primary narcissism

[Guest guest]

Freud starts by linking Civilization and its Discontents with The

Future of an Illusion by taking up Romain Roland's criticism that he

had neglected the " oceanic " feeling as the true source of the

religious sentiments which are used by the various churches and

religious systems. Freud, however, traces this " limitless " feeling,

this " sensation of eternity " to that early ego state which knows no

boundary, in other words, to the primary narcissism of the

undifferentiated stage, whereas he derives religious needs from the

infant's helplessness and the longing for the father aroused by it.

He leaves room for the possibility that there may be something

behind this, and also for the possibility that later the oceanic

feeling may become connected with religion, and these hints may

imply states of helplessness occurring before the infant has

advanced to a relationship with the father. Helplessness in earlier

phases due to breaks in maternal care which maintains primitive

omnipotent narcissism would represent the deeper sources of

religious needs (and possibly of matriarchal religious systems).

 

 

cordially,

Kip Almazy

[Guest guest]

Nisargadatta , " kipalmazy " <kipalmazy> wrote:

>

> Freud starts by linking Civilization and its Discontents with The

> Future of an Illusion by taking up Romain Roland's criticism that he

> had neglected the " oceanic " feeling as the true source of the

> religious sentiments which are used by the various churches and

> religious systems. Freud, however, traces this " limitless " feeling,

> this " sensation of eternity " to that early ego state which knows no

> boundary, in other words, to the primary narcissism of the

> undifferentiated stage, whereas he derives religious needs from the

> infant's helplessness and the longing for the father aroused by it.

> He leaves room for the possibility that there may be something

> behind this, and also for the possibility that later the oceanic

> feeling may become connected with religion, and these hints may

> imply states of helplessness occurring before the infant has

> advanced to a relationship with the father. Helplessness in earlier

> phases due to breaks in maternal care which maintains primitive

> omnipotent narcissism would represent the deeper sources of

> religious needs (and possibly of matriarchal religious systems).

>

>

> cordially,

> Kip Almazy

 

It might be possible to link adult states with infant states. However,

there is a possible tricky mistake that can happen: we retroactively

reread the earlier events in our life from our current perspective.

This is explained by Ken Wilber in his book A Brief History of Everything:

 

Q: So each of the nine stages of consciousness evolution is actually a

paradigm shift.

 

KW: In a broad sense, yes. Consequently, the typical adult in our

culture has already undergone a half-dozen or so major paradigm

shifts, worldview shifts - from archaic to magic to mythic to rational

to existential, or thereabouts. You an I have _already_ undergone

these revolutions in consciousness, and although we might not remember

any of the specifics, researchers on the scene report psychological

earthquakes.

We tend to seal these earthquakes out of awareness. There are a lot

of funny stories about this. If you take children in the

preoperational stage, and - right in front of their eyes - pour the

water from a short glass into a tall glass, and ask them which glass

has more water, they will always say the tall glass has more, even

though they saw you pour the same amount of water from one glass to

the other. They cannot " conserve volume. " Certain " obvious " things

that we see, they do not and _cannot_ see - they live in a different

worldspace. No matter how many times you pour the _same_ amount of

water back and forth between the two glasses, they will _insist_ the

tall glass has more. So much for the " pure " and " undistorted "

perception of children.

If a few years later, after concrete operational awareness has

emerged, you repeat this experiment, the kids will always say that

both glasses have the same amount of water. They can hold volume in

their mind and not be confused by its displacements. They have an

internal _rule_ that automatically does this (a concrete operational

rule). And if you show them a videotape from the earlier period, where

they were saying that the tall glass has more water, they will deny

it's them! They think you've doctored the videotape. They simply

cannot imagine somebody being so stupid as to think the tall glass has

more water.

So they - so all of us - will retroactively reread the earlier

events in our life from this new perspective, and we tend to imagine

that is the perspective we had from the start. When we think of

ourselves at age 4 or 5, we think of the people around us at that time

- our parents, our siblings, our friends - and we picture what they

were thinking about us, or how they felt about certain things, or what

was going through their minds, when in fact we could do none of that

at the time! We could not take the role of another at that age. So we

are automatically (and subconsciously) " retro-reading " our entire life

from the perspective of a recently emerged worldview, and imagining

all of this stuff was present from the start!

Needless to say, this considerably distorts what was actually

occuring in the earlier periods. Memory is the last thing you can

depend on to " report " childhood. And this leads to all sorts of

problems. Romantics often imagine that childhood is a wonderful time

where you see the world just like you do now, only in a marvelously

" spontaneous " and " free " fashion. Archaic is nondual paradise, magic

is holistically empowered wonderfulness, mythic is alive with

spiritual powers, and it's all so marvelous and free. Whereas what is

probably happening is that the Romantics, with access to the higher

worldview of reflexive awareness, are simply reading all sorts of

wonderful things back into a period which, if they could _actually_

see it (on videotape, for example), they would deny any reality to at all!