There were two great minds in this century. One such mind was that of Sigmund Freud
(1856-
1939). In the year 1923 he created a new view of the mind. That view encompassed the
idea
we have split personalities and that each one have their own realm, their own tastes,
their own
principles upon which they are guided. He called these different personalities the id,
ego, and
super ego. Each of them are alive and well inside each of our unconscious minds,
separate but
yet inside the mind inhabiting one equal plane. Then there was Nietzsche (1844-1900)
who
formulated his own theories about the sub-conscious. His ideas were based on the fact
that
inside each and every one of us is a raging battle going on. This battle involves the
two most
basic parts of society, the artistic Dionysian and the intelligent Apollonian. Sometimes
one being
becomes more dominant than the other or they both share the same plane. Even though
individually created, these theories could be intertwined, even used together. Thus it
is the
object of this paper to prove that the Freudian theory about the unconscious id, and ego
are
analogous to the idea on the Apollonian and Dionysian duality's presented by Nietzsche.
"The division of the psychical into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the
fundamental premise of psycho-analysis; and it alone makes it possible for
psycho-analysis to
understand the pathological processes in mental life..." (Freud, The Ego and the Id, 3).
To say it
another way, psycho-analysis cannot situate the essence of the psychial in consciousness,
but is
mandated to comply consciousness as a quality of the pyschial, which may be present
(Freud,
The Ego and the ID, 3). "...that what we call our ego behaves essentially passively in
life, and
that, as he expresses it, we are 'lived' by unknown and uncontrollable forces,"
(Groddeck,
quoted from Gay, 635). Many, if not all of us have had impressions of the same, even
though
they may not have overwhelmed us to the isolation of all others, and we need to feel no
hesitation in finding a place for Groddeck's discovery in the field of science. To take
it into
account by naming the entity which begins in the perception system. And then begins by
being
the 'ego,' and by following his [Groddeck's] system in identifying the other half of the
mind, into
which this extends itself and acts as if it were unconscious, namely the id. It could
then be said
that the id represents the primitive, unconscious basis of the psyche dominated by
primary urges.
The psyche of a newly-born child, for instance, is made up of primarily the id. But then
contact
with that child and the outside world modifies the id. This modification then creates
the next part
of the psyche, the ego, which begins to differentiate itself from the id and the rest of
the psyche
(Dilman, 163).
The ego should be seen primarily as Freud puts it is, "...first and foremost a bodily
ego; it
is not merely a surface entity, but is itself the projection of a surface," (Freud, The
Ego and the
Id, 20). An analogy that could help with this definition could be one that states the
following. If
we were to identify it with the, "cortical homunculus," (Freud, TEI, 20) of the
anatomists, "which
stands on its head in the cortex, sticks up its heels, faces backwards and, as we know,
has its
speech area on the left side," (Freud, TEI, 20). Ego, the Latin word for "I," is a
person's
conception of himself or herself. The term has taken on various shades of meaning in
psychology
and philosophy. In psychoanalysis, the ego is a set of personality functions for dealing
with
reality, which maintains a certain unity throughout an individual's life. Freud, with
whom the
concept is closely associated, redefined it several times. In 1923, Freud used the term
to refer to
the conscious, rational agency in his famous structural model of the mind; powered by
the
instinctual drives of the id, the ego imposed moral restraints derived from the superego.
After
Freud's death, several of his associates, including Anna Freud and Erik Erikson, extended
the
concept of ego to include such functions as memory, sensory abilities, and motor skills.
It could
also be said that there are other important functions to the ego. It is the reality
guide for one,
and conscious perceptions also belong to it. During the height of the phallic phase,
about ages
three to six, these libidinous drives focus on the parent of the opposite sex and lend an
erotic
cast to the relation between mother and son or between father and daughter, the
so-called
Oedipus complex. However, most societies strongly disapprove of these sexual interests
of
children. A taboo on incest rules universally. Parents, therefore, influence children to
push such
pleasurable sensations and thoughts out of their conscious minds into the unconscious by
a
process called repression. In this way the mind comes to consist of three parts: (1) an
executive
part, the ego, mostly conscious and comprising all the ordinary thoughts and functions
needed to
direct a person in his or her daily behavior; (2) the id, mostly unconscious and
containing all the
instincts and everything that was repressed into it; and (3) the superego, the conscious
that
harbors the values, ideals, and prohibitions that set the guidelines for the ego and that
punishes
through the imposition of guilt feelings. Strong boundaries between the three parts keep
the ego
fairly free from disturbing thoughts and wishes in the id, thereby guaranteeing efficient
functioning
and socially acceptable behavior. During sleep the boundaries weaken; disturbing wishes
may
slip into the ego from the id, and warnings may come over from the superego (Dilman,
170). It
could thus be seen that the id and the ego, are two separate identities upon which our
whole
psyche is dependent upon, one side is the pleasure side (id) and the other is the
reality-based
side (ego).
Then, however, Nietzsche came along and stated that he had his own theories on the
unconscious mind. In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872, Eng. trans, 1968),
Nietzsche
presented a theory of Greek drama and of the foundations of art that has had profound
effects
on both literary theory and philosophy. In this book he introduced his famous
distinction
between the Apollonian, or rational, element in human nature and the Dionysian, or
passionate,
element, as exemplified in the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus. When the two principles
are
blended, either in art or in life, humanity achieves a momentary harmony with the
Primordial
Mystery. This work, like his later ones, shows the strong influence of the German
philosopher
Arthur Schopenhauer, as well as Nietzsche's affinity for the music of his close friend
Richard
Wagner. What Nietzsche presented in this work was a pagan mythology for those who could
accept neither the traditional values of Christianity nor those of Social Darwinism
(Salter, 41-
42).
It can be visibly ascertained that by binary opposition, Nietzsche, as well as Freud,
can
thus now reveal to us our split personalities. "Much will have been gained for esthetics
once we
have succeeded in apprehending directly-rather than merely ascertaining- that art owes
its
continuous evolution to the Apollonian-Dionysiac duality," proposes Nietzsche, "even as
the
propagation of the species depends on the duality of the sexes, their constant conflicts
and
periodic acts of reconciliation," (AD in Jacobus, 550). It is by these two,
"art-sponsoring
deities," (AD, in Jacobus, 550), Apollo and his brethren Dionysos, the we come to grasp
the
idea of that splinter between the, "plastic Apollonian arts and the non-visual art of
music inspired
by Dionysos," (AD, in Jacobus, 550).
"The art impulse which has been described he [Nietzsche] designates as the Apollinic
impulse," (Salter, 40). We thus recall that Apollo is the god of dreams, "...and
according to
Lucretius the Gods first appeared to men in dreams," (Salter, 40-41). He [Nietzsche]
then
regarded the residing family of deities on Mount Olympus as a removed and exalted
conception
of the, "commanding, powerful, and splendid elements in Greek life," (Salter, 41). The
experience of the Dionysiac is compartiavly different from that of the Apollonian. The
[Dionysiac] experience is element for art. It is a subject that may be virtuously
treated, for, "out
of the Dionysiac festival grew that supreme form of Greek art, the tragic drama; this may
briefly
characterized as an Apollinic treatment of the Dionysiac experience- a marriage of the
two,"
(Salter 43). By creating the art-loving Dionysian, he [Nietzsche] has also created the
equal but
opposite Apollonian.
It would appear to be necessary to then understand Apollo in order to understand
Dionysos, and vice-versa. "At first the eye is struck by the marvelous shapes of the
Olympian
gods who stand upon its pediments, and whose exploits, in shining bas-relief, adorn its
friezes,"
(AD, in Jacobus, 557). The mere conclusion that he is one god amongst many should not
throw
us into a fit of misguided questions. But instead it should represent that the same
motive that
created Apollo created Olympus (AD, in Jacobus, 557). The Dionysian, the opposite of
the
Apollonian would then be considered his twin brother, cut from the same womb, but yet
different in personality and equally independent.
Nietzsche and Freud both had similar views on the subject of the unconscious.
Nietzsche's though were directed primarily to the arts and the Greek gods Apollo and
Dionysos
for whom his dichotomy of the personality were named. The Apollonian, "...music had
long
been familiar to the Greeks as an Apollonian art , as a regular beat like that of waves
lapping the
shore, a plastic rhythm expressly developed for the portrayal of Apollonian conditions,"
(AD, in
Jacobus, 556). That "plastic rhythm" described by Nietzsche is the cardinal groundwork
for the
theory of the Apollonian. Apollonian people are those who are totally based in the
scientific
world. They have no real imagination, no abstractness to their thinking. Whereas people
who
are wholly Dionysian are the opposite. These folk have no real basis in the real world.
They are
completely out of synch with reality because they think only in hypothetical thoughts.
Hence the
fact the most, if not all humans have a little of both in them. Most great scientists
for instance are
both Apollonian and Dionysian. They are mainly Apollinistic, due to the fact that they
are clearly
intelligent, which according to Nietzsche is the foundation for Apollonian thought, but
they are
also Dionysian. This can be said if you take Albert Einstein for an example. He is
probably one
of the most intelligent (and thus Apollonian) thinkers
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