When you look at a person, you are looking at a hundred more dwelling inside him. That is my quirky attempt to encapsulate Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory in sixteen words.
This psychological Theory, the psychological theory, has become the most influential, not to mention controversial, theory for shrinks all over the world in the past century. Its validity alone could not have given it its prominence. Rather, it is its uniqueness and audacity that made it the chief theory in psychology, the one that all psychologists should first understand before any other mumbo-jumbos claiming to explain human behavior and mental processes.
Defy everything and be good at it and you will surely leave history emblazoned with your name. Freud, via his theory, did it in two ways. His unearthing of the unconscious is the first, and his conception of Libido Theory is the second. Buckle your seatbelts fellas for you’re off to a head-spinning ten-minute ride to the deepest recesses of your minds as mapped out by Freud. And I will be your guide.
The unconscious. Let me start by saying that this “thing” existed inside man since his creation,
and possibly even inside other beings that existed before him. Just like I always say in my lectures, it is comprised of the elements of our minds that we cannot access without the use of psychoanalytic techniques exercised by an expert psychologist. So what’s the big deal with being inaccessible? If it doesn’t hurt us, it could hibernate for all eternity, or it could even rot in there for all we care, right? Okay here’s the deal. The unconscious is a tumultuous aggregate of man’s most potent motives. What’s inside it steers every single act in his repertoire of behavior, from daily post-lunch-break chain-smoking to the creation the atom bomb.
As a student of Freudian concepts, it seems to me that this unconscious is the holy grail of psychology since it can potentially explain all of human behavior and mental processes. The problem—a really big one—is that it is inaccessible. Freud just gave mankind utter bad news, big time, by claiming that the causes of his acts and thinking are unknowable. In other words, we have always been (and will always be) slaves of a primitive dictator residing inside our minds, the existence of which is unknown to all who haven’t heard about psychoanalytic theory including all who lived before Freud. Get the picture?
All of a sudden man is facing a dead end, a stoic white wall where you are destined (doomed, is more like it) to be ignorant about your nature forever is written in sinister red paint. This leaves man dumbstruck and insecure. However, Freud left a little silver lining just enough to rouse the appetite for challenges in his successors. For instance he said that dreams and slips-of-the-tongue, referred to as Freudian slip in psychoanalytic jargon, can give us clues on what’s inside our unconscious. In addition, in the hands of a master psychoanalyst, some psychoanalytic techniques can potentially exhume cryptic notorious motives buried in the unconscious with all its cobwebs. Nevertheless, even with these means, the pilgrimage towards the valley of the unconscious remains as woebegone as finding a needle in a haystack.
Now that we know what’s the deal with the unconscious is, let me add a couple more vexed premises into our already vexed state of affairs. Most of what comprise the unconscious are socially unacceptable urges. This is the first premise. The two most powerful among these are aggression and sex. Put in another way, Freud is saying that we are predominantly aggressive and sexual beings. More precisely, he is saying that we are primarily sexual beings and secondarily aggressive ones. This is the second premise, which is crystallized in his Libido Theory. This theory asserts that sexual urge is the most important determinant of human behavior. Yes, you read it right. He is just full of surprises isn’t he?
By theorizing about what consists the unconscious, Freud enlightened us about our nature a little more. He made man less ignorant and insecure, by revealing its contents, but more malevolent and immoral nonetheless this time around. He solves one dilemma but purports another. Psychoanalysis is getting more deplorable by the moment huh? Or is it?
Is being a primarily sexual individual deplorable? Perhaps it is in the context of most societal norms. But from the perspective of the newly born infant, still in its pristine state and untainted by the laws of society, his sexual instinct is perfectly normal, devoid of malice, and healthy. The urge is as innocent as the urge to eat when hungry or the desire to drink when parched. It is essential for the propagation of the species. The moral dilemma on man’s sexual urge enters the fray only upon assimilation of societal code of ethics, like those learned from one’s religion for instance, into his personal belief system.
t is in this light that Freud wants us to view sex. It is through this naïve, objective and scientific lens that he intends us to regard Libido Theory. Taking a second look at the landscape, it appears it was society that incorporated malice into man’s concept of sex and sexuality. The immaculate newly born organism would be boggled with the thought that sex is taboo just as much as we would be perplexed at the thought that gobbling Macdo fries, especially when hungry, is obscene. Whenever we get uncomfortable with the ubiquitous sexual innuendos in Psychoanalytic Theory, perhaps it is us who are being malicious, not Freud and definitely not his object of study—man. Only when we learn to temporarily suspend our propensity for automatic value judgment (so automatic it’s almost like a knee-jerk reflex) on the concept of sex and sexuality when studying this brainchild-of-a-theory will we start to fathom and dig it. Only then will we discover its secrets.
The implications of the existence of the unconscious are double-edged. In a sense, it made us mere hypothesizers of our nature instead of vigorous discoverers and conquerors of it. Its discovery means that man’s nature can’t be completely discovered. Freud’s eureka made a sneaky ricochet and blew-up to become man’s ultimate hubris. On one side, it made us more evil and less good. Man became a sex-starved violent being.
Wait a minute. Perhaps it’s time for a little pause.
At this point it is wise to take a break at prying at the theory on the hot seat. Let us give our heads a good shake and look at it, this time around, with a different scope, in a different angle. I think the discovery of the unconscious and what’s inside it made man more special than ever before. Let me invoke another school of thought in psychology, the one that said the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Gestalt psychology is known for its contribution on the phenomenon of perception and configuration of experience. But personally speaking, it is its emphasis on gestalts, its gestaltism itself, that has unlimited implications. (By the way a gestalt is any organized whole that is greater than the sum of its parts). Man is a gestalt. Even with perfect analysis of all his components, he remains immune to absolute knowing and definition. At the same time, if there is an unconscious and if it is inaccessible 99.99% of the time, then analysis is not even possible since the most significant facets of man’s nature is uncharted territory. How can we analyze if we don’t even know what are the constituents of the whole to be analyzed?
Right. I’ll stop my technical bafflegab-streak and go straight to my crux. So why did I bring up gestaltism? By regarding man as a gestalt, we render him impervious to understanding and elusive to definition. And the discovery of the unconscious practically makes him inscrutable, unfathomable, and untouchable. He is now perched in a pedestal that is beyond the reach of reason. He is now shrouded by an esoteric and mystical nature knowable only to intelligence greater than ours. Putting it this way, man becomes special and not squalid, sublime and not malicious, venerable and not malevolent. Now that’s better, right guys? Let’s rightfully thank Freud who we almost crucified earlier, and Max Wertheimer, bedrock of gestalt psychology.
There is a cute ironic corollary presenting itself. Perhaps our intelligence is not competent enough to fathom our own nature. This is humbling and embarrassing at the same time. But what, again, is greater than our intelligence which it can’t conquer? It’s nothing else but us. We are too great to be understood by ourselves. Sounds weird, I know. But believe me, it’s a compliment.
The bangaw shades. Here‘s a fashion statement. Here’s a metaphor. Here’s a symbol of human nature. Here’s an embodiment of our psyche. Here’s a stroke of coolness.
Once fashionable way back when Lennon and company were on top of the world and Led Zeppelin was flaunting their musical wizardry all over the European airwaves while experimenting with Satanism, the bangaw shades has now made a bad-ass comeback. Resurrected by Jennifer Lopez and immortalized by Bono, it now finds itself back in mass-production, accessorizing millions of people, enhancing their aesthetic value. It is a symbol of humanity itself. Woaw!
We have to recognize its place in the order of meaning of things. Trying to be cool and cute aside, I think it bears profound significance. Culture is a hallmark of man. No other species has a highly evolved neocortex and a resultant sophisticated psyche, which subsumes consciousness and personality, that when they form society they create a highly dynamic culture. Besides religion, our sense of fashion and esthetics are two components of culture that separates us from all other species and exalts us into humanness. Fashion and esthetics are irrational but human, illogical but beautiful. Exactly like the bangaw shades.
Freud once said that civilization is a collective product of man’s sublimation—a maneuver of the mind that transforms socially unacceptable impulses into productive and socially esteemed behavior, just like painting nude is a sublimation of ones desire to have sex. Psychoanalysis proposes the idea that man’s behavior is the product of a complex cut-throat psychic process that eventually transforms taboo impulses into normative behavior. The resulting personality is a socially suitable one, a façade that covers and enhances the presentability—including the esthetics—of what is behind it. Exactly what the bangaw shades does to its wearer.
A facial ornament that conceals the window to the soul, the bangaw shades adds enigma to the persona. Instead of having direct view of the person’s naked eye, one deals with a face highlighted by smoked glass. It finishes the face. A face of a species made up of a concoction of primal urges, headstrong emotions and conceited rationality all wrapped in a range of behavior serving as a social façade. The bangaw shades finishes the person.
This article, I think, has lost track of its point. Haha. Pardon me for indulging in this freewheeling monologue without a compass and dragging you along with me. But my gut-feel tells me that even without finishing with a solid conclusion, we all grasped the unsaid inferences of this article. The number of possible inferences could be as many as the number of those who will read this.
This all started with a sight of a trinitian trotting her way down the campus “catwalk” in front of the CAS building. She was the quintessential beautiful trinitian. Oblivious of her surroundings, she made heads turn, including mine. And she was wearing the ubiquitous bangaw shades like a secret weapon for attracting attention. Then I thought about what would Freud think about that sight I just described.
I am not proposing a theory on why the society and/or the individual came up with the bangaw shades. I just wanted to flirt with the possible symbolisms it bears regarding humanity, primarily from the point of view psychology and psychoanalysis. That is such a Herculean role for just a little piece of plastic. What the heck, I’m fascinated by it.
With this essay serving as serendipitous primer for Psychoanalytic Theory, I hope I’ve justified my opening paragraph. Freud implied that there are many persons residing inside us. The bangaw shades makes everyone of them cool.
