(4)Freud did not call his "mythological science" Freudianism, but rather Psychoanalysis; the roots of his thought/language were in ancient Greek mythology and the neuroscience of his day. Psychoanalysis takes on various permutations and manifestations due to its buoyant metaphorical language. Major psychoanalytic theorists such as Erikson, Bettelheim, Kohut, Winnicott, Klein, and Lacan, creatively and brilliantly, extrapolate from Freud's language and logic, making new and different "roads" and expanding psychoanalytic thought. Psychoanalysis reminds us that we come from oceanic "origins": the blissful state of amniotic/symbiotic existence with the Mother (the child experiences this omnipotent feeling of power again , in sophisticated form, through our class "picture narratives"). The umbilical cord is cut, but the "psychological umbilical cord" remains after birth; in our first years of life our identity and sensations of Self are still largely tied to the Mother. Psychoanalyst Otto Rank coined the phrase "Birth Trauma" to characterize/describe the initial shock that comes from our forced exit from the womb. (Eric Neumann argues that this event is like being forced from "The Garden of Eden".) This is the child's first encounter with Erikson's stage of Trust vs. Mistrust. The Mother is biologically "programmed" to respond to the child's needs. (This is often "intuitive" and therefore the Mother can often satisfy the child's specific needs without being explicitly conscious of the child's desires/needs, i.e., correctly interpreting, and even lactating, to various baby-scream tones). The mother creates the "external environmental holding". We understand that we are trying to perceive this life-process phenomenon through "metaphors and metonymns". "Shame and Doubt" may be inflicted on the child through what Heinz Kohut calls the "incomprehensible drop". The child seeks affirmation for his adventurous experimentations in his/her newly discovered external world. If a parent or primary caregiver reprimands the child too harshly/suddenly, the child doesn't learn to trust his "instincts" and natural "motivations." |