Earlier this week – on May 6th – it was Sigmund Freud’s birthday. Happy 156th birthday, Siggie!
I think he raised some interesting questions, but I’m not a fan of the answers. There’s a world of difference between Freudian analysis and Time-Light, and here are just a few of the differences:
As with most every system, the Freudian school infers the existence of an autonomous, controlling self. The inference isn’t so much in his map of the psyche, but in the fact there is a person seeking to be well. There is a self, or ego, that is healthy, which is assailed by ‘unhealthy’ thoughts and images from the sub-conscious or unconscious. This autonomous, conscious self had previously been unable to face up to shameful or upsetting thoughts and so had buried them in a sub-conscious. Through psychoanalysis, the ego can be re-established, and can resume its dominant control.
According to Time-Light, this is a fiction. Indeed, the problem of most therapies is this assumption; if, instead, they could see that there is no central thinker, but instead a series of thoughts that – in their formation – create the thinker, problems become clearer and more manageable. Instead of a ‘bad’ person having ‘bad’ thoughts, there are thoughts that create a thinker who interprets them as bad.
Similarly, if there is no ‘Central Command’, there can’t be a sub-conscious either – because there is nobody deliberately suppressing unpalatable thoughts. And if nobody is suppressing the thoughts, they aren’t going anywhere!