| JollyRoger |
11-22-2010 04:52 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by strelnik
(Post 2590975)
Sounds like you have talked to Werner Erhard, of the 1960s and 70s lol.
Do the Wiki on him and est and the Forum.
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What a mess his life turned out to be, after telling everyone he had the secret to a happy life. Sued into penury by the IRS, smeared and vilified by his own children, who knows whatever happened to him. I remember back in the 70's his book was on every hippie's book shelf. I thought it was all a bunch of crap. Myself, I would describe myself as a an Adlerian, and also a bit of a Jung-ster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Adler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung
Jung had a direct role in laying the foundation for the current conventional "AA" style treatment for alcoholism:
Quote:
Spirituality as a cure for alcoholism
Jung recommended spirituality as a cure for alcoholism and he is considered to have had an indirect role in establishing Alcoholics Anonymous.[58] Jung once treated an American patient (Rowland Hazard III), suffering from chronic alcoholism. After working with the patient for some time and achieving no significant progress, Jung told the man that his alcoholic condition was near to hopeless, save only the possibility of a spiritual experience. Jung noted that occasionally such experiences had been known to reform alcoholics where all else had failed.
Rowland took Jung's advice seriously and set about seeking a personal spiritual experience. He returned home to the United States and joined a Christian evangelical Re-Armament movement known as the Oxford Group. He also told other alcoholics what Jung had told him about the importance of a spiritual experience. One of the alcoholics he brought into the Oxford Group was Ebby Thacher, a long-time friend and drinking buddy of Bill Wilson, later co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Thacher told Wilson about the Oxford Group, and through them Wilson became aware of Hazard's experience with Jung. The influence of Jung thus indirectly found its way into the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous, the original twelve-step program, and from there into the whole twelve-step recovery movement, although AA as a whole is not Jungian and Jung had no role in the formation of that approach or the twelve steps.
The above claims are documented in the letters of Jung and Bill W., excerpts of which can be found in Pass It On, published by Alcoholics Anonymous.[59] Although the detail of this story is disputed by some historians, Jung himself discussed an Oxford Group member, who may have been the same person, in talks given around 1940. The remarks were distributed privately in transcript form, from shorthand taken by an attender (Jung reportedly approved the transcript), and later recorded in Volume 18 of his Collected Works, The Symbolic Life ("For instance, when a member of the Oxford Group comes to me in order to get treatment, I say, 'You are in the Oxford Group; so long as you are there, you settle your affair with the Oxford Group. I can't do it better than Jesus.'" Jung goes on to state that he has seen similar cures among Roman Catholics.[60])
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Adler may have had the better diagnosis, that alcoholics and a variety of other social mal-adjustment diseases are all just one type of disorder he would call "an ego maniac with an inferiority complex:"
Quote:
Inferiority complex
Adlerian psychology assumes a central personality dynamic reflecting the growth and forward movement of life. It is a future-oriented striving toward an ideal goal of significance, mastery, success or completion. Children start their lives smaller, weaker, and less socially and intellectually competent than the adults around them. They have the desire to grow up, to become a capable adult, and as they gradually acquire skills and demonstrate their competence, they gain in confidence and self esteem. This natural striving for perfection may however be held back if their self-image is degraded by failures in physical, intellectual and social development or of they suffer from the criticisms of parents, teachers and peers.
If we are moving along, doing well, feeling competent, we can afford to think of others. If we are not, if life is getting the best of us, then our attentions become increasingly focussed on ourself; we may develop an inferiority complex: become shy and timid, insecure, indecisive, cowardly, submissive, compliant, and so on.
The inferiority complex is a form of neurosis and as such it may become all-consuming. A person with an inferiority complex tends to lack social interest; instead they are self-interested: focused on themselves and what they believe to be their deficiencies. They may compensate by working hard to improve in the skills at which they lack, or they may try to become competent at something else, but otherwise retaining their sense of inferiority. Since self esteem is based on competence, those who have not succeeded in recovering from this neurosis may find it hard to develop any self esteem at all and are left with the feeling that other people will always be better than they are.
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As a further compensation, we may also develop a superiority complex, which involves covering up our inferiority by pretending to be superior. If we feel small, one way to feel big is to make everyone else feel even smaller! Bullies, big-heads, and petty dictators everywhere are the prime example. More subtle examples are the people who are given to attention-getting dramatics, the ones who feel powerful when they commit crimes, and the ones who put others down for their gender, race, ethnic origins, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, weight, height, etc. Some resort to hiding their feelings of worthlessness in the delusions of power afforded by alcohol and drugs.
http://www.trans4mind.com/mind-development/adler.html
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