tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post3328195267003384727..comments2024-03-29T04:06:37.402-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: America the ShamelessStuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-10876594778183956142014-10-08T11:04:30.924-07:002014-10-08T11:04:30.924-07:00re: When Freud asserted that people suffer from ne...re: When Freud asserted that people suffer from neurosis because they hide and repress their sexuality he was declaring war on modesty, propriety and decorum.<br /><br />Did Freud assert this? Doing a quick search I find this quote at least that sees neurosis as a an ego-adaptation to reality. This quote at least doesn't says that neuroses should be "corrected" by removing all suppression.<br /><br />“Recently, along quite speculative lines, I arrived at the proposition that the essential difference between neurosis and psychosis was that in the former the ego, in the service of reality, suppresses a piece of the id, whereas in a psychosis it lets itself be induced by the id to detach itself from a piece of reality."<br /><br />I wonder if the questions of shame and shamelessness can't be answered in the general case, without considering the individual.<br /><br />I mean I've heard it said that children who are sexually abused often become sexually active much younger, and so if that sexual expression is CAUSED by sexual abuse, then it's going to mean something very different from someone without that abuse.<br /><br />When I think of shame, I think of like John Bradshaw's work, in relation to family systems, and addiction. In such families "keeping secrets" becomes a necessary skill of survival, and it might be once a person escapes that system, they go overboard in the opposite, and start pretending no secrets are good, and that their discomfort will be lifted if everything can be put out in the open?<br /><br />So it might be "toxic shame" and "shamelessness" are two sides of the same coin, opposite reactions to pain?<br /><br />Stuart, regarding your closing assertion "Anyone who believes that a President Hillary will command more respect needs some serious educating. A woman who owes her career to her ability to suffer repeated humiliations at the hands of her shameless husband will never be respected as a world leader."<br /><br />That sounds like a blog topic in itself. But I admit I don't know what it means.<br /><br />In the proper "toxic shame" family world, everything is good as long as everyone keeps quiet. In the proper "shameless" family world, there's no such thing as boundaries, and you are not allowed to have secrets, and others have the obligation to expose your secrets to "liberate" you from their powers.<br /><br />Politics might be a sort of tribal affair, where you learn whether it is safe to talk about your tribe member's transgressions. And maybe the "ideal" tribal attitude is to pretend away all the shame on your tribe and project it onto your rival tribe?<br /><br />Hillary may or may not feel humiliated by her marriage. She may or may not have chosen to stay married if she didn't have political ambitions. But what we SEE in the political world, what we call shame and shamelessness, might as easily be called "projected shame" and "projected shamelessness", and you'd be saying as much truth.<br /><br />If it seems "shamelessness" is a political asset, its because visible shame can be exploited by those who want you to fail.<br /><br />I guess I like Jung better than Freud because there wasn't this great need to label the universe as a certain way, or judge things from one point of view, filtered by who knows what hidden projections.<br /><br />The question for me is how humans carry passions without being consumed by them, without identifying with them. So language that can express the reality of behavior without needing to shame it or claim to understand it, means reality can be seen, and then individual human conscience can work with it.<br /><br />I don't know if Hillary will run for president, or could win the presidency, or could manage the job. It seems to me that the left/right tribal projections and hatreds now are so great, that no one can be trusted to be an unbiased judge of reality.<br /><br />Back to Freud, perhaps its not neurosis but psychosis that is guiding everyone now?Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.com