How Peter Klevius solved "the biggest mystery in science".
Peter Klevius (who was the first in the world 1992/94 to discover how the brain works and what consciousness is - and later 2006 empirically proven right) explains why (except for semantic language traps) synaptic pruning is at the very core of understanding consciousness - and why dismissal of thalamus paired with irrational monotheistic anti-Atheist propaganda has blindfolded many other scientists (P. Klevius 1992, 1994*), as has the modern form of exorcism called psychoanalysis**.
* Peter Klevius EMAH theory (the Even More Astonishing Hypothesis) about thalamus central role as the display of what we call consciousness/awareness and how the cortex feeds it with data in conjunction with sensory input, was presented in a letter to Francis Crick at the Salk Institute 1994. The theory was later empirically proven correct through the birth of a unique set of craniopagus twins born 2006 who had their thalamuses connected but not their cortices. This made them able to keep separate personalities while seeing through the the other twins eyes and to talk with each other inside their head.
** Freud was the original archetype of a modern charlatan and ought also to be blamed for the death of the young and vulnerable genius Otto Weininger whom he dismissed but whom Wittgenstein later included in his short list of influencers (which of course didn't incl. Freud), saying: Weininger is great even if you negate everything he wrote. Magnétiseur ("treating" wealthy women with magnetism) Sigmund Freud's meticulous nonsense (see Peter Klevius Freud timeline below) was a direct continuation of religious exorcism (see e.g. Ellenberger) but was welcomed in the US spread of anti-Atheism/anti-Communism propaganda. So even if Freud didn't believe in the traditional "monotheistic" God, he believed in sprits whom he said would perhaps be scientifically proven "later". However, although there are loads of charlatan followers who come up with unfounded "theories", nothing of what Freud thought holds more essence than the medieval alchemist guys who tried to make gold.
Ludvig Wittgenstein (mentor of Georg Henrik von Wright, who mentored Peter Klevius):
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
No
matter which posting you read over more than two decades or
publications over five decades, you will never find Peter Klevius
logically failing (cause he's an intellectual coward just picking easy
low hanging fruits behind the PC fog), but on the contrary a much more
stable and sensible approach than populist PC "science". This is why
you'll never find Peter Klevius on e.g. Nature, which on these topics is
extremely politically correct. Nature has published loads of nonsense
"research" (as Peter Klevius has given many examples of), not because of
their scientific value but because they fit in a bigger PC narrative.
Take for example the "research" made on a super computer to model human
migration on climate changes, and concluded that it proved out of
Africa, although it equally proved out of Asia.
Wikifailia is
good for finding certain general info but useless for a true scientist
like e.g. Peter Klevius. However, Wikifailia may be used as a reflector
of some sort of general mainstream consensus - no matter how wrong - on
certain topics. So here Wikifailia is used to describe the topic of:
Wikifailia:
Synaptic pruning which is classified separately from the regressive
events seen during older ages. The stereotyped pruning can be compared
to the process of chiseling and molding of stone into a statue. Once the
statue is complete, the weather will begin to erode the statue and this
represents the experience-independent deletion of connections.
Peter
Klevius: It's the chiseling and molding of the stone that corresponds
to human brain development, while "weathering" may be compared to
dementia.
Wikifailia: All attempts to construct artificial
intelligence systems that learn by pruning connections that are disused
have the problem that every time they learn something new, they forget
everything they learned before.
Peter Klevius: This is why Peter
Klevius groundbreaking theory from 1992/94 (now 100% empirically
confirmed) divides the process in cortex (memory) and the thalamus (RAM)
"display".
Wikifailia: Since biological brains follow the same
laws of physics as artificial intelligences, as all physical objects do,
these researchers argue that if biological brains learned by pruning
they would face the same catastrophic forgetting issues. This is pointed
out as an especially severe problem if the learning is supposed to be
part of a developmental process since retention of older knowledge is
necessary for developmental types of learning, and as such it is argued
that synaptic pruning cannot be a mechanism of mental development. It is
argued that developmental types of learning must use other mechanisms
that do not rely on synaptic pruning.
Peter Klevius: Wrong! This reasoning completely misses thalamus RAM role as seen in e.g. the unique craniopagus Hogan twins. As an old time photographer Peter Klevius has spent endless times using photographic film, which is a strip or sheet of transparent film base coated on one side with a gelatin emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals. When the emulsion is exposed to light, in an exposure to the image formed by a camera lens, it produces a chemical change, proportional to the amount of light absorbed by each crystal. This creates an invisible latent image in the emulsion, which can be chemically developed/pruned into a visible photograph. This corresponds to every thalamic 'now' in Peter Klevius EMAH theory, while the latest "image" or state of the cortex is only altered if incoming "reality" has changed compared to the previous state of mind.
Peter Klevius also explains why there cannot be an "objective reality": The "hard problem" of consciousness is said to be its subjectivity. However, there cannot be anything else than subjectivity in a mind - although that subjectivity (compare anthropocentrism) is objectively/rationally processed within our minds. It's an impossible irrationality to argue for the existence of something "objective" outside mind. Even if you talk about multiverse or Penrose's eons, white holes etc. it's all in the human mind - otherwise you couldn't talk about it. There's a distinct difference between subjectivity and an irrationality that pretends to go outside mind while only bouncing back against the wall of existencecentrism (P. Klevius 1992:21-22). Although cameras are objective, images are always subjective. Cameras don't lie - pictures do. Whereas a camera objectively reflects light that hits it, we are unable to see the image without a subjective interpretation based on our state of mind for the moment. Same applies to a rock polished into a stone in a river of beach. Its latest state determines how it reacts to its environment. So the only difference between a stone and Peter Klevius is that the latter has an extra layer of subjectivity made possible in language. The experience/adaptation of a stone determines its future.
In conclusion Peter Klevius suggests swapping stupid anthrocentrism for existencecentrism.
Read Peter Klevius in-depth research on The Psychosocial Freud Timeline.
Read Peter Klevius Origin of the Vikings from 2005 - now again available after Google deleted it 2014 and again in February 2024.
Peter Klevius (1981, 1992): The ultimate question ought to be: What is it like to be a stone? There's no difference between human consciousness polished through living, and the "consciousness" of a stone that has been smoothly shaped in streaming water against other rocks, stones etc. It started its "life" as a rugged piece of rock in a mountain and adapted to its life in streaming water down hill, or perhaps as a piece of rock falling on a beach and polished by waves.
How US robs the world
There seems to be a powerful resistance to accept even empirically proven theories when they don't fit populist "science".
Acknowledgement: Terminology about the brai is a mess, so do understand that when Peter Klevius talks about mentalists he doesn't include Berkely as many others do. This is because our minds are all by necessity subjective, alsthough not necessarily irrational as those who try to squeeze in "spirituality", "soul", "self" etc. nonsense.
Because Peter Klevius - whose EMAH solved* "consciousness, the biggest mystery ever" 1990-94* - can't get the Nobel prize due to "anonymity" and "islamophobia" (i.e. defense of Human Rights) it should be given to the craniopagus twins Krista and Tatiana Hogan (born 2006) who proved him right!
After 20+ years blogging with highly intelligent Human Rights based content and groundbreaking scientific revelations, with thousands of postings and images, Google still has monumental problem finding Peter Klevius - while Gimp, Duckduckgo etc. easily find him.
Dear
reader, do realize how strongly Google is actively suppressing Peter
Klevius' blogs - wonder why? Is it his defense for Human Rights, or his
defense of girls/women, or is it his scientific revelations?! Take a
check: Although Peter Klevius' blogs are scattered with popular images,
Google has a hard time finding them (except a few Youtube). But if you
scroll down far below Google's 'The rest of the results might not be
what you're looking for. See more anyway', you'll find plenty of them!
But few of the really important scientific ones.
* The core of which is the 'stone example' (see below) published in Demand for Resources 1992 but written 1990 and presented for G. H. von Wright (Wittgenstein's successor at Cambridge) 1991, and letter about EMAH (the Even More Astonishing Hypothesis) to Francis Crick at Salk 1994, after having been rejected from a main philosophical magazine due to it being 'too technical', and from a main neurological magazine due to it being 'too philosophical'. Peter Klevius' writing about EMAH was described by the Finnish neuroscientist, professor J. Juurmaa as: 'Peter Kleviuksen ajatuksen kulku on ilmavan lennokas ja samalla iskevän ytimekäs', which translated to English would mean something like: 'Peter Klevius' flow of thought is airily wide-ranging and at the same time strikingly succinct'. This he wrote in a long letter answering Peter Klevius' question about EMAH and the effects on the visual cortex on individuals who have been blind from birth. This inquiry was part of Peter Klevius' check up of his already published EMAH theory, so to get a qualified confirmation that the "visual cortex" in born blind people is fully employed with other tasks than vision. Juurmaa's description of Peter Klevius is in line with philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright's 1980 assessment, and perhaps more importantly beneficial when assessing AI/deep learning etc. Dear reader, this "bragging" and self-naming is only for you, i.e. to understand that you may have some reason to take this text more seriously than "the usual influencer", and to rather connect it to a name than to an 'I'. After all, Peter Klevius is almost invisible in the topics he has some expertice on. Why isn't he at least equally cited as ordinary scientists (see answer below)?
Krista and Tatiana Hogan (born 2006) constitute the perfect follow up to Peter Klevius' stone example from 1990-92 (see below), because when they 'talk inside their head with each other' that can only happen in their connected thalamuses, not in their disconnected cortices, which would otherwise be synchronized as one single personality.
In
all other aspects they are separate individuals and personalities -
except of course for that part of the cranium that keeps them together,
and the entangled blood vessels and nerves that hindered separation.
Krista's and Tatiana's brains have a unique thalamic bridge connection
which proves Peter Klevius' 1994 theory EMAH (the Even More Astonishing
Hypothesis - which alludes to Francis Crick's book The Astonishing
Hypothesis) according to which "consciousness" resides in the thalamus -
not in the cortex, although what plays out in the thalamic "display"
triggers association patterns in the cortex which are reflected in new
thalamic patterns. According to Peter Klevius, people with split brain
halves appear as having two separate "minds" simply because each half
only connects to the thalamus and not via the corpus callosum directly
to the other half of the cortex, resulting in two separate association
patterns in each half which then mix with the other half in the thalamus
which exactly explains e.g. that these people may verbalise with one
side but not the other although the other side also understands it but
without verbalising it. However, while Tatiana and Krista Hogan share
only a communication bridge between their thalamuses the result is
exactly the same, i.e. that they "understand" each other, but from two
different patterns of associations, just like people with split brain
sharing the same thalamus. As they can "talk" with each other "inside
their head", this means the "talking" happens only in their thalamuses,
because if they should have access to the other's cortex they would feel
talking to themselves, i.e. they would be one person with one
personality.
Peter
Klevius' EMAH (the Even More Astonishing Hypothesis) 1994. The dotted
lines schematically describe the cortico-thalamic connections.
The unconnected white dots symbolise potential (nearest) connections to for the time being existing association pattern(s).
Neuronal connections and spikes in the cortex are of no interest when studying consciousness, because it resides in the thalamus. And although the thalamus doesn't represent your life history like the cortex does, it is the only display you have to your "inner world" and the only camera to your "outer world". The cortex is always the latest state of knowledge or configuration on which known and new data reflect from the thalamus. Although the thalamus "knows nothing" (much like your computer display) without it you wouldn't have access to your knowledge. Cortico-thalamic communication (e.g. thinking) is a continuous streaming where association patterns in the cortex reflect in thalamus which then reflects them back in a slightly altered way - i.e. based on but not exactly as the previous pattern, which again stimulates the next reflection from the cortex. This internal communication may then be added by external perceptions (incl. from the body).
We humans are chordates in which the thalamus evolved. We are also a special type of primates called Homo (e.g. Homo floresiensis) and our brain evolution accelerated at the beat of recent (<4 Ma) climate changes which repeatedly affected sea level. See https://peterklevius.blogspot.com/2023/01/how-pliocene-pleistocene-panama-isthmus.html
Why Peter Klevius?!
Partly
because of his particular life that has freed him from usual scientific
bias within an academic career. And partly because he has been lucky
(or unlucky) to have had extremely intelligent parents, father was,
among other things, one of Sweden's best chess player ever (won the
Gothenburg chess championship many times over more than four decades
despite playing more for fun and for the entertainment of the spectators
than for winning), and Peter Klevius half sister (same mother) won
IBM's talent contest with IQ 167. Add to this Peter Klevius lifelong
spending of time on free research on evolution and what it means to be a
human. And because of the anonymity obscurity "problem" - partly
imposed by reactionary attitudes - Peter Klevius' works aren't known by
many enough, although Wittgenstein's successor at Cambridge, von Wright,
already 1980 gave him high written credit for original
philosophical/scientific analysis on evolution and
methodologies/theoretical analysis , which also led to the first paid
article on a new approach to science and evolution, and published 1981.
The other part is that Peter Klevius bias free analysis always gives
anomalous results vs existing paradigms (also compare Peter Klevius'
analysis which places our evolution in SE Asia, and the analysis of sex
segregation which reveals that only heterosexual attraction can work as
an analytical tool for analyzing relations between the sexes and Human
Rights. Moreover, according to Peter Klevius, only a full commitment to
the negative (basic) Universal Human Rights (Art. 2, 1948) can make all
of us fully part of a "human community" - unlike "monotheistic"
religions which always cut out the chosen ones from the "infidels", more
or less, in one way or another.
Peter Klevius feels almost
embarrassed because the "hard problem of consciousness" turned out to be
self evident when using the EMAH model which hones away biased concepts
that muddle the view. However, due to previous lack of interest in
thalamus there are still today only limited data available although the
interest in thalanus has increased recently (thanks to Peter Klevius
bombardment on the web since 2003 with his 30 year old EMAH analysis?).
Neurological background
Apart
from the speed* problem EMAH also explains why there's almost
negligible difference in the brain's need of energy no matter how hard
we think.
* What has also been
"puzzling" for brain research (and therefore rarely properly mentioned,
or just talked away) is that reaction time seems to exceed the brain's
own speed limit. However, this is self-evident in EMAH because awareness
is already in the thalamus, and only those processes which need
additional contact with the cortex are slightly delayed in comparison.
The importance of accounting for the thalamus when theorising about cortical contributions to human cognition.
High-order
thalamic nuclei, such as the mediatorship thalamus, is the core of
cognition. However, due to the old 'just a simple relay station'
attitude against thalamus, paired with a strong defence for the
indefensible anthropocentric mentalist fantasies about linguistic
concepts such as 'soul', 'self' etc., little effort has been made to
really understand the function of the most obvious candidate as an
interactive display mediating between incoming signals from the senses
(incl. body signals) as well as from the cortex. The thalamus is ideally
positioned in the midst of the head between the brainstem and the
cortex.
The phase of both ongoing mediodorsal thalamic and
prefrontal low-frequency activity are predictive of perceptual
performance. Mediodorsal thalamic activity mediates prefrontal
contributions to perceptual performance. These findings support Peter
Klevius EMAH model (1992, and reported to Francis Crick 1994 - although
not sure if he read it despite confirmation letter from Salk Institute)
that thalamocortical interactions predict perceptual performance
displayed in thalamus as a continuous and seamless flow of new "now"
awareness, much like a frameless video.
Your brain doesn't write
memories - it deletes them by constantly updating/adapting your brain.
The default mode is when the brain is in equilibrium with incoming
signals, i.e. no new information to delete. Your brain adapts to
whatever you experience.
"Consciousness" is your thalamus'
adaptation to what your bodily sensations mean in relation to what is
going on around you in the world as well as in the cortex. Learning and
memory, language and culture are linguistic add-ons to create the mix of
"conscious" feeling, which is of course material, because what else
could it be.
Mentalism
Mentalism
is the lack of understanding that even language is physical. Although
ghosts or gods don't exist, the word 'ghost' and 'god', like the word
'stone', are physical realities. Without neurons no words, thought or
uttered. And although mentalists (like everybody else) have no clue
about any difference between concepts like "sensory inputs" and mental
"reasoning", they anyway use such a divide. Reasoning is equally verbal
and physical as talking loudly. Same with non-verbal reactions. A cat's
reasoning before jumping on a mouse is the same as when it asks for
going out. It's a linguistic "abstract" fantasy trap by mentalists to
divide memory in abstract ("immaterial") concepts and material
sensations or images.
If I utter or write 'ghost' then it
becomes operational when adapted/understood by someone. What mentalists
think is mental, is simply words that, for no particular reason, are
lumped in a language category labelled "mental".
Although EMAH
focuses on the thalamus, i.e. vertebrates, the same applies to the
mushroom body in invertebrates which is also able to instantly combine
information from the internal body as well as from the environment -
even the nerve ring of starfish fulfils this task. According to Peter
Klevius (1992), brain evolution not only started as a rudimentary
olfactory organ, but is in fact still to be seen as the main brain
notwithstanding its name and that it's limited to a tiny part of the
human brain in conventional neurological descriptions. A long forgotten
smell from one's childhood, if felt as an adult ignites the whole brain
in an overwhelming flood of associations. And the reason why olfactory
connects differently than other perceptions is simply because it was
first in line in evolution of the vertebrate brain. So even though we
have lost much of our smell capacity, there's no need to limit the
olfactory to smell. The nose is a smell organ while the olfactory organ
is so much more.
According to EMAH, Thalamus is the action centre
while cortex is the mostly fixed "storage" against which the world is
surveyed/synchronized. Cortex hence is the updatable "film" on which its
subset thalamus projects incoming signal patterns from the "outer"
environment incl. the body as well as responses from the cortex itself -
new information from the thalamus as well as what we call "thinking",
which simply means the exchange of signals initiated by the thalamus,
i.e. reciprocal cortico-cortical interactions.
The main structure from the starfish to the human brain is similarly logical, i.e. an organism's command centre is always optimally located.
While
a starfish lacks a centralized brain, it has a nerve ring around the
mouth and a radial nerve running along the ambulacral region of each arm
parallel to the radial canal. The peripheral nerve system consists of
two nerve nets: a sensory system in the epidermis and a motor system in
the lining of the coelomic cavity. Neurons passing through the dermis
connect the two. The ring nerves and radial nerves have sensory and
motor components and coordinate the starfish's balance and directional
systems. The sensory component receives input from the sensory organs
while the motor nerves control the tube feet and musculature. The
starfish does not have the capacity to plan its actions. If one arm
detects an attractive odour, it becomes dominant and temporarily
over-rides the other arms to initiate movement towards the prey. The
mechanism for this is not fully understood.
Inhibitory
interneurons, rather than relay neurons make up most of the nuclei of
the thalamus. These neurons do not project into the cortex but instead
project into the other nuclei, modulating their activity. This is how
thalamus distributes signals in accordance with incoming signals and
reflections from the cortex. Mainly the pulvinar part of the dorsal
thalamus is focused on when it comes to reasoning etc. Although the
pulvinar is usually grouped as one of the lateral thalamic nuclei in
rodents and carnivores, it stands as an independent complex in primates.
Each pulvinar nucleus has its own set of cortical connections, which
participate in reciprocal cortico-cortical interactions. Unilateral
lesions of the pulvinar result in a contralateral neglect syndrome
resembling that resulting from lesions of the posterior parietal cortex.
This again emphasizes the "dictatorship" of the thalamus.
The real "mystery of consciousness" is why the self-evident answer has been stubbornly avoided despite being presented in countless writings, talks and on the webb - even including a letter to Francis Crick in 1994.
The
reason is of course segregation used as a social and political power
tool. However, the greatness of Tatiana and Krista is precisely that
they have showed the world that total de-segregation works without loss
of individual personality. Whereas the majority of two separate twins
quarrelling is simply due to misunderstanding, Tatiana and Krista avoid
this because they can always see the rationality of whatever happens to
be at stake in their head. The thought process happens in their
connected thalamuses, not in their cortex which only reflects their
personality. In other words, what Tatiana's cortex delivers to the
thalamic display is different from what Krista's dito delivers, but in
the bridged thalamuses everything is processed as one. Their thoughts
are equally well synchronized as how they master synchronizing their
four arms and legs.
As EMAH has showed, "consciousness", i.e.
awareness, is a two-dimensional 'now'* that resides in thalamus where it
functions as a sub-set of association patterns in the cortex, always
changing due to "outer" perceptions and "inner" feedbacks from how the
corresponding association networks in the cortex happen to fit the
situation. Association pattern in the thalamus ought to be seen as a
small local subset of the global network in the brain.
*
I.e. a continuous flow of changing "nows" without history or future.
Like a seamless/frameless/seamless/f video camera where the viewer, i.e.
the brain, synchronizes/updates itself in a similarly
seamless/frameless way.
There's no "immaterial
intellect" or "material intellect" division. This thinking is a dinosaur
from the past and reflects Western unfounded belief in supra-natural
phenomenon, of which "monotheisms" - to an extent that even spelling
correctors don't know the plural form of it although there are at least
four main "monotheist" branches (Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianism
and its late coming cousin islamism plus a multitude of opposing
variants.
The Even More Astonishing Hypothesis (EMAH) expands AI from human-centrism* - but not from existence-centrism*.
*
Human-centrism is the dividing of the world in "human" and "non-human".
An example is humans bragging about humans which makes no sense due to
the lack of any reference outside "humans". Which "non-human" would be
able to evaluate such a claim? We humans can only brag among ourselves,
which is equally meaningless as saying that this particular set is the
best of this particular set.
EMAH sees everything as the
latest adaptation in an arbitrarily chosen (local) global set which is
in equilibrium with an other (local) global set via an interface ('now')
working as a subset.
There's no time lag in adaptation because
it's synonymous with 'now'. In conventional language use one could say
that 'adaptation', 'now' and understanding are the same.
Words
like "mind", "memory", "history", "future", "abstract", "physical", and
"understanding" cannot be conventionally used in explaining EMAH.
"mind" implies something (Homunculus paradox) that talks with itself, which is impossible
"memory" implies a possibility to "go back" which is impossible
"understanding" implies a state of "not understanding" which is an oxymoron
"history" or "future" do not exist in EMAH because there can only be a 'now' which is the latest 'state'.
"abstract or physical" is a division that lacks meaning in EMAH
The
word 'artificial' in AI seems to imply made by humans but not human,
but instead does the very opposite, i.e. outlines separate rooms for
'human intelligence' and 'human made intelligence' where there cannot be
such a division. This division has a long history and contains concepts
such as e.g. soul, mind, etc.
Algorithm AI and none-algorithm AI
Algorithms
are useful but contain human bias. For a non-biased exploration of a
certain topic we therefore need an interface without algorithms.
General statements in conventional AI vs EMAH:
Cameras don't lie - pictures do.
'Intelligent
agents' are any device that perceives its environment and takes actions
that maximize its chance of success at some goal.
EMAH: There's
no room for "agency" in an EMAH interface. And "success" is an
algorithm, i.e. defined. EMAH lacks algorithms and is therefore free to
explore without bias - like a camera.
There are endless amounts
of possible EMAH interfaces - like e.g. a mounted video camera filming
waves. No matter if you watch the display in real time or later, the
only thing you get is the latest 'now' (frame). And the only way you can
"understand" every consecutive 'now' is as the latest changes piled on a
previously "known" state.
It's said that as machines become
increasingly capable, mental facilities once thought to require
intelligence are constantly removed from the definition.
EMAH:
'Intelligence' here seems to imply either there's some undefined point
where it becomes human, or there's no such point. And of course there's
no other point than the previously mentioned human selfishness.
A state that adapts to its environment
state- now
adapts- always the sum of inputs/always "up to date"
environment- inputs (change)
example- a light switch - or millions in a changing on/off state pattern
Some objections to prevailing understanding of "consciousness"
Do
keep in mind that the verbal is physiological and the
"non-physiological" only exists as a, in this respect, meaningless but
conflating verbal expression, just like e.g. 'ghost' and 'god'.
Consciousness is neural events occurring not within the brain, but in the thalamus.
There are no qualia.
Access
consciousness, as opposed to phenomenal consciousness, is said to be
the phenomenon whereby information in our minds is accessible for verbal
report, reasoning, and the control of behavior. So, according to this
view, when we perceive, information about what we perceive is access
conscious; when we introspect, information about our thoughts is access
conscious; when we remember, information about the past is access
conscious, and so on. EMAH disputes the validity of this distinction.
P-consciousness
is said to be simply raw experience: it is moving, colored forms,
sounds, sensations, emotions and feelings with our bodies and responses
at the centre. These experiences, considered independently of any impact
on behavior, and are called qualia. EMAH object to this view because
"qualia" is both an undefinable word as well as a linguistic
categorization with no place in the brain. Brains don't do "categories".
The very core of EMAH is to remove "folk language" concepts* from the analysis. A camera never lies but pictures do. The camera doesn't see qualia.
The complexity of the
neural network in the brain of a newborn is there to be synchronized
with the individual's coming experiences. So early on a lot happens
while later in life only minor changes occur.
David Chalmers has
argued that A-consciousness can in principle be understood in
mechanistic terms, but that understanding P-consciousness is much more
challenging: he calls this the hard problem of consciousness. However,
the stone example (1992) proves that 1) observation and understanding
are the same and that 2) there's no qualitative difference between
seeing, hearing, smelling etc. and that 3) what is called understanding
as opposed to observation is in fact just retrospection in the latest
state - as is any "new understanding", e.g. when in the stone example it
turns out to be made of paper mache.
Basics of "consciousness".
There's
no other difference between the "consciousness" of a stone in a stream
of water and the "consciousness" of a human being, except for the
stone's lack of origo (the stone is adapting mainly on its surface) and
lack of language. What often misleads us is our self inflicted admiring
of our own inability to grasp the complexity of the neural network in
our brain - but not the complexity of a stone and its interaction with
its environment. Nor do most people seem to realize that language is
capable of empty oxymorons used as facts of the brain. Or perhaps they
just love this feature of language as a magician loves his tools and
tricks. And as we all know, we pay for magicians to cheat us.
1 There are no "memories" or "history" - only the most recent state.
This state is constantly changing (evolving).
These changes are random inputs - because non-random inputs wouldn't change the state.
The real "hard problem" of "consciousness" ("consciousness" originally meant 'knowing with').
The
hard problem, i.e. phenomenal consciousness, may, according to
Chalmers, be distinguished from the soft problem", i.e. access
consciousness. In EMAH, like in Dennett, there's no need for such a
divide.
2 The overall state (the cortex) is fixed until it gets changes from the thalamus.
Random inputs will be allocated into the existing state in accordance with its actual focus.
Focus
= the thalamic sub-state ("consciousness") that is dependent on the
actual association pattern in the cortex. Changes could come from cortex
in interaction with other association patterns or from outside the
brain, i.e. from the opposite direction in the thalamic display.
Actual focus = e.g. "awareness"/to be "conscious", which in whatever system simply means now.
System = whatever that changes.
The language problem (compare Donald Duck in the holy land of language in EMAH)
Wittgenstein called language a well functioning but hopelessly inaccurate game.
1 a neural network
2 random input to 1 causing a minor change in 1
3 1 will now be almost the same as previously except for a minor alteration caused by 2
4 next input will do the same unless it hits the previous one, in which case no reaction
5 the flow of random inputs continues
translated to EMAH and exemplified with how the brain works as a painter and a canvas
1 a canvas
2 experience painting on that canvas
3 a new canvas layer only slightly different from the previous
4 if "painted" on a spot with the same "color" nothing of course changes
5
the "painter" never stops painting - but becomes lazy and running out
of inspiration so the canvas changes less over time - although the
patterns on the canvas have become all the time more "like" the "model".
Summary
We
(like everything else) don't "observe" or "understand" or "memorize" -
we adapt. And not only to our outer surrounding but equally to our own
body incl. our brain. Or a brick turning into grovel/sand. Or a star
turning into a supernova etc.
Is the pattern of the flying dust
from what used to be a brick less or more "complex"? Or the supernova?
If we index all particles in the brick, then its dust has the same
complexity as the original brick although outspread by the wind to who
knows where.
Although the brain/nerve system could be seen as
more complex, it's no different from e.g. light skin that gets tanned in
the sun.
EMAH is extremely simple - yet not "simplistic".
However, the culprit is what humans are most proud about, i.e. language.
By giving something one doesn't comprehend but wants to put in a
package, a name, will continue to contain its blurred (or sometime
empty) "definition". This is why EMAH only deals with 'now' and the
body/state of the "past" (erased in the process) this 'now' continuously
lands on. Of course this leads to everything (or nothing) having
"consciousness".
A brick "remembers" a stain of paint as long as
it's there - and with some "therapeutical" investigation in a laboratory
perhaps even longer. And a stain of paint on your skin is exactly the
same. However, unlike the brick you've also got a brain that was
affected by the stain. This could be compared with a hollow brick where
the paint has vanished from the outside but submerged into the brick's
"brain" so that when cutting the brick it "remembers" it and "tells" the
cutting blade about it. And for more complexity and "sophistication",
just add millions of different colors unevenly spread.
Although
the brick example of course will be challenged by mentalists - they in
turn will be refuted by the Homunculus paradox, Wittgenstein's private
language problem, etc.
Background to Peter Klevius' 'stone example' against unfounded but populist "immaterial consciousness".
This
top science isn't offered to the mediocre Nature because that PC
magazine's quality isn't good enough and Peter Klevius doesn't have the
means to get a proper Chinese translation. So Google gets it in power of
its Western hegemony - not Google's quality which due to PC and
especially its connection with the militaristic leadership of the
$-freeloader U.S. constitutes a security risk beyond comprehension.
Here's
an other example. 1957 -Swedish Arvid Carlsson was first in the world
to demonstrate that dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain and not
just a precursor for norepinephrine. He also discovered that lack of
dopamine causes Parkinson. However, although Israel awarded him already
1979, and Japan 1994, it was only in 2000 he got the Nobel prize and had
to share it with two others. Why? Because Swedish state supported
mentalists (what Peter Klevius calls the psycho state) have had a strong
strangle hold on research about the brain.
It's a linguistic
"abstract fantasy" trap to divide memory in abstract ("immaterial")
concepts and material sensations or images. Krista and Tatiana Hogan
constitute the perfect follow up to Peter Klevius' stone example from
1990-92, because when they 'talk inside their head with each other' that
can only happen in their connected thalamuses, not in their
disconnected cortices.
Mentalists' unproven and unreachable s.c.
"objective reality" (or "fantasy reality") stands as the basis for their
unproven idea about non-physical mental processes in the brain at the
same time as they admit that sensory inputs are physical. This view
stands in sharp opposition to idealists' who only see what the
(physical) senses bring - but honestly admit that they have nothing to
say about a "world" outside the senses - except for Berkely who called
the not reachable "god". But according to Peter Klevius'
existencecentrism, not even "god" fits in a set that can't be talked
about. Moreover, Peter Klevius is convinced that the intellectual
schizophrenia of mentalists is detrimental to Human Rights.
Peter
Klevius ontology and epistemology rests on Atheism, i.e. the lack of
monotheisms, combined with negative (basic) Human Rights, i.e. the lack
of impositions based on human characteristics, other than laws guided by
negative (basic) Human Rights. Peter Klevius is not a mentalist (see
below). Peter Klevius' analysis puts him, like Daniel Dennett, at odds
with mentalists.
Acknowledgement: The simple reason I often refer
to myself with my name in the text is because as a less known underdog
outside the conventional academic sphere (which is in fact my main
asset) there's a real chance that many will not only dismiss the author,
but more importantly, just cherry pick from my texts out of proper
context. Moreover, for me it's essential that I'm understood because
that's the only way for me and others to criticize myself. Furthermore, I
don't know about you dear reader, but although I'm fluent in three
languages, my thinking, like that of all animals, is mostly non-verbal,
meaning I have to translate it to words. This translation is for
mentalists the very obstacle to understand how the brain works.
Origins
Ultimately
the stone example and EMAH go back to Peter Klevius' correspondence
with G. H. von Wright (Wittgenstein's successor at Cambridge) 1980 and a
published and paid article 1981 about evolution and scientific
methodology 1981. However, at the time I wrote the stone example I was
puzzled by how my theory could be physiologically explained. I didn't
know about the two-way cortico-thalamic connections until 1993 when they
were outlined in Nature. The manuscript to Peter Klevius' Demand for
Resources (with the 'stone example') was in its final form presented for
G. H. von Wright (Wittgenstein's successor at Cambridge) before Daniel
Dennett's Consciousness Explained was available. Moreover, whereas Peter
Klevius' analysis at the time lacked physiological evidence for
thalanmus involvement, Dennett based his (non-mentalist) view on
available data which constituted mainly of in the 1980s so popular brain
imaging of blood flow, which gave the wrong impression that thinking
happened all over the brain, and which also encountered the speed limit
problem that was neglected by "close to the same time". Peter Klevius
analysis eloquently resolved this problem by keeping attention/awareness
in the smaller thalamus "display" while the cortex stands for the
totality of adaptations of which only a tiny part is projected on the
thalamus. So what the blood flow images show is just the history of what
the thalamus has been busy with, i.e. the association patterns thalamus
activates on the cortex.
In fact, Peter Klevius didn't even know
the existence of Dennett until many years after Peter Klevius' letter
to Francis Crick. Why Dennett is mentioned here is because he seems to
be a non-mentalist and closest to Peter Klevius analysis. However,
unlike Peter Klevius' 'stone example' where consciousness is limited to a
real time 'now' "image" of the world (i.e. no depth), Dennett compares
consciousness to an academic paper that is being developed or edited in
the hands of multiple people close to the same time, the "multiple
drafts" theory of consciousness. In this analogy, "the paper" exists
even though there is no single, unified paper. When people report on
their inner experiences, Dennett considers their reports to be more like
theorizing than like describing. These reports may be informative, he
says, but a psychologist is not to take them at face value. Dennett
describes several phenomena that show that perception is more limited
and less reliable than we perceive it to be. Dennett's views put him (as
Klevius) at odds with thinkers who say that consciousness can be
described only with reference to subjective "qualia". These "qualia"
people's (ab)use of language is the main obstacle for understanding how
the brain works and therefore also the main target for Peter Klevius
analysis, which could otherwise been much shorter. One year after
publishing Demand for Resources, Peter Klevius read in Nature about
two-way cortico-thalamic connections which immediately for him located
the stone example to the thalamus, hence overcoming earlier problems
about neural speed limits in the brain.
Short form of Peter Klevius ontology (1981, 2003): Peter Klevius would be helpless without an assisting world*.
*
Peter Klevius has no 'self' or 'private language' because all of him is
a product of his environment (incl. his body). Moreover, the world that
has shaped him is exactly his whole world. There can't be a world
"beyond" existencecentrism (see below). Same applies to the whole of
humankind. This world is constantly changing but can never exceed the
borders of existencecentrism.
And here's a longer form for those
who desperately try to misinterpret it for the sake of rescuing their
beliefs. As in the preface to my 1992 book Demand for Resources, I again
appeal for a positive reading - so to save the reader from her/his own
prejudice:
Being is ultimately only comprehensible as an
all-inclusive whole which Peter Klevius calls 'existencecentrism', i.e.
that the view from one's (or humankind's) particular origo is always
limited (otherwise we would be all seeing gods) which also excludes
"metaphysics" or if you like, integrates "metaphysics" into our
existencecentrism, i.e. into what can be said/experienced. There cannot
exist anything outside our reality because "existence" is dependent on
human minds. Trying to talk "outside" one's existencecentrism is
therefore impossible and only ends up in a navel gazing dead end of
undefinable "nothingness".
Language has overwhelmed our thinking
to an extent that often hinders or complicates the analysis of it. The
'stone example' below is meant to reveal the true nature of language as
just an adaptation among others, so to discharge it from conflating
misleading words about how organs (e.g. the brain) work. We have a
tendency to create meaningless questions because language - but not the
world - allows it. Words like 'memory', 'past', 'future' etc., have no
meaning when exploring awareness/consciousness because there's only one
valid latest 'now' at the time, just like a video where only the last
frame is relevant for viewing. If the stone in the stone example later
turns out not to be a stone, then we can no longer "remember" the
"stone" we saw before we realized it wasn't a stone.
There's no
"reality" or "things-in-themselves" outside our existencecentrism,
simply because whatever we talk about is per definition already inside.
So trying to explain something humans come up with and to demand a "god"
to answer a question that makes no sense - makes no sense. This also
means that there's no basis for questions like 'don't you believe in a
human independent reality'. A human independent "reality" is per
definition out of reach, so the question becomes an oxymoron. A human
perceived object or world can't exist if humans are forever gone. Our
world is in our mind only - where else could it possibly reside.
However, many seem to have problem letting the question go, e.g. by
stubbornly repeating the naive 'but surely the table must still be there
even if all humans are gone'. And if we pretend being an all seeing
god, then we would realize that the bird on what humans used to call a
'table' strongly disagrees while conceptualizing it perhaps as a place
for landing.
There are no colors, objects etc. in the brain, only
the imprint on the neuronal network of our adaptations with our world
incl. each other. We adapt to our surrounding just like a rock in a
continuous stream of water, or a flatworm to light. The light absorbed
by silver crystals on photographic film produces a reflection that can
only be "understood" as an image based on earlier adaptations to what is
interpreted to be in the image. An image of the stone in the 'stone
example' may be interpreted as a stone or paper mache, depending on the
knowledge of the viewer. To be able to know the world at all, there must
be a continuing identity of mind and perception. This equilibrium is
upheld by synchronizing new perceptions with the previous state of the
mind.
Mind or consciousness are physical and physiological.
Everything else is just language. It's language that makes consciousness
"mysterious". The reason many humans don't accept consciousness in e.g.
flatworms is that humans tend to drown in their oceans of neurons etc.
A
mind independent world is impossible because how could we possibly talk
about something "outside" our mind. If you, like naive "realists", say
that objects still exist even if there's not a single human left to
sense them, then ask yourself how to sense such objects without any
human existing to perform the sensing? Moreover, if an unknown force
suddenly puts universe into a state of time and space-less singularity,
then where are your objects? This latter example is of course equally
naive as the naive "realist" position, and therefore belongs to them.
Peter Klevius commenting on the misuse of widely used concepts:
* Such concepts may of course be perfectly usable in openly declared local contexts.
'A car' is equally concrete or abstract as 'the car'.
Although
earlier cosmological models of "the" universe now are accused of being
geocentric, i.e. placing Earth at the center, nothing has really changed
because "the" universe is anyway still both anthropocentric as well as
limited by our existencecentrism. Yesterday's Earth is today's "Big
Bang" (P. Klevius 1992:22).
The 'empty set' is the most
operational of all sets in that its impossible task is to keep things
from entering it, e.g. its own conceptual defining framework.
Objects, operations, and functions
Peter Klevius: Objects, operations, and functions, are all dependent on each other.
Organs of sense-
Peter Klevius: There can't be "organs of sense", because then there could also be "organs of appearances" etc. stupidities.
produce sensations out of which appearances take place-
Peter
Klevius: There's no difference between sensations and appearances.
Where would you draw such a line? "Sensations and appearances" meet in
the thalamus where they become one, i.e. 'now'.
and these come to represent something that renders objects thinkable.
Peter
Klevius: Represent what? Where was the original presentation? The "real
world" that's beyond us?! But our existencecentrism excludes us from
even talking about it - and if we do we are back to appearances.
Although
one could say that the heart is the origo of the blood flow, unlike the
nervous system that feeds the brain, the heart is part of an an
inclusive system. And the stone in the flow of water doesn't have an
origo, other than its centre of gravity.
Why are we here? This
question is senseless because it rests on the possibility of a
"nothingness" which would be impossible to define because its definition
would kill the concept as well as the question. So when Penrose says
Universe at some extremely diluted point may "forget" space and time,
then this scenario is still within our existencecentrism. Wittgenstein's
'bedrock' is Peter Klevius' existencecentrism.
Just like a stone
in the continuous flow of water adapts to its environment, similarly
the mind doesn't need to "structure" and "process" incoming data,
because it simply maps it on the existing data map. Better still, there
are no "incoming" data, only nerve reactions. And just like we make
sense of an image, similarly we make sense of other reactions.
There
is no one thing that unifies being human - except negative (basic)
Human Rights, which don't limit your sphere of love or passion, but
let's others do the same without impositions, except for what is
restricted by laws guided by these same rights.
Dear reader, don't confuse this text with nihilism because it's actually less nihilistic than mainstream views on the subject.
The
significance of Peter Klevius' stone* example from 1992, is to embed
contentious or confusing concepts into a theoretical analysis that makes
their connections to other categories more explicit. As a consequence
it will also reveal the impossibility of any effort to draw a
distinction between abstract and concrete objects because there simply
can't exist a human definition in a "reality" outside human experience.
The 'car' is equally abstract as the 'thought' about it. And the
neuronal activity we call a thought process is certainly equally
physical and physiological as photons hitting the retina or the
molecules hitting our mouth and nose, or the vibrations hitting our
ears. The fancy "elevation" of some physical/physiological events to a
"higher" status has no real foundation.
*
The reason Peter Klevius chose 'stone' instead of 'rock' is that 1) in
Swedish it's 'sten', and 2) in both Swedish and its creole descendant
English, the word sten/stone is also associated with phrases like stone
blind (literally "blind as a stone"), stone deaf, stone-cold, etc.,
which then contrasts more sharply with the 'mind'. Yet, nothing excludes
the possibility of describing a stone as equally complex as the brain.
There
are no functions without objects. A function is an operation which
needs objects to function, such as variables or other operational
"tools". You can't think about a number without its operational
function, be it functioning as a sign or a calculation. There simply
doesn't exist a naked number. Same with colors, which will always be
somehow framed.
Everything experienced is always understood,
which means that every conceptualization happens in the brain - not in
an outside "reality". The retroactive "understanding" that the stone
later turned out to be something else, is just a new understanding.
The
oxymoron 'true by definition' is limited to its definition. The
"out-of-Africa" myth, for example, rests on defining modern DNA as
representing the same locality (Africa) several hundred thousands of
years ago. And fossils are pure lottery if they can't be satisfactorily
tied to evolutionary origin. This is why Homo floresiensis on the
"wrong" side of the Wallace line, outperforms all fossils in Africa.
The stone example reveals that:
1
Recognition of a stone as matching the concept of a 'stone' is
culturally embedded in our brain as a result of adaptation (programmed
through lived experience). There is no direct understanding of a "real"
stone, only the cumulative adaptations of when to use the concept, or
how to deal with it in general - just like animals do without linguistic
concepts.
2 'Stone' is a linguistic reflection and doesn't cover
humans who are non-linguistic*. Language is an anthropocentric
operation, and therefore not applicable to non-linguistic lives or
things. This means a linguistic machine could understand a linguistic
human linguistically, whereas a non-linguistic human would not
understand a linguistic machine.
3 To see or touch a stone both need
the recognition that it is a stone. Photons from the stone or from the
ink in the word stone do exactly the same as touching the stone - which
includes hearing the word stone. And if the surface feels hard it could
still be a hollow shell. And if it feels heavy like a stone it could
still be a dirty piece of hollow gold weighing the same as an ordinary
'stone'.
* The most naive, or alternatively, the most
self-evident of value based expressions is that 'humans are special' -
but not more or less special than a billion year old stone or a flying
fruit fly. And the only way to encompass all humans as fully human is to
Atheistically and axiomatically accept it as e.g. it's stated in the
original anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-sexist U.N.'s Universal
Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 - which islam's biggest and most
influential organization, the Saudi based and steered O.I.C., 1990
declared not acceptable and therefore replaced it with an islamic sharia
declaration, which contrary to Art. 2 in the UDHR, imposes segregated
"rights".
First of all one needs to accept that we are by
necessity anthropocentric (and above all existencecentric). How could we
possibly not be humans? You may also benefit from learning about later
Ludwig Wittgenstein (who asked my mentor* G. H. von Wright to be his
successor at Cambridge) whose reasoning is in good harmony with Peter
Klevius EMAH theory which in turn pushes the "consciousness"/language
"problem" to its ultimate end - without embarking on simplisticism.
Unfortunately there seems to be a problematic aversion against
Wittgenstein's most important insights among many Western scholars,
probably due to the fact that Wittgenstein in his later period didn't
follow a more conventional philosophical jargon and methodology within
the discipline, but rather questioned its borders. Aversion against
Wittgenstein may also have something to do with the heavy influence of
"monotheisms"** which became widespread in the West because ot the Roman
empire. However, it also feeds into a quite appalling and racist
dismissal of non-monotheistic thought traditions. And Atheism, which is
the only possible foundation for fully adopting basic (negative) Human
Rights, is in e.g. U.S. politics etc. still almost seen as a curse. This
Western bigoted hypocrisy is easily seen in statements about
"monotheistic" religions as somehow the 'crown of sophistication' -
although stunningly disproved by history. Moreover, Kierkegaard was an
individualist, not a "communityist"***.
*
G. H. von Wright strongly supported P. Klevius' 1979 paper Resursbegär
(Demand for Resources) that was published 1981 as a paid article. Same
thing happened a decade later with Peter Klevius book with the same name
and published 1992 - although he thought its 'aphoristic form' could be
difficult for some readers.
** Atheist Wittgenstein's curiosity
about religion has often been wilfully misinterpreted. Wittgenstein was
also interested in other similar human entanglements such as e.g.
psychoanalysis. A telling sign is that the father of psychoanalysis,
Sigmund Freud, didn't fit in his list of people who had influenced him
the most, but included Otto Weininger, the youngster whom Freud had
dismissed and probably became complicit to what led to the vulnerable
young and depressed genius' suicide. And because Weininger's Sex and
Character was seen as misogynistic, Wittgenstein was asked how he could
like such a work. To which Wittgenstein answered that one may negate
everything in it and it's still good. Peter Klevius' thesis Pathological
Symbiosis implies the question how many young lives have been distorted
or destroyed because of psychoanalytically influenced actions. Adult
people can choose if they want to consult these modern magicians, but
have no such right when authorities decide about their children.
*** A "community" may be negatively described as a lynch mob where the individual is in the end of the rope.
Our
mind consists of adaptive associations/reactions in every 'now' built
on previous ones. However, using the associations/reactions (or simply
adaptations) we call language to "explain" associations/reactions to
language, of course causes confusion. Mind is a word that can be used as
a synonym for human, and hence solely restricted to humans while
therefore also eliminating the possibility of the question: Do others
than humans have minds? Alternatively one may expand its use over the
human border and face no defensible restrictions at all. However, since
humans are trapped in our own existencecentrism we lack authority to
talk for others. What we can do though is to clean up our
anthropocentric discourse. To avoid the "consciousness mystery" one has
to clearly distinguish between single human-only bordered experience and
one that includes the totality of human existencecentrism* (see P.
Klevius 1992:21-22). This is why the question: 'Do animals have
consciousness?' is a meaningless oxymoron. Starting by declaring only
humans have "consciousness" while then blurring this concept with other
human centered concepts such as "soul", "spirit", "self" etc.,
inevitably leads to questions about animals and due conflation of the
original concept. This is no different from the slow acceptance of
evolution where still today many stubbornly keep hanging on the 'humans
are special' myth. Humans can only be special among humans. How would a
non-human possibly even know what is meant by 'humans'?
The
'Universe' is fully comprehensible for humans because the whole of it is
bordered by human existencecentrism. Humans hence rule the world by
absolute dictatorship.
The fancy idea that 'there's a physical
reality' independent of humans, I abandoned in my early teens after
reading Einstein's and Barnett's book about Universe. The concept of
'physical reality' (which implies some other perceivable "reality") is
inevitably and only contained into human language - so without humans no
"physical reality". "Reality" has no mysterious "essence" other than
what humans inject "it" with. A 'stone', a 'brick, a 'table' etc. have
no "essence" but are, like e.g. numbers, only operational, i.e. context
bound. And the only essence humans have in common is the axiomatic
"being human". Sure we can talk about it, touch, make experiments and
even agree that the Earth is still there even after Uncle Sam has
started a nuke war that eventually could accelerate and make humans
extinct. However, where would the human perceptions be stored? And even
if the CDs on Voyager somehow came in contact with what we used to call
"Aliens" - the cultural content is equally cut off as are prehistoric
'humans' (i.e. the genus) artefacts from us living humans.
In
Demand for Resources (1992) Peter Klevius pointed out the difference
between the modern use of the word existence as implying the possibility
of non-existence, and the more sensible and culturally much older and
more widespread meaning of something emerging (compare 'existere'), i.e.
not out of "nothing" or "god".
Reality is always confined within
the borders of existencecentrism. "Metaphysics" hence is (or should be)
simply the acceptance of existencecentrism. So whatever "universe",
"reality" or "spirit" is contemplated, it always resides within the
borders of existencecentrism. While existence is motion/change, the
borders of existencecentrism constitute an unchangeable relativity. No
matter what new insights are made they cannot change this because there
is no "reality" beyond existenecentrism that could be used as a
reference. The size of the "still unknown" is always infinite. On the
level of humankind this means that it cannot be assessed, compared,
evaluated etc. against other "kinds" other than by using a meaningless
"humankind" comparison.
The mentalists' love for a "mental", as opposed to physical, hiding place.
As
Peter Klevius wrote 1981, 'the meaning of life is uncertainty' - which
offers more possibilities than any narrow minded mentalist view. This
uncertainty is rich enough in itself and contrary to what mentalists
believe, mentalism not only actually limits freedom but also boosts
racism and sexism as defined in the 1948 Universal Human Rights
declaration.
And according to the stone example in EMAH there is
no in this context meaningful separation between observation and
understanding. The relation between a new observation that contradicts
an earlier one is not consciousness but can of course be titled
'understanding'. And the totality of our understanding is just the
temporal body of adaptations bordered against the future by a now. In
other words, future doesn't exist per se.
One way of helping to
understand EMAH is to think about an internally active two-way
display/monitor (thalamus in vertebrates) with ever changing "meetputs"
('nows' - i.e. stream of "images") between input and output, incl.
inputs and outputs from your brain and other parts of your body.
"Sensory information" has conventionally been seen as a specific type of
stimulus. This view is a linguistic mirage which arbitrarily
categorizes certain inputs. Although it's useful to talk about hearing,
vision etc., there's no need to make a "sensory group" which only
creates unnecessary bias when analyzing "consciousness".
Peter Klevius stone example unifies all modes of observation and communication.
If we want to break the borders of human navel-gazing we also need to clean up cross-border concepts.
In
the 1980s, while reading Jurgen Habermas' The Theory of Communicative
Action, Peter Klevius criticized his division observation and
understanding as I had always used to do in other contexts. However, my
(perhaps overly) respect for Habermas made me wondering why even he used
such a meaningless distinction.
Peter Klevius' 'stone example' in Resursbegär (Demand for Resources) from 1992 (pp 32-33, ISBN 9173288411).
The
connection between intelligence/intellect and its biological anchors
may appear problematic on several levels. This applies to the connection
between sensory impressions and abstraction. In a remark regarding
rational reconstruction, Jurgen Habermas makes a distinction between
what he calls sensory experience (observation) and communicative
experience (understanding). Against this one may argue by seeing the
thought process as consisting of parts of memory patterns and
experiences that must be understood to be meaningful at all.
sees a stone* = visual perception understood by the viewer
I see a stone = utterance understood by another person
* When the origo/viewer then kicks the "stone" it turns out to be made of paper mache, i.e. becoming a new updated adaptation.
I
presume that Habermas sees the latter example as communication due to
the reference (via language) to the original viewer's visual impression
of the stone, while I claim that this "extension" of the meaning of the
statement cannot be proven to be of a different nature than the
thought/understanding process behind the first example. This
understanding of the stone does not differ from the understanding of an
abstract symbol like e.g. a letter or a word, written or pronounced. The
statement 'I see a stone' is also a direct sensory impression which,
like the stone as an object, has no meaning if it is not understood.
Here one may then object that the word stone in contrast to the
phenomenon of seeing a stone can transfer meaning (symbolic
construction, according to Habermas). Still, I would insist that this
too is illusory and a consequence of our way of perceiving language and
Popper's third world (see below). A stone can be perceived as everything
from the printing ink in a word to an advanced symbolic construction.
It is then not a matter of a difference between observation and
understanding, but only different, unbounded levels of understanding.
Nor does the division "pure observation" and "reflective observation"
have any other than purely comparative meaning, since no delimitation
(other than the purely comparative one) can be made in a meaningful way.
Does it not matter then that the communication takes place between two
conscious, thinking beings? Certainly, Habermas and others are free to
elevate communication between individuals to a group other than the
communication the stone observer has with himself and his cultural
heritage via mirroring in the stone, but in this case this is only an
ethnocentric stance without relevance to the observation/understanding
distinction. For me, therefore, there is no fundamental difference in
the symbol combination of the sensory experience of a stone or of
Habermas text. Of course, that does not mean that I would in any way
express any form of judgement of Habermas or the stone. What it does
mean, however, is that I want to question the division
observation/understanding and thus also the division primitive/civilized
thinking (P. Klevius 1992:32-33).
To be fair, it should be said
that Haberma's exemplification is based on a completely different chain
of thought with a purpose other than the one discussed here and that I
only try to demonstrate the danger of generalizing the
observation/understanding relationship. In other contexts, it becomes
almost unnoticed transferred to a linguistic axiom (virus or bug to take
information technology as an example) which then both generates and
accumulates differences that do not exist.
In the book Evolution
of the Brain/Creation of the Self (foreword by Karl Popper) John C.
EccIe notes that: '1t is surprising how slow the growth of World 3 (K.
Popper's and J. EccIe's division of existence and experience; World I =
physical objects and states, World 2 = states of consciousness, World 3 =
knowledge in objective sense) was in the earlier tens of thousands of
years of Homo sapiens sapiens. And even today there are races of mankind
with negligible cultural creativity. Only when the societies could
provide the primary needs of shelter, food, clothing, and security were
their members able to participate effectively in cultural creativity, so
enriching World 3.'
This quote shows both Eccie's and Popper's
legitimate concern about the issue and the cultural evolutionary escape
route they use to leave the question (compare chapter Khoi, San and
Bantu in this book). It also reveals a certain, perhaps unconscious,
aversion to the idea that societies would voluntarily settle for
satisfying their "primary needs." Karl Popper has, with reason, made
himself known as the champion of freedom and herein I fully share his
attitude. Freedom (implicitly a humane and responsible freedom) is
clearly a scarce commodity in the modern state. At the same time, the
concept of freedom does not exist at all among the gatherer-hunter
cultures referred to in this book. The concept of freedom, like
diamonds, is created only under pressure (P. Klevius 1992:33).
Original EMAH as web version 2004. The theory is exactly as it was when sent to Francis Crick 1994, although the text is slightly altered, but without any changes in the theory*.
*
Already in the 1970s I had the same view as today about how the brain
works. The reason for this is twofold: Firstly, I read and scoffed at
Laing's perverted but populist view on mental illness, and secondly, I
happened to work in a mental hospital as a guard on a department for the
worst cases, where I thoroughly read everything about the 40 patients
there, and concluded that they all had become worse in their teens,
although with very different backgrounds and lives. Some of them showed
autism early in their childhood but most didn't show anything before
their teens. This led me to Arvid Carlsson and his dopamine research.
And the only reason I called my theory "the even more astonishing
hypothesis" (EMAH) was because of Crick's book 'The Astonishing
Hypothesis' which didn't astonish me at all. However, EMAH is a theory
because it is falsifiable, it fits all existing data, and it has
predicted everything that research has revealed since. Moreover, it's
not shallow but to the very point. Therefore, dear reader, if you have
doubts or if something in the theory is hard to understand because of my
incompetency as a writer, please contact me on klevius-yahoo.com
The
theory was presented for Georg Henrik von Wright (Wittgenstein's
successor at Cambridge) 1991, and 1994 sent to Francis Crick (only got a
confirmation from Salk administration so not sure if he ever read it),
and 2004 presented on the web* for the entire world.
* My EMAH page on Yahoo's Geocities was quite frequently visited for many years until Geocities was terminated.
Abstract:
Thalamus is the least discussed yet perhaps the most important piece in
the puzzle of mind, due to its central function as the main relay
station between body actions and environment. A critical assessment of
concepts such as: observation/understanding, mind/body, free will and
language reveals an inescapable awareness in the Thalamic "meetputs". In
conclusion memories hence may be better described as linguistic traps
rather than as distinct entities. The continuity model proposed in EMAH
also avoids the limitations of a "discrete packets of information"
model.
Note. In some respect the neural network of "lower"
systems such as the spinal cord and cerebellum by far outperforms the
cortex. This is because of different tasks (fast motorics and slow
adaptations) and due difference in processing. (Copyright Peter
Klevius).
Introduction
Understanding
how social behavior and its maintenance in human and other forms of
life (incl. plants etc) evolved has nothing to do with “the balance
between self interest and co-operative behavior” but all to do with
kinship and friendship. Although humans may be attributed a more chaotic
(i.e. more incalculable) "personality", they are, like life in general,
just robots (i.e. active fighters against entropy – see Demand for
Resources - on the right to be poor). Misunderstanding (or plain
ignorance of – alternatively ideological avoidance of) kinship (kin
recognition), friendship (symbiosis), and AI (robotics) pave the way for
the formulation of unnecessary, not to say construed, problems which,
in an extension, may become problematic themselves precisely because
they hinder an open access for direct problem solving (see e.g. Angels
of Antichrist – kinship vs. social state).
The Future of a "Gap" (copyright P. Klevius 1992-2004)
Human:
What is a human being? Can the answer be found in a non-rational a
priori statement (compare e.g. the axiomatic Human Rights individual) or
in a logical analysis of the "gap" between human beings and others? The
following analysis uses an "anti-gap" approach. It also rests on the
struggle and success of research performed in the field of artificial
intelligence (AI), robotics etc.
Signal: A "signal gap" is
commonly understood as a break in the transition from input to output,
i.e., from perception to behavior. Mentalists use to fill the gap with
"mind" while behaviorists don't bother because they can't even see it.
Matter:
Berkeley never believed in matter. What you experience is what you get
and the rest is in the hands of "God" (i.e. uncertainty). This view
makes him a super-determinist without "real" matter.
Mind: The
confusing mind-body debate originates in the Cartesian dualism, which
divides the world into two different substances, which, when put
together, are assumed to make the world intelligible. However, on the
contrary, they seem to have created a new problem based on this very
assumption.
Free will: Following a mind-body world view, many
scholars prefer to regard human beings as intentional animals fuelled by
free will. It is, however, a challenging task to defend such a
philosophical standpoint. Not even Martin Luther managed to do it, but
rather transferred free will to God despite loud protests from Erasmus
and other humanists. Although Luther's thoughts in other respects have
had a tremendous influence on Western thinking, this particular angle of
view has been less emphasized.
Future: When asked about the
"really human" way of thinking, many mentalists refer to our capacity to
"calculate" the future. But is there really a future out there? All
concepts of the future seem trapped in the past. We cannot actually talk
about a certain date in the future as real future. What we do talk
about is, for example, just a date in an almanac. Although it is a good
guess that we are going to die, the basis for this reasoning always lies
in the past. The present hence is the impenetrable mirror between the
"real future" and ourselves. Consequently every our effort to approach
this future brings us back in history. Closest to future we seem to be
when we live intensely in the immediate present without even thinking
about future. As a consequence the gap between sophisticated human
planning and "instinctual" animal behavior seems less obvious. Is
primitive thinking that primitive after all?
An additional aspect of
future is that neither youth, deep freezing or a pill against ageing
will do as insurance for surviving tomorrow.
Observation and Understanding (copyright P. Klevius 1992-2004)
If
one cannot observe something without understanding it, all our
experiences are illusions because of the eternal string of corrections
made by later experiences. What seems to be true at a particular moment
may turn out to be something else in the next, and what we call
understanding hence is merely a result of retrospection.The conventional
way of grasping the connection between sensory input and behavioral
output can be described as observation, i.e. as sensory stimulation
followed by understanding. The understanding that it is a stone, for
example, follows the observing of a stone. This understanding might in
turn produce behavior such as verbal information. To do these simple
tasks, however, the observer has to be equipped with some kind of
"knowledge," i.e., shared experience that makes him/her culturally
competent to "understand" and communicate. This understanding includes
the cultural heritage embedded in the very concept of a stone.
Categorization
belongs to the language department, which, on the brain level, is only
one among many other behavioral reactions. But due to its capability to
paraphrase itself, it has the power to confuse our view on how we
synchronize our stock of experience. When we look at a stone, our
understanding synchronizes with the accumulated inputs associated with
the concept of a stone. "It must be a stone out there because it looks
like a stone," we think. As a result of such synchronization, our brain
intends to continue on the same path and perhaps do something more (with
"intention"). For example, we might think, "Let's tell someone about
it." The logical behavior that follows can be an expression such as,
"Hey look, it's a stone out there." Thus, what we get in the end is a
concept of a stone and, after a closer look, our pattern of experience
hidden in it. If the stone, when touched, turns out to be made of paper
mache, then the previous perception is not deepened, but instead,
switched to a completely new one.
One might say that a stone in a
picture is a real stone, while the word "stone" written on a piece of
paper is not. The gap here is not due to different representations but
rather to different contexts. When one tries to equalize observation
with understanding, the conventional view of primitive and sophisticated
thinking might be put in question. We act like no more than complex
worms and the rest, such as sophistication, is only a matter of biased
views built on different stocks of experience. But a worm, just like a
computer, is more than the sum of its parts.
Therefore, meaning,
explanation and understanding are all descriptions of the same basic
principle of how we synchronize perceptions with previous experiences.
For the fetus or the newborn child, the inexperienced (unsynchronized,
or uncertainty/"god" if you prefer) part of the inside-outside
communication is considerably huge. Hence the chaotic outside world
(i.e., the lack of its patterns of meaningfulness) has to be copied in a
stream of experiences, little by little, into the network couplings of
the brain. When the neural pattern matches the totality (meaningfulness)
its information potential disappears. On top of this, there is in the
fetus a continuous growth of new neurons, which have to be connected to
the network. As a result of these processes, the outside world is, at
least partly, synchronized with the inside, mental world. Eureka, the
baby finally begins to think and exist! In other words, the baby records
changes against a background of synchronized inputs.
* see "existence centrism" in Demand for Resources for a discussion about a shrinking god and the almighty human!
The Category of the Uniquely Human (copyright P. Klevius 1992-2004)
A
main difficulty in formulating the concept of consciousness is our
pride (presumably we should have been equally proud as mice) and our
strong belief in "something uniquely human." However, if we try to
follow the die-hard determinists, we would probably find free will and
destiny easier to cope with, and also that the concept of "the unique
human being" is rather a question of point of view. Following this line
of thought, I suggest turning to old Berkeley as well as to Ryle but
excluding Skinnerian Utopias. Those who think the word determinism
sounds rude and blunt can try to adorn it with complexity to make it
look more chaotic. Chaos here means something you cannot overview no
matter how deterministic it might be. We seem to like complexity just
because we cannot follow the underlying determinism. Maybe the same is
to be said of what it really is to be a human? A passion for
uncertainty, i.e. life itself. Francis Crick in The Astonishing
Hypothesis: "... your sense of personal identity and free will are in
fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and
their associated molecules."
This statement is easy to agree on,
so let me continue with another, perhaps more useful, quote from Crick:
"Categories are not given to us as absolutes. They are human
inventions." I think these two statements create an efficient basis for
further investigations into the mystery of thinking. Hopefully you will
forgive me now as I'm going to try to abolish not only the memory but
also the free will and consciousness all together. Then, I will go even
one step further to deny that there are any thoughts (pictures,
representations, etc.) at all in the cortex. At this point, many might
agree, particularly regarding the cortex of the author of this text.
The
main problem here is the storage of memories, with all their colors,
smells, feelings and sounds. Crick suggests the dividing of memory into
three parts: episodic, categorical and procedural. While that would be
semantically useful, I'm afraid it would act more like an obstacle in
the investigation of the brain, because it presupposes that the hardware
uses the same basis of classification and, like a virus, hence infects
most of our analyses.
Nerves, Loops and "Meetputs" (copyright P. Klevius 1992-2004)
According
to Crick, "each thalamic area also receives massive connections from
the cortical areas to which it sends information. The exact purpose of
these back connections is not yet known." In the following paragraphs, I
will outline a hypothetical model in line with this question. The
interpretation of the interface between brain and its surrounding as it
is presented here has the same starting point as Crick's theory but
divides thinking into a relay/network system in the cortex and the
perception terminals (or their representatives in the thalamus) around
the body like an eternal kaleidoscope. Under this model, imagination
would be a back-projected pattern of nerve signals, equal to the
original event that caused them but with the signals faded. This view
suggests that there are not only inputs and outputs but also "meetputs,"
i.e., when an input signal goes through and evolves into other signals
in the cortex, these new signals meet other input signals in the
thalamus.
There is no limit to the possible number of patterns in
such a system, and there is no need for memory storage but rather,
network couplings. These "couplings," or signals, are constantly running
in loops (not all simultaneously but some at any given moment) from the
nerve endings in our bodies through the network in the cortex and back
again to the thalamus. Of course the back-projected signals have to be
discriminated from incoming signals, thereby avoiding confusion
regarding fantasy and reality. But this process, though still unknown,
could be quite simple and perhaps detected simply by the direction where
it comes from. As a consequence of the loops, the back-projected
pattern differs from the incoming signals, or the stimuli. Therefore,
every signal from the body, perceptions, hormonal signals and so on,
either finds its familiar old routes or patterns of association in the
network (established experiences) or creates new connections (new
experiences) that can be of varying durability. For example, if someone
is blind from the moment of birth, he or she will have normal neuronal
activity in the cortex area of vision. On the other hand, in case of an
acquired blindness, the level of activity in the same area will become
significantly lower over time. This is logical according to the EMAH
model because, in the former case, the neurons have never become
involved in association patterns of vision but were engaged in other
tasks. In the latter case, the neurons have partly remained in previous
vision patterns, which are no longer in use, while the rest has moved
onto other new tasks.
It is important to note that human
thinking, contrary to what today's computers do, involves the
perceptions that originate from the chemical processes in the body's
hormonal system, what we carelessly name "emotions." This, I think, is
the main source behind the term "human behavior". The difference between
man and machine is a source of concern but, as I see it, there is no
point in making a "human machine". But perhaps someone might be
interested in building a "human-like machine".
Body vs. Environment - a History of Illusions (copyright P. Klevius 1992-2004)
According
to the EMAH model, its nerves define our body. This view does not
exactly resemble our conventional view of the human body. Thus, our
hormonal signals inside our body, for example, can be viewed (at least
partially) as belonging to the environment surrounding the EMAH-body.
The meaning of life is to uphold complexity by guarding the borders and
it is ultimately a fight against entropy. In this struggle, life is
supported by a certain genetic structure and metabolism, which
synchronizes its dealings with the surrounding environment. Balancing
and neutralizing these dealings is a job done by the nerves.
A
major and crucial feature of this "body-guarding" mechanism is knowledge
of difference in the directions between incoming signals and outgoing,
processed signals. On top of this, both areas change continuously and
thus have to be matched against each other to uphold or even improve the
complexity. According to this model, people suffering from
schizophrenia, just like healthy people, have no problem in
discriminating between inputs and outputs. In fact, we can safely assume
that the way they sometimes experience hallucinations is just like the
way we experience nightmares. Both hallucinations and nightmares seem so
frightening because they are perceived as incoming signals and confused
as real perceptions. The problem for the schizophrenic lies in a defect
in processing due to abnormal functions in and among the receptors on
the neurons, which makes the association pattern unstable and "creative"
in a way that is completely different compared with controlled
fantasies. In the case of nightmares, the confusion is related to low
and fluctuating energy levels during sleep. A frightful hallucination is
always real because it is based on perceptions. What makes it an
illusion is when it is viewed historically from a new point of view or
experienced in a new "now," i.e., weighed and recorded as illusory from a
standpoint that differs from the original one. In conclusion, one can
argue that what really differentiates a frightful ghost from a harmless
fantasy is that we know the latter being created inside our body,
whereas we feel unsure about the former.
EMAH Computing as Matched Changes (copyright P. Klevius 1992-2004)
EMAH
does not support the idea that information is conveyed over distances,
both in the peripheral and central nervous systems, by the times of
occurrence of action potentials?
"All we are hypothesizing is
that the activity in V1 does not directly enter awareness. What does
enter awareness, we believe, is some form of the neural activity in
certain higher visual areas, since they do project directly to
prefrontal areas. This seems well established for cortical areas in the
fifth tier of the visual hierarchy, such as MT and V4." (Crick &
Koch, 1995a,b). Hardware in a computer is, together with software
(should be “a program” because this word signals programming more
directly), specified at the outset. A high level of flexibility is made
possible through the hardware's ability to unceasingly customize to
incoming signals. This is partly what differs human beings from a
machine. The rest of the differentiating factors include our perceptions
of body chemistry such as hormones, etc. Programming a computer
equipped with flexible hardware, i.e., to make them function like
neurons, will, according to the EMAH-model, make the machine resemble
the development of a fetus or infant to a certain extent. The
development of this machine depends on the type of input terminals.
All
input signals in the human, including emotional ones, involve a
feedback process that matches the incoming signals from the environment
with a changing copy of it in the form of representations in the brain's
network couplings. Life starts with a basic set of neurons, the useful
connections of which grow as experiences come flooding in. This complex
body of neuronal connections can be divided into permanent couplings,
the sum of experiences that is your "personality," and temporary
couplings, short-term "memories" for everyday use.
A certain
relay connection, if activated, results in a back-projected signal
toward every receptor originally involved and thus creates, in
collaboration with millions of other signals, a "collage" that we often
call awareness. This is a constant flow and is in fact what we refer to
as the mysterious consciousness. At this stage, it is important to note
that every thought, fantasy or association is a mix of different kinds
of signals. You cannot, for example, think about a color alone because
it is always "in" or "on" something else (on a surface or embedded in
some kind of substance) and connected by relay couplings to other
perceptions or hormonal systems. "Meaning" is thus derived from a
complex mix of the loops between perceptions and back-projected
perceptions. This can be compared to a video camera system with a
receiving screen and a back-projecting screen. The light meter is the
"personality" and the aperture control the motor system. However, this
system lacks the complex network system found in the cortex and thus has
no possibility to "remember." The recorded signal is of course not
equivalent to the brain's network couplings because it is fixed. To save
"bytes," our brains actually tend to "forget" what has been
synchronized rather than remember it. Such changes in the brain (not
memories) are what build up our awareness. This process is in fact a
common technique in transmitting compressed data.
Short-Term Memories and Dreams (copyright P. Klevius 1992-2004)
At
any given moment, incoming signals, or perceptions, have to be
understood through fitting and dissolving in the net of associations. If
there are new, incomprehensible signals, they become linked (coupled)
to the existing net and localized in the present pattern of
associations. Whether their couplings finally vanish or stay depends on
how they fit into the previous pattern and/or what happens next.
As
a consequence of this coupling process, memories in a conventional,
semantic meaning do not exist, because everything happens now.
Consciousness or awareness is something one cannot influence, but
rather, something that involves an ongoing flow of information to and
from nerve endings through the brain (a relay station). For every given
moment (now), there is consequently only one possible way of acting. One
cannot escape awareness or decisions because whatever one thinks, it is
based on the past and will rule the future. Memories are thus similar
to fantasies of the future, based on and created by experiences.
Regarding short-term memory, I agree with Crick's view and hypothesis.
But I certainly would not call it memory, only weaker or vanishing
couplings between neurons. Remember that with this model, the
imagination of something or someone seen a long time ago always has to
be projected back on the ports were it came through and thus enabling
the appropriate association pattern. Although signals in each individual
nerve are all equal, the back-projected pattern makes sense only as a
combination of signals. The relay couplings in the cortex is the "code",
and the receptor system is the "screen." Because this system does not
allow any "escape" from the ever changing "now" which determines the
dealings with the surrounding environment. Living creatures are forced
to develop their software by living.
Dreams are, according to
this model, remains of short-term memories from the previous day(s),
connected and mixed with relevant association patterns but excluding a
major part of finer association structures. This is why dreams differ
from conscious thinking. The lack of finer association structures is due
to low or irregular activity levels in the brain during sleep. The
results are "confused thoughts", which are quite similar to those of
demented people, whose finer neural structures are damaged because of
tissue death due to a lack of appropriate blood flow. Thus dreams are
relevantly structured but in no way a secret message in the way
psychoanalysts see them, whereas patients with dementia tend to go back
to their childhood due to the irrevocable nature of the physical
retardation process. Investigating dreams and their meanings by
interpreting them is essentially the same as labelling them as
psychological (in a psychoanalytical sense). A better and less biased
result would emerge if the researcher actually lived with the subject
the day before the dream occurred. Rather than analyzing pale and almost
vanished childhood experiences from a view trapped in theoretical
prejudices that describe an uncertain future, the researcher should
perhaps put more effort in the logic of the presence.
Donald Duck and a Stone in the Holy Land of Language (copyright P. Klevius 1992-2004)
Wittgenstein:
"Sie ist kein Etwas, aber auch nicht ein Nichts!" (Phil. Untersuch.
304). Also see P. Klevius' analysis of a stone (in Demand for Resources -
on the right to be poor, 1992).
Although Wittgenstein describes
language as a tool it seems more appropriate to classify it as human
behavior. Unlike tools language is a set (family) of a certain kind of
bodily reactions (internal and/or towards its environment). We have to
reject, not only the grammar which tries to force itself on us, but
also, and perhaps even more so, representations we, without any
particular reason, assign to language.
Language is basically
vocal but apart from that little has been said about its real
boundaries. One could actually argue that the best definition is perhaps
the view that language is a human territory. The question whether
animals have a language is then consequently meaningless. On the other
hand, Wittgenstein denied the existence of a "private language" because
applying it could never prove the validity of its products. We are
trapped in words and connotations of language although these categories
themselves, like language in general, are completely arbitrary "language
games", as Wittgenstein would have put it. (no offense, Mr Chomsky and
others, but this is the tough reality for those trying to make sense of
it in the efforts of constructing intelligent, talking computers).
Furthermore, these categories change over time and within different
contexts with overlapping borders.
Changing language games
provide endless possibilities for creating new "language products", such
as e.g. psychodynamic psychology. I believe this is exactly what
Wittgenstein had in mind when he found Freud interesting as a player of
such games but with nothing to say about the scientific roots of the
mental phenomenon. Let's image Donald Duck and a picture of a stone.
Like many psychological terms, Donald Duck is very real in his
symbolized form but nonetheless without any direct connection to the
reality that he symbolizes. In this sense, even the word stone has no
connection to the reality for those who don't speak English. Words and
languages are shared experiences.
It is said that a crucial
feature of language is its ability to express past and future time. This
might be true but in no way makes language solely human. When bees
arrive to their hive they are able, in symbolic form, to express what
they have seen in the past so that other bees will "understand" what to
do in the future. Naming this an instinct just because bees have such an
uncomplicated brain does not justify a different classification to that
of the human thinking. If, as I proposed in Demand for Resources
(1992), we stop dividing our interactions with the surrounding world in
terms of observation and understanding (because there is no way of
separating them), we will find it easier to compare different human
societies. By categorization, language is an extension of
perception/experience patterns and discriminates us as human only in the
sense that we have different experiences. Words are just like
everything else that hits our receptors. There is no principle
difference in thinking through the use of words or through sounds,
smells (albeit not through thalamus), pictures or other "categories."
Ultimately, language is, like other types of communication with the
surrounding world, just a form of resistance against entropy.
To
define it more narrowly, language is also the room where psychoanalysis
is supposed to live and work. A stone does not belong to language, but
the word "stone" does. What is the difference? How does the word differ
from the symbolic expression of a "real" stone in front of you? Or if we
put it the other way round: What precisely makes it a stone? Nothing,
except for the symbolic value derived from the word "stone." The term
"observation" thus implicates an underlying "private language". When
Turing mixed up his collapsing bridges with math, he was corrected by
Wittgenstein, just as Freud was corrected when he tried to build
psychological courses of events on a basis of natural science.
Wittgenstein's "no" to Turing at the famous lecture at Cambridge hit
home the difference between games and reality.
Archetypes and
grammar as evolutionary tracks imprinted in our genes is a favorite
theme among certain scholars. But what about other skills? Can there
also be some hidden imprints that make driving or playing computer games
possible? And what about ice hockey, football, chess, talk shows, chats
and so on? The list can go on forever. Again, there is no
distinguishing border between evolutionary "imprints" and other
stimulus/response features in ordinary life.
"Primitive" vs. "Sophisticated" Thinking (copyright P. Klevius 1992-2004)
The
more synchronized (informed) something or someone is with its
surrounding reality, the less dynamics/interest this something or
someone invests in its relationship with that particular reality.
Interest causes investment and social entropy excludes investment
economy because economy is always at war against entropy. The key to
economical success is luck and thus includes lack of knowledge. No
matter how well a business idea is outlined and performed, the success
or lack of success is ultimately unforeseeable. In Demand for Resources
(1992) I discussed the possibility of some serious prejudice hidden in
Karl Poppers' "top achievement of civilization", namely the "World 3"
and his and Eccles' assumption of an increasing level of sophistication
from the primitive to the modern stage of development. It is of course
easy to be impressed by the sophistication of the artificial, technical
environment constructed by human, including language and literature,
etc. But there is nonetheless a striking lack of evidence in support of a
higher degree of complexity in the civilized human thinking than that
of e.g. Australian Aboriginals, say 25,000 years ago. Needless to say,
many hunting-gathering societies have been affluent in the way that they
have food, shelter and enough time to enrich World 3, but in reality
they have failed to do so.
Even on the level of physical
anthropology, human evolution gives no good, single answer to our
originality. What is "uniquely human" has rested on a "gap," which is
now closed, according to Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, among others.
This gap is presumably the same as the one between sensory input and
behavioral output mentioned above.From an anthropological point of view,
it can be said that a computer lacks genetic kinship, which, however,
is a rule without exception in the animate world, although we in the
West seem to have underestimated its real power.
Deconstructing the Mind (copyright P. Klevius 1992-2004)
A
deconstruction of our underlying concepts of the brain can easily end
up in serious troubles due to the problem with language manipulation.
Wittgenstein would probably have suggested us to leave it as it is. If
language is a way of manipulating a certain area - language - then the
confusion will become even greater if we try to manipulate the
manipulation! But why not try to find out how suitable "the inner
environment" is for deconstruction? After all, this environment
presupposes some kind of biology at least in the border line between the
outside and the inside world. Are not behavioral reactions as well as
intra-bodily causes, e g hormones etc. highly dependent on presumed
biological "starting points"? How does skin color or sex hormones affect
our thinking? Where do causes and reactions start and isn't even the
question a kind of explanation and understanding?
Determinists
usually do not recognize the point of free will although they admit the
possible existence of freedom. Why? Obviously this needs some
Wittgensteinian cleaning of language. Unfortunately I'm not prepared for
the task, so let's pick up only the best looking parts, i.e. that words
as freedom, will, mind, etc., are semantic inventions and that they
have no connections to anything else (i.e. matter) if not proved by
convincing and understandable evidence. Does this sound familiar and
maybe even boring? Here comes the gap again. Stimuli and response seen
purely as a reflex is not always correct, says G. H. von Wright, because
sometimes there may be a particular reason causing an action. According
to von Wright, an acoustic sensation, for example, is mental and
semantic and thus out of reach for the scientific understanding of the
body-mind interaction. Is this a view of a diplomatic gentleman eating
the cake and wanting to keep it too? To me, it is a deterministic
in-determinist's view.
G. H. von Wright concludes that what we
experience in our brain is the meaning of its behavioral effects. In
making such a conclusion that it is rather a question of two different
ways of narrowing one's view on living beings von Wright seems to narrow
himself to Spinoza's view. Is meaning meaningful or is it perhaps only
the interpreter's random projection of himself or herself? Is it, in
other words, based only on the existence of the word meaning?
Aristotle
divided the world primarily into matter and definable reality (psyche).
As many other Greek philosophers, Aristotle was an individualist and
would have fitted quite well in the Western discourse of today.
Berkeley, who was a full-blood determinist, however, recognized the
sameness in mind and matter and handed both over to "god". Consequently
Philonous' perceived sensations in the mind were not aligned with Hylas'
view of immediate perceptions. We thus end up with Berkeley as a
spiritual die-hard determinist challenging materialistic humanism.
Conclusion
In
conclusion one might propose a rethinking of the conventional hierarchy
of the brain. What we used to call "higher levels", perhaps because
they are more pronounced in humans, are in fact only huge "neural
mirrors" for the real genius, thalamus (and its capability of two-way
communication with extensions in the cerebellum, spine, nerve ends etc),
i.e. what has sometimes been interpreted as part of the "primitive"
system. In other words, one may propose a view describing the "gap"
between humans and animals as a quantitative difference in the
amount/power of cerebral "mirroring" and communication with thalamus,
rather than as a distinct qualitative feature. Nothing, except our
"emotions", seems to hinder us from making a "human machine". And
because these very "emotions" are lived experiences (there is, for
example, no way to scientifically establish what could be considered
"emotions" in a fetus) nothing, except the meaninglessness in the
project itself, could hinder us from allowing a machine to "live" a
"human life".
Peter Klevius psychosocial Freud timeline compiled on the web 2003-8
A recorded public time-line of Peter Klevius original research on
evolution, consciousness, existencecentrism, anthropology and sociology
1979-2012 - and some thoughts about self-citation
Read Peter Klevius in-depth research on The Psychosocial Freud Timeline.
Read Peter Klevius Origin of the Vikings from 2005 - now again available after Google deleted it 2014 and again in February 2024.
How US robs the world
In Atheist* Peter Klevius series notorious "Atheist" idiots** (or just deliberate scumbags) from the past still having their sexist shadow hanging over us.
Dear reader, while BBC is busy spreading fake info and islam propaganda* over ignorant license paying Brits, Klevius always guarantees real info. Judge for yourself - and complain about BBC's disgusting behavior and intellectual emptiness!
* Of course it had to be a muslim presenter who 8 a.m. in the morning welcomed the Brits on Christmas day with a long story about an other muslim, etc. etc. Followed up with endless programs about how the "Abrahamic religions" (essentially to boost islam - Christianity is already dead in UK and Jews are a tiny minority) are so much better than everything else.
Henri F. Ellenberger, Peter Klevius favorite source on psychoanalysis) has been praised (but 'criticized', according to stupid religiously biased Wikipedia) for modeling his picture of the origins of psychiatry in the Enlightenment clash with Demonology — in the triumph of illuminated reason over the blindness of faith. Perhaps 'blindness of faith' is an exageration when keeping in mind that religion has very profane objectives, e.g. sex segregation.
Perpetua (203 AD): 'I saw a ladder of tremendous height made of bronze, reaching all the way to the heavens, but it was so narrow that only one person could climb up at a time. To the sides of the ladder were attached all sorts of metal weapons: there were swords, spears, hooks, daggers, and spikes; so that if anyone tried to climb up carelessly or without paying attention, he would be mangled and his flesh would adhere to the weapons.' Perpetua realized she would have to do battle not merely with wild beasts, but with the Devil himself. Perpetua writes: They stripped me, and I became a man'.
Peter Klevius: They stripped Perpetua of her femininity and she became a human!
The whole LGBTQ+ carousel is completely insane when considering that the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) art. 2 gives everyone, no matter of sex, the right to live as they want without having to "change their sex". So the only reason for the madness is the stupidly stubborn cultural sex segregation which, like religious dictatorship, stipulates what behavior and appearance are "right" for a biological sex. And in the West, it is very much about licking islam, which refuses to conform to the basic (negative) rights in the UDHR, and instead created its own sharia declaration (CDHRI) in 1990 ("reformed" 2020 with blurring wording - but with the same basic Human Rights violating sharia issues still remaining). The UDHR allows women to voluntarily live according to sharia but sharia does not allow muslim women to live freely according to the UDHR. And culturally ending sex segregation does not mean that biological sex needs to be "changed." Learn more under 'Peter Klevius sex tutorials' which should be compulsory sex education for everyone - incl. people with ambiguous biological sex! The LGBTQ+ movement is a desperate effort to uphold outdated sex segregation. And while some old-fashioned trans people use it for this purpose, many youngsters (especially girls) follow it because they feel trapped in limiting sex segregation.
The reason Klevius is self-promoting is (except for no one else daring to do it, and to serve an audience starved on the "real thing") exactly the opposite to why most bloggers (and media) do it. Compare the promotion of ordinary, or even sub-standard products among high quality ones. A reader stumbling over a blog that looks out of the ordinary and says strange (but logical) things, may need some hard facts about the author, who himself is out of the ordinary (although he calls himself "the extremely normal" to emphasize his logic and internal harmony that should attract those who value it). Dear reader. Of some reason word and phrase statistics etc. clearly show you've a positive view on Klevius. However, how do we get more people reading and understanding Klevius? If you support Wikipedia you shouldn't be forgiven for not supporting Klevius and his defense for your Human Rights, right!
Peter Klevius: Relying on my scientific methodology I enter the field of subversion* through the Trojanian pores of diffuse discourse conceptualizations. My pockets are full of "alien" thoughts and well inside, when I am throwing them around, they might reveal internal inconsistencies in the very discourse I am visiting, not sharing. My employer? Negative human rights, of course!
*the potential subversion is already there waiting for revelation via the dynamics that is created by "alien" thoughts. But "alien thoughts" are no threat to a certain discourse if they don't use this particular method.
Charcot and his school considered the ability to be hypnotized as a clinical feature of hysteria. Here Charcot demonstrating hypnosis on a "hysterical" Salpêtrière patient, "Blanche" (Blanche Wittmann), who is supported by Dr. Joseph Babiński (rear). Blanche acted"hysteric" for to prove Charcot's senseless charlatanic fantasies true. It was here Sigmund Freud got his first kick into the unethical and unscientific swamp that he called "psychoanalysis" - an extension of exorcism, now clad in a new language spiced with medical latin words.
Wikipedia's weird description of this monster of charlatanism: Jean-Martin Charcot (/ʃɑːrˈkoʊ/; French: [ʃaʁko]; 29 November 1825 – 16 August 1893) was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology.[1] He is known as "the founder of modern neurology",[2] and his name has been associated with at least 15 medical eponyms, including Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease and Charcot disease (better known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, motor neurone disease, or Lou Gehrig disease).[1] Charcot has been referred to as "the father of French neurology and one of the world's pioneers of neurology".[3] His work greatly influenced the developing fields of neurology and psychology; modern psychiatry owes much to the work of Charcot and his direct followers.[4] He was the "foremost neurologist of late nineteenth-century France"[5] and has been called "the Napoléon of the neuroses".
Richard Webster on Charcot's student Sigmund Freud: If Freud’s early patients were, for the most part, not suffering from psychological disturbances at all, and if Freud’s therapeutic technique was founded on the medical errors of Charcot, it might well be asked how it was that he (and Breuer) succeeded in curing so many patients in the remarkable fashion attested to by the early case histories.
Peter Klevius psychosocial Freud timeline
The hysteric birth of psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud desperately tried to "scientifically" defend how he treated his wife in a world that already had begun abandoning most of sex segregation in practical life. In fact, what many psychoanalytic feminists now ascribe to the "patriarchy" is often a product of this prolonged "artificial" sex segregation and hence due to Freud's and their own separatist efforts.
Sex segregation is the reactionary "phallus" seen as the "hystericized site of displaced" sexes in a world entering the confusion of modernity.. Feminists & Islamists = guardians of the "feminine".
The lost ghost in the machine and the psychoanalytic chameleon Mr. Nobody
There has been an all time on-going development within biology, genetics, AI research and robot technology, which narrows our view on, not only the difference between animals and humans, but also the gap between what is considered living and dead matter. Not only free will, but also properties and representations/symbols are getting all the more complicated and vanishing as their subjective meaning seems less usable in a new emerging understanding of our invironmental positioning. Although the psychoanalytic movement seems ready to confirm/adapt to this development equally fast as Freud himself changed his ideas to fit into new scientific discoveries (it was a pity he didn't get a chance to hear about Francis Crick) psychoanalysis is forever locked out from this reality. PA is doomed to hang on the back of development just as feminism and middle-class politics, without any clue on the direction (neither on the individual nor the collective/cultural level).
Psychoanalysis has survived just because of its weakest (in fact, absent) link, namely the lack of a border between folk psychology and itself. The diagnosis for psychoanalysis would consequently be borderline.
Sigmund's dream of a biological psychoanalysis was his biggest mistake.
However, for women he suggested "a normal penis several times" to keep hysteria at bay.
This timeline (launched on the web in 2003) is copied from a yet unpublished book: Homo Filius Nullius - the Illegitimate Man by Peter Klevius. It consists of mostly Peter Klevius' own observations but includes other gathered material as well.
An interesting detail in the timeline below is Hollywood's early and strong engagement in psyhoanalysis. My working hypothesis is that it might have something to do with certain characteristics of Hollywood, which in a way, are precursors of Homo Filius Nullius and the social state he (and she - compare Finnish non-gender/sex 'hän') lives in. Attractive people were transported to this particular place where they met with other equally attractive but lonely people. As we all do know, apart from movies Hollywood’s favorite product for the media was divorce. It became cool to divorce because these attractive stars did it at an early time with quite some frequency But for many of these stars it might not have been that cool as it appeared and most likely the introduction of psychoanalytic thinking in Hollywood was an attempt to try to better resolve personal relations on these grounds. Here again we see the same pattern of modernity, sex-segregation and lose attachment treated with the disease itself!
1879-80 Translated one volume of Mill's collected works and didn't like Mill's idea about women's emancipation and equal rights. Actually this was the real starting point for Freud's fanatic and lifelong search/construction of a "scientific" defense for sex segregation (see What is sex segregation?) in an unprecedented time of female "gender" breakers..
1881 Sigmund Freud finally gets his delayed medical degree, and a poorly paid job.
1882 Suddenly left his job without getting a new one.
1883 Tried to convince his fiancee that Mill was a moron and that a woman (by nature) belonged to kitchen, nursing room and bed.to such an extent that it "...practically rule out any profession". However, the (deliberate?) development of psychoanalysis into a female profession (many of the female child psychoanalystst were childless including his own daughter Anna Freud), forced him to a pragmatic acceptance of professional (but sex segregated) women while reinforcing his sense that the distinction was still regarded as fundamental..
1884-5 Freud ruins his scientific reputation by presenting too hasty and erroneous conclusions about cocaine.
1885-86 Freud visits his mentor and idol Jean Charcot's lectures on "hysteria" in Paris.
1886 At the end of April, Freud, known as a “practising magnétiseur”, opens his private medical practice in an effort to economically survive after having been laughed down (because of the cocaine mess) by the Viennese scientific society.
1886-7 Turns to hypnotic suggestion based on the lectures of the pathetic Charcot in Paris.
1888 Freud begins treating Anna von Lieben, known in "Studies in Hysteria" as Caecilie M.
1889 In July, Freud begun using the cathartic method on Anna von Lieben, a wealthy morphine addict he treated twice a day for some three years.
1890-92 The “discovery” of electrical activity in the brain was debated in the Viennese ‘Centralblatt für Physiologie’. Freud and his Viennese colleagues did not know about the original discovery by the British R. Caton from 1875.
1891 Caton sends a letter to Centralblatt in which he describes his findings presented in Britain in 1875 and 1878.
(Peter Klevius is, until disproved, to be considered the first (2001) and only one (so far) to have acknowledged the crucial connection between Freud's emerging psychoanalysis and Caton's discovery). Few researcher even know abt the basic controversy (i.e. that Caton was some 17 years - sic - ahead of the Viennese scholars) underlying Klevius' theory. The implications of Klevius findings abt the Freud/Caton connection, are presented in "Pathological symbiosis", and are entirely described in yet unpublished Homo Filius Nullius.
1891 Freud’s ideas on neuronal transmission were altered because of Waldeyer’s hypothesis that the nervous impulse also had to be discontinuous.
1891 Death of Fleischl von Marxow (Freud’s friend who erroneously thought he was the first who had discovered electrical activity in the brain, and who became a cocaine addict because of Freud).
1891 On Aphasia 1891. London and New York, 1953. Indicates a psychosomatic connection between body and language.
1892 Freud moves (according to Macmillan) from the descriptive level of Charcot’s hysteria to the more sophisticated ideas of Janet (March 11).
1892 Dec. A preliminary report on hysteria. A preliminary report for the 1895 book Studies in Hysteria.
1892 First mentioning on tics.
1893 “…in mental functions something is to be distinguished, a quota of affect or a sum of excitation which possesses all the characteristics of a quantity (though we have no means of measuring it), which is capable of increase, diminution, displacement and discharge, and which is spread over the memory-traces of ideas somewhat as an electric charge is spread over the surface of a body. This hypothesis, which, incidentally already underlies our theory of ”abreaction” in our ”Preliminary Communication” (1893), can be applied in the same sense as physicists apply the hypothesis of a flow of electric fluid explaining a great variety of psychical states”.
1893 Freud, S, On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena. [with J. Breuer] SE 2, 3-17.
1894 - The first written appearance of the word "feminism" as we know it. Two completely different "feminisms" can be exemplified by "feminine" Hubertine Auclert and "non-feminine" Madeleine Pelletier. Also compare the notion of "false feminism" ascribed to competent women competing on male turf.
1894 Freud, S, The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence. SE 3, 43-61.
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1894 “… a complicated electrical apparatus” (in The Neuro Psychosis of Defence).
The obvious connection between Caton and Freud has to my knowledge not been pointed out before the presentation of this timeline (P. Klevius).
1894 Freud suffers from impotence. Fliess gives him cocaine to cure a sinus infection – Freud got addicted and begun his "self-analysis".
1894 December. Fliess visited Freud and examined Emma Eckstein.
1895 Women's football on the rise (e.g. Nettie Honeyball).
1895 In February Freud asked Fliess to cure Emma Eckstein’s “nasal reflex neurosis” (a hoax diagnose, see above) by unnecessarily removing the middle left concha of her nose. Emma was on the verge of bleeding to death from gauze that carelessly had been left within her nasal cavity. According to Freud Emma was not bleeding because of ruptured veins but because she had, unconsciously, fallen in love with him.
1895 First woman scales Matterhorn (Europe's highest mountain), gets big headlines and becomes notoious in Victoian circles. Did Freud think she actually climbed a penis, and did her (and other women's) strength contributed to the birth of psychoanalysis one year later?
1895 Fliess is peeping on his toddler son’s spontaneous penile erections while looking at his mother. This is then connected to Freud’s “memory” of his desire to copulate with his mother at the age of two.
1895 May. “a consuming passion for psychology” (a “tyrant” as Freud himself describes it in a letter to Fliess).
1895 The first Freudian psychotherapy appeared in 1895, in Freud’s contribution to his and Breuer’s Studies in Hysteria. Here Freud gives the concepts of ”resistance” and ”transference” their first definition.
1895 Freud, S, A Project for a Scientific Psychology. SE 1, 283-397.
1895 On July 25, 1895, the secret of the dream "revealed" itself to Freud.
1896 First coins the term "psychoanalysis”. Freud's father dies and Freud starts his self-analysis (according to some interpretations – but see 1894).
1896 Freud, S, The Aetiology of Hysteria.
1897 “I no longer believe in my neurotica” (seduction theory).
1897 University of Vienna for the first time permitted the enrolment of women.
1897 When Anna Freud was two or less Freud “discovered” infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex.
1898 Freud, S, Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses.
1898 R v Krafft-Ebing: Psychology of sexual life. Mentions "psychoanalysis" (Krafft-Ebing was positive to Freud because they both shared the view that "sexuality" was world-embracing, and hence "readable" in every aspect of life. He strongly supported Freud's application to his university).
1899 Freud, S, Screen Memories.
1900 S. F. The Interpretation of Dreams published. (written in 1898-1899).
1901 In the autumn of 1901, Freud was faced with a mind far superior than his own. Otto Weininger approached him with an outline for his thesis (not the final book version) Sex and Character. Of course Freud wasn't the man to take it so he rejected the young (21) genius in the most brute way and hence probably contributed to this sensitive youngster´s suicide. Although Weininger based his thoughts erranenously on a speculative male/female "sex-fluid" in every cell (he didn't know abt DNA and therefore couldn't properly asssess the power of heterosexual attraction), his importance as a genius is the internal logic in his construction - a logic that made Wittgenstein choose Otto, but not Sigmund, to his list of a few important thinkers that had impressed him. Also see Klevius analysis of mind and awareness!.
1904 S. F. published Psychopathology of Everyday Life; and ended relationship with Fliess (who accused Freud of plagiarism).
1905 S. F. published Three Essays on Sexuality and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.
1907 Freud and Jung meet in Vienna.
1908 First International Psychoanalytical Congress, Salzburg,
Vienna.
1909 S. F. forms International Psychoanalytical Society with Carl Jung as its first president. Comes to US to give a series of lectures at Clark Univ. (invited by G. Stanley Hall).
1911 Adler left Freud.
1914 Jung left Freud.
1914 S. F. "On Narcissism"-- the first mentioning of the ego ideal, which will become the superego.
1915 S. F. delivers introductory lectures at University of Vienna.
1917 S. F. publishes Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.
1918-22 S. F. analyzed his daughter Anna Freud and put more emphasis on a mother's role in a daughter's life versus the father's role as being the sole motivator for behavior.
1920 S. F. publishes Beyond the Pleasure Principle; introduces the death instinct.
1920 The first child psychoanalyst, Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, publishes “On the Technique of Child Analysis”.
1921 British FA bans women's football by the help of female physicians, who (as experts on the female body and mind) declare the game "unsuitable for women". Several of the doctors involved are now presented as feminists by feminist writers of today. And feminists should know who are feminists, shouldn't they (also see Heroic gender breaking women - and some tiny men)?
1921 S. F. publishes Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego; applies social context to psychoanalysis.
1921 Margaret Schönberger (Mahler, 24) had severe stomach pains and attacks that horrified her circle of friends. She was diagnosed with Heirshsprung disease, "a congenital disorder of the colon rectum which is unable to relax and permit the passage of stool. During the surgery severe adhesions were discovered and removed. After the procedure, the problem ended.
1922 Anna Freud became a member of the International Psychoanalytic Congress.
1922 Margaret Schönberger (Mahler) age 25, arrived to Vienna and was taken care of by the "expert on delinquency" August Aichhorn.
1923 A long series of operations on Freud’s jaw to remove cancer. Anna felt she had to stay with him because, not only had he been borrowing money from friends, but also he was now ill.
1923 S. F. Publishes The Ego and the Id; a final structural theory.
1923 Anna Freud, while taking care of the neighbors’ children: "I think sometimes that I want, not only to make them healthy, but also, at the same time, to have them, or at least have something of them, for myself”
1923 Sigmund Freud:"Our symbiosis with an American family, whose children my daughter is bringing up analytically with a firm hand, is growing continually stronger"
1923 Klein M. The development of a child. Int. J. Psychoanal., 4:419.
1923 Presented structural model of id, ego, & superego (at age 67).
1924 Hermine Hug-Hellmuth publishes “New Ways to the Understanding Youth”.
1924 On 9 September Hermine Hug-Hellmuth was found strangled (by the boy she had analysed) on her couch. 2.400.000 Kronen were stolen from her underwear. According to a brief entry by Siegfred Bernfeld in International Journal of Psychoanalysis Hermine expressed a desire in a will a few days before she was murdered that no account of her life and work should appear in psychoanalytic publications!
1924 S. F. allegedly turns down an offer of $100,000 by Samuel Goldwyn to cooperate in making movies of famous love stories.
1924 Klein M. The role of school in the libidinal development of the child. Int. J. Psychoanal., 5:312-331.
.
1925 Anna Freud began getting heavily involved with Child Psychoanalysis.
1926 Infant analysis., Int. J. Psychoanal., 7:31-63.
1926 Publishes Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety.
1926 Helene Deutsch began analyzing Margaret Schönberger (Mahler). After 14 months of cancellations she said Margaret was "unanalyzable".
1927 Symposium about the Freud/Klein controversy, arranged by Jones.
1927 August Aichhorn (who had a “personal relationship” with her) became Margaret Schönberger’s training analyst.
1927 Anna Freud, Eva Rosenfeld and Dorothy Burlingham organized a school for local children, later, Hampsted War Nursery research.
1927 Anna Freud’s first book entitled Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis. It was a collection of all her lectures, and a direct attack at Melanie Klein's theories.
1927 S. F. publishes The Future of an Illusion; debunks religion on rational, scientific grounds.
1933 Margaret Schönberger (Mahler) was finally accepted as an analyst.
1934-6 (?) Rolf (who strangled Hermine Hug Hellmuth 1924) was released and started chasing the psychoanalytic movement and especially Helene Deutch). Deutch’s husband hired two protectors and Rolf eventually disappeared).
1942 M. Mahler: Pseudoimbecility: a Magic Cap of Invisibility.
1944 M. Mahler: Tics and Impulsions in Children: A Study of Motility.
1947 "The Hampstead Clinic is sometimes spoken of as Anna Freud's extended family, and that is how it often felt, with all the ambivalence such a statement implies," one of her staff wrote
1949 Margaret Mahler gives the first hint of her coming theory about symbiosis in a footnote in ‘Clinical studies in benign and malignant cases of childhood psychosis – schizophrenia-like”, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, vol 19, s 297, fotnot.
1949 Therese Benedek published what was perhaps the first use of the concept of ‘symbiosis’ to characterize the early mother-infant unit.
1951 John Bowlby: Maternal Care and Mental Health," published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1952. ). It stimulated future studies of infant-mother bonding and the effects of early separation.
1955 Mahler and Gosliner presents an idea about human symbiosis and separation/individuation, that launches the research project “The natural history of symbiotic child psychosis” at Masters Children’s Center in New York.
1957 Bowlby's first formal statement of Attachment Theory, ‘The Nature of the Child's Tie to his Mother’was read to the British Psychoanalytic Society. The paper was controversial. Donald Winnicott: "It was certainly a difficult paper to appreciate without giving away everything that has been fought for by Freud". Anna Freud: "Dr Bowlby is too valuable a person to get lost to psychoanalysis".
.
1957 The revelation of the deeds of “the real Psycho”, Ed Gein. Although he suffered and was diagnosed with severe paranoid schizophrenia, the popular “psycho”-analytic “diagnosis” about a too close attachment with his mother is the one that still labels him. When Ed appeared in the psychoanalytic circles and popular culture (which are almost the same as has been noted above, i.e. that psychoanalysis far from being radical can thank its success precisely because it is reactionary) he fulfilled every possible expectation.
1950-64 When Leo Rangell arrived in Los Angeles in 1946, he felt that psychoanalysis seemed ideal. Psychoanalysis was then, according to Rangell, 'as golden as the Southern California sun'. The treatment of the war neuroses together with the arrival of the European analysts who had fled Hitler advanced psychoanalysis, attracting much professional and popular interest. While LAPSI had become almost paralyzed in the late 1940s, the period following the split became for some a 'golden age' for psychoanalysis'. Both societies expanded and graduates quickly developed full analytic practices. Mel Mandel who began training at LAPSI in 1952 recalled that the animosity between the societies 'was as thick as a heavy fog'. Still, within LAPSI the 1950s provided some 'periods of quiescence'.
By the early 1960s, the 'golden age' was over.
1957-61 In 1947, Ernst Simmel appointed Greenson as a training analyst. After the split Greenson became president of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society (1951-53) and Dean of Education (1957-61). He was Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA Medical School.
1959 Mahler et al’s follow up study with normal children and their mothers.
1959 Psycho, book by Robert Bloch (compared to the movie a more incestuous relationship between a 41 year old man and his mother).
1960 Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock (about a young man that killed his mother). Based on Robert Bloch’s novel but influenced by the screen player Joseph Stefano and the information he got from his psychoanalysts (compare the LAPSI controversy among US psychoanalysts at the time). The movie can be interpreted as a mix of Kleinian and Mahlerian thoughts on the mother/son-relationship. "He used to ask me about my analysis. Many of the things I supplied for Norman's background were not in the book because I was learning in analysis why boys killed their mothers. I would tell Hitch all these things. I told him I felt I could have killed my mother at a certain point in my life, and it was sort of a miracle that I hadn't done that. He thought all that was very interesting."
1963-65 A follow up study to the follow up study was granted and launched for M. Mahler et al. This study is presented in The psychological birth of the human infant (see below).
1968 Ralph (Romi) Greenson was closely connected to Anna Freud and her group in London. His Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis in Beverly Hills provided an important source of funds for Anna Freud's work in London as well as for Albert Solnit's New Haven group around the journal, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. The fund financed Anna Freud's purchase of Freud's London home and half of the Hampstead Clinic's 1968 budget shortfall of $60,000. The chief wealthy donor for this Foundation was one of Greenson's patients, Lita Annenberg Hazen.
Freudian chock waves also reached Sweden.
1970; nr 14 Socialstyrelsens Råd och anvisningar (Advises and Direktions from the Social Boyard) 1970 no 14 Åtgärder mot misshandel av barn (tar även upp psykiskt skadlig behandling). Measures against child abuse (including psychological abuse).
1972 Barnbyn Skå starts treating families in accordance with a psychoanalytic "understanding". A main focus is laid on parent’s “lack of understanding their children".
1973 Beyond the Best Interests of the Child, by Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud and Albert J. Solnit (financially contributed to Anna Freud’s Hampstead Clinic).
1975 The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant (M. Mahler et al).
1976 The UKÄ-report 1975:24 officially introduces psychoanalysis (psychotherapy and psycho-social work) in the state financed social work in Sweden.
1978 As a result of the official means now available because of the UKÄ report, a psychoanalytic research group, including Sven Hessle, is put together at Barnbyn SKÅ.
1979 Alice Miller: The Drama of the Gifted Child (see Alice Miller's genosuicide)
1979/80:1 Government Bill introduces LVU, the new child protection act. Main features include the suppression of the word “compulsory”, as well as the removal of the punishing aspect of measures directed towards children and youth.
1980 Alice Miller: Det självutplånande barnet in Swedish (Das Drama des begabten Kindes und die Suche nach dem wahren Selbst)
1980 The Shining (movie about domestic violence by the father).
1981 Alice Miller: Prisoners of Childhood.
1981 Socialstyrelsens Allmänna råd (General advices from The Social Board) 1981:2 LVU warns for “destructive bonds” between parent and children, and the necessity of compulsory care because of these ties.
1983 Alice Miller: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the Roots of Violence.
1984 The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant (M. Mahler et al) is published in Swedish.
1986 Sven Hessle introduces “symbiotic rejection ”, a concept he later (2001) seems to be less convinced about.
1987 BRIS (a society connected to Anna Freud) contributes to the preparatory works for a revision of LVU by stating that "symbiosis is the most fundamental of dangers facing a child and thus should be used as a criterion for separating children from their parents".
1989/90:28 Government Bill proposing the new revised LVU including “pathological symbiosis”.
1991-03-01 The revised LVU (SFS Act No: 1990:52) including “Pathological symbiosis” as a legal criterion to take the child into state "care".
For a detailed scientific analysis of the stealthy introduction of "pathological symbiosis" in the Swedish child protection act read Klevius thesis: "Pathological Symbiosis" in LVU
- Relevance, and Sex Segregated Emergence.
Peter Klevius comparison of early female child psychoanalysts (in Pathological Symbiosis, 2004:46).
3.3 Symbiosis in psychoanalytic epistemology
S. Freud never seems to have used the term “symbiosis” to refer to phenomenon associated with psychoanalytic concepts of development (T. M. Horner 1985) in the sense presented here. Sandor Ferenczi, who was the psychoanalytic thinker that, from M. Mahler’s teenage and on, together with A. Aichhorn was the most influential on her development, contributed to this topic already in 1913 by asserting omnipotence as embedded in an original undifferentiated state (ibid.). In the 1920’s Jean Piaget, who focused his research in developmental psychology and genetic epistemology on how knowledge grows, referred to the non-differentiation of self and others in the child’s developmental process (Piaget 1929). Freud’s follower, Otto Rank, used separation-individuation and symbiotic modes of functioning to deal with the “trauma of birth” part of his central thesis in Truth and Reality, published in 1929 (1968). In Escape from Freedom Erich Fromm[53] presents the idea of symbiosis connected to his social psychoanalysis (1941). His description of separation-individuation is, according to T. M. Horner, essentially the same as that later presented by M. Mahler. In 1949 M. Mahler gives the first hint of her evolving theory about symbiosis in a footnote in ‘Clinical studies in benign and malignant cases of childhood psychosis – schizophrenia-like’, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. Vol 19, p 297, footnotes. The same year, 1949, Therese Benedek published what was perhaps the first use of the concept of ‘symbiosis’ to characterize the early mother-infant unit (1949). This is one year after the “invention” of the “schizophrenogenic mother” (also in a footnote, see footnote 54 below). In 1975 M. Mahler et al published the main work The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant.
A precursor to the idea of symbiotic relationship between mother and child is clearly visible in A. Aichhorn’s method of creating dependency in children and youth (1936). Furthermore most of A. Freud and M. Mahler’s contributions to child psychoanalysis were presented during the period of sexual counter-revolution between the 1930’s and the 1960’s. According to L. Appignanesi & J. Forrester the mid-twentieth century was a special time of emphasis rather on a proper motherhood instead of a penis envy transformed to competition with males (1992:458).
3.4 The emergence of “pathological symbiosis”
3.4.1 Early child psychoanalysts
The history of child psychoanalysis begins with Sigmund Freud’s case[54] of the five-year-old “Little Hans”, published in 1909. However, treatment of delinquent children and youth by the means of psychoanalysis got a bad start for the first female child psychoanalyst, Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, who also was an important influential of Anna Freud. H. Hug-Hellmuth´s analysis/treatment of her first child client, ”Rolf”, seems to have miserably failed. The boy got a bad history of foster homes and boarding schools and eventually killed and robbed his analyst[55] the same year, 1924, when her ‘New Ways to the Understanding of Youth’ was published (L. Appignanesi & J. Forrester 1992:196-203). More than three decades later Margaret Mahler presents her view on how a too close, “symbiotic” attachment between parent and child causes pathology and delinquency.
3.4.2 “Black Devil” [56] mothering the “frail child”[57]
According to R. Webster, her father entrusted Anna Freud with the “frail child” of the psychoanalytic movement. She then guarded it with all the jealousy and all the fierceness of a mother protecting her own child (1995:402). “From the beginning Anna did not form a close bond with her mother” (J. Bumb 2002) and Freud’s analysis of his daughter was aimed to support her to develop the right “femininity” thus helping her getting married in an appropriate way (R. Webster 1995:409-418). S. Freud’s emphasise on the pre-Oedipal stages in 1918-1922 may be related to this. Anna stated, “I wanted beautiful clothing and a number of children but I considered myself to be too shabby and inconspicuous” (J. Bumb 2002). The family referred to her and her sister as the “beauty and the brains”. According to Anna she never wrote much on female issues within psychoanalysis because she felt that she identified with male case studies. She was then sent, together with her grandmother, to Sicily and other parts of Italy to improve her health[58] – probably depression and anorexia – (J. Bumb 2002) and to make her more “joyful” and “marriageable” (Webster 1995:407-409). “According to Freud’s own theories his analysis of his daughter was an attempt to resolve her problems with her sexuality. Psychoanalytic theory suggested that Anna had become fixated at an essentially infantile stage, and that she had simultaneously identified with the father who had supposedly been the object of her first sexual desires”[59] (ibid. 415).
A. Freud’s special mix of career and psychological motherhood begun in 1923 when she cared and analysed the children of Freud’s neighbours who lived in the same house. She vicariously tried to be a mother for them (from Young-Bruehl[60] 1994, in J. Bumb 2002). “…I have this dependency, this wanting to have something, even leaving my profession aside, in every nook and cranny of my life." According to S. Freud "our symbiosis with an American family, whose children my daughter is bringing up analytically with a firm hand, is growing continually stronger" (Dyer, 1983 in J. Bumb 2002). In Anna Freud: A Biography, E. Young-Bruehl states: “She remained a ‘vestal’ – to use the apt word Marie Bonaparte later chose to signal both Anna Freud’s virginity and her role as the chief keeper of her father’s person and his science, psychoanalysis.” ( in J. Bumb 2002).
In addition to a strong wish for motherhood, and a strategy to create dependent children in the analysis (compare A. Aichhorn above and below), knowing what is best for the child seems to have been the main characteristic of A. Freud’s child psychoanalytic approach, all of which is embedded in a rigidly sex-segregated discourse. Half a century since the first analysis of the Burlingham children A. Freud co-authored Beyond the Best Interest of the Child, mentioned above as the main source for the “children’s need” approach, which also became the view of the Swedish legislator. We are here warned for the “confusion” of “insufficient” sexual identities: “The sexual identities of the parents may be insufficiently resolved so as to create confusion in the child about his own sexual identity.” (A. Goldstein et al 1973:15).
Anna Freud showed a visceral antipathy against Melanie Klein, the foremost child psychoanalyst of the time. According to Alix Strachey, Anna hated M. Klein, the “ultra-sexual Semiramis waiting to be pounced on”, simply on personal grounds (L. Appignanesi & J. Forrester 1992:289) thus supporting a more personal view on the work of A. Freud and its motives as a whole. A. Freud’s influence in the field of child psychoanalysis grew rapidly and “the Hampstead Clinic is sometimes spoken of as Anna Freud's extended family, and that is how it often felt, with all the ambivalence such a statement implies,” one of her staff wrote (J. Bumb 2002).
According to Anna Freud drives play a major role in the psychological development of a child and a teenager (1994). The force of the sexual instinct can be regarded as the energy underlying sexual urges i.e. the “libidinal energy” of the child, meaning the energy of the child’s sexual activities. In the same manner “aggressive energy” underlies the aggressive urges of the child. The flow of this energy, says A. Freud, we have to try to observe in the child if we want to have any chance to guide and influence it (A. Freud 1992:69). She then outlines the child’s fight against its family ties:
On the line from Biological Unity with the Mother to the Adolescent Revolt[61] against parental influence, we expect the normal child to negotiate a large number of libidinal and aggressive substations such as: the symbiotic, autistic, separation-individuation phases (Mahler); the part-object (M. Klein), need-fulfilling, analytic relationship; the stage of object constancy; anal-sadistic ambivalence; the triangular phallic-oedipal relationship; the latency extension of ties to peers, teachers, the community, and impersonal ideals; pre- adolescent regressions; adolescent struggle against infantile ties and search for objects outside the family (1982:63).
Early stages of infantile sexuality, not the puberty, are crucial due to the normal or abnormal development of the child as well as for its capacity to love (A. Freud 1994:116-117). But reversed, this statement would imply that puberty, not early stages of infantile sexuality, should be the crucial, measurable variable, revealing deviance. Thus, instead of focusing on uncertain and quantitatively, immeasurable mystical[62], sexual traits from early childhood – deformed by the hypothetical repression/unconsciousness hypothesis – there may be alternative hypotheses better in accordance with measurable deviance. One can, for example, reverse the separation-individuation thesis of M. Mahler, hence narrowing an attachment approach. According to this, deviance and delinquency are negatively correlated to attachment between parent and child. But contrary to this, A. Freud expects the normal child to develop from the biological unity with the mother to a defense against parental influence. A. Freud’s own personal situation is reflected when she states that:
…parents’ feelings for their children arise from the depth of their inner lives and are based on procreation and pregnancy, on the emotional dependence of the child, and on the unquestioned proprietary rights of the parents. None of these feelings, however, have any significance for the professional. I cannot help seeing it as our task to arouse this type of interest (deeper dependency on their side, or deeper bonds from the side of the adult) in all the people who work with children. Not love, for which there is no real basis, but an insatiable curiosity to learn more about the problems of child development seems to me the appropriate bond which ties the professional workers to the child in their care, irrespective of the fact whether work is located in school, in the hospital, in a social agency, or in the child therapist’s office (1982:298-299).
Although Anna Freud emphasized a limited love approach she does not seem to have considered the balance between the subjective, human and the professional[63]. Moreover, an important, but perhaps also misleading, key to A. Freud’s understanding and interpretation of children lies in “the parent’s bedroom”:
I and my co-workers could demonstrate to them how often their playrooms became stages where sexual and aggressive scenes in the parental bedroom were acted out by the children, and that understanding of this nonverbal communication offered a key to the children’s confusions, distresses, anxieties, unruliness, and uncooperativeness, i.e., to behavior problems which remained inexplicable otherwise (1982:309-310).
Although Beyond the Best Interest of The Child served as an influential guide for those who argued for the removal of the child from their parents, she also strongly emphasized, according to L. Appignanesi & J. Forrester, a child’s need for “unbroken continuity of affectionate and stimulating relationships” (1992:304). In fact, her contribution seems to have rested in a worry about children in temporary foster placement. This aspect of A. Freud’s later thinking seems not to be reflected in the preparatory works of the revised LVU.
3.4.3 An un-analyzable, “sticky libido” “disturbed by motherhood”
Psychological symbiosis is a key concept intimately connected to M. Mahler’s work. Consider, says P. Stepansky, its widespread usage: “To the extent that when mental health workers and psychologically astute laymen characterize relationships of extreme dependency as ‘symbiotic relationships’, and speak of the chronic needs of such people for support and reassurance as ‘symbiotic needs’, they operate within a Mahlerian paradigm.” (P. Stepansky 1988:xvii). M. Mahler took her inspiration directly from Anna Freud, in theory as well as in observational techniques, which she extended to the use of film cameras. But who was M. Mahler?
Expectations on a girl’s development to a woman in a rigidly dichotomized gender world were extremely pronounced in A. Freud and M. Mahler’s upbringing. “Growing up for Margaret was not a happy time, she had a very low self-esteem and was jealous of the praises that Suzanne received from their mother.” (L. Woolf 2002). Margaret obviously did not fulfil the gender expectations of her time, and in an extension she seems to have internalised her childhood experiences in her evaluation of motherhood:
Margaret once overheard her mother say to Suzanne “I have brought you into this world, I suckle you, I love you, I adore you, I live only for you, you are my whole life.” Margaret’s heart being shattered, replied, “And I, I was born to my father.” Margaret later believed that the way her mother treated her was the reason she grew such an interest in paediatrics and psychoanalysis (L. Woolf 2002).
A. Freud and M. Mahler had similar relations to their fathers who supported a “tomboyish” profile while they were young and later on pushed them back into the “womanhood” and “femininity” of the 19th Century. The clash between out-dated femininity and modern intellectuality seems to have severely affected M. Mahler:
Margaret's father supported her and watched while Margaret excelled in Math and Science. Margaret felt she needed to make up where she was lacking, and gave up her feminine self-esteem for an intellectual self-esteem. Crying one day to her father because none of the boys noticed her he replied, “You don't need a man, you are man enough for yourself.” After realizing she would not be a successful sculptor, she decided to enrol in Medical school in January of 1917. Margaret’s father was so proud she was successful in gaining admission. Though he encouraged her to stay away from anything too masculine and to study ophthalmology, because it was “dainty” (L. Woolf).
Already in her teens M. Mahler developed a “deep adolescent friendship” with her high school classmate Alice Balint, another famous theorist of the mother-infant relationship. M. Mahler ended up as a paediatrician on a well-baby clinic in Vienna after having finished her medical and psychoanalytic training (M. J. Buhle 1998:246-248). Her early professional career became strongly influenced by sex segregation and a demand to fulfill her femininity, and especially her “motherhood”:
von Pirquet’s appreciation of my research skills did little to mitigate his absolute horror at the prospect of having any woman in a position of authority. Thus, when I later requested a promotion from ”apprentice” {Hilfärztin) to ”assistant” paediatrician, he replied, ”I will never have a woman as an assistant. You are very smart, and I like you very much, but if one is a woman, and especially if one looks like you, one should marry and have children.” The remark about the desirability of a woman who ”looked like me”, marrying instead of pursuing a profession, was repeated on more than one occasion. I recall, as well, von Pirquet’s comment the first day I donned glasses at the clinic. Inspecting me carefully, he remarked: “Do me a favour. Put those glasses in your pocket,” by which he conveyed the clear meaning that he couldn’t stand them on my face! This disparaging estimation notwithstanding, I idealized von Pirquet and regressed to the point of being well nigh ”in love” with him. (M. Mahler 1988:45).
August Aichhorn, M. Mahler’s tutor and most powerful influential on her “formative years”, was “a mysterious man who lived a strange and charmed life with close connections to the underworld[64] of Vienna” (M. Mahler 1988:51-54). He analyzed her when the therapy with Helene Deutsch miserably failed (see below). According to P. Stepansky, A. Aichhorn also had a “personal relationship” with M. Mahler who was in her early twenties back then. These topics were obviously still too difficult to face when M. Mahler, at the age of 87, was preparing her autobiography (1988:xxxiv). But regarding symbiosis A. Aichhorn’s concept “dependency relationship” was especially important for M. Mahler:
Aichhorn used dependency relationship to ”show” that the child had chosen his delinquent life-style on the basis of past frustrations, abuse, or misunderstandings, but that this life-style was not appropriate to current circumstances. “He was a master at drawing the unconscious motivation out of a child’s recital of circumstance and happenstance and then confronting the child with the underlying reason for his delinquency… These counselling strategies ushered in the second stage of treatment in which Aichhorn undertook to make the
child, in his own words, ”as neurotic as he can be made” in order to render him analysable (M. Mahler 1988:51-53).
According to S. Freud the essence of the analytic profession is feminine and the psychoanalyst “a woman in love” (L. Appignanesi & J. Forrester 1992:189). But psychoanalytically formalized sex and sex segregation also seem to have been troublesome components in the lives of female psychoanalysts struggling under a variety of assumed, but irreconcilable femininities and professional expectations. How sex segregation was experienced back then is perhaps best illustrated by Helene Deutsch in Psychology of Women: “She passively awaits fecundation: her life is fully active and rooted in reality only when she becomes a mother. …This speculation, which is based on my own experience, can perhaps be confirmed by a more objective observation: no human being has great a sense of reality as a mother.” According to H. Deutsch “the most miserable feminine type in existence” is a woman who is “disturbed by motherhood” and who “protects herself from the development of feminine qualities” (1944:140-142). H. Deutsch’s emphasise on motherhood has its modern child psychoanalytic counterpart in Daniel N. Stern’s[65] “motherhood constellation” (1995). This stays in sharp contrast with the striking lack of motherhood in pre-historic records (R. Tannahill 1992:36-37).
Because of the above it seems less surprising that M. Mahler’s career within the psychoanalytic movement was initiated by a painful clash with H. Deutsch, who, encouraged by Ferenczi, became her first training analyst. However, after 14 months of constant cancellations H. Deutsch insisted that M. Mahler was “un-analysable” (L. Woolf 2002). According to H. Deutsch, M. Mahler-Schoenberger[66] had a “sticky libido” (M. Mahler 1988:60). Although they apparently did not cope well with each other they also shared some similarities. H. Deutsch’s main “love affair” throughout her life was her father, whereas her mother’s role mainly seems to have been to watch guard Helene’s “femininity” thus causing an early rebellion (L. Appignanesi & J. Forrester 1992:307-328). But unlike M. Mahler and A. Freud, H. Deutsch seems to have emphasized the fulfilment of femininity through real motherhood.
The fact that M.Mahler’s major works are published after her menopause may be considered when evaluating the background of the concept of ”pathological symbiosis” and its connection to her interpretation of “motherhood” and “femininity”. “Margaret loved working with children’s clinical studies on childhood psychosis, it was her passion. She loved the way the children gave her all of their attention and enjoyed working with her as well” (L. Woolf 2002). Her own description is revealing:
Paediatrics, I should perhaps explain, represented a compromise of sorts: it would enable me to be what my father was, while simultaneously accommodating my desire perhaps my outstanding “feminine” trait to work with children. At the time, the desire to become a baby doctor, and thereupon to be a practicing physician like my father coexisted with the equity strong desire to become a psychoanalyst like Ferenczi, the warm father figure I had encountered in the Kovacs household (M. Mahler 1988:23-24).
Like most psychoanalysts, M. Mahler’s theoretical method relays on the use of “normal development” as a reference for the abnormal. In a fast changing world such an approach does not, neither however, necessarily takes enough into account an all time ongoing change in human behaviour nor does it allow for historical flexibility in human societies. Hence the “normal” may in fact rather be interpreted as traces of the past, and as such of limited value in assessing the development of contemporary children. On top of this comes the fact that the scientific basis for M. Mahler’s research seems weak. It is difficult to explain, say M. Mahler et al, how the self-object-representations of the symbiotic phase develop into a self-representation (1984:244). The results follow from a complicated process of conclusions based on rules that are not clearly established. This is especially true for psychoanalytic research (ibid. 272). An additional problem is hinted at when M. Mahler et al, “half-way through the examination”, decided not to include those children (25 percent) who did not fit into the categories created by the team (ibid. 282). A. Freud taught us, say M. Mahler et al, that children’s playing with their mothers from the age of seven months is not the result of altruistic behaviour[67]. We think the purpose is to discriminate the child’s view on its body from that of the object (M. Mahler et al 1984:245). Briefly, says M. Mahler, “one could summarize my hypothesis as follows: whereas in primary autism there is a de-animated frozen wall between the subject and the human object, in symbiotic psychosis, on the other hand, there is fusion, melting, and lack of differentiation between the self and the no self” (1979:5). This view constituted a considerable brake to traditional psychoanalysis and places the parent in the position of being potentially accused for treating the child in a deviant way. M. Mahler describes the theoretical introduction of the parent (mother) in the realm of the child’s “mental apparatus”:
The whole idea of the mother-infant dual unity, for example, originates in their (Ferenczi[68], Herman, Bak, Benedek) theoretical and clinical perspectives. This developmental viewpoint did not gain expression in the German or Viennese psychoanalytic literature of the time. It is not even found in the later work of Anna Freud. At her Hampstead Clinic, the mother-child pairing was surely recognized, but the child was evaluated separately. “Leave the mother in the waiting room; she is tired,” the Hampstead analysts would say. Anna Freud and her collaborators were concerned almost exclusively with the intra-psychic, which they believed to be the only proper domain of psychoanalysis. Indeed, the intra- psychic is the main thing, but as I have undertaken to show over a lifetime of research and writing, the intra-psychic only evolves out of the differentiation from the individually undifferentiated matrix of mother and child. At the Hampstead Clinic during the 1930’s and forties the clinic analysts had to take great pains to differentiate their position from that of both Melanie Klein and D. W. Winnicott. It was Winnicott it will be recalled, who claimed that there is no such thing as a baby without a mother (M. Mahler 1988:16).
M. Mahler’s method in practical use is described in a paper from 1977 concerning the assessment of narcissistic and borderline personalities in the boy Sy. Two main characteristics in the assessment are recognizable: 1) strong structural expectations and b) “biologism” (constitution) as an alternative explanation when negative expectations are not fulfilled. At first Sy is assembled into the theoretical framework:
Sy’s sub phase developmental history was characterized by prolongation up to his twentieth month of the nocturnal “child-lover-at-the-breast” symbiosis. This, without more than a nominal experiencing of the practicing and rapprochement sub phases of separation-individuation, was overlapped by and continued as a bizarrely frank oedipal relation with his mother and later with his father (M. Mahler1979:201).
In the next step, Sy’s mother is accused for causing borderline in her son:
From the time he weaned himself and walked, Sy was treated by the mother as her “man,” with reciprocal behaviour on his part. It is a demonstration in statu nascendi and step by step of what Kernberg (1967) describes as the genetic-dynamic analysis of the borderline personality’s oedipus complex. He says: “What is characteristic of the borderline personality organization… is a specific condensation between pregenital and genital conflicts, and a premature development of oedipal conflicts …” (p. 678 in M. Mahler1979:201-202).
However, because of “lack of space”, all the failures of Sy’s poor ego function cannot be elaborated. One example is given, though:
We could follow, in the second part of Sy’s third as well as in his fourth, fifth, and sixth years, the vicissitudes of the failure of the ego’s function of normal repression. There were many instances of this failure, but for lack of space we cannot elaborate on them. An example might suffice: Sy remembered minute details about the Centre, which the other children had completely repressed. These details were syncretically retained by his ego’s pathological memory function (SPI:11 in M. Mahler 1979:201-202).
There are no hints given, except of this fairly poor one, due to the disastrous powers assumed to reside in Sy. M. Mahler and her research team, however, are deeply concerned: “Sy’s intra-psychic conflicts can be only guessed at, of course, and we would like to get Sy into analysis, but both parents are opposed to it” (M. Mahler1979:201-202). Quite contrary to M. Mahler’s prediction it all seemed to get a happy end – except for the teachers’ un-explained irritation with the family:
Follow-up home and school interviews of Sy in his eleventh year described him as faring much better than we would have predicted. His academic achievement in an honors class in a local public school is excellent and he is fairly popular with his classmates. The teachers, however, could not suppress their irritation with Sy and his family (M. Mahler1979:201-202)..
The explanation to this incomprehensible success M. Mahler finds in Sy’s biological constitution:
We believe that the positive qualities that saved Sy from psychosis were his excellent endowment, for example, the way in which he made up for his slow locomotor development by becoming extremely proficient in gymnastics (his favourite activity was acrobatics) (M. Mahler 1979:201-202).
A similar reference to biological factors, however, is completely absent in the case of “another girl” who, during the last couple of days before she arrived at the Centre, had been unable to pass her stool. According to M. Mahler et al, the 29-month-old girl’s behaviour was extraordinary because she liked to play with water in the children’s playroom, and the most plausible explanation to this was a “compulsion”. When she sat on the toilet the “observer” reported that she looked worried and asked not to let the mother in. The “observer” asked her to tell more about it[69]. Then, we are informed, through the “observer”, that the girl said: “Mother hurts me” (this happened during the most intense “the battered child”-debate). But when the pain increased the girl asked for her mother, who then read a book for her until she was released and happy. According to M. Mahler et al, the stool was passed when the girl saw a picture of a foul and shortly after she had pointed to a picture in the book saying: “Dad has a pig in his belly”. This has to be explained as the result of a poor mother relation. Later the girl did very well at school and her social development was good (1984:99-103). This case is of special interest because of its close resemblance with the private life of M. Mahler herself. As noted above, she suffered from a poor connection to her mother and in 1921 she had severe stomach pains and attacks that horrified her circle of friends. She was diagnosed with Heirshsprung’s disease, a congenital disorder that makes one unable to relax and permit the passage of stool. After medical treatment the problem ended. Considering the psychoanalytic interest in anal problems the connections above may not be surprising.
3.4.4 Main characteristics of pioneering child psychoanalysts
M. Mahler, who was childless[70], intellectually relied on S. Freud and his childless daughter Anna. She made her contributions to child psychoanalysis after her menopause and mainly in the especially sex-segregated period from the 1940´s to the 1960´s[71]. A comparison reveals that the similarities between A. Freud and M. Mahler stay in sharp contrast to the view represented by Melanie Klein, the mother of three and a female child psychoanalyst of the less sex-segregated 1920’s. M. Klein was considered a dissident in the psychoanalytic movement because of her early insertion of the Oedipus complex and her suggestion of a primary femininity phase for both sexes (L. Appignanesi & J. Forrester 1992:451-452). Having in mind that M. Mahler’s “pathological symbiosis” concerns mothers, and that “motherhood” is intimately connected to “femininity”, two opposite views on mother/child relations emerge. Whereas the Kleinian view emphasizes the child’s destructive and even violent tendencies towards the mother, the view of A. Freud/M. Mahler recognizes the mother as the main source of pathology.
M. Klein compared free associations with the play of a child and, like S. Freud himself, analysed her own children (Webster 1995:431-432). But in contrast to the view that small children have a weak and unformed superego, she considered the superego of a young child as monstrous, because of early – even before birth – persecutory experiences and fantasies. The superego, hence, should not be strengthened, as A. Freud advocated, but rather be modified to help its integration (L. Woolf 2002). Thus M. Klein’s mother appears to be a resource rather than a threat. Where M. Mahler is searching for a possible “parasitic parent”, M. Klein sees “good enough mothers”. Whereas M. Mahler emphasizes the victimization of the child who has not been properly released from the mother, M. Klein’s approach includes an inherent “badness” in the child in accordance with S. Freud’s own theories. In M. Mahler’s theory the idyllic Eden in the form of the mother/child-symbiosis has to be broken up for the survival of the child, whereas M. Klein’s children already from the beginning were basically paranoid. And whereas S. Freud introduced the super-ego at the age of five, M. Klein inserts it at the age of five month (M. Klein et al 1995:29-35). M. Klein, contrary to A. Freud and M. Mahler, remembered her childhood as mostly serene and happy. She was tremendously impressed and stimulated by her father's intellectual achievements and he was always ready to answer her many questions. M. Klein had a good relation to her mother. Opposite A. Freud and M. Mahler she did not cope well with S. Ferenczi[72] (H. Segal 2003).
In contrast to M. Klein, but in accordance with M. Mahler, A. Freud traces the threats against the child’s healthy development to its mother. The emerging picture is a sensitive, vulnerable being, incapable of adaptation to certain of its mother’s behaviour. Unexplained symptoms are interpreted as psychological:
So far as they (the earliest disorders) have no purely organic cause, they can be traced to interaction of inborn modes of functioning with the mother’s handling of these given potentialities, i.e., her more or less skilful or insensitive, well- or ill-timed response to the infants needs; or they can be traced to the infants high sensitivity to the mother’s emotional states, her anxieties, her moods, her predilections, and her avoidances. Un-pleasure or distress due to either cause can find discharge only in two manners: either through crying, or by way of physical pathways within the somatic areas mentioned above” (A. Freud 1982:19).
Apart from the fact that the above seems more like a simple and quite obvious qualitative evaluation of different methods of parenting wrapped into the mystique of something[73] “discharged through somatic pathways”, a comparison with the view of M. Klein is striking. M. Klein believed that in the play young children “ceaselessly imagined how they might fellate or castrate their fathers, defile or attack their mother’s breast, or imaging or recalling their parents copulating (R. Webster 1995:431-432). But according to A. Freud: “Where a mother, for whatever reason, is unable to give adequate comfort to her infant, this may have a lasting effect on this individual’s own capacity to cope with even normal amounts of un-pleasure, pain, and anxiety, i.e., on his frustration tolerance.” (1982:21). Furthermore, although kinship and other family ties may be the more important the older the child gets because of a widening and more complex life-sphere and a corresponding need of a closer and more sophisticated attachment A. Freud’s following statement reveals a quite limited picture of “the parental task” seemingly utterly devoid of thoughts on continuity, especially over generations:
With the blood tie wholly ignored at this age, he recognizes as his parents the adults who fulfil the parental task in the psychological sense, i.e., who serve his growth by day-to-day interchange of continuous care, affection, and stimulating involvement. As the law stands today children can be forced away from psychological parents, to whom they are deeply attached and under whose guardianship they prosper, and with continuity broken, be made to adapt to biological parents with whom no ties are in existence. It is alleged by some people that return to the biological family is truly in the “best interest” of the child, who thereby will be spared an identity crisis in adolescence. The truth is that in adolescence most children undergo what may be called a crisis of identity when they have the difficult task to grow beyond the parents of their childhood… (A. Freud 1982:302-305).
In conclusion the above reveals a pronounced hostility between childless female child psychoanalysts and female psychoanalyst who had children of their own (A. Freud vs. M. Klein and M. Mahler vs. H. Deutsch). Main characteristics of female child psychoanalysts, as reported above, dichotomised for and against the parent (mother):
From Peter Klevius comparison of early female child psychoanalysts (in Pathological Symbiosis, 2004:46).
Alice Miller´s psychoanalytic genosuicide
The secular trend against religion in its most primordial sense (religare = tie back, ancestor worship) is perhaps best exemplified through the writings of Alice Miller. Although the notion of "the child itself" seems philosophically unintelligible, it reveals the myths and inconsistencies of what is believed to be the modern individual. Alice Miller's inner desperate longing for parenthood lost in modernity.
Lack of deep (not superficial) and lasting attachment (family, kin and friendship ties) is, together with cultural/political segregation (sex, race, etnicity etc), the social cancer of today. In this respect A. Miller's family hatred/jealousy constitutes a weapon directed against the very core of human society, i.e. it's the most lethal and massive form of genosuicide and the basis for the new human being Homo Filius Nullius!
In psychoanalysis a person tells a story she did not know about and the psychoanalyst is a person who lets her be "such as she is right now" says Alice Miller (1980:74), one of the most ardent, psychoanalytic proponents for connecting personal difficulties at adult age, on parental deviance. "My patients", she continues, lack a "genuine emotional understanding" for the course of their own childhood, and they express "complete unsuspecting" for "the real needs of their own". Miller refers to the works of M. Mahler, D. Winnicott and H. Kohut (A. Miller 1980:12-13).
Little is available from general resources as to Alice Miller's personal circumstances and she is known for not revealing her private life. But she writes: "I was a stranger to everybody in my family. Today, I know for sure that I was unwanted, rejected from the conception on, never loved, emotionally completely neglected, and used for the needs of others. But above all I was lied to, I grew up with a perfect hypocrisy. My parents, both absolutely unconscious of their true feelings, pretended to love me very much, and I believed this (because I so much needed this illusion) for more than 40 years of my life until I started to suspect the truth hidden behind their pretensions, hidden probably to them too. Suspecting is not yet as much as knowing for sure but it was the start. It took me 20 years more to get rid of my denial because I was so alone with the knowledge of my body and my dreams, and a wall of denial surrounded me wherever I opened my mouth. Writing and painting were the only ways to continue with my search without being offended and "punished" for being the troublemaker"[1] (Miller 2001).
According to Alice Miller, "any person who abuses his children has himself been severely traumatized in his childhood in some form or another. This statement applies without exception since it is absolutely impossible for someone who has grown up in an environment of honesty, respect, and affection ever to feel driven to torment a weaker person in such a way as to inflict lifelong damage. He has learned very early on that it is right and proper to provide the small, helpless creature with protection and guidance; this knowledge, stored at that early age in his mind and body, will remain effective for the rest of his life" (A. Miller 1990:190).
Parenting seems an almost impossible task when looked upon through the writings of Alice Miller. Furthermore she does not serve us with more precise advices about the alternatives. Only generalized expressions, such as "seeing the child", are given. Instead Alice Miller asks herself if we ever are going to conceive the extent of the loneliness and abandonment that we have been exposed to as a child. The "very huge number" of people suffering from narcissistic disorders "very often" have had "discerning", "ambitious" and "supporting" parents. Often they have received praise for their talents and achievements. According to Miller, almost all of the individuals attending her for analysis have become dry already during their first year (sic). They tell her that their parents have been empathetic and they have no compassion for the child they were themselves (A. Miller 1980:12-13).
According to Miller there is an "original narcissistic need" in the child to be "as it is". "As it is" has to be understood as M. Mahler's[2] notion that the infant's inner sensations constitute the core of the self. These sensations "seem" to remain the point of crystallization on which the sense of identity is built (1980:14). But, says Miller, if the patient through the analysis, "consciously" has experienced? how he has been "manipulated" in his childhood by his parents and which "wishes for retribution" this has created in him, then he is going to be less manipulative himself (ibid).
This is, concludes Alice Miller, based on my own experiences (A. Miller 1980:103). She gives an example of how remaining "Oedipal pain" can be delegated to the child through parenting. One day she walked behind a young and "tall of stature" (sic) parental couple and their whining two-year-old son. Alice Miller, contrary to the parents, understood that the boy wanted an ice cream stick of his own instead of licking the tip of those of his parents. Why, asks Miller, did not the parents understand the boy and why did not they give half of their ice cream to him? It could only be explained if we look upon the parents as children who now have got a weaker individual on whom they can feel powerful (1980:63-65).
However, an alternative view, as out-lined above, could interpret this as "psychic energy" of Sigmund Freud, that talks through a disappointed adult in search for a suitable explanation that could help her clarify her own life.
But the final question remains: Why do so many assign Miller with such an important role and how do we get back on the old tracks again without fundamentalist degeneracy?
[1] Alice Miller was obviously not a child when she discovered the ?child? in herself. But the question is whether that child would have recognized itself? If not, unrecognizable parts would then belong entirely and only to the already grown up Alice Miller!
[2] In M. Mahler 1972:17.
by Peter Klevius 2003
Shortly after Alice Miller's death her son Martin Miller stated that he had been beaten by his authoritarian father during his childhood - in the presence of his mother. Miller first tried to defend herself by saying she intervened, but later admitted that she did not intervene.
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