Freud's Shadow over Modern Psychology (South East European University, SEEU)

So, sex and punishment were the core ideas or the core features of the early Sigmund Freud.

Sigmund Freud initially suggested that sexuality, the sex drive, affects development. It's that people develop, the child develops, by exploring various pleasure zones in the body.

The child starts by experiencing pleasure through the mouth, breastfeeding, sucking, sucking finger later and so experiencing pleasure through the mouth. And this is called the oral stage.

Then the child discovers other parts of the body which we will not go into.

It's bad quality pornography.

And so we have all kinds of stages, and this was known as the libidinal or psychosexual development model.

The children, by exploring their own bodies, gradually evolve and gradually develop, and they internalize these discoveries about their own bodies and then they use these discoveries, project them onto other people, which creates the bridge.

So I'm not going to all this now.

He made a distinction between narcissistic libido and other libido, other directed libido.

At this stage, I will not go into it.

This development model is no longer used even by psychoanalysts.

So even the followers of Sigmund Freud, and even Sigmund Freud himself ultimately gave up on this model. So we no longer use it.

It is still used in literature. It is still used in movies.

So for example, someone with an oral fixation, because you can get stuck. As a baby, you can get, according to Freud, early Freud, very early Freud, you can get stuck.

The baby starts with the oral phase, and then for some reason, the mother is frustrating, or the baby is sick, or whatever, the baby gets stuck at the oral face.

So this kind of person would eat a lot, would gratify himself by eating, or would otherwise enjoy activities involving the mouth, for example.

And then there's, of course, the anal stage. Let's not go into anatomical details, and someone who gets fixated on the anal stage, because the anal stage, let's not go into anatomical details, and someone who gets fixated on the anal stage, because the anal stage involves what comes out of the anus. So it's about dirt, it's about dirt, about smells, bad smells, and so on.

So Sigmund Freud said, if you get stuck in the anal stage, you become obsessed with cleanliness, you clean all the time, you arrange everything, you can't see something like that, so you make it like that.

Hercule Poirot, those of you have watched Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie.

So Hercourt is like this. Hercoult Poirot walks and then he sees something that is like that. So he walks. Hmm, he does this.

So this is an anal retentive guy. He got stuck, he got retained in the anal-anal phase.

Anyhow, that's nice and very cute ideas, and they are in use in movies and literature and so on, but we no longer discuss them seriously in psychology.

However, there was one legacy, one thing that was left over from this idea, and that is that there are stages of development.

So this was a new idea, by the way. Before Sigmund Freud, no one was talking about stages of development. It was a totally new idea. So there are stages of development.

And even maybe to some extent that sexuality plays a role in growth and development, which in 19th century Vienna, 19th century Austria, this was absolute shocker. This was a revolution in thinking.

Everyone was accusing Sigmund Freud of being a pornographer, pedophile. You don't want to know what this guy had to go through, just for suggesting that sexuality plays some role in babies.

Because babies were supposed to be asexual, non-sexual. Angels, basically. There were angels. So they had no sexuality.

Never mind that masturbation starts at the latest, at age three years. Latest, usually two. Never mind that. You ignore, you deny.

So these were his legacies.

Much later he came with the structural model of personality, which begins to be much more interesting.

We started the lecture with Bollas, who is much later than Freud. Yes, Bollas did most of his work in the 1970s and 1980s.

We started with Bollas because Bollas adopted the Freudian id, which was actually not Freudian id, Freud stole it from others.

Freud was a major plagiarist, by the way. He kept stealing ideas and texts even from everyone, from Adler, fromyou name it.

So one of the ideas Freud stole was the unconscious. It was not Freud's idea, absolutely. He stole the idea of the unconscious and Bollas adopted this idea and suggested that the unconscious has power over us.

These unrecalled memories, these suppressed experiences and so on, they have power over us. They are like an engine working in the background and they drive development and so on so forth, which is essentially what Freud said. Freud said the same.

So, Bollas's work is not so much innovative as it is an upgrade of Freud's work for the modern age, let's say. There's not much innovation there.

Now, according to Freud, the mind is full of energy. Freud was very big on energy. Why?

Because Freud wanted to convert psychology into a branch of physics. That's why, in mathematics. That's why he coined the phrase psychoanalysis, like it was mathematical analysis.

And so he used many physical metaphors. One of the metaphors that he borrowed from physics was energy. He said, we have energy. Everything is imbued with energy. Everything is connected to energy, psychic energy, also known as cathexis.

Now, Freud hated this word. The word cathexis was coined by a guy who translated Freud. And Freud had a huge fight with this guy and he absolutely hated this word. But this word stuck, and today we use this word, not Freud's word, which makes me very happy.

So, because I think it's a great word. Cathexis is when we invest psychic energy, emotional energy, we invest it in some process. The process could be internal, this is known as primary process, and the process could be behavioral or conscious, and that is secondary process.

So everything has energy. So for example, if you have a trauma, you just went through some very bad experience, horrible experience, you know, this experience comes with energy.

And when you suppress this experience, when you deny it, when you repress it, it's called repression. When you repress it, you repress the experience and the energy of the experience. You repress it.

In therapy, the therapist helps you to remember the experience. The minute you remember the experience, the experience comes up with the energy, with the energy connected to it.

This process is known as abreaction. Okay? So this is the economy of the mind. It is essentially like even like the electricity company. All kinds of energies and over coming up, popping up, going down all the time there's huge energy cycles in the mine.

Now there are two forms of energy, actually. Everyone thinks there's only one form of energy, but actually there are two forms of energy, and I will teach you a few concepts that maybe you haven't heard of.

But before we come there, cathexis, like any energy, you can do anything you want with it. You can invest it.

So you are cathecting something. When you are interested in something, when you're committed to something, when you do something, when you like doing something, when you want to do something, when you daydream about something, when you fantasize, you are cathecting it. You're putting cathexis into it.

Then you move on to another subject and you lose interest. You are decathecting it. Okay? So you can do many things with cathexis.

There's also un-cathexis. I'm not going to it. There's a whole field about cathexis, what you can do with it. It's very fluid. Think of it like water. Kind of water. It goes everywhere.

Okay, so this is cathexis.

What do you cathect with? What is this energy that you're using?

Freud initially suggested that it is libido. He called it libido.

Now, initially, early, early, early on, he identified libido with eros. He said that the libido is eros and eros is the sexual energy.

So, libido is sexual energy.

So to this very day, when you watch movies and read books, everyone makes the mistake that libido is about having sex.

It's not. It's not. It's actually the force of life. Libido is the force of life. A part of the libido is eros, which is sex, falling in love, infatuation, limerence and so on. So eros is part of libido.

Libido was defined the way we use it today in psychology, where it is used. It was defined by Jung, not by Freud.

It is Jung who defined libido as the force of life. Whatever you do, socially, sexually, with yourself, with others, in your career, whatever you do, you are using libido units. You are investing, you are cathecting with libido.

Every human activity is cathected with libido according to Jung. That is not Freud's view.

But today we don't use Freud's view. We use Jung's view.

However, this is only one force. There is another force.

That other force is known as destrudo or mortido. Destrudo or mortido is the opposite of libido. It is the force of death. It is known as thanatos. Thanatos or the tannatic force.

But again in literature and movies, because unfortunately, today you find Freud and Jung only in literature, movies, and stupid online forums. That's where you find Freud and Jung.

And of course, they get it wrong like 99% of the time on a good day.

So Thanatos, the force of death or death drive, is not about death like, not this kind of death.

Thanatos is about reducing internal tension, reducing anxiety, reducing conflict.

So whereas the libido drives us outward, the libido drives us to the world. The libido makes us experience things. The libido forces us to be in touch with people. The libido causes us to act and to behave and to make decisions and to make choices. And even the libido forces us to invest in ourselves, for example, to love ourselves and so.

So the libido is relational. The libido forces us to invest in ourselves, for example, to love ourselves and so on. So the libido is relational. The libido forces us to be in relation to something.

So the libido causes conflicts, obviously. If you love someone and they don't love you back, that creates conflict. If you love someone and unfortunately they love you back, it creates even more conflict.

I mean conflicts are integral part of libido.

Thanatos, the death drive, is about reducing the internal reactions, the internal outcomes of conflict.

Whenever we are faced with a dissonance, dissonance is when two things don't fit together, like cognitive dissonance.

You have two beliefs, you have two ideas, and they don't fit together. Two thoughts, you have two thoughts. They don't fit together. It's a cognitive dissonance.

So whenever we are faced with a dissonance, two things don't fit, this creates anxiety. The dissonance creates stress. And the stress creates anxiety. You don't feel comfortable about this.

You know, there are two. For example, you were taught all your life, you grew up in a religious family. And the religious family taught you, thou shalt not kill. You should not kill other people.

Then you go to the army, and the army tells you, you should kill people. So you should not kill people? You should kill people.

This creates dissonance. There is a conflict between the religious instruction and the army instruction. And there's a dissonance here. This dissonance creates a lot of stress.

You know your stress? What to do? This creates anxiety.

And so the death drive reduces anxiety and reduces tension. What Freud said, the ultimate situation where you have no anxiety is when you are dead. Obviously. When you're dead, there's no inflation and there's no anxiety. These two phenomena disappear.

So he said, well, this must be the death drive.

Because, you know, if you want to be conflict-free, you should be dead. That's why he called it death drive.

But it's not about dying. It's not about death. It's not about committing suicide. It's about going to a lower level of energy, decathecting the conflict, going down.

And this is also called in my view, wrongly, but it's still, it's called Destrudo or Mortido. Because like the Thanatic drive can cause you to self-destructiveness and to die. Mortido, mortido means to die. Okay?

So these are the forces at play, not one but two. And they conflict all the time.

One force, the libido, drives you outwards. The studo or the thanatic drive drives you inwards. Outwards, inwards, outwards, inwards, this is the dynamic of life according to Sigmund Freud.

When the death drive wins, you're in a state of nirvana. Believe it or not, nirvana is a concept in psychoanalysis. So the nirvana principle.

So in psychoanalysis we say that when your death drive is winning, you are free of conflict, you're free of dissonance, you're free of anxiety, and you're floating, you know, like in the Indian mystical traditions, you're floating, you feel wonderful, and so on, and this is called nirvana.

So, ironically, the death drive is the one that drives you to be happy. Not the libido.

When the death drive wins, the Thanatic drive wins, you're conflict free. And you are in a state of nirvana, which is supposed to be a good state.

It is when the libido wins that you enter life because the libido is intimately connected with a structure that we will discuss in a minute and it is a structure that puts you in danger all the time.

So libido puts you in situations which could be very bad for you, very detrimental, and creates conflict, and creates dissonance.

In short, the libido is about life, because this is life, you know.

When you go out to life, to reality, bad things can happen to you. You can cross the street here. There'll be a car. You know, the car is finished. You're sorry. This is life.

So when you cathect, when you cathect, you're taking a risk.

The first time the baby, the first time the baby cathects, the baby is taking a huge risk.

Because here is a baby with mother. The baby initially does not affect mother because mother is not an external object. Mother is what we call a part object. She, like the baby and mother are one.

So there's no process of cathexis here. So the baby is one with mother.

But then the baby, and the baby is hugging mother's leg, typical baby thing. Baby is hugging mother's leg.

But then suddenly the baby lets go of mother, lets go of her, and walks two, three steps.

This act is known as separation. Baby separates from mother and walks two three steps.

It's a giant risk. It's an enormous thing for the baby, you know? And the baby takes these two, three steps because for the first time the baby cathects something.

Usually the baby sees another baby or another person or a dog.

So there's a process of investment in something external to the baby.

And so the very first thing the baby does is to take the risk of losing mommy because the baby doesn't have a way of knowing that if he lets go of mother she will still be there maybe she will not be there maybe if you let go of mother and take two three steps mother will disappear vanish abandon you maybe it will make her angry that you left her and she will let go. And you will lose mother.

And the baby takes this chance. The baby is taking this chance.

None of you, until you die, will ever take a bigger chance in your life. Trust me. The chance of losing mother when you are 18 months old, nothing compares to it. Nothing.

And this is driven by the libido, driven by cathexis, driven by the wish to go outward, to connect.

So it is the death principle, the death drive, that leads you to stability, safety, contentment.

And this is something no one realizes about psychoanalytic theory.

Now, in most psychoanalytic schools, and for you to understand, psychoanalysis is not a single school.

Psychoanalysis, there are at least 17 schools that I remember right now, and maybe if I go deeper, I will find another 10 or 20.

It's a family of schools, including object-relation schools, including psychodynamic schools like Jung, including Freud, including Adler, including many, many others. So there are many, many schools.

But what I'm discussing right now is what all these schools agree on, what is common denominator of all these schools, because they argue about many things, but there are some things that all of them accept.

For example, all of them accept. The unconscious exists. All of them accept this.

Which, by the way, in modern theories, it doesn't exist. For example, we have no concept of unconscious in social cognitive theory. There's no such concept. We don't have a concept of unconscious in information processing theory. There's no unconscious there.

So psychoanalytic schools accept the existence of the unconscious.

And they say that there are two phases, and now I'm linking it to information processing theory.

Okay? That's why I gave you all this. That's why I'm torturing you because it leads to information processing theory, but it leads in a way that also provides you with what we call an agent.

An agent is who is doing the thinking, who is doing the processing.

So if you combine actually psychoanalytic theories or psychodynamic theories or object relations theories, you combine them with information processing theories, you get a perfect theory, which answers all the questions.

Unfortunately, as I told you, in today's world, Freud is a no-no, and Jung is a no-no. You're not supposed to...

So no one is doing this work.

But the genius who would put the two together would get a theory of everything in psychology. Would explain everything.

In which way can we put the two together?

As I said, psychoanalytic theories, psychodynamic, object relations, they all agreed that there is unconscious.

Now what does it mean unconscious?

These theories say that there are two types of thinking. One type of thinking is known as pre-verbal, pre-verbal thinking, or pre-logical thinking. And the other type of thinking is thinking we're used to.

Now there is another theory known as systems theory.

And in systems theory, we make a distinction between apprehensive and comprehensive thinking in system theory.

Apprehensive thinking in system theory is thinking that is done in the unconscious.

They don't call it unconscious. They don't call it unconscious.

But thinking that is not accessible to you, thinking that you, the unthought, known.

And comprehensive thinking is the kind of thinking that is verbalized, that is fully accessible, that you can share with others and so on.

So you see that in system theory, which is a very, very, very modern theory of psychology, there is also the element of thinking.

And the element of thinking and the process of thinking and the nature of thinking was first described and first analyzed and first studied by definitely Sigmund Freud and later psychoanalysis.

So I told you that Sigmund Freud made a distinction between primary processes and secondary processes.

Primary process is unconscious process, irrational process, childish process that is not accessible to us, you are not aware of it, and secondary processes is what we're doing here in class.

This is what everything we're doing right now is a secondary process. It's verbal, it's logical, well, I think it's logical. It's discussable, you can discuss it, and so and so forth.

Pre-logical and pre-verbal thinking is something completely different and is very fascinating.

Pre-logical and pre-verbal thinking is the kind of thinking that is essentially communicated via symbols and images, visuals.

So, for example, dreaming is pre-verbal, pre-logical thinking. Dreaming.

Another example, psychosis, hallucinations. Hallucinations are pre-verbal, pre-logical.

Surrealism. All of surrealism, you heard of surrealism, the art movement? All of surrealism was based on pre-logical, pre-verbal thinking. All the imagery in surrealism reflects dream imagery.

And if you look at the work of Salvador Dali, for example, who is not a pure surrealist, by the way, but if you look at his work, it is clearly a dreamscape, and all the images in the dream represent not only themselves but also some message. They're symbolic. They symbolize something.

So, in pre-logical, pre-verbal thinking, we have overt text, and occult, hidden text.

While in comprehensive thinking, in the kind of thinking we are doing right now, in secondary processes, what you see is what you get.

If I tell you, you know, I'm going to give you a break in 10 minutes, and if you trust me, for some reason which I don't know, but then there's no hidden meaning behind it. It's not like if I tell you I'll give you a break in 10 minutes, actually I'm telling you there's a green car in the parking. There's no hidden text.

But in pre-logical thinking, there is.

Freud said that until the age of two, there is a debate. Two, three, five, never mind. Each one comes with another number. But he accepted is two.

Until age two, babies, infants, toddlers engage in pre-logical, pre-verbal thinking.

So ironically, the language of babies is much more complex than our language.

Our language has no hidden text, usually, not always. In good literature, you have a hidden text. So if you read the Bible, there's a hidden text.

But in day-to-day conversations, and in day-to-day thinking, there's no hidden text, usually, not always, but usually.

While with babies, there's always a hidden text. It's always symbolic. When you dream, there's always a hidden text. It's always symbolic. When you dream, there's always a hidden text. There's always a symbol. It always symbolizes something.

And after the break, we will discuss examples of pre-logical and pre-verbal thinking, which examples that I find fascinating.

And they are relevant because if in some adults, in some adults, these ways of thinking survive.

And these adults think like babies do they have pre-logical pre-verbal thinking not the logical kind not the rational kind

So by introducing you to a variety of pre-logical things types of thinking you will be able to identify sometimes people that you know, that they are thinking like that.

Because in many people who are immature, who are developmentally arrested or stuck, mentally ill, and so on so forth, or not mentally ill, but just dysfunctional and so on, in many of these kind of people, the problem is they never transitioned to proper thinking and to proper language.

They remain stuck in the infancy stage, not only as far as thinking, but also as far as defense mechanisms.

We see that information processing theory and psychoanalytic schools, especially object relation schools, they have one thing in common. They emphasize the role of thinking, of processing information. That's not a minor thing. That is the core of information processing theory.

And they have two things they disagree on.

Information processing theory and many other modern theories don't have the concept of unconscious. And information processing theory and many other modern theories don't have the concept of energy.

They are not dynamic theories. They are theories that are descriptive. They're theories that are observational. And they are theories that are algorithmic.

So we have information, it goes here, it comes here, there's a buffer, we'll come to it a bit later.

But they don't have the dynamics while psychoanalytic theories object relation theories describe some kind of energetic exchange dynamic inside the person as the person interacts with himself and with others.

Lydia asked me a question before I wiped the board about the death drive.

I told you that the aim of the death drive, according to Freud and others who did much more important work on the death drive, the aim of the death drive is to reduce tension, to resolve conflict, to ameliorate anxiety.

The death drive is axiolitic. And the death drive causes us to be in a state of nirvana. That's the nirvana principle in psychoanalysis.

However, dysfunctional people, people whose psyche is not exactly healthy, unhealthy people, they would seek nirvana. They would seek to reduce the tension by destroying themselves. That's why it's called the death drive.

So there are two ways to reach, if you wish, nirvana. There are two ways to be content and conflict-free and consonant, not dissonant. There are two ways to accomplish this.

One way is to do some work with yourself and to reduce the tension and the stress and the anxiety.

And the other way is todestroy yourself, exactly like Freud said, when you are dead, there is no anxiety.

So self-destructiveness is an integral part of the death drive.

But in this particular case, when self-destructiveness is the solution, the self-destructiveness uses the death drive coupled with aggression.

That's why I didn't mention it before, because self-destructiveness has a lot more to do with aggression, the internalization of aggression, internalized aggression.

Okay. Now, you all know that Freud suggested a structural model. It's known as the three-partite model. Tripartite model. Three-partite model of the psyche. Tripartite is because there are three parts.

So, three-partite structural model of the psyche, id ego, super-ego.

Again, let's start with common mistakes. The super ego is part of the ego.

These are not separate structures. Actually, this is not a three-partite model. It's a bipartite model. It's two. There's the Id and the ego. A part of the ego, like an iceberg, the part that you see above the water is the super ego, but it's a part of the ego.

People who have no ego or people whose ego formation was disrupted, people who have fragmented ego, broken ego, non-functional ego, they don't also have a super ego.

You can't have a super ego without an ego. It's again very common mistake.

Okay. So id ego super ego, this complex.

Now you remember that we were discussing preverbal and pre-logical thinking before you went on a break. So you remember? Okay.

Okay, and I promised you to discuss a few examples of this type of thinking, because this is the type of thinking of the id.

The id engages in pre-verbal and pre-logical thinking.

Can you say it is more intuitive?

Not really intuitive. It's more, in a minute I will give examples and maybe it will become more clear.

Pre-verbal and pre-logical thinking, which is the thinking of the baby or the infant until...

Marian, when I go here, am I on camera?

Yes.

Where can I go? Not to be on camera. No, I'm joking.

You remember that pre-verbal and pre-logical thinking is typical of someone underage, there's a debate, underage two years, 18 months, something of it.

At that point, the baby does not realize its own separateness.

The baby doesn't perceive itself as separate from.

There's no inside outside. There's no external, internal, there's no, these distinctions, there's no boundaries. There are no boundaries. These distinctions are not very clear. It's very fuzzy to the baby.

That's why babies cry when mother leaves the room, because it's terrifying. It's like part of them left the room. It's like amputation.

There's a problem of object constancy. If the baby doesn't see the object, the baby doesn't believe the object exists. Because the baby's vision makes the object exist.

And this is the first example of pre-logical pre-verbal thinking. My seeing, my vision makes the object exist. I bring the objects into being by watching them.

So when the baby wants something to become, when the baby wants something to appear suddenly, the baby would look at it.

And when the baby wants to hide itself, the baby would cover itself with a blanket, because then he disappears. The baby identifies vision, his vision, the baby's vision, vision with existence. No see, no exist. Yes, see, yes exist. I'm under the blanket, I don't exist. Mother leaves the room. She doesn't exist. I cannot see her.

So this is the first example of, and all these examples of thinking that I'm about to give you, they are typical of the Eid in Freud's work.

Now, just to be clear about one thing. No one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever captured an Eid. No one has an Eid in a cage or no one has an Eid in an aquarium. No one, there's no, no one, you cannot, this is a metaphor. This is not real. There's no real ego, There's no real Eid. It's just a metaphor. It's like literature.

So in this sense, the language of psychoanalysis is pre-verbal, pre-logical.

Because you remember what is pre-verbal, pre-logical thinking? It's when you have an open text and a hidden text, overt text and hidden text. It's the same with psychoanalysis. When psychoanalysis tells you there is id, there is ego, there is super ego, that's the overt text. But there is a hidden text.

Because these are symbols. These are metaphors. They're not real. There's not such thing. It's just the overt text that triggers the hidden text.

In many ways, psychoanalysis is the language of the baby. And indeed, in psychoanalysis, the huge emphasis is on the first two years of life. Huge. Like 90% of psychoanalysis is about the first two years of life. And they're using, psychoanalysis uses baby language.

Okay, so, ego, superego.

Another example of pre-logical, pre-verbal thinking is what is known as magical thinking.

Magical thinking is if I concentrate on something, if I wish something to happen, if I think about something long enough and hard enough, it will happen. I can make things happen. I can make things happen for other people also. I can change other people. I can affect their lives. I can make bad things happen to them. I can make good things happen to them all I need to do is think about it, all I need to do is imagine it, all I need to do is to wish it and it will happen.

And this is magical thinking. Magical thinking.

Magical thinking in babies is about thinking, and later some babies develop rituals.

So they say, I don't know, if I knock three times, something will happen.

So you see already such rituals in very early childhood, in two years old and three years old. It's also a form of magical thinking.

Now, in today's postmodern society, magical thinking is a major industry.

You heard of the law of attraction? Yes, that's magical thinking, of course. It's also nonsense, but you heard of the secret? It's magical thinking.

These are all magical thinking. If you just put your mind to it, if you just focus on it, if you just concentrate, the universe will rearrange itself to give you your wish.

That's of course, magical thinking. It's infantile thinking. We call it primitive thinking in psychology.

There is another form of thinking.

Again, I'm giving you examples of pre-verbal, pre-logical types of thinking.

There's another form of thinking known as TAF. T-A-F is thought-action fusion.

Thought-action fusion. It's a form of primitive thinking.

Thought action fusion is the belief that if you think about something bad it will happen.

So for example a child would say I hate you, I wish you die. And then the next day, the father dies in a car accident. The child would believe that he killed the father.

Or a child would witness his parents' divorce. And a child would say, they're divorcing because of me. This bad thing is happening because of me. So the divorce is, I'm guilty for the divorce, so they would feel very guilty.

This is thought-action fusion.

Thought-action fusion, magical thinking is about good things usually. Magical thinking is about good things.

If I wish very hard to get a car, a toy, I will get the toy. If I wish very hard to get the girl, I will get the girl. Yeah, that's a bit later in life.

And this is good. So, magical thinking is good.

Thought-action fusion is bad.

Now, you heard of obsessive-compulsive disorder? You heard of it?

Obsessive compulsive disorder is when we have constant intrusive thoughts, thoughts that we cannot control, thoughts that we dislike, thoughts we would like to get rid of, but they keep invading our mind and we cannot stop it.

And compulsion, the need to act in a specific, in a highly ritualized, highly specific way, and we can't help it either. We can't stop acting this way.

Now, obsessive-compulsive disorder is the outcome of thought-action fusion.

What happens in the obsessive-compulsive mind?

So, first there is a thought.

If I don't wash my hands six times, my mother will die. If I don't knock on the table.

So the famous example of obsession compulsion is when we say, you know, touch wood, like nothing bad will happen. You know, when people knock on wood, touch wood, nothing bad will.

This is obsession compulsion.

Superstitions are obsessive-compulsive because they link specific bad outcomes to specific behaviors. Don't do this because something bad will happen. This is a form of obsession compulsion.

But some people with obsession compulsions have very, very serious obsession compulsions.

For example, when they walk, they have to skip every second tile. So they walk by jumping. Or they wash their hands to the point that the skin falls off. I'm kidding you or not. I mean, some obsession compulsions are really bad.

These are rituals. These are rituals intended to defend against what? Against the bad thoughts.

Why?

Because bad thoughts become bad events. If I think someone will die, they will die.

To prevent this, I will make a ritual.

Does it remind you of something?

Religion. Religion is a major case of obsessivecompulsive disorder. If I pray to God, nothing bad will happen. If I don't pray to God, I'm a bad person and bad things will happen to me and to my family. That's of course obsessive compulsive disorder.

Do you think that we all have a little bit of OCD?

OCD is a very extreme clinical term.

But we are all a bit from time to time obsessive. We are all a bit from time to time compulsive.

It's a question of magical thinking.

In other words, do you truly believe that your actions prevent something from happening, something bad from happening?

Then this is OCD.

But when you do this, you know, touch wood, nothing bad will happen. It's more a social habit or superstition or whatever.

People who pray to God repeatedly, it becomes the center of their lives, and they truly believe that if you don't pray to God, you're a bad person and you will pay the price.

This is mental illness.

So in many respects, yes, that is mental illness.

And in many respects, yeah, I know you don't agree because most religious people don't agree.

Catholics, they have, oh, she died because I didn't go to confess myself.

And did really believe it.

No, not too much religious.

You have not valid.

No, not too much religious.

If you believe that your religious actions prevent bad things from happening, not if you're too religious, but if you believe that your prayer, for example, prevents bad things.

And if you don't pray, bad things will happen.

That is obsession, compulsion.

Understand?

It's okay to be religious.

What counts is your actions?

Not action. If you believe that the rituals that you're following prevents something from happening in reality.

Okay.

Understand?

You're praying, you're lighting candles, whatever you're doing.

That's up to you.

That's up to you.

But if you believe that your actions are preventing something in reality, because I lit the candle or because I prayed, the accident did not happen. I prevented the accident by praying. Or I did not pray my child got killed in an accident.

And that is extreme.

That is obsessive, obsessive.

This is the magical element.

Yes?

So these are examples of pre-logical, pre-Bal, and they are typical of the id.

Now what is the id again remember these are metaphors this is literature no one has identified an id no one photographed.

Did you ever photograph an id, Marian? Did you ever photograph an id?

What is it?

Exactly.

So Marian never photographed an id.

So...

He didn't see it.

Yeah, you never saw it.

There's not such thing, of course.

This is just metaphor, just a way of speaking.

The way a child would speak, actually.

It's very childish language, psychoanalysis.

Can I ask, you give an example of a child using the vision. The vision is one of the senses, right? And sees. And if he sees, it exists.

So is it now like we are talking about two years old, right? And for infant, so when they start actually to sense the world and they're growing out of the mother's womb and they're trying to develop and the libido is calling like, you know, the life in them is like go and explore the world.

This is actually the senses are the first thing. They actually acknowledge and believe they have and they can relate to the outside road.

This is very much connected to beliefs. Later, believe in religion, belief in other people. This is, in my view, the first, by the sense, you are connecting with someone else. And you make later on get attached to objects and so on.

So I think it is the life itself, the libido, experience through the senses.

Yes, the sensory...

And in my opinion, is the mother who should define what the child sees and confirm and validate if it exists.

So, yes, the sensors are of course very important.

In information processing theory, the theory starts from sensory inputs.

Of course, sensor is very critical.

In psychoanalysis also, sensory inputs are very important.

The id indeed makes use of the libido. It is the reservoir, the container of libidinal energy, and the libido comes from the id. All the libido is in the id.

It is the libido actually that cathects.

Remember what is katexis?

Emotional investment.

So it is the libido, the id, I'm sorry, that cathects. The id cathects with libido.

And now the model is very, very interesting in my view, not necessarily because it's true or can be tested or because, you know, it's not scientific, but it's very interesting.

Why?

Because Freud says, and later, after Freud, many others, they say that there is a war between the need to reach out, the need to interact with life and with reality, they need to be out there. There's a war between this and between internal structures that hold you back. Internal structures that fight you. They don't let you cathect. They don't let you use the libido. They're holding you back.

Now, no one said it before to the best of my knowledge, but I think it's possible to conceive of it as the id is the life force. The id is libido and the ego and super ego are the death force, in my view.

That's how I see it. It's not in the literature anywhere, but I see it that way. There's a war between life and death. The id is the life. And ego and super ego intend to reduce conflict, to reduce stress.

In a minute I will explain to you how they do that.

But the main aim of the ego is to keep you safe. The main function of the ego is to keep you safe.

How to keep you safe? By becoming aware of reality and not acting.

So the ego is inhibitory. It inhibits action. It prevents action.

The id wants to go out to do things. And the ego says, no. Don't do it. Wait a minute. Bad consequences, risks, dangers, this.

So the ego is holding you back all the time, pulling you down all the time, de-activating you all the time.

So it's very reminiscent of the death drive. Very.

So you mentioned before the conflict, and you said that before that we're actually in cognitive dissonance between the libido and thanatos, right?

Thanatos, yes.

So you have to pass the stage of cognitive dissonance and this is actually the fight between the id and ego you're in actual the argument.

The irony is that indeed we are in a constant state of internal conflict.

This is a conflictual model. It's a model of conflicts.

In modern theories of psychology, for example, systems theory and information processing theory and so on, there is no concept of conflict.

There is no conflict. We find conflict in other psychological schools. For example, internal family system. It's a very fascinating school of psychology. Internal family system.

It says that your psyche, your psychology is like a big family. And they are members of the family inside you, like members of the family, it's internal family, and they are fighting. They are fighting, they have different functions, and it's a fascinating thing.

But there you have conflict.

But conflict is absent in most modern theories, while in Freud's work conflict is foundational, is basic.

So there's the id.

What does the id want to do? What babies want to do?

The id wants to eat, the id wants to drink, the id wants to have sex.

Sex drive is part of the id.

The id wants to do many things.

The id wants to have sex. Sex drive is part of the id. The id wants to do many things.

The id, like the baby, is not aware of external internal. The id has no concept of external.

The id, in other words, includes the world.

We could say safely that the id is psychotic.

Because what is psychosis?

Psychosis is when you think you are the world. When you think your mind is the world.

The psychotic person has a voice inside his mind. There's a voice inside the mind of the psychotic person.

He doesn't say, I have a voice in my mind. He says, there's someone, there's a voice there. Someone is talking to me from there.

The psychotic person has an image in his mind, some visual, and he says, wow, look at that. It's called hallucination.

So the psychotic person confuses his mind, his internal world, with reality, the external world.

Psychotic person thinks that his mind is reality.

Same with the baby.

The pre-verbal phase, the pre-logical phase is, I am the world.

You know the famous song? We are the world.

That's a psychotic song.

So the baby is in this sense psychotic and the id is psychotic.

The id works on a principle of hyper-reflexivity.

The mommy smiled, the age is mine.

Yes.

It is the foundation of empathy. It's a good comment. It's a foundation of empathy.

Because if you are the world, then when mommy smiles you are the one who is smiling because you're mommy, you're the world.

That is the first instance of empathy.

This is known as reflexive empathy. It's when the baby smiles at mommy. That's reflexive empathy. Very, very basic.

Animals react this way to images in a mirror. When they face a mirror, they react this way.

OK, so this is the id.

The id wants to do things.

The id is outgoing, but not in the sense that the id perceives some external thing.

But every wish, every drive, every urge should be immediately gratified because there are no consequences and there are no consequences because there's nothing out there.

Everything is in here. There are no consequences.

So the id is not aware of consequences.

When you are not aware of consequences, for example, if I lift the thermos and open the thermos and drink the coffee, the consequences that I enjoyed it.

So if you are not aware of consequences, you are not aware of time. There's no time. If there's no cause and effect, action and consequence, there's no time.

So the id is timeless. It has no concept of time.

And this is the id. It's super primitive.

Freud says it's super primitive.

But it's risky.

Freud says that's a huge risk.

You want to have sex? You have sex. You go to prison. You want to eat? You go to a restaurant, you take the food, you eat it, that's it. You don't talk to anyone. You don't pay, of course. You go to prison.

What Freud is saying, basically, if you obey the id, you're doomed. You're finished. You end up in prison, you end up dead. It's a very dangerous part of you.

He says, the id puts you at huge risk and huge danger.

And that's why the baby comes up gradually with the ego.

But you can say, why? What gives rise to the ego?

Yes, it's dangerous out there, but the baby doesn't have a concept of out there. The baby doesn't have a concept of risk, of danger, of consequences, of the existence of the external world.

So why would the baby invent the ego? The baby has no reason to invent the ego. If you're not aware that there's a world out there, why would you create a structure that would interact with the world out there that you don't know exists? So it's a bit stupid.

He says that it's the mother. The mother teaches the baby that there's a world out there, but not the way you think, and not the way Lydia said.

Not by giving the baby an example, not by teaching the baby, but by frustrating the baby.

So Freud said, for example, the baby wants to eat. Okay? So baby cries. It doesn't say, I want to eat. It cries. So the baby wants to eat. So baby cries. I want to eat. It doesn't say I want to eat. It cries. So the baby cries.

Mother doesn't let the baby eat. Doesn't breastfeed the baby. She's busy. I don't know what she's doing. She doesn't feed the baby.

The baby realizes, wait a minute, something's wrong here. I want to eat. I am the world. I want to eat. But it seems that there's something else that doesn't give me the food because how can it be?

Gradually the baby, through the frustrations, through the denial, the baby begins to understand that mummy is separate.

The minute the baby realizes that I am not mother, that minute the world is born.

But not only the world, that minute the baby is born.

When the mother frustrates the baby, at that moment the baby realizes, mother is not me, so there is mother and there is me.

The self, the subject, we call it the subject, the subject and the object, emerge at the same time when the mother frustrates the baby.

Of course, at that point, the baby also begins to develop morality. The baby says, mother is bad. She is not giving me food. Bad mommy. Wait a minute, if mommy is bad, I'm good. Bad and good. Morality.

Now initially the baby says, bad mommy, good me. That is called splitting. Baby splits.

Later on, the baby reverses this position and says, actually, I'm bad, mother is good. Doesn't matter, but suddenly the world breaks down. The baby becomes aware.

At that point, the baby starts to develop an ego.

Because if there is an external world, and if this world can frustrate you, can deny your wishes, if this world is not controlled by you, if this world is not you, wait a minute, I need some instrument, I need some tool to cope with such a world.

Then the ego is born.

Initially, the ego is what we call the body ego. Initially. Initially, it's the awareness of the baby's body. It's very early. Awareness of baby's body is like three, four months.

The baby explores the body. The baby is its own object. This is called narcissistic libido. It's narcissism. The baby is its own object. So it explores itself. This, that, other things which we're not going to, and so on.

And by doing this, the baby is creating simulated reality. It's like his body becomes the reality. There's me and there's reality body.

So this gives rise to the ego in Freud's work, by the way.

There were others who disagreed. We're talking about Freud at this stage.

Now, initially, the id operates on what we call the pleasure principle.

Pleasure principle has two sides, not one, seeking pleasure and avoiding unpleasure. Seeking pleasure, but also avoiding unpleasant things.

This is the pleasure principle. That's the id.

The ego operates on the reality principle. There's a reality out there, and I must become aware of it and I must take it into account. I must consider reality when I pursue the gratification of my drives.

I want to have sex. I need to ask what does reality say. I want to eat, I need to ask what reality has to offer and how can I obtain the food and so on. So I need to take reality into account.

So there is necessity to start thinking.

It's practical. The ego is a response to practical problems.

I want food, how to get it.

Now I realize, mother is not me.

Say God, that's a big problem. Mother is not me. I'm not in control.

I need to make sure that mother will give me food, otherwise I will die.

So I need her to see me, otherwise I will die. So I need her to see me, so I will cry.

So all this theory, we call it theory of mind about other people and theory of the world. The baby creates theories.

And these theories, this theory is just another name for the ego. The ego is a set of theories about the world.

And the ego tells you, according to my theory, don't do this. This is bad. Or according to my theory, it's safe. Do it.

So the ego is kind of, in a way, a parental figure. It's a kind of parent.

But it's a very primitive parental figure. You will see later that a full-fledged parental figure, a total parent, appears later, and it's called the super ego.

But initially, it's a very primitive parent.

Why?

Because the baby is primitive. When a baby tries to imagine an internal parent, he is going to imagine the internal parent as some kind of big baby. He's going to extrapolate.

The baby is going to say, oh, the internal parent is like me. So it's kind of baby parent. The ego is kind of baby parent initially.

Initially, after that, the ego evolves the super ego. And then the structure is complete.

What are the functions of the ego? Many.

The ego is known as the executive. The ego is in charge. The ego is the boss. The ego is the director. Or in a university, the ego is director.

So, everything basically is mediated through the ego. Nothing can be done. You cannot even think some things without involving the ego.

The ego also exercises censorship. In Freud's work, there is what is called the internal censor, but I'm not going to it right now.

So, you cannot exist without the ego. That's why when the formation of the ego is disrupted, when the baby fails to develop an ego, because the parents are bad parents, or because the environment is horrible, because there were adverse childhood experiences, bad experiences. Or because the baby has been mistreated one way or another.

For example, even when you spoil a baby, it's a bad thing, because you don't allow the baby to be in touch with reality.

So when upbringing, bringing up the baby, when educating the baby goes wrong, the baby fails to develop a self or a fully-fledged self.

And then there are massive problems for the rest of life because the ego functions are very critical. You cannot survive without ego functions. If your ego or self, whatever you want to call it, is not there, is broken, is dysfunctional, you're in big trouble, very big trouble, and you will pay a heavy price all life.

So what are the functions of the ego?

Number one function, by far, is what we call reality testing.

Reality testing is the ego informs you about reality.

The ego tells you this is reality.

This is how to gauge reality. Thisthe ego informs you about reality. The ego tells you this is reality. This is how to gauge reality. This is how to evaluate it. This is how to predict reality. This is how to...

This is reality.

So the ego is the interface between us and reality. We don't see reality as it is. We see reality as the ego wants us to see it.

Why?

Because the ego is a control freak. The ego wants to control everything we do.

Ego is also very anxious. There's anxiety attached to the ego. Ego is always anxious that you're going to do something really, really stupid and you're going to pay a really, really heavy price.

The ego regards you as underdeveloped idiotic babies, and he's in charge of this kindergarten. He has to make sure that you don't break the furniture and you don't flood the kindergarten.

So the ego is constantly anxious, constantly this tension and stress, and ego just observes the id all the time.

What the id is going to do? This crazy, you know.

So reality testing is not actually about reality, because reality is filtered and very often reframed and very often even falsified through the psychological defense mechanisms.

But we get a picture of reality that the ego believes protects us.

The function of the ego is to protect us. It's a protector. That's why it's very reminiscent of a parent. It's like a parental figure. It protects us because we are babies. We're helpless. We're also stupid. And the ego needs to be there to defend us.

So reality testing is very misleading phrase because it's not about reality. It's about the kind of reality that would bring about behaviors and outcomes that would not put us at risk.

Second thing is self-awareness. You become self-aware through the ego. That's easy to understand.

The ego tells you this is reality.

But wait a minute, if this is reality, you are not reality. There's reality and there's you.

The minute the ego tells you, the minute, you want to answer?

No, it's okay.

The minute the ego tells you, this is reality, the ego is also telling you. This is reality and this is you. There's you and there's reality. You're not the same.

So that moment you become self-aware. The self emerges. The ego helps you to realize that there's you and there's reality.

So self-awareness.

Problem solving. Of course, if you want to solve a problem, you need to be aware of reality. Otherwise, you will not be able to solve the problem.

So problem is something.

The body ego, you remember, the very, very old ego, the ego, when the baby started to explore his body, so the body ego is responsible for motor functioning.

If you're clumsy, for example, it's a strong indicator of ego problems, problems with ego.

Adaptation, the ego changes in reaction to changing environments, changing circumstances. When things change around you, a new person entered your life, you have a new relationship, you're in a new setting, in a new school, it is the ego that takes care of this.

Adaptation.

If the ego is not consolidated, not integrated, fragmented, problematic, you will not have adaptation, you will have maladaptation. You will have dysfunctional solutions.

By the way, at this point I will stop and mention that there are scholars like Philip Bromberg and Sam Vaknin and others, there are scholars who suggest that actually people have self-states. They don't have a single self, but they have self-states.

And each environment, each change, brings out one of the self-states.

So the self-states are like solutions to different environments.

So we don't have a unitary self, which is rigid, not adaptive and so on, but we have like multiple players and many of them are not active, but then the environment changes, one of them becomes active.

So this is Bromberg's view originally and that's my work. That's my school.

The ego is responsible for memory. If you think about it for a second, you will see how logical this is. If you are not aware of reality, you cannot have memory.

Think about it during your break.

Conflict resolution, the ego is responsible for conflict resolution. It's known as reconciliation in the literature.

And finally, regulation of affect. In other words, controlling your emotions, not letting your emotions overwhelm you, being able to manage your emotions in a risen adult way.

People with a problematic ego, like narcissists, like borderlines, they cannot regulate their emotions. They have emotional dysregulation or affective dysregulation.

The borderline, for example, when she experiences an emotion, the emotion drowns her, overwhelms her, and she becomes dysfunctional. I'm saying she, because until recently most borderlines were, most diagnosed borderlines were women, but you should know that half of all borderlines are men.

So a borderline cannot manage reality well. It triggers emotions in her and then the emotions take over. She loses control completely. She begins to think emotionally. She reacts emotionally. She falls apart.

So this is known as emotional dysregulation. And it's a powerful indication, strong indication, that people with borderline personality disorder have a very, very primitive problematic ego. Because it's a function of the ego.

Now, time has passed. Freud has died. His daughter has lived. Everyone was happy in the psychoanalytic movement and then Melanie Klein came along.

Melanie Klein was a very curious figure, not exactly a psychologist, never mind. And she tried to bridge the gap.

There was a gap because Freud said the child is born, the child begins to think, the child begins to realize the existence of mother is an external object, then there's reality and the child, all is very nice.

But Klein asked two questions, basically, Melanie Klein.

So Melanie Klein is the mother of the object-relations school. Object-relations school.

What's the difference?

Before I go to Melanie Klein, what's the difference between object-relations and psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis and psycho-analytic schools like Carl Jung, which is essentially a form of psychoanalysis, they put emphasis on the individual.

The psychoanalyst asked what is happening inside the mind of the individual. It's as if the environment was there just to trigger the mind of the individual.

It's a very baby approach, a very baby kind of thinking, because that's exactly what the baby thinks. Mother is there to give me food. Mother's only reason to exist is to give me food.

And this is the approach of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis says everyone around the baby is triggering the baby's mind, is causing the baby's mind to develop. It's as if everyone around the baby is there to make the baby happen, to make the baby develop.

But of course, it's nonsense. Mother has a life of her own. Everyone has a life of her own. Reality continues regardless of the baby.

So Melanie Klein asked two questions.

How does the baby internalize reality? How does a baby interact with reality once the baby had realized that reality is external? How does the baby interact with it? The mechanisms.

And the second question that Klein asked, how does the baby react to its discoveries? The baby is discovering all kinds of things. How do the baby react?

I'm not going to deal with the second question. Those of you who are interested can go online and search for Melanie Klein.

Melanie Klein is a whole theory how the baby reacts. The baby becomes paranoid, then the baby becomes depressive. I'm not kidding. It's a mentally ill baby.

So baby goes through all kinds of mental illnesses until it emerges, mysteriously healthy. This is the second question.

I'm going to focus on the first question.

What are the mechanisms that operate within the baby when the baby is exposed to the shocking realization that there is something outside me?

You can't imagine how shocking this is. There is something outside me.

It's exactly as if tomorrow you will wake up and realize that all this is a dream. Doesn't exist. All this. Your professor, Maria, Lydia, Rector Begetti, they all don't exist. They're just a dream. You're dreaming, and you cannot wake up from this dream.

Imagine how shocking this would be to you. You know?

It's the same with the baby. The baby is in a dream state. The baby dreams the world. The baby dreams the world.

And then the baby kind of wakes up from the dream and realizes that the world is external. And it's very shocking.

And Melanie Klein suggested that the baby has four mechanisms. Baby uses four mechanisms to deal with this catastrophic discovery.

But before we go to the mechanisms, these are the mechanisms, before we go there, Klein and Bandura have something in common basically, not only Klein, but I would say all object relations schools. The difference between psychoanalysis and object-relation, I started to say that psychoanalysis focuses on the mind of the baby.

While object-relations schools say that we become who we are by interacting with other people.

So we are who we are because all the voices of the other people, all the experiences with other people, all the relationships with other people are inside our mind.

So this is object, other people, relations. Okay?

Object relations schools, what do they say?

They say that if you are isolated from other people, you will never become. You will never become an individual.

So to become an individual, you need to be in contact with other people.

And this is exactly what Bandura says.

Do you remember Bandura's social cognitive theory or social learning theory?

The baby imitates. The baby imitates. The baby imitates. The baby chooses role models like mother, later on, influential peers, father, and so on.

And the baby chooses role models like mother, later on influential peers, father, and so on, and the baby imitates the model.

But Bandura's work, social cognitive theory is actually not a cognitive theory. It's actually an object relations theory that emphasizes cognition.

But the core of social learning theory is social. The social part.

It's an object-relations theory, absolutely.

Same with Melanie Klein. Same with many others. Guntrip, Winnicott, other names that you may hear in the future. They are all object relation. They all say the concept of individual is wrong. There's no such thing. It's all a reflection of our interactions with other people.

These are called relational schools.

Okay?

So this is Bandura's modeling.

I just wanted to demonstrate to you that in psychology there is continuity.

It's not true that in psychology there are jumps and revolutions and there is continuity.

It's just that many times we deny this continuity.

So if you talk to someone from social learning theory, you talk to someone from social cognitive theory, if you were talking to Bandura and say to him, hey, Bandura, which is tomato, your theory is object relation theory. He would say what? He would probably become violent because he denied that there was any connection to psychoanalysis, object relations. He denied that to this very day. He denies it.

But it's nonsense. It is an object relation theory.

Okay. So the four mechanisms that Klein proposed, how the baby assimilates the new knowledge that there is reality, which is a shocking knowledge.

The first thing is incorporation. That's the earliest most primitive mechanism. It's when you believe that you are swallowing the object, that the object becomes integral part of you.

So, for example, when the baby sucks on the breast, when the mother is breastfeeding, the baby sucks on the breast, the baby tends to regard the breast as a part of itself. The baby incorporates the breast, which is why the baby is shocked when mother doesn't give the breast, because the baby incorporated the breast.

And this fact that the mother does not give the breast forces the baby to realize that the breast is not a part of itself. Forces the baby to realize the breast is external.

It is the first realization that there is reality out there, that you are not reality as a baby, that there is baby and breast. It's the first time.

And in Melanie Klein's work, this is called good breast, bad breast. When you feed the baby, it's a good breast, when you don't feed the baby, it's a bad breast. It's also the title of a pornographic movie, I assume.

So, incorporation.

The second mechanism is known as internalization.

Now they are sequential. That means baby starts with incorporation, baby grows up a bit, begins to internalize.

Internalization is when you create a mental representation of the person out there.

So the baby recognizes somehow the externality of the object, the separateness of the object. The baby recognizes the object is out there, separate, external, but it is terrifying. It's very frightening. Baby is afraid to lose the object, for example, to lose mother.

So the baby takes a photograph of mother, a snapshot. It's called an introject. The baby assimilates the snapshot.

And then when mommy leaves the room, the baby has an internal mummy that the baby can continue to interact with.

And this creates object constancy or object permanence.

So this is internalization.

At this stage, the baby is still delusional about reality because the baby confuses the internal object with the external object.

If the baby were not able to confuse the two, the baby would be terrified.

But the baby thinks external mummy and internal mummy are the same. It's mommy. So if she leave the room, it's okay. I have a copy. I have a clone. You know, it's like copy paste. I copy pasted mommy and she's in my brain and she can be here or not here. It doesn't matter. Internal is still external.

In other words, it's still a psychotic stage. There's still the equivalent of psychosis.

Next stage is much more complicated. It's called introjection.

So having internalized the object, having created a mental representation of the object, now the mental representation becomes independent. Now there is no confusion between internal and external.

There is an introject of Mami and there is real Mami. Introject of Mami can be helpful because, for example, it has a voice. It talks to you. By the way, it talks to you all your life. You hear your mother talking to you in many, many situations. You just sometimes don't realize it's your mother.

But these voices inside your mind, everyone has dozens of such voices. Everyone has the voice of mother, the voice of father, voice of influential peers, the voice of teachers, voices of teachers, voices of neighbors even, if they were important in your life.

So whenever you come across a significant person, for example, in the future, your intimate partner, your husbands, your children, you will have introjects, you create interjects. And you have a library of these voices inside your mind, but you don't confuse them.

I don't think that the voice of my mother is my mother, luckily for me. I don't think that. I know that this is the voice of my mother and my mother exists separately.

So, interjection is much more mature form of internalization, where the introject has a life of its own and inhabits the mind.

And finally, identification, commonly misrepresented process, you find mistakes in textbooks, even. Identification is about representing processes, not external objects.

So identification is when the child, or adults also, adults also, this is already adult phase also. So adults identify as well, and introject. Adenters interject.

Identification is when there is a relationship between two objects that are external, there are two objects that have a relationship, they're external, and you create inside your mind a representation of this relationship using two structures in your mind.

I'll give you an example. So there's your father and there's your brother. And father is telling brother, you're a criminal, you must stop it, you will end up badly. Stop with the drugs.

Okay, that's father and brother. I hope you don't have such a brother. but okay.

You create a representation of this interaction, a representation of this exchange in your mind. Between who? The ego and the super ego. The super ego says, don't do drugs. The ego says, don't do drugs because you will go to prison. It's a reality principle.

So the ego and the super ego interact, representing father and brother. This is identification.

But you will find many mistakes, even in textbooks, even in encyclopedias. You'll find mistakes about this.

Okay, so these are the four processes. They continue, as you see, two of them continue well into adult life.

And the question that arises then, before we come to the super ego, the question that arises is what happens when this delicate process of recognizing reality is disrupted, is interrupted.

For example, the baby perceives reality through the mother initially, initially through the mother. When the mother frustrates the baby, the baby realizes there's mother and there's me. Clearly. So if there's mother, there's a world. If there's a world, let me explore the world.

So this is the sequence.

What happens if the mother is not available? Emotionally absent, physically not available, is selfish, depressive, hates the baby, can happen, hates the baby. What happens then?

All these processes are disrupted. There is no formation of the self or the ego, or call it whatever you want. There's no formation of this central command, central executive that organizes reality and the internal world to react to reality.

So all this falls apart. It's totally disrupted.

At that point, many of the ego functions, you remember the ego functions, previous whiteboard? Many of the ego functions are of course disrupted because there's no ego.

So I mentioned reality testing. Reality testing becomes impaired.

Now again, it's the common mistake is that impaired reality testing means that you don't evaluate reality properly. That's not what it means.

Impaired reality testing means that you don't recognize the very existence of reality, that you confuse internal states with external states.

So, for example, if you have a fantasy, you would believe that this is reality. If you have a wish, you would believe that this is reality, magical thinking.

So impaired reality testing, internal, external, confusion between internal and external.

And in the case of sex, usually these people would be auto-erotic because they are unable, I'll explain what it means, because these people are unable to perceive reality and external objects, the only object they perceive is themselves. So they are sexually attracted to the only object available to themselves.

So this is auto-erotism. It's one of the main features of disruption in ego formation.

Now, ego, id, and super ego were terms coined by Freud, of course. But many, many people who followed Freud came up with their own terminology.

But ultimately we discover that having come up with a new terminology, they actually ended up where Freud began. So they ended up being Freudian, even though they would have denied it completely.

One of the guys, his name was Fairbairn, Ronald Fairbairn. Ronald Fairbairn was a major figure in British object-relations schools, the major figure, probably, in British Object Relation School, and he would have denied that he is Freudian, of course, but he's Freudian.

Fairbairn suggested that we are born with an ego. He said it's not true that the ego is a reaction to reality. It's not true that it's a reaction to mother. It's not true that is a reaction to frustration. All this is not true. We are born with an ego.

And later he and others like Guntrip, they call it ego nuclei. It's like there's a nucleus of an ego.

Okay, so we are born with an ego. And the ego is unitary. So the ego indeed is not able to distinguish reality from external from internal. So there he agrees with others. He agrees that the ego is a unitary thing.

And then he says the mother frustrates the baby, the baby feels that its life is in danger because if mommy doesn't feed me I will die. So the baby feels that its life is in danger because if mommy doesn't feed me I will die.

So the baby becomes paranoid, that is Melanie Klein, actually, that's not Fairbairn. Baby becomes paranoid.

And then the ego breaks, the ego falls apart under the stress, under the anxiety.

Remember Freud, the death threat? Under the stress, under the anxiety, under the terror that mother will leave the room, will not give me food, I will die. I have no way of knowing if she will come back.

By the way, this is all substantiated by experiments. This is not speculation. There are experiments by Mary Ainsworth and others that show that this is exactly how babies react. They are terrified. They are in state of extreme terror when mother leaves room.

So under this enormous stress the ego breaks. It breaks to three pieces. The central ego, the libidinal ego, and the anti-libidinal ego.

Okay. If you look at this, this is Freud. The central ego is the id. The anti-libidinal ego is the superego. Sorry, the libidinal ego is the id. I'm sorry. The anti-libidinal ego is a super ego and the central ego is the ego.

So this is Freud. It's just another name, other names. Anti-libidinal is super ego. Libidinal is id. And central is ego. It's just another name, other names.

The only difference between him and Freud is that he said that the ego exists, all three exist, all three pre-exist in a unitary structure, and the stress of the mother's frustration differentiates them, breaks them apart.

But they exist from the beginning. The baby is born with super ego, with ego, with everything. They just break under the stress.

This is the difference between him and Freud, but essentially he's Freudian, completely Freudian. The anti-libidinal ego is the super ego.

The super ego has two components, actually three components, but... The super ego has two components in the classical theory.

I'm not talking now, but two components.

One is what you know as conscience. Conscience tells you it's wrong to do this. Don't do this. It's wrong. This is conscience.

What is conscience? It's a voice. Actually, it's a coalition of voices.

So it's an introject. Conscience is an alliance of introjects, group of voices. The voices agree with each other. That's why in your mind it's like a single voice.

But if mother told you it's wrong to beat up the neighbor and if your grandmother told you it's wrong to beat up the neighbor, finally your conscience will tell you it's wrong to beat up the neighbor and youwillthink it's a single voice.

But it's not a single voice. It came from your mother and grandmother and ultimately you will beat up the neighbor. Who cares?

So this is the conscience.

The second part of the superego is the ego ideal.

Ego ideal is what you would like to be when you grow up.

Your idealized image of yourself.

What you dream of being. I want to be an actress. I want to be, I don't know what. I want to be a professor of psychology if you're masochistic. I want to be a politician if you're corrupt.

I mean, it is a self-image of you in the future as you hope that you will end up being.

This is the ego ideal. Your ideal image of yourself in the future and it's coupled with the conscience.

Now, the superego is a part of the ego, as I explained to you. But it is the boss.

The superego tells the ego how to behave. What to think.

The superego is the executive?

The ego, the totality of the ego is executive.

The superego is part of it. But the superego dictates to the ego. Dictates the ego output.

The superego tells the ego, inform the individual this. Prevent the id from doing this.

So the superego, in the conscience part, has a set of instructions.

In other words, it is not true as you can find in many textbooks and many, it's not true that the ego operates only according to the reality principle. It's not true at all.

The ego operates according to the reality principle plus the social principle, which is the superego.

The conscience is what society says. The conscience is what is known as morality.

Morality are the instructions of society, how to behave, not reality, society. Society tells you don't kill people, don't steal, you know, this is society.

Father and mother, especially father, by the way, not mother, father and mother teach us what society has to say and how to fit into society, how to conform, how to function in society to obtain the best outcomes, how to be self-efficacious.

So this process is known as socialization. Father and mother also teach you about the culture. These things are acceptable, not acceptable. This is acculturation.

So, conscience is a combination of socialization, the instructions of society on how to behave and so on, and acculturation, the cultural mores and expectations.

In other words, because superego controls the ego, the ego is not ruled only by the reality principle. It's definitely ruled by societal expectations, by cultural mores and norms.

So the ego is normative. It is reactive to norms. The superego fulfills this role.

Now, there was a guy called Strachey. Strachey suggested, I think in 1938, my memory doesn't fail me. Strachey suggested that exactly like the ego, ego starts with body ego, right, and then develops more.

He said exactly, super ego is the same. Super ego starts with primitive super ego and then becomes a full-fledged super ego.

What is the primitive super ego?

The primitive super ego, according to Strachey, is when the baby says, Mommy is frustrating me because I am bad. I deserve to be frustrated. I deserve to be punished. I support Strachey's view.

Because there's a debate between Klein and Strachey. Klein says, not true. The baby will split mother. The baby will say there's a bad mommy and a good mummy. Bad breast and good breast.

When mommy frustrates the baby, she's a bad mommy. When mommy gratifies the baby, she's a good mommy.

That's Klein.

I completely disagree. I completely disagree because I think it would be very frightening for the baby to say that there is a bad mommy. I think this would be terror frightening for the baby to say that there is a bad mommy. I think this would be terrorizing for the baby. To admit that mommy is capable of being bad. Because if mommy is capable of being bad, the life of the baby is at risk. The baby is so dependent on mommy that baby cannot think of mommy as bad, not even partly, not even by splitting mommy. I don't believe that at all. I think Klein is very mistaken about this.

So I belong to Strachie's school.

Where I think what happens is when mommy frustrates a baby, baby has to assume that mommy is all good. Loving, caring, would never abandon him, never neglect. So, mommy is all good.

But if mommy is all good, why is she frustrating the baby?

Because I'm all bad. The baby says, I'm all bad. So, mommy is all good. I'm all bad. Whatever she's doing to me, I deserve. I had it coming. It's a punishment.

And that is the primitive superego. The primitive superego is what we call an internalized bad object. It is punitive. It is founded on punishment.

And that's a very primitive thing. You do this, we punish you. It's primitive kind of approach to morality.

And from the primitive superego, also known in Winnicott's work, I think, as the moral default. Anyhow, from the primitive superego emerges the full-fledged superego.

But that takes time, a lot of time. The first hint of a superego is at age five years.

Children don't have a superego before that. And so they are not so empathic. They are not so nice. Before age five, they're very selfish. That is Piaget, the egocentric phase. They are very selfish and so on and so forth.

And the primitive superego internalized bad object informed the child that of the possibility of being bad.

This is a major revolution also.

The first revolution is there's reality and there's me. We are not one. It's a major revolution, catastrophic, trauma.

The second revolution is I am capable of being bad.

Initially the baby doesn't make these distinctions bad and good it's everything is there but now suddenly there's bad and good suddenly and the baby is bad it's very terrified.

So there is the child says I am a bad object.

I am the bad child.

And then he has this ego and you.

So I was about to explain.

Because of this internal pressure, I'm a bad object. The thought of a bad object is intolerable, is unbearable. Who wants to feel that he's bad?

So that's why the child learns to integrate, not to split, but to integrate.

The child gives up on splitting.

Because when the child splits, he becomes bad. So he gives up on splitting.

And instead, what the child does, the child creates an integrated view of himself and of others.

Okay? So this leads to maturation. This leads to growth. This phase leads to growth.

However, if yourself is disrupted, if you fail to develop the full-fledged functional ego, you will remain stuck in this stage, and you will split all your life, and you will have a voice inside you telling you you're unlovable, you're bad, you're unworthy. That's when the development is disrupted.

And this kind of person goes through life, believing that he or she is bad, unworthy, unlovable, stupid, ugly.

And then there are two options.

In this case, there are two options, because this is an unbearable feeling, intolerable. You cannot survive life like this.

So then there are two options.

You lie to yourself, say, I'm not ugly, I'm drop dead gorgeous. I'm not stupid. I'm a genius. That's narcissism.

Narcissism is a compensatory defense against the internal bad object. There's option one.

Option two is to adopt the internal bad object and then you become emotionally dysregulated and suicidal, self-destructive. You become self-destructive. I'm bad, so what the hell? Let me die.

So these are the two ways to react.

But this happens only if the process is disrupted.

These people also split. So these people would be your best friend on Wednesday, and you are all good, and you can do no wrong, and you're perfect and you're amazing and you're super-intelligence. That's on Wednesday.

And on Thursday, you're exactly the opposite. You can do no right, you're stupid, you're ugly, you are not a good friend, your enemy.

So this is splitting. When you're either all good or all bad, all black and all white.

So now we circle, we go back full circle to information processing theory.

You're beginning to see that psychoanalysis has influenced massively, even modern theories.

Even though today in the West we say that psychoanalysis is trash and we should not teach it and it's nonsense and so on, the seeds, the intellectual seeds of psychoanalytic theory, not only psychoanalytic theory, the seeds, object relation theory, are there in all.

When Badua says modeling, he's just copying Melanie Klein and Fairbairn when he says modeling. Because they said that the child identifies with an external object and internalizes the object. That's a good description of imitation in my view.

And when information processing theory says, it's all about thinking, it's all about processing information. We don't need the unconscious, we don't need the external objects. We don't need mother. There's no mother in information processing theory, which I find pretty shocking, by the way.

When they say this, what they're doing is they're taking an element of psychoanalysis. Because psychoanalysis said that thinking is the core. They're taking an element of psychoanalysis, because psychoanalysis said that thinking is the core. They're taking an element of psychoanalysis, dumping all the rest, trashing all the rest, and developing this single element.

But it is still, unfortunatelyfor them, psychoanalysis.

I am not aware of any theory, any theory in psychology, and after 30 years I think I'm aware of all of them. I'm not aware of a single one who doesn't in one way or another incorporate some concepts from psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic theories, and later psych psychodynamic and object relations schools. I'm not aware of any theory. That has nothing whatsoever to do with the previous theories. No such thing.

But in the West, that's what they tell you. They tell you we advance. This is bullshit. Ignore it.

Okay. So back to information processing and more precisely to the work of, to remind you, previous lesson we discussed stimulus, attention, and we began to discuss memory.

So memory is a big thing. I recommend that you have a look at the work of Loftus, Elizabeth Loftus. I mentioned her last time. She has amazing experiments. You won't believe the things that she...

She succeeded, for example, to show that eyewitnesses get it wrong most of the time.

Her work was so revolutionary, so catastrophically, you know, shocking, that there was a debate at the time not to allow eyewitnesses in court anymore. Because today, you go to prison for murder based on an eyewitness account, usually. And she proved that the majority of eyewitnesses get everything completely wrong, and that it is easy to influence an eyewitness with a single question.

So she had an experiment, for example, with a car crash. It was a car crash.

So she had a few eyewitnesses. They were all students. Students are the guinea pigs of professors, you may know.

So she used students and she asked them, what did you see? Why did you see? It was two cars and so.

There was no crash. There was no accident.

But she asked them, what did you see in the car crash?

And they described an accident. Eye witnesses. They were there in the scene. It's just two cars passing.

Nothing.

Nothing happened. She just asked them what did you see in the car crash.

There was enough. Many of them saw a car crash in details. Like this car came from the left, from the right, you know, glass, amazing, amazing experiment.

I told you about the experiments with the shopping mall where she went to people and said, you were lost as a child in a shopping mall.

Initially they said, no, we don't remember this.

A few weeks later, one third of them insisted that they were lost in a shopping mall and argued with her.

When she told them, I invented this, no way, come on, I remember this clearly.

Memory is a big problem because we discovered in neuroscience this time, we discovered that there's no such thing as memory. This is complete fiction.

What we do when we try to remember something, we take bits and pieces from all places and we reconstruct a memory. Every memory is a reconstruction.

You don't go to a library and take a DVD with your memory. That's not what you do. You take a bit from here, smell, a bit from here, sound, a bit from here, visual. Is the visual connected to the memory? Yeah. Well, I think so.

And so on. You put everything together. This is called on the fly.

So memory is reconstructed, reconstructed on the fly. That's why it's not reliable at all. That's why you could have three completely contradictory memories about the same event over ten years as time passes.

Because your memories are also influenced by your experiences, relationships, external events and so on. They change, they shape shift according to so. It's totally in many ways useless tool.

Anyhow, Robert Ziegler, Robert Ziegler was a famous scholar in information processing theory. He came up with what is known as a microgenetic method, microgenetic method.

And he documented how and when people acquire knowledge.

He exposed people to new environments where there was a lot of new information, and he observed them.

But you observed them in a very micro way. Like he observed every split second of what they did.

And then he created diagrams of how people acquire knowledge and when they acquire.

He discovered that being exposed to knowledge is not enough. Timing matters. How the knowledge is acquired matters.

And the retention of the knowledge depends crucially on how you acquire.

Also which knowledge?

People are very selective. I told you last time. People are very, very selective.

It's not true that when we are all exposed to the same knowledge, we all end up with the same knowledge. It's completely untrue. Completely untrue.

And so this is the work of Robert Ziegler, microgenetic method.

Now Ziegler said that all thinking, the word thinking, is just another name for information processing.

He said when we process information, that's what we call thinking.

Thinking is the internal experience of processing information.

When we process information, we experience it as thinking.

And this raises very interesting questions about artificial intelligence, about robots and so on, and it would be a good reason for you to return to the next lesson.