Freud’s naive assertion: The impossibility of neurological correlate of Freudian psychological model

I remember when I was first expose to then fantasized by Freud conceptual model of human mind, the obsession is no less than jumping in love with someone. But as the passion recede I begin to see theoretical issues in his framework, what really repel me is his tendency to mechanization of human mind by suggest that maybe we should look for neurological correlate of Id, Ego and Superego. How on earth is he thinking?
For me, psychological world is an abstract representation of the biological functioning of brain in coordination with other organ. I admire his heroic effort to put the human body and biology back to where it suppose be, but psychology is different from biology. They must be distinct disciple of empirical research
. As anyone could imagine: the operation of something must be somewhat different from the structure of something, granted the assumption that psychology is nothing but operation of brain. What Freud is studying is how the psychology in operation, it would difficult in logic to reverse engine what biological structure lies behind the operation of psychology. There are really many ways to abstracting the mind, Freudian framework is just one out of many. How on Earth must he think that is the only valid way(so the correspondence with neurological structure implies)?
What happen if we push this idea to its limit: Id, Ego and Superego are three functionally distinct neurological structures. That means there are some brain damages/disease/condition which would weaken one but not another; that would be an interesting observation if it corresponding to observation by medical doctors Since Id, Ego and Superego are built in process of socialization, it follows that socialization process would alter the structure and functioning of human brain; so do psychoanalysis. Beside, since our psychological process is almost a reflection of biological process of the brain, that would be really amazing that human civilization could advance as much as we seen today!
The core difference between me and Freud is: I see thinking/emotion more as a process that represent advance usage of neurological structure, which is why human could be seen as a step forward in evolution that layers of flexibility is what give human freedom its essence. In Freud’s mind, human is mechanical and deterministic, which is yet to be demonstrate.

Observation in pornography

Sex sells! Other than its stimulating nature, it is also because it is taboo in many cultures. Therefore according to Freudian Psychology, jokes are a way for the release of pent up psychic energy. Similarly, pornography sells not just because it is sex, it is also about cultural taboo. Therefore my observation is that while in conservative culture like Chinese, any amount of exposure of female body is already enough to prompt the mass to buy; while in non-conservative culture like America, it would require more perversion against cultural norm to elicit same strength of response as in Chinese culture. Because the cultural norm there is about equality of man and woman, therefore these pornography depict bondage, mistreatment, torture sells in the same way of pictures of naked woman sells in China.

Alternative Hypothesis for Repression Process

In Freudian Psychology, Repression is said to be actively maintain by Superego to prevent thoughts that is in violation of social norms and personal values from entering the conscious. Now that would require an omniscient Superego that monitor every thought in and out of the Conscious, and that consume enormous amount of energy from psyche to check every thought one have. For those creative people, their mind produce over a million thoughts a day, that would certainly put strain on the psychological activity.
I have an alternative hypothesis about what cause thoughts to be rejected from the Conscious: Due to the nature of thought-object themselves. It maybe part of nature of psyche that similar thoughts attract and different thoughts repel. So it is the nature of thought-ecosystem in individual mind which cause the unpleasant thought/emotion from departing the Conscious. Thus it is not necessary for this thought-ecosystem for knowing the context of each of the thoughts in order to filter the unwanted thought. For instance, since the psyche can't tolerate present of emotional energy that is too strong, then an automatic response is to expel that thought-emotion-object from the psyche. In a sense, it expel itself instead of semi-sentential awareness to examine individual thought and decide which thought stay in Conscious and which is not. Thus we no longer need the construct of Superego as an omniscient entity in the mind. With this hypothesis, we can reformulate all phenomenas termed by Freudian psychology.
What are your opinion on this alternative hypothesis on Process of Repression?

Complex and Complexity

By Complex, I refer to the complex that could be verified by experiment, of the type first suggested by Freud, then Carl Jung and others. This thought I just come up today: Complex is formed in relationship with event that elicit strong emotional reaction to the subject, could complex be formed by the nature of complexity of the emotional reactions, or the nature of the incident itself? What I mean by complexity is that when the complexity is below certain threshold, just like the inorganic structure which can’t sustain itself for long, and dissipate as a simple energy structure; while the complexity is above certain threshold, just like the organic structure which is built for self-sustainability, could maintain itself in the psyche much like life in the Physical world.
i.e. Complex is formed because of the nature of complexity of the emotional reactions, which we can apply the theory of complexity from Physics to Psychology.

Why we can't have ‘I think therefore I desire’?

Freudian Psychology could be summarize in one sentence, it is ‘I desire, therefore I think.’ Many see that as a one way street but not the converse. It is natural to some to see that desire/primitive motivation programmed by DNA is the basis of Human Psychology. Since we live in a world which gravity is pulling us downward, therefore every organism must grown from the base. Thus the hierarchy of Human Needs is starting from Biological needs to Psychological needs to Philosophical needs but not the opposite order. My thinking is: Why must it like that? Why can't it be otherwise? What made the opposite less likely than what we are currently thinking?
So if we think otherwise. Human is the unique animal with his/her Higher Needs more important than its lower Needs. Thus, the first thing s/he realize after his/her birth is his/her existence; therefore s/he has the greatest need to understand the nature of his/her existence, the inborn cognitive apparatus has forced s/he to make sense of it before anything else. As Eric Fromm asserts, every man need to reason out his/her existence otherwise s/he will go insane. Sanity is survival of what is essential as human, and the essence of human must before anything else. So, a man first figure out he is hungry therefore he need food, it is the hungry as a primitive drive in itself that direct his/her behavior. Therefore it lay open the possibility that inborn-damage of brain/mind could led to cases which a person is too dumb to understand the need of food and take effective solution to relieve his/her hungry, but nothing wrong with his/her sense of hungry. Believe it or not, psychological researches do document cases like that. Thus, the hypothesis of ‘I think therefore I desire’ does led itself some credentials.
How would such a framework of psychology be formed? We just need to reverse the Hierarchy of Human needs. As for the cases which this framework may not fit, I would like to advance a hypothesis that maybe for some human this perspective is best to understand their behavior, while for other the normal Hierarchy of Human needs is more applicable.

A new method for Psychoanalysis

The manifest of a complex in Psychoanalysis usually take the form of prolonged time for processing of a verbal stimulate. Then by digging into the web of association of that verb, the analyst would eventually uncover the repressed memory that is thought to be a root cause of current psychological problem. It seems to assume that the added emotional load onto a verb related to a repressed incident would necessarily increase the time of processing of that word. So ‘neutral’ word is assumed to process faster than emotionally loaded words.
However, by the theory of Psychoanalysis lied down by Freud, the nature of repression is just the word ‘repression’. Any emotionally unpleasant memory would attempt to hide certain verbal association in the mind, therefore it would slow down the processing of stimulate associated with this incident. Freud doesn’t seem to provide a method on how to overcome this repression(it appear that repression could overcome magically at some instance during the therapy). I would like to provide a method here to circumvent the unconscious block without directly attacking it.

My thought is following the direction given by this blog post. The idea behind it is although it can hide the association, but it can never hide the fact it has attempting to hide the association, otherwise it wouldn’t be termed repression at all. So by looking specially for those who take longest to process and elicit strongest unconscious bodily reaction like increase of pulse, sweating, dilution of pupil, subtle change of tone of voice, the therapist could target the specific verbal stimulate that seems to be lying at the heart of the matter. Now, that is not the end of the story, the therapy session need to uncover more of the nature of the block and the reason behind the block. How?

As the therapist now have the target stimulate, s/he can paired with other ‘neutral’ stimulate, and apply the similar methodology to detect the association that unconscious try to hide. For instance, if the focus verbal stimulate is ‘Shoe’, the s/he can pair it with ‘Man,Woman,Food,Drink,Doll….etc’. If then s/he notices that it take longest for the client to process the pair of ‘Shoe, Woman’, the therapy then can use that as the focus stimulate to look for other association that unconscious attempt to hide, and s/he can repeat the process until it has reached the limit of Short Term Memory(7 items). For instance, s/he arrived at something
like ‘Shoe, Woman, Closet, Masturbate, Guilty, Parent, Punishment’, then the therapist would made up different stories using these verbal stimulate, and notices the reaction of client to each of them. Therefore now the therapist has a much better pictures of the psychological operation of the client without the client fighting the complex alone. My concern is also, sometimes it maybe better for the therapist to understand the client better before digging into his/her past because the therapist could planned for what would happen when his/her client face different complexes.

無意識和潛意識之辨

無意識和潛意識,是我思想史最早的語義學和心理學問題,對我有特殊的意義。
我在當時看的不少心理學書,都是用無意識來代替潛意識,其實兩者同樣是代表弗洛伊德提 出的unconscious,即意識上不清楚、不知道的事,但我以為潛意識比中文心理學書常用的無意識較為合理。因為依我的慨念,無就是虛無,什麼都沒有 的意思,是不存在的東西,如此說來無意識的意思是不存在意識的狀態.如果意識不存在即人腦的活動終止,亦即是死。活生生的人,他/她的意識怎可能終止呢? 就算他/她是在作夢/不清醒的狀態,但是他/她依然可以察覺自己的存在,因此人不可能會有無意識,只可以說是進入了潛意識。潛意識是清醒意識之外的東西, 但是潛意識本身不是意識性質的否定:無意識,作為一個有機的整體的人的意識流本身一定是連貫的,正如生命是一個整體一樣。因此潛意識只可以說是包含在意識 以內,卻不一定被意識察覺的東西,它一定是和意識流連貫的。
為什麼中國人喜歡用無意識而不是潛意識呢?似乎是中國人的習體潛意識中,意識被割斷成兩個狀態,一個是清醒,一個是不清醒,清醒和不清醒的東西自然是截然 不同,所以潛意識不能算屬於意識的一部份。因為潛意識的性質和清醒意識相反,兩件相反的東西,怎可以同時兼容在同一個心靈空間內?因此,清醒意識是意識, 非清醒意識不是意識,是意識以外的空間,是神怪活動的世界,「子不語怪力亂神」,和常人生活的世界有所不同。
由此思路出發,可以看出心理分析學的一個潛在的邏緝問題,無意識是意識以外的東西,它之所以在意識以外,一來可能是被意識刻意驅逐,另外可能是它本身的性 質是不容於意識之內,但是意識作為有一個有連貫性及內在邏緝的整體,如何可以包容性質是不容於意識之外的東西而它自己又不分裂呢?例如在文字的認知過程, 由螢幕的一系列光暗到組成有規律有意義的字,有幾多是在我們意識範圍內呢?我的猜想是,可能當我們年紀還小的時侯,由於在神經心理學中的發展階段,是可以 清淅的感知整個由刺激到形成觀念再分析的過程,後來為了避免浪費神經系統的資源,又或者是受某進化規則的限制,這些「無聊、硝碎」事慢慢被移到意識以外, 最後變成不知不覺,即成了我們的潛意識。潛意識發展到這地步,到底還算不算是意識的一部份呢?如果純以覺知的意義去看,潛意識當然是意識不可或缺的一部 份,但是如果以意識一定是包含思想/理性抽象分析過程去看,潛意識只是提供資料給意識,是意識的起點,則到底潛意識應不應算是意識的一部份?