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      HIGHER VALUES, for CHARACTER, for higher INFLUENCE, for higher WEALTH . . . . . . . . . .Ch. 1
Becoming the Best Person You Can Be

Chapter  1

             
MOVING UP:
Positive Psychology
Optimum Psycho - Social Lifeskills
by Darrell Franken, Ph.D.

Chapter Outline

Session 1-1    LOOKING AT OPTIMUM FUNCTIONING
     What psychology is about
     A look inside your heart – your psyche –   superego, ego, id
     A 2500 year look at what we believe we ought to do
     What’s the ego, heart, psyche, soul and conscience?
     (Focused on basics of ego, superego, id and psyche)

Session 1-2  PSYCHE: CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS
     Conscious: current awareness of emotions
     Unconscious: Reservoir of emotional memory
     Suppression and repression from conscious to unconscious
     Positive results from a positively filled unconscious
     (Focused on conscious and unconscious processes)

Session 1-3  LIBIDO: ENERGY FOR THE PSYCHE (soul)
     Cathexis: Psyche's connection with emotionally
          nourishing experiences and teaching
     Narcissism: Defense mechanism for self-preservation
          which can become excessive when allowed
          to expand for personal pleasure
     (Focused on Eric Berne and Positive Strokes)

Session 1-4   BENEFITS FROM A POSITIVE PSYCHE (soul)
     Positive behaviors and feelings for self-esteem
     Positive behaviors and feelings for violence reduction
     Positive behaviors and feelings for addiction prevention
     Positive behaviors and feelings for suicide prevention
     Positive behaviors and feelings for mental health
     Positive behaviors and feelings for physical health
     Positive behaviors and feelings for employment/success
     (Focused on violence reduction, suicide prevention)

Session 1-5   DIRECTIONS FOR DECISION MAKING
     How the psychic computer gets programmed
     Intra-psychic software programming guidelines
          Goals, passions, fulfillment, values, spirituality, identification, health,
          meaning, success, well-being,  
     (Focused on Soul/psyche nourishment, and will power)     



Going back to Plato, history and
science show that certain character
values and behaviors are important
to a person’s optimum functioning.

     This course is about the best known values, the most scientifically acceptable behaviors; the ones that generate the most positive benefits for a person. The purpose of the course is to enable the student to understand the optimum lifeskills that accompany people who want to live at their optimum potential. Ever since Plato (4thand 5th century BC) educators have wanted people to learn those values and behaviors that produce health, happiness, success and well-being. For the past 100 years psychology and the social sciences have been researching to determine which values and which behaviors are best. This book teaches the results of over 10 million published research projects since 1927. If you want to know how to win, this course will help. If you want to know which behaviors help you become the most successful, this course will help you. If you want to know how to stay healthier, this course will help teach you. This course offers guidance for fulfilling one’s ultimate dreams.
We teach that there are universally optimum
values. This is quite an upgrade to “values
clarification” taught in many textbooks.

“ Values clarification is the so-called value-free teaching that is employed to some extent in virtually all schools today though the term values clarification is unfamiliar to some teachers. The ideology dismisses the possibility of absolute moral truths and asserts instead that people are free to make their own rules, to personally fashion their own unique code of morality, to choose whatever behavior pleases them most at a given time with little, if any, consideration of the common good. – Values clarification destroys conscience.” Lisa Marie Contini

     You have entered upon an exciting venture. You will be introduced to nearly 50+ of the world’s most famous leaders in psychology and the larger field of the social sciences. These persons have improved the lives of millions of persons. They will become your heros. They will be your mentors. They will put the tools of health, happiness, success and well-being before you. What you do with what they offer is up to you. These researchers, writers and educators know what produces an inner sense of self-worth. They can take you from withdrawing behavior to assertiveness. They can reveal to you a composite set of skills that can take you from fear to self-confidence. Even if you don’t have any particular weakness in your personality, these mighty spokes persons for optimum living can show you how to improve your assets.
     In this course you will learn many of the skills that are taught by psychologists and counselors. You can have increased awareness of the values and skills which they teach persons for solving problems. This course turns the psychologists’ tools into preventive strategies. It’s all to make you a better citizen, a better functioning worker, and more enjoyable to be with. Enjoy the course.
     What do you look like inside your mind and your emotions? How do you make decisions? What forces work together to let you fall in love? When some persons get angry they clam up. When other persons get angry they shout and/or become physically violent. Can you trace the path of anger-to-explosion in your mental-emotional being? Can you think and behave so that you can prevent clamming up or exploding?
     Then there is the shy person. Research statistics indicate that most teen-agers are somewhat shy. Over half of adults are shy. Want to break that? You probably can’t break that by one, two or three sessions with a counselor, but you can put the wisdom of 50+ famous psychologists together, in a classroom, once a day for 4or 5 months. Then you can break out of shyness.
     This is a course in character education. It’s not religion. It’s a course that teaches persons the best values and skills. This course teaches people how to achieve like mathematics teachers teach how to solve math problems.
     This course teaches students how to live harmoniously like music teachers teach students how to play music harmoniously. It teaches optimum behaviors like a language teacher teaches optimum speaking. It teaches students the dynamics of analyzing personal problems, like the computer teacher teaches you  the dynamics of a computer. You’ll dissect your psyche, like you dissect a frog in the biology laboratory. We hope you’ll move up with this course.

Session 1-1  FUNCTIONS OF THE PSYCHE


THIS COURSE USES THIS DIAGRAM TO HELP A STUDENT HAVE A PICTURE OF WHERE THE PSYCHE FUNCTIONS WITHIN A PERSON.

Psychology is a study of the  psyche. The word “psyche” comes from the Greek word, which means  “soul” or essence of a person. Think of the psyche as the computer which runs your life. Your brain is connected to it. Your biological appetites are connected to it. Your emotional passions are connected to it. Your belief systems are connected to it. Your immune system is connected to it. Feelings are connected to it. Your conscience is connected to it. Your hereditary genetic structure plays a significant role. Environmental factors play a role. When you have a decision to make, all these forces or factors go into the the psyche, computer of your life. It’s a complex process.
     To simplify it, somewhat, we are going to use a model in which body, mind, spirit and psyche are integrated (Figure 1-2). A series of figures will be used to help you understand the interaction of the various systems at work in the decision making and behavior-creating process.
     Historically, people understood that most behavior came as a result of our mental processes. We are beginning to understand that our behaviors result from a far more complex set of interacting forces, working within the psyche. Over the years people saw much behavior coming out of hereditary factors. People also attributed much behavior to cultural pressures. Then for decades people believed that one’s past experiences, some good, some painful, heavily determined our behavior. All these factors are relevant to behavior. More recently people have come to understand that beliefs and values need to be added to the list of contributing factors.
     In Figure 1-2 you see the word “ body.” Most of understand how that our bodies can send a set of signals to start some behavior going.  In Figure 1-2 we see the word “mind.” We also know something about our minds sending signals to start some behavior. In Figure 1-2 you see the word “spirit.” This is not used here as a reference to religion. It is used here primarily to refer to a person’s values, and the degree of passion a person has for each of them.
     Every person is special. There are many optimum lifestyle factors. Some persons find the best lifestyle factors earlier than other. Other persons find lifestyle factors that are better for them than for another person. There needs to be a large number of optimum lifestyle factors so that there can be variety. No two persons are alike, nor do they want to be alike. Each person wants to be unique, and from a very early age a child is searching for the behaviors which will be the most advantageous to himself or herself.
     Psychology has not been very concerned about what kind of car you put into your lifestyle, nor what kind of clothes you should buy, nor how your house is built. Psychology is usually more concerned about a person's “psyche,” rather than how it is fed, clothed, housed, or where it goes on vacation. This text is concerned about how the psyche functions to make life worth living for you.

A 2500 year look at what we believe we ought to do





Sigmund  Freud (1856-1939), Austrian Physician, started most of our contemporary thinking about behavior. He was born in Moravia, Czechoslovakia. He moved to Leipzig when he was age 3. A year later he moved to Vienna, Austria where he remained most of his life. He entered the University of Vienna in 1873 and was awarded his M.D. degree in 1881. He began a private practice, but became a professor in 1902. He fled Vienna in 1938 after the Nazi book burnings, and went to London where he died in 1939. His concepts and their descriptions evolved over a number of years. He wrote “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920), “ The Ego and the Id” (1923), “New Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis” (1933), and “An Outline of Psychoanalysis” (Published in 1940). The core idea in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory is that many painfully traumatic experiences get bottled inside people. If those unhappy memories get bottled up too often, or they are major traumatic abuses, this negativity can lead to mental illnesses. And in counseling, when those once painful past experiences are brought out of a person’s unconscious system into consciousness, the person’s problematic symptoms go away. That idea has been strongly attacked over the past few decades. Newer theories of mental illness and therapy have upgraded that concept.
     Sigmund Freud’s earlier ideas about the structure and place of the psyche have remained fairly stable and accepted. Place your hand over your heart. That is somewhat the location (metaphorically speaking) of where the psyche is. Just think of someone asking you, “Who did that?”  To which you reply, with finger pointing at that center section of your body, “I did!”  The word “ ego” in Figure 1-3 is the Latin word for “I.”  So, what should “I” do? Do I do what I “want” to do, or do I do what I “ought” to do?  Freud attached the word “superego” to the content held in one’s psychic “ought” memory system. This “superego” system holds memories of the expectations and requirements planted there by parents, teachers, friends and the culture in general.  Now point to your stomach (gut).
You are pointing to your biological appetites as well as your psychological appetites. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Of course, your mental, emotional and psychological appetites are not all in your stomach. They are in the lower part of your psyche as you see in Figure 1-3. Few persons criticize Freud’s concepts of super, ego and id.




A look inside your heart – your psyche –   superego, ego, id  

The  superego is the voice of a person's conscience. In early infancy the superego is very weak and insignificant. As the child grows, his or her sense of “ought-ness” grows, unless the child reacts. The child introjects, takes in by himself or herself, the requests and demands of parents, teachers, friends and society. The superego becomes a judge over the self. In a home where there is more guilt-inducing criticisms, the child may become withdrawing, being told to do so because of many influences needed to train the superego. As the child matures the child may sense a culture that is less guilt-inducing from his or her home. That new information obtained by the superego portion of the mind can change a person. The child can become quite rebellious, and fight to return to a balance between the forces of the superego and the id.  While the superego is much like the conscience, it also functions as the ego ideal; something that motivates a person to live by a positive image. “Id” in Figure 1-4 is the Latin word for “that.” Your body needs food which is the energy to keep the body functioning.  If you fail to feed the body it will die. Secondly, your mind needs to be fed to make it grow. This is also true for the psyche. If you fail to feed or fail to use what you put into the mind, a certain amount of that input diminishes and gets lost.  Thirdly, people need to feed their value system with clearly recognized and firmly held  values for that system to become functional and remain functional. The   belief system must be fed or it will slowly deteriorate.
     A person’s id system is closely tied with the biological functions of the body. It is a strong source of energy for the psyche, besides the mind and the spirit. The id handles the instinctual needs for food, shelter, sex and aggression.  Here is how Sigmund Freud describes the id. “It contains everything that is inherited, that is present at birth, that is fixed in the constitution -- above all, therefore, the instincts which originate in the somatic organization and which find their first mental expression in the id in forms unknown to us” (Freud 1949).  “The id is “a chaos, a cauldron of seething excitement. . . it has no organization, no unified will, only an impulsion to obtain satisfaction for the instinctual needs in accordance with the pleasure-principle. Naturally the id knows no value, no good and evil, no morality.  The economics, or, if you prefer, the quantitative factor which is so closely bound up with the pleasure-principle dominates all its processes.  Instinctual cathexes seeking discharge, that in our view is all the id contains” (Freud 1933, p.103-105).  Id is predominant in a new-born child, but learns to accept  delay in gratification as the person grows and exercises self-discipline and self-control. While id operates without moral and ethical principles inside itself, the id is controllable by other parts of the system, such as the superego and the ego (Figure 1-4).
     The  ego is the central core of the psyche. The  ego is somewhat equivalent to a modern computer with two disk drives (Figure 1-5).  One of the disk drives receives input from the superego, and one of the disk drives receives input from id. The  computer interacts with each disk drive in the decision-making process. This analogy, while picturesque, and somewhat appropriate, has some defects.   People can program themselves. Computers can't.  The ego is the linking and integrating dynamism of Freud's system.

     Freud believed that the ego was basically weak and had to   “borrow its energy from the id” of which it is actually only “a better organized part” (Freud 1933, p.107). With research and more information we now acknowledge that  there are more sources of energy than those coming from the id. We generally accept that a person gets decision-making (ego making) power from strong cultural expectation, from personal ideas that one values, from painful pent-up emotional memories, from deep beliefs, from envisioned goals, from peer pressures, and passions as well as addictions.

    

Freud did recognize the semi-independence of the ego in its orientation to what really goes in around a person (Freud 1958, Vol. 18. p.23). In fact when a biological need for gratification is experienced, the id would want some satisfaction immediately. The ego, however, has other resources and can employ strengths to create self-discipline and delay in gratification. The  ego is an integrator. “In this way, goaded on by the id, hemmed in by the superego, and rebuffed by reality, the ego struggles to cope with the economic task of reducing the forces and influences which work in it and upon it to some kind of harmony” (Freud 1933, p. 109). The ego has access to the memory, and in that interval between the instinctual drive and its gratification the ego discovers and interprets the most advantageous way in which those drive excitations in the id can be reduced.  Since the ego is  oriented to reality it seeks to employ the  reality-principle advantageously to the ultimate benefit of the pleasure-seeking id” (Freud, 1933, p.106).
     Imagine being thirsty. You are in a gas station. Your biological system is calling for water. Your id sends a message to the ego. “I want water now.” You know that you can’t just grab a bottle of some liquid and drink it without paying for it. You pay for the gas. You think about “thirst.” Something inside you scans your coming moments. You are going home for dinner. You need to stop and buy some flowers. You only have 7 minutes to get home for dinner. The ego (psychic computer) processes all this. You want to be responsible about your partner’s birthday. You want to be home for dinner. Your children are waiting for you. All this is cultural and personal superego functioning. In the moment of truth, you decide against buying something for your thirst. You veto  instant gratification such commands from the id. Your ego processes listened to the beliefs, values and passions implanted in your mental processes. They were more dominant. So the thirst-impulse sent by the id system, to give you some pleasure, was squelched. You did the “right” thing which was the most “rational” thing, and the least self-indulgent thing. You obtained respect from your own psyche for doing that. You also built a better world for doing that.

Ageless concepts promoted by Plato

Plato  was a Greek teacher-philosopher. He lived centuries ago. His book, The Republic has been published more frequently than any other secular book that old. Plato’s ideas of  optimum lifeskills and optimum society have been extremely respected. His three highest virtues were justice, honesty and helping friends. These three elements come out of the human psyche-soul, which is driven most optimally by reason, appetite and passion.

“There is no difference between a just man and a just society. . . My friend, if we are to be justified in attributing these virtues [previously described as ‘justice’, ‘honesty’, ‘helping friends’ ] to the individual, we shall expect to find the individual soul [psyche] contains the same three elements and that they are affected in the same way as the corresponding types in society. . .  reason [mind]. . . appetite [body] . . . (and) . . . passion [spirit] . . .”

     The above quotation from Plato’s Republic supports the diagram in Figure 1-5. The words in brackets [ ] have been inserted to show a connection between Freud’s concepts and Plato’s concepts.  Plato described a person in terms of that person’s body, mind and spirit. The YMCA has used this same triad in their triangular symbol for the past century and half. But it is also interesting to see Plato basically substantiating some of the thinking of Sigmund Freud regarding the soul as something inside the body, mind and spirit. The psyche for Freud represents a unique set of three internal factors rather similar to what Plato described. Here is  Plato again.

“The soul [psyche] contains something which urges them to drink [id]] and something which holds them back [superego] . . . [but also] . . anger [spirited passion] is sometimes in conflict with appetite, as if they were two different principles. It is like a struggle between two factions, in which indignation takes the side of  reason. I believe you have never observed, in yourself or anyone else, indignation make common cause with appetite in behavior which reason decides to be wrong . . .  The soul (psyche) will contain . . . reason . . . appetite . . . a spirited element (‘a sense of honor’)” (Plato, The Republic, iv, 439).

     The psyche for Freud was quite similar to what Plato is describing. The psyche for Plato is an integrating force. One’s id is going after  pleasure. One’s superego, highly conditioned by truth, presents evidence against excessive  pleasure. For Freud the integrating mechanism was the ego. Plato was not able to offer an equivalent for Freud’s concept of the ego. However, Plato spent a lot of effort in describing the moral person as one who is just, truthful and caring.

No similar identifiable psyche in the animal world

Animals are different than people. Animals do not appear to have a psyche, a soul. Animals have instincts for food, shelter, procreation, training their offspring, fight, flight, etc. These instincts are programmed into their genetic structure. Animals can learn some wonderful traits. Certain animals appear able to be friendly, to be caring, to be helpful and provide great companionship. Animals appear to have little ability to deal with moral and ethical decisions. They don’t dream of fame or fortune. They don’t appear to manipulate pleasure and become addicted to food, sex, or exercise. They tend not to be altruistically given to share either food or territory. They don’t beat the drums for political and educational change. They are not people with all the factors that go into doing these things.
     The existence of the superego, the ego, and the id enables persons to have an existence which is social, and inter-relational, rather than predatory (animals eating other animals). The psyche enables people to be tender, loving and  self-sacrificing, a quality not really a part of the animal world. People can rise above their  bondages. It works with ego processes, but too many people do not see this potential. They remain in the bondage to the id, and its demand for instant gratification.  Id-dominated persons can become excessively indulgent in food, sex, and anything closest to the  pleasure principle, to which the person is heavily attached.  Such persons ignore the  ego and its  reality-orientation to  truth and its effect on  relationship. Such individuals can be violent, self-serving, law-breaking and staying dangerously close to the behaviors of our  primal ancestors. If a person lives by certain optimum lifestyle guidelines, the person must have some awareness of what they are. This text will describe certain more important concepts of the optimum lifestyles.

Reasons for the descriptions of Freud and Plato

Your best chance of becoming the person you want to be, is by maintaining a balance between all six factors described so far. They are; body, mind, spirit, superego, ego, id. Excesses and deficiencies in them are generally a problem. Too much attention to the appetites of the body present possible problems like weight, alcoholism, drug usage, etc. Too much listening to and living by the expectations of others in our superego contributes to certain difficulties, phobias, obsessions, dependencies, etc. Too much living by the passions of the spirit (see Plato above) can generate problematic radical thinking in one’ political, social, economic and religious belief systems. In other words one can eat too much (body), study to much (mind), be too passionate (spirit), do too much of what your superego (ought) says, or do to much of what your id (want) says. Your knowledge-filled  ego must be the dominant integrator for you to become the most mature and most rational being.

Session 1-2  PSYCHE: Conscious and Unconscious

When we are awake we are conscious of things happening in us and around us. When we are asleep we are not conscious of what is going on. During sleep we may still have some activity going on inside even while we are not conscious of it. This is true physically.  How about psychologically?  
     Within the psyche there is a somewhat parallel process, but there are some differences. You may recall that if someone insults you during the day, you might remember it from time to time, but the memory may go away. At first you might even have thought the abusive comments were funny. That occurs in the Pre-conscious stage (Figure 1-6).
     Now, try to think of someone insulting you every day about something. The hurt starts to enlarge. The insults become more humiliating. You fail to speak up. You don’t want to have this person insult you more. You withdraw. You may even try to avoid this person. But this person is in your social group. You don’t have many friends. You need the friendship of this group. You tolerate the insults because there is a trade off of acceptance. Now, days pass and your emotions hurt every night. You can’t sleep well. Your grades begin to slide down. You are basically very unhappy, but you don’t know what to do about the insults.

 Suppression and repression: conscious to unconscious

The unhappy feelings which were conscious during the day are now slipping into the unconscious compartment of your psyche.  At first a person may suppress some of those feelings. Suppression of negative feelings is generally done consciously. Without some relief, your unconscious system is becoming a dumping ground for your hurts and anger. Repression sets in over time. Repression is an unconscious activity. A person slips from suppression to repression without really planning to do so. Repression is the act of the psyche to deaden the pain of negative experiences. Repression is storage and covering up of negative feelings. They are stored in the unconscious. If severe enough and experienced long the contamination in your unconscious system can affect your eating habits, your sleep habits, your study habits, your health habits, your relationships and more. A negatively infiltrated unconscious system in a person can block a persons awareness of feelings and can prevent a person from being spontaneous.

It is a fundamental principle of the social sciences that unresolved and unforgiven negative input to the unconscious system of the psyche has great potential for generating personal discomforts. Of all the psychological descriptions and their underlying theories, Freud's theory of  conscious and  unconscious processes became fundamental for understanding neurotic (blaming, denying, rationalizing, etc) and psychotic illnesses (needing medication) from which people suffer. Notions of the “unconscious” had been set forth by Jacob Boehme (b.1575).  They are seen in Schopenhauer's (b. 1788) “unconscious will.” Edward Hartman (b. 1842) had pursued the understanding of the “unconscious.” Understanding the unconscious has been important for a long time.
     Almost all psychologists understand that the contents of the unconscious in the psyche can only be brought back to consciousness through counseling and psychotherapy. These treatment processes may include dream analysis, and a process of getting in touch with feelings. The therapeutic process helps the person become aware of day to day feelings and how they lead to the opening up of stored emotional pains.

Emotional functioning in the psyche

   “Emotions . . . (are) unique entities with built-in windows
across the mind- body barrier . . . (having) tappable power f
or the development of the individual, of society, and even for
the now self-conscious evolution of man.”     Manfred Clynes,  
Department of Psychology, University of Melbourne, Australia,  
Plenum Press, 1988, p.161

You are being introduced to the functions of the psyche. It will now be easier for you to understand that the psyche is heavily involved with emotions. One’s psyche is still the computer, the core of one’s being, that integrates many factors. Emotions  within the psyche need to be integrated too. Emotions have connections to the mind, the memory, the brain. Emotions have connections with biological drives and appetites. Emotions have connections with one’s values and one’s beliefs residing in that spiritual system seen in the Figures 1 through 5. Emotions can be painful as indicated, but emotions are also positive. Most of our goals in life are tied to bringing us positive emotional experiences, happy experiences, and result in personal well-being.

Positive results from a positively filled unconscious  

Let’s look at the psyche when it experiences positive input. Imagine yourself starting to date. The two of you are students in a high school band class. You see each other week after week. Suddenly, you eye each other in a different way. There is an attraction. Inside the psyche of each of you there is a new emotion. The emotion is positive. The emotion is beautiful. The emotion goes with you down the hall to the next class. The emotion and the memory goes home with you. The next day you go through the process again and again. Hey! Life is great!  Life is grand!  You feel like you have new energy! It’s like food for your psyche! Your grades get better.  You feel like dressing more neatly. Your self-esteem grows. Your outlook on the world is more positive. You even like your parents better!
     In this process you have gone through some of the same processes described earlier.  Even before you happened upon the look of attraction between you and that special person, your psyche was doing a lot of calculating for you. This was the pre-conscious stage. Partly your body’s biological development clock had alerted you to some new feelings. Your eyes and mind had been scanning for a while. Unwittingly, you were looking for the compatible size person, the compatible complexion, the compatible build, the compatible personality, the compatible whatever!
     Once the attraction took place, something happened in your psyche’s conscious system. And day by day you recalled that attraction. You did this consciously. Your psyche was open to accept this person into your conscious psyche (remember that psyche is the Greek word for soul). The two of you enjoyed this attraction. You interacted. You dated. You dreamed. You envisioned. You remembered. You placed all those wonderful memories in the depths of your unconscious. You stored them there. They are there forever.
     Then, unfortunately, you broke up. Your heaven turned into a hell. You were despondent. You felt that life was not worth living. You cried. You walked the streets. You fell asleep at night with memories. But you were sad, very sad. All those memories were like horror thoughts. You wanted to quit school. You wanted to run away. It was a terrible experience. Out of the depths of your conscious and unconscious psyche you may have cursed your fate. You might have even wished you were no longer living.


     Ten years later, you are married to a different person. You went through the romance as passionately and blissfully as with your first love. Yet, deep within the conscious, and even deeper, perhaps, in the unconscious, you never forgot. Your psyche holds these memories with some of the same passion and pathos as you had ten years before. If you see him/her the feeling is back in a flash. If you don’t see him/her in person, memories bring back all those glorious positive feelings out of the unconscious. The reservoirs of the conscious and unconscious processes of the psyche have power to influence a person for positive future development. That’s why we all need to find a hero or two.
Libido, the energy of the psyche  

What drives the psyche? Where does it get its energy? Is there something biological that empowers it? Is the mind the compelling influence in the psyche? Are spiritual values and beliefs providing the strongest forces within the psyche? Is the psyche king unto itself, generating its own energy and direction? Is the psyche given its pep, its kick, its influence by something we don’t yet know about ? Does the superego have sovereignty over psychological processes that deliver behavior? How strongly does the id influence the psyche, and where does the id gets its steam?
     Sigmund Freud, the pioneer who sparked psychology into a science, basically thought that the psyche’s power source was from the pleasure principle residing mostly in the id, the “I want...” part of the psyche. It is no secret that most of us are quite impassioned to find pleasure. The desire for pleasure drives people a lot. The idea of humans wanting pleasure is no great scientific idea. However, fitting pleasure into the psyche was quite a step for the development of psychology a century ago.
     The pleasure principle is quite basic to our biological systems.  Dopamine is a neurochemical that helps regulate mood and appetite. It is associated with pleasure. During our most pleasurable experiences a person has a higher level of dopamine. During very depressing experiences dopamine levels decline. This may account for persons heavily addicted to food. Eating is pleasurable and is considered to raise dopamine levels (Gene Jack-Wang, MD, Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY.).
     Pleasure drives us. Pleasure draws us. The human desire for pleasure costs money. To satisfy the need for pleasure some persons spend countless hours practicing humor to make others laugh. We are willing to pay for that. Pleasure comes from food, from alcohol, from skiing, from sports, from love, from seeing sunsets, celebrations, and thousands of such experiences. Pleasure often makes us say, AAHHhhaa! AAHHhhaa!  Or smaller, AAaa!  We feel it in the middle of our being. We feel it in that area known to us as our heart. Somewhere, in that core of our being, we are taking in energy for the psyche when we experience pleasure.

Nearly a century ago, Sigmund Freud described that AAHHhhaa! experience with a word that we hardly mention any more. He used the word  libido for that AAHHhhaa! feeling.  Lieb is the German word for “love,” and libido is the Latin word for sexual desire. This combination of meanings tells us that AAHHhhaa! is a very positive and nourishing force. It operates within the psyche. It drives the psyche. It empowers the psyche. Freud maintained that  libidinal energy was necessary for the ego to function, meaning that the ego needed positive experiences, especially fulfillment. Positive energy is generated with AAHHhhaa-type positive experiences. Understand this practically. Your body needs food which is the energy to keep the body functioning.  If you fail to feed the body it will die. Secondly, your mind needs to be fed to make it grow. This is also true for the psyche. If you fail to feed or fail to use what you put into the mind, a certain amount of that input diminishes and gets lost.  Thirdly, people need to feed their value system with clearly recognized and firmly held  values for that system to become functional and remain functional. The   belief system must be fed or it will slowly deteriorate (Figure 1-8).

Positiv e Strokes as psyche nourishment

To help us all understand what kind of  fuel that “libido” was or that “lieb-love” was,  Eric Berne, M.D. popularized the term “Positive Strokes,” with the writing of Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy (Grove, 1964). Claude Steiner, Ph.D. popularized the term “Warm Fuzzies” in a book entitled A Warm Fuzzy Tale (Jalmar Press, 1977). From that point forward in time the term libido was almost left behind. Psychologists currently use the terms   positive emotions,   positive feelings, or positive strokes when describing or researching the psyche.

Tanking up on real soul food

Feeding on soul food is not necessarily going to a southern restaurant. Soul food can be psyche food in this context. You and your best friend are vacationing on the Bahama Islands. You rented a car. You memorized the map and start out. The sky is blue. The water is blue-green with whitecaps. You are from Kansas. You don’t often see sights like this. AAHHhhaa!  Look at those beautiful sail boats. AAHHhhaa! That is some magnificent scenery. wwWOOWww! The road is so smooth. The air is so fresh. You stop at a Scenic View. You just sit for a while.  You touch hands. After a while you spot a beach area. The sand on the beach is warm and clean. You absorb the sun for a long time. The sun sinks lower in the sky. The kiss is lieb, libido and AAHHhhaa!  The orange glow is spectacular. It’s wwwWWWOOOWWWwww! That’s “Positive Strokes” in your  Psyche Account.

    “The distribution of libido, that is, the direction of the libidinal flow is constantly changing.  It may, for example be directed outward or inward (object-love); it may be arrested in its outward flow (fixation); or it may flow to levels representing earlier stages of development ( regression); it may become dammed up ( repression); or it may be deflected into more socially acceptable channels ( sublimation).” (Healy, 1931, p.6)

     There are thousands of ways that people get their “strokes,” their “Warm Fuzzies,” their love, or their libidinal nourishment for the ego. A good meal feeds the body and makes one sit back and say, “AAHHhhaa!”  Likewise, a good lecture or prized piece of information makes the mind go, “AAHHhhaa!” Thirdly, the belief-oriented person prizes a poetic expression of a noble value, which elicits an “AAHHhhaa!” Not surprising that the psyche, Freud's fourth dimension of personality, should also require a nourishing “AAHHhhaa!” from time to time to recharge its energy system. For Freud, the "AAHHhhaa!” experience was the motivating force that he called the  Pleasure Principle.

Defining how many Positive Strokes one saves


Now, stop. Think about your Psyche Account. What is the balance? Had enough Positive Strokes today? Or did you make someone upset (or fail at something) so that your Psyche Account is overdrawn?

Time for becoming accountable to yourself. What are you going to do to bring that negative balance back into the positive range?

Take time out and write yourself
a note about what you really
are determined to do.

Positive Strokes and Warm Fuzzies are compliments, success, thrills, a wink, a hug, anything that make one feel positive inside. Every day we get some Positive Strokes and Warm Fuzzies from what we do and how we relate to others. We deposit these.  We also receive negative experiences. They are called Negative Strokes  and  Cold Pricklys by persons who are familiar with  Transactional Analysis. Both are deposited. Like a bank account, the psyche tabulates them.  Suppose you received 3 compliments and 2 good grades in school. That would add up to 5 Positive Strokes that day. But also, suppose you received on bad grade in school and got scolded badly at home. That adds up to 2 Negative Strokes. So at the end of the day your Psyche Account has a balance  of 3 Positive Strokes. Pretty good if you can keep that going. Seven days later you have 21 Positive Strokes in your Psyche Account.
     Mental illness is more prevalent in persons who bottle hostile feelings too much and too long. They have a negative balances that are stored in the unconscious. This results from not knowing how to settle troubles, by not repaying things taken, by not apologizing for abuses, by not forgiving grudges and dozens more Cold Prickly experiences.
      A   positive stroke base (Clarke, 1978) was the sum total of all the sources from which a person would expect to get strokes. A stroke drain (Clarke, 1978) was any experience which tended to reduce the  stroke-bank account. The  stroke level was an indication of how much strength the emotions had in reserve. There were also stroke rules (Clarke, 1978). governing how to increase the supply and maintain a strong balance. Such rules covered giving, receiving, discounting, and believing in oneself to find them. Stroke theory is more of an illustrative model, rather like an allegory, where the picture generates the meaning.

Allen was a typical young man. He went to school and did his homework. He had friends. They talked together. They socialized on weekends. He was OK. He worked at a fast food restaurant from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM .  Another worker was more outspoken than Allen. He dominated most of the talk around fellow employees.. Allen could hold his own any other time. After work, though, Allen often went home feeling  upset. Allen’s Psyche Account was being drained. He thought of quitting. He could have. But instead, he took a bit of a risk. In psychology class he was shown some of the problem consequences of letting his Psyche Account get drained. So, one night after work, he simply mentioned to the dominating Negative Stroker that he was quite displeased at being so dominated during work hours. Allen was composed when he said it. He was prepared to quit the job if the Negative Stroker wouldn’t change. The next day Allen was quite surprised. Suddenly, he felt like he was being treated more like an equal.  His Psyche Account rebounded, and his self-esteem returned.

     Listen to your psyche, where your emotions spend a lot of time. Try to determine what your  Psyche Account level is.  When things are going well the account gets replenished. When things start going from bad to worse, the Psyche Account gets drained.
     Don’t try to deaden the feelings with drugs. Don’t try to get substitute Positive Strokes from massive indulgence of alcohol. Appetites for these are partly signals from the emotions when the level of psyche energy is getting low.  Call up a friend and go out to a movie. Settle a conflict by apologizing for your 50% or 60% of the conflict. Be a little more obedient to your parents, to others or to the law. You can’t afford to go on incurring deficit spending of your Psyche Account. This is extremely self-destructive.
     What clues does a person look for to know when there is a deficit in one’s own psyche? Hunger tells you that you need food. Right?  Sleepiness tells you to go to bed. Right? The clues for lack of psychological nourishment are sadness, feeling down, sluggish, poor memory, listlessness, lethargy, depression, explosiveness, bullying, moody, rebelliousness, defiance, etc. You might want to talk about this in class and see how long you can make the list.
     Challenge your mood! Don’t bathe in television dribble at times like this. Go on the attack. Go your local book store and/or library. Go to the self-help section. Borrow or buy and read. Go for the gusto of life. . . . in a book, then two books, then more, til you raise your Psyche Account to a very comfortable cushion level.

Session 1-3  PSYCHE: CATHEXIS AND NARCISSISM


Cathexis, how the ego is energized  

Almost every psychologist senses that a person has the ability to connect with things that bring in that AAHHhhaa! feeling, that positive psychological  nourishment for the psyche. Frequently, psychologists train persons to search-
and-find operations that bring in Warm Fuzzies to the psyche (soul). More precisely, some of the terminology is like this. The ego has the ability to form a  cathexis or connection (like a magnet to iron) with many sources of psyche-food supply. Do this. Lift your right arm up slightly. Now extend your right arm out about straight. Imagine yourself touching a smoothly shaped sculpture of polished aluminum. Your eyes feast on the beauty of this object and your psyche goes AAHHhhaa! Your touch brings back an AAHHhhaa! You verbalize a muffled wwWWOOWww! You just gassed up on positive emotional food for your psyche, or Positive Strokes. In this experience your psyche connected. Your psyche was drawn by the sculpture, and the sculpture was drawn by your psyche. That is cathexis. Cathexis is what happens when magnets cling together or cling iron.

     Your psyche has the ability to pull together what is in you and what is out there. Your psyche collects data from your mind and memory, from your values and spirited passions, from your past and your present, and your hoped-for future. Your psyche uses your whole “you” to connect with something outside you which will feed and energize you’re your entire being (Figure 1-9).
     People need to feed on high and noble values to get that nourishment for higher pursuits. They need to cathect with ideals, visions, heros, virtues and everything good, true and beautiful. With those kinds of cathexes people become winners.
Narcissism, from hurt and deprivation


You were asked to put out your arm and touch a beautiful piece of sculpture. That way you could begin to understand what cathexis of the psyche is about. Now extend your arm again. Open your hand. Think about trying to give someone a gift with that hand. Suddenly, the person you intend to receive this gift swats your hand. That swat on your hand now hurts. Instinctively, you withdraw your hand. That receiver shows signs of swatting your hand again, so you withdraw that hand further toward yourself.
     Using this picture in your mind, think of your psyche as having the ability to extend itself, like a hand. The psyche can reach out emotionally. The psyche is always on the lookout for cathecting with whatever will bring back Positive Strokes and Warm Fuzzies. Its part of the pleasure principle built into the psyche. When the psyche reaches out to connect with expected positive experiences, but instead, is hurt by negative experiences, it will withdraw. So the arm of the psyche is able to extend itself and withdraw itself.
     Remember the bank account idea described above. When the psyche ends up getting more negative connections than positive connections a person is moving toward withdrawal and self-centeredness. That is narcissism. Narcissism, in psychology, takes place when the libidinal needs go unmet, and “it is turned back upon the ego” (Freud, 1924, p. 422). Many problems and troubles result from excessive amounts of narcissism.
      Narcissism is a dysfunction of the ego, when more of it is turned back on the self than is connected with pleasurable things outside of the psyche.  


Narcissism is a word which comes from a Greek fable where a jilted lover was crying by a pool. He looked into the pool and saw a reflection which he thought was that of his lover. He leaned over to  embrace his lover, fell into the pool and drowned. Narcissism is the opposite of  altruism. When a person extends the psyche outward like an extended hand, that is altruism. Altruism is an act of kindness, charity and service. Some of what your are is benefitting someone else or something else. Narcissism is self-serving. Too much  narcissism is egotistical, offensive, and self-destructive.  The goal is to find a happy balance between the extremes of these two normally moderate behaviors. (Figure 1-10)
      If a person feels unloved, s/he will withdraw and that is also part of the picture of narcissism. Freud described the origin of narcissism, saying; “It is probable that this narcissism is the universal original condition, out of which object-love [love of things more than people] develops later without necessarily effecting a disappearance of the narcissism” (Freud, 1924, p.423). We are born with an instinct for self-preservation (slightly narcissistic) and narcissism will never totally disappear.

     The ego, the psychological core of a person who is deprived of a lot of Positive Strokes and  Warm Fuzzies (libidinal nourishment) still needs psychological nourishment. The psyche gets hungry. The psyche that is undernourished gets as grumpy as a person not eating solid food. A famished psyche is painful, depressing, anger-producing, just as you might find in a starving baby. Counselors nearly always find a connection between psyche deprivation  and rebellious behavior. There is a strong association between the  overdrawn account of a person’s psyche and deviance from society’s optimum values.  (Figure 1-11)






Moving up with altruism

There is a lesson for life in this. Keep the arm of your psyche flexible. Let it move out to cathect with as many vital, living, beautiful, positive and healthful relationships as possible. It will naturally move back into a more narcissistic position. That is human nature. The key is to have the wisdom you are gaining by reading this, and determination to think and act with more altruism than narcissism. Think about being generous. Believe in the truth that the more altruistic lifestyles result in larger health and happiness benefits.  
     The chart on the right (Franken, 1995) supports the fact that higher and higher levels of altruistically-motivated kindness contributes to an increasingly larger and larger amount of influence for a person. Look at the solid line in the graph. The left end of that bar is at the lowest level of altruism, meaning that persons with this small amount of altruism are much more narcissistic. The implication of this is that, if you want to MOVE UP, and gain a higher level of “influence” you need to be more “altruistic.” But remember that “kindness” is just one component of a lifestyle that helps to deliver this larger and larger amount of “influence.”

     You have a natural capacity to mature, develop and MOVE UP. This textbook is designed to help you put together the many pieces of the puzzle. MOVING UP is not an arrogant, narcissistic pursuit. It is a humble and dedicated commitment to enable you to be the best person you can be.

 Fixations on too few sources of strokes

People sometimes get fixated on one source of pleasure. They ignore their psyche’s need for pleasure from multiple sources. Instead of expanding the sources of AAHHhhaa! people let their field of potential happiness sources shrink. They will feel down, depressed, exhausted, despondent, neglected and unloved. Such persons are not bad people, just non-informed about need for refueling the psyche. Social interaction is an important fuel stop, at the right station, delivering the right octane, to keep one going. Violate that with an isolationist belief and behavior and a person simply sets himself or herself up for running out of psychic energy.
     It is highly advisable for a person to expand one’s awareness of the hundreds of experiences that are positive. These positive experiences empower us. They help bolster our self-esteem, and our self-confidence. Television makes it too easy for us to become dependent on viewing it as a limiting source of positive experiences.
     Some persons get fixated on an isolationist lifestyle. Becoming a Forest Ranger fits this person’s emotional and psychological makeup. Other occupations become welcome places for persons who have certain personality limitations. There is generally a place for almost everyone. People struggle to discover which lifestyle is best for them. For the most part, psychology recommends trying to eliminate the negatives and accentuate the positives, many of them.

Examining the sources of psychic nourishment

What are your sources of emotional nourishment? Do you have enough of them? Do you have a variety of experiences that bring in some psychological nourishment? Here is an opportunity for a person to evaluate one's own lifestyles, and make some personal judgements about whether one is tending toward shrinking resources or expanding resources of positive feelings.
     Match the following everyday experiences with what you believe and what you do.  How do you get your Positive Strokes, the psyche’s nourishment? Give yourself some points from 1 to 10 for each of them that applies to you.

I get Positive Strokes from food      _______
I get Positive Strokes from studying      _______
I get Positive Strokes from my part-time work      _______
I get Positive Strokes from listening to popular music      _______
I get Positive Strokes from some classical music      _______
I get Positive Strokes from reading a novel      _______
I get Positive Strokes from going to a movie      _______
I get Positive Strokes from going for a walk      _______
I get Positive Strokes from being self-disciplined      _______
I get Positive Strokes from racing my car      _______
     TOTAL _______________        


I get Negative Strokes from bullies      _______
I get Negative Strokes from going to school     _______
I get Negative Strokes because I don’t study     _______
I get Negative Strokes from insults      _______
I get Negative Strokes watching too much TV     _______
I get Negative Strokes from my brother/sister      _______
I get Negative Strokes from being teased       _______
I get Negative Strokes from not obeying my parents     _______
I get Negative Strokes when no one greets me with Hi!     _______
I get Negative Strokes when I feel put down      _______
     TOTAL _______________        


     Add up all the Positive Strokes.  Then add up all the Negative Strokes. Which do you get more of? This is not a scientific survey. It’s only illustrative. This small exercise should help reinforce some of the functions necessary to keep one’s emotions more positive. This exercise should also help an individual understand the benefits of maintaining an awareness for nourishing one’s whole being. There are hundreds of ways persons can nourish the psyche –  its SUPEREGO,  EGO and ID as well as BODY, MIND and SPIRIT.


Session 1-4  PSYCHE:  BENEFITS FROM POSITIVE FEELINGS

Positive behaviors and feelings for self-esteem

Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself. It is the last balance or the running deficit in your emotional bank account. Add up all your negative experiences and feelings. Then add up all your positive experiences and feelings. Subtract the negatives from the positives and you have some idea of whether or not your self-esteem is positive or negative.
     Those calculations will still not tell you how you measure up in relation to the highest self-esteem possible. Nor do they tell you how low you are in relation to the lowest levels possible. You may imagine that your positive is not positive enough as you may imagine someone else having a higher level than you have. That will probably make you feel less worthy. What is most significant is whether your personal level of self-esteem is positive. When it is positive it can grow. So you will want to focus on positive experiences. (In a later chapter certain models and skills will be taught to be of help.)

   “In some adolescents violence erupts not
from narcissistic rage but from strong wishes
for affectionate contact.”     Richard C. Marohn,      
Northwestern University Medical School,     
Hospital and Community Psychiatry, June, 1992

     Psychological abuse is high on the list of causes for low self-esteem.  Researchers at the University of Southern California used inventory-type questions with 277 college students. They determined that lower self-esteem is associated with; 1. psychological abuse, 2. physical abuse, 3. sexual abuse. That does not surprise most of us. What the researchers did not recognize was that much lowered self-esteem also comes from a  non-stroking environment. Parents are so heavily narcissistic they fail to give Positive Strokes. They fail to invent ways to produce Positive Strokes for their children. They are simply too pre-occupied to be “stroking” persons.
     Many people in the world simply fail to recognize the self-esteem benefits of Positive Stroking. Schools are beginning to recognize this and are trying to promote the idea of nurturing emotions among students.
     Building self-esteem involves the skills of acquisition of Positive Strokes. The formula for higher self-esteem involves increasing one’s knowledge. A high school education is designed to generate higher Positive Strokes and higher self-esteem. Reading and continuing education allows a person to converse with a wider number of people. It puts the person in that circle of people who are sometimes more highly respected. The formula for building self-esteem includes  cultural values  that have proven to be beneficial. These may be the virtues to which our community subscribes. These may be the character traits that you admire in someone else. The formula for self-esteem includes  life-enhancing beliefs that are in the classroom and in the worship centers of the community. The formula also includes learning stress management skills and coping skills. With these skills a person has greater ability to counteract those negative catastrophes which come upon us unexpectedly. –  One of the purposes of this course is to help the student build self-esteem.


Positive behaviors for violence reduction

Violence is generally an eruption of hostility from a lot of suppressed and repressed hurts and disappointments, which have not been resolved, forgiven or controlled by the superego. Even our common sense tells us that, but so do the researchers.  Bully behavior was studied in 1735 junior high students (Komiyama, 1986, Tokyo).  Komiyama found that 69% of the boys (66% of girls) who felt they were being bullied, were bullying others. These bullies  passed on what they perceived they were receiving. The research also showed that larger numbers of these bullies were experiencing negative feelings from "lack of affection,” "rejection,”  " disagreeable experiences at home,”  "desire for close friendships,” etc. The lack of positive feelings, especially in relationships, can stir up violent emotions as much as experiencing abuse.
     Non-violent persons tend to have a more positively charged psychic system. They have been taught how to resolve problems, rather than fight. They have been taught how to take personal responsibility for finishing what they started, which gives their psyche a positive charge. They have been taught how to be less pre-occupied with certain narcissistic (self-centered) demands. They radiate a sense of friendship. Positive experiences tend to satisfy the needs of the psyche. Happy experiences act like tranquilizers within the conscious, unconscious, superego, ego and id processes.

 Positive behaviors and feelings for addiction prevention

Addictions are:  foods, alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, sexual attraction, pornography, spending, nicotine, caffeine, dependency, and more. What are the factors which set one up for becoming addicted? There are a number of factors or variables which contribute to addiction.  (Figure 1-12)

       1. the pleasure principle
       2. need for stimulation
       3. need for pain relief
       4. social pressure
       5. genetic influences
       6. psychological needs for intimacy
       7. need for bolstering self-esteem
       8. socio-economic-status
       9. stress factors
     10. one's personal belief in high level of narcissism

     Addictive substances cooperate with the needs of the psyche to blur, or cloud, or mask, or substitute for,  the accumulating negativity within a person’s psyche. Becoming addicted is heavily determined by some experiences that have been producing a negative feeling state, not a positive feeling state. It is known that the use of an addictive substance increases during times of stress and depression (Marlatt, 1982). This suggests that a need for positive feelings is met by the use of an addictive substance.  Essentially, if one's sources of positive feelings are greater than the positive feelings one gets from his or her addictive substance, addiction will probably not take place. However, under stress or in crisis people quickly return to the addictive substance which gives them the positive feelings. The addictive substance - alcohol - drugs - food - attraction - sex - or other - becomes a short-cut way to find the Positive Strokes and Warm Fuzzies which others find in sports, education, hobbies, music, beliefs/values, pursuing goals, self-discipline, belief in delayed gratification, and thousands of other ways. Addicts allow themselves to become conditioned to demand and get immediate gratification.
THE LITTLE PROFESSOR LIVES INSIDE AND TAKES US TO OUR PLEASURE PRINCIPLE UNLESS INHIBITED BY SUPEREGO SYSTEMS WHICH TELL IT WHAT IT OUGHT NOT TO BE DOING.

     The power of an uninhibited pleasure-principle makes a person quite vulnerable to become obsessed with getting satisfaction for the emotional system from one particular source. Eric Berne, M.D., and Claude Steiner, Ph.D. have popularized the understanding of how we get libidinal nourishment by suggesting that there is  a Little Professor  inside our emotional system whose job it is to find almost anything that he can to make us happy (pleasure-principle). The Little Professor only uses the moral guidelines which are in the SUPEREGO, MIND, and SPIRIT (values, beliefs). S/He himself has no restrictions. S/He will scramble around and brings her/his boss, the ego, all kinds of interesting pleasures. (Figure 1-13)
     There are thousands of sources of this pleasurable libidinal nourishment, among them; food, sex, mind-altering substances, new cars, gambling, scenic trips, credit card spending sprees, and endless exciting feelings. Addiction to any one or several sources of pleasure is possible. The Little Professor is practical. S/He doesn't like to go hunting for too many new pleasures if her/his boss is satisfied with a powerfully familiar one like alcohol, drugs, sex, food or  other.

Positive thinking for suicide prevention

Positive feelings prevent suicide thoughts, but it is known that at some time in a person's life, everyone has felt that  "Life is not worth living.” At such times the idea of a self-determined form of death races across one's mind. If that has happened to you, you are not abnormal. Rejection by a girl friend or boy friend is horribly painful. Young people often want to die during this time of loss and grief.  Romance is the greatest source of Positive Strokes and Warm Fuzzies. It supplies so many positive feelings that a person feels psychologically wounded from a broken romance. Thousands of researchers have supported the model that people need positive emotional nourishment or their risk of mental illness increases. So, what does a person need to do to prevent suicide due to a broken romance? The loss needs to be filled. The loss needs to motivate a person to find other sources, not abandon life. Some great accomplishments have been motivated by loss.
     Suicide is seen partly as a result from many combinations of  stress factors.  Yet, suicidal ideas seem to occur more readily when there has been a chronic absence of emotional nourishment going back to one's childhood home. Joyce Stephens (1986) of the State University of New York examined the histories, diaries, letters, interviews with therapists, and gathered material from group therapy (all with permission), for 50 suicidal females (aged 10-63).  She found evidence that 64% of the 50 females described their  parents as non-nurturing, 32% as absent, 30% as abusive, 26% as mentally ill and 22% as alcoholic. That is more than a total of 100% which means that some suicidally-inclined persons experienced more than one source of these negative experiences. This appears to support the basic theory that the poorly nourished psyche seems to act more irrationally, and the well nourished psyche copes with stress better. What decisions can you now make to expand or strengthen your sources of emotional nourishment and prevent the possibility of future suicidal ideas?

Positive behaviors and feelings for mental health

A large number of published research projects are showing a connection between a positive emotional outlook and health. Other research has shown a connection between humor and the body’s level of epinephrine and dopamine. These two neuro-chemicals which are associated with higher levels of   immune-active chemicals within a person. Bunji-jumping, skiing, snorkeling and great music also enhance the level of immune-active biological substances. Other research has shown that meditation, prayer and relaxation exercises have the same effect. This will be taught in greater detail in a later chapter.
     This information is placed here, though not in detail, to substantiate the proposition that it is important to learn about expanding one’s base of psychic nourishment.

Positive behaviors and feelings for physical health


Research keeps expanding to identify those behaviors and lifestyles which are better for a person. Research tells us that positive feelings generate  endorphins, which are people's happiness and pain relief chemicals. We know that stress raises cortisol levels, which inhibit immune defenses. We now know that relaxation, guided imagery, laughter, and meditation lower cortisol levels so the immune system can function and produce health and healing.
     We are so heavily influenced to believe that germs, bacteria, and viruses cause illness, that it has been difficult for us to see how stress and  poor coping skills cause illness. Hans Selye, M.D. (1974) spent 35 years  stressing animals and seeing them become ill.  Holmes and Rahe (1967)  developed a stress test which showed that people who suffer from multiple stressors like loss of loved one, divorce, unemployment, etc., got sick quicker. Norman Cousins (1989) has pursued the question of how much the  mind has power over the healing process.  His 25 year pursuit of this understanding is now classic.  The research by Selye, Holmes, Rahe and Cousins stimulated thousands of other research projects and accumulated a respectable scientific base for believing that the pursuit of positive feelings is good for one's health and healing. It is once again appropriate to engage our reader's attention and involvement by asking, If positive feelings are so important to one’s health, why don’t people eagerly learn to produce more positive feelings? Why do people (you) keep getting angry, making others angry, and continue to produce negative feeling by a variety of put-downs, snide comments and/or silent suppression of negative feelings? The answer to this is that most people have never taken course, and studied this textbook.

Positive behaviors and feelings for employment/success

Dale Carnegie wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People. The seminars that are patterned after his material, help people succeed. In the seminars people give speeches and the audience uses plenty of praise and complimenting to reinforce every good feature. Positive feelings are generated as reinforcers. People become emotionally strengthened through this praise and compliment system. Again, we are not far from the basic psychoanalytic model which indicates that positive feelings have the power to nourish and build up people's emotional systems. Norman Vincent Peale wrote The Power of Positive Thinking. The book is filled with stories of famous and successful persons. His series of biographical accounts tells how people transcended life's difficulties by  positive thinking. Again, we are close to the fundamental core of happier human existence as described in the psychological model. If the inner emotions are filled with excessively negative feelings, a person will not function as well as when the general majority of feelings inside oneself are positive.
"You have to have a positive attitude," said Debbie Hunt, sales director for Rocky Mountain Instrument Co. in Longmont, Colo. Describing how the optical supply house achieves its goals, Hunt said, "A lot of times, people just need positive strokes."                  Robert C. Pini
     It is doubtful if one can achieve one's goals when the inner emotional system is more negative than positive. Robert Schuller advocates   Possibility Thinking. As this text is being written he has a weekly audience of several million people throughout the world. No one can do that with a heart full of negative emotions like, hate, cynicism, guilt, fear, anxiety and depression. It takes a lot of love, compassion, zeal, and faith. Success requires a fairly clean track record, complete honesty, and a strong moral character. Schuller generates positive feelings instead of negative feelings, and those positive feelings come back. They feed his emotions and recycle the system.  Now, how about you. How much negativity do you need to clean out to become successful? How many grudges do you need to give up and/or forgive, to become a success in your own eyes? Is your belief system organized around negative feelings, or around positive feelings? Do you need to do some replacing, some learning, some growing, some  self-talk to get yourself on the positive track?

Session 1-5   PSYCHE’S CHOICE OF NOURISHMENT


The psyche’s choices of nourishment

     You name it! If it is makes us feel good and gets us friends, the psyche at the core of our being, will probably go after it, if the MIND and the superego  of the psyche agree to it. If that behavior, idea or image tickles us inside with – AAHHhhaa! – wwWOWww! –   Positive Strokes – Warm Fuzzies – and love, the Little Professor inside us will cathect with it,  if the MIND and the superego  of the psyche agree to it. The psyche is heavily influenced by the Pleasure Principle, which is the same as saying, “I want to be happy.” Some degree of happiness is necessary for optimum health, according to researchers. Therefore a positively filled emotional system is better for a person than a negatively filled emotional system (psyche). But risk of major personal problems becomes higher when the psyche is misinformed or ignorant of the consequences of some choices..
     There are many opportunities to live at a higher levels of health, happiness, success and well-being. The illustration on the right enables us to see many of those choices. There are so many choices that a person may feel overwhelmed by them. The social sciences have been researching to show us that  we need to be informed about this. Research from the social sciences has supported the idea that there are lifeskills which are more beneficial to a person than some other lifeskills. It has taken the social sciences decades to make sure which skills are helpful. These researchers also offer you their insights. Like a music teacher coaching a student to sing on pitch, the social sciences are offering their advice as to how to live more advantageously.

    

Not everyone is trying to be a better singer, but most persons start out in life wanting to have all the benefits that optimum lifeskills will bring.
     Compare yourself with the illustration just referred to. Of the 10 circles in the illustration, give yourself a percent rating for each circle. If you think you are getting some positive experience at a 50-50 level (average) give yourself 5 points. If you believe you are getting more than average positive experience in this area of your life, give yourself a 6, or 7, or 9, or 10. If you believe you may be deficient in adding this source of positive experiences to your life, give yourself a 4, or a 3, or a 2, or a 1. Add up the scores of the 10 circles. Doing well? Not doing as well as you would like? Having done a little self-evaluation, it would not be surprising if you had higher scores in some and lower scores in others. That is what life is about. Everyone is a little different. Persons who evaluated themselves with scores that averaged below the 50-50 average level will very likely be doing better after this course.

Storing positive feelings against crisis times

Think of the psyche and it’s emotional nourishment as  “soul food” in the psychological sense. People generally have some food supplies on shelves, stored for an emergency. One can say that about “soul food” too. It is difficult to measure the amount that we store in our psyche or even in the conscious and unconscious systems of our being. Over the decades the social sciences have been quite active in discovering stored supplies of negative experiences and feelings. Mental illness has been associated with  excessive storing of personal hurts and disappointments. These experiences get tucked out of consciousness into the unconscious areas of the psyche. More recently the research of the social sciences has turned to discovering connections between positive experiences and higher-level immune responses. These stored experiences and their feelings are there for future crises and catastrophes. At these times the wounded or over-stressed emotional system needs a very positive supply to handle the stress.

Personal optimum choices include loving

There is one source of emotional or psychological nourishment that may become blurred in the process of looking at so many sources. It needs special attention. It’s the function of “friendship” and “love” on our entire being.  and all the skills we may place at our disposal. Review in your mind that “libido” was a dynamic force that fueled a lot of decision making. Review in your mind that the word  “lieb” is the German word for “love.”  Now remember that the current impetus for psychological understanding started about a century ago. It was Eric Fromm (1900-1980) who held us to strongly understand the basic needs for “love” and the basic benefits of “love.” Place friendships and relationships on your “resolutions” list. Put energy, money and creativity to work there.
     The statistical chart comes from a study of 1800 persons (Franken, 1995). The chart shows that persons who are more “loving” in their “social” relations have much less stress in life. Loving persons are kinder. They give more Positive Strokes to others. They get more back from them. That is the way love and friendship works.
     The chart can also be understood to indicate that non-love (lower left end of solid line) is associated with much more “anxiety” and “stress.” There is a lesson here which says that MOVING UP to a life with less anxiety and stress will require an optimum level of love (as in altruism) in one’s psyche, or soul.

Putting love in the psyche

In the diagram you saw the word “friendship.” Friendship occurs between persons at varying levels of intensity. We can have many friends, but certain friends are longer-term and more intimate. We can say that we “love” a person when the friendship has more intimate and personal attachments.

     
Relationships of a loving nature deliver the greatest amount of nourishment for the psyche. A person can feel emotionally devastated by a catastrophe. Catastrophes can drain one’s psyche (soul, heart) of emotional energy. After suffering from a catastrophic experience  a person feels exhausted. The hug of a friend is extremely supportive. The tear of a friend can speak of empathy and compassion. That’s soul food. Destructive incidents of a sizeable nature can bring a person to despair, depression and loss of hope. But when someone cares, that caring, hope revives.  
     Love is not the only nutrition for the psyche, the soul, the heart of a person.  There are many ways to return a negatively charged psyche back to a positive charge. Some persons have been known to confront the offender and await some repentant spirit before they forgive.  Forgiveness neutralizes the negativity in both the conscious and unconscious reservoirs of the psyche. Another person may not be in a position to forgive, but uses the hurtful aggression to show some personal success in life. They used the painful experience make a difference in society. They get delayed emotional satisfaction from this turning pain into progress. Some move to another city to avoid the reminders of the past. This allows time for new and positive experiences to replace some of the suppressed and repressed negative experiences of the past. The move allows time for healing. During this time a negatively charged psyche can be counteracted with positively charged experiences.  In some cases the person just believes that being forgiving takes care of the negative charge, and it works for them. A few persons have actually decided to do extra special deeds of kindness to the person that has hurt them terribly. Forgiveness, aggression, moving, believing, deeds  of kindness all become helpful in changing the psyche’s charge from negative to positive. In simpler terms this means that a person changes from hateful to loving.

TRANSITION FROM SOUL FOOD TO WILL POWER




Transition from describing inner functions of the psyche to describing the guidelines which the psyche uses in decision-making.

     “Soul food” is the term used to describe the essentials of many sources of  positive satisfaction for a person. The term also gives us a mental picture that the psyche needs nourishment. However, the picture is somewhat inadequate for it only gives us a way of thinking about what we need at the core to survive, not what we need to grow, transcend, fight obstacles, and get on top, to where maturity and character are.  So far, the reader only has information about how the psyche makes “soul food” choices which will counteract a few things like depression. “Soul food” (all 20+ factors in the diagram above) is urgently needed to counteract the emotional deterioration of depression. “Soul food” is very  important to the prevention of certain addictive behaviors, and very important to rehabilitation. We’ll move forward to describe the activity of the soul in other areas.

The psyche’s integrating role

The important thing to realize is that the psyche is heavily involved in decision making which goes far beyond preventive and rehabilitative processes.  The psyche becomes involved in the maturing of a person. Maturation is a process of going from certain more inferior behaviors to behaviors which are more complex and more beneficial. The psyche plays a decision-making  role in applying our ideals to our lives, as it helps us fight off the pressures of certain persons to stay immature. For example, Dexter wants to be like his uncle who owns a small factory, but Dexter’s friends want to frequent the local casino. The ideal is to be constructive, but the pressure on Dexter is adopt the playfulness of a less constructive lifestyle. Dexter’s psyche has a battle to apply what is in his  MIND and what is in his SPIRIT, while his passions are pulling him away. If what is in Dexter’s MIND and SPIRIT is weaker, the ideal of his uncle will get abandoned.

     

What gives direction to the psyche to move people from immaturity to maturity?  What issues and guidelines make a person (his/her psyche) decide to mature or stay immature? How many factors come to the attention of that inner decision-making system and how are they processed?

What the psyche integrates

When proposing to identify what factors the psyche integrates, we are looking for a list of things. Of course, we want the list prioritized. We want to know the first and most major expectation. This is like trying to answer the quest by an athlete. “What are all the things I must do to be a winner”?  To be definitive about that list presents problems. We need to list which factors the psyche integrates, combines, prioritizes and puts together to do what the person believes s/he needs to do. We would need to define intensities, ranges, scales of importance, and be able to measure and quantify them. These factors have been described. How big or small they need to be depends on what the issue is.  Here are some of the factors found in this chapter.

BODY: (hunger, thirst, sex, shelter, etc.)
MIND: (memories, experiences, learning, etc.)
SPIRIT: (values, beliefs,  intuitions, etc.)
SUPEREGO: (family, cultural, social expectations)
EGO: (decision making, residence of psyche & conscience)
ID: (impulse, passion, obsession, etc)
LITTLE PROFESSOR: (looking for pleasure)
POSITIVE STROKES: (energizing)
PLEASURE PRINCIPLE: (can’t live without it)
REALITY PRINCIPLE: (keeping us character oriented)
CATHEXIS: (draws us to pleasure)
PASSION: (combined vision, pleasure, spirituality)
JUSTICE, REASON, CARING

     Integrating all that for a single decision! That is what the psyche does, and more! Plato did not go into this kind of an analytical process. Plato simply identifies the highest-level virtues and values that he thinks winners live by. Plato, in his book, The Republic, gave major credit to “reason” as being important to the ultimate direction(s) a person would take. He saw in persons an innate  passion for knowledge and understanding. . . and that passion is the same thing as philosophy -- love of wisdom..” Plato also advocated education as important to “reason” and “wisdom.” In his Allegory of the Cave, Plato advocated education as a transition from primitive life “to the region of the intelligible.” [If Plato says you can MOVE UP, you can!] “Truth” and “justice” were also to be valued. In effect Plato identified truthfulness, fairness, justice, love, knowledge, wisdom and similar values as the optimum guidelines which produce the greatest benefits to a person.
     Two thousand five hundred years later Rollo May, Ph.D. also identified what he believed were the necessary guidelines for optimum functioning to make decisions and get the job done.  Dr. May studied in Vienna first. He trained in the United States in the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry. He taught at Harvard and Princeton in the later decades of the 20th century. Dr. May raises serious objections to certain psychoanalytic ideas of Freud about the driving force of the “id.” He recognizes Alfred Adler’s concern over the powerlessness of people and society to do go. Rollo May avoids the analysis of which biological or which psychological components are most important to “being,” to success, to fulfillment and to optimum living. He assigns a major guideline that influences everything from body, mind, spirit, conscious, unconscious, pleasure principle, etc. He the total human being to adopt “ intentionality.”   It is a concept which helps describe that which we call “will.”

“My belief (is) that we have omitted a dimension of human experience which is important, indeed critical, to human will. . .  This is the problem of  intentionality in contrast to the mere intention. Intentionality, in human experience, is what underlies will and decision. It is not only prior to will and decision but makes them possible. . . Even Descartes (1590-1659, French Philosopher)  separated understanding from will. . . cognition (knowing) could be separated from conation (making something happen or change) . . . Intentionality does not rule out deterministic influence. . .”

     Rollo  May sees “intentionality” as a constellation of forces. Intentionality is “wishing” turning to “willing.” It is combined with “cognition,”  “conation,” “perception,” “caring,” “tending toward,” “movement toward,” “commitment.” May sees “intentionality” as an essential ingredient in the client who is in therapy. Therapeutic counseling was most effective in persons who reached their own core “intentionality,” their will power.
     For Rollo May, “intentionality” motivates. It help shape every contribution from both outside the person and inside the person.

Summary

     This chapter assists a person in “moving up,” or stay “moved up, or help someone else “move up.”  It directs a person to consider the seriousness of providing one’s psyche (heart, soul) with a wide variety of positive experiences. Many of the upcoming chapters help a person stay on this course.

1. A person has a psychological system that makes him/her able to solve problems, be creative, generate ideas, use self-control and many things which animals cannot do.
2. The emotions are in a memory bank. Deposits of anger, guilt and fear can give a negative charge to the psyche and the person, so that most of what comes out is negative.
3. Emotions can be suppressed (consciously) and repressed (unconsciously) into the area of the “unconscious,” requiring the ego to use energy to keep them inside.
4. The superego is the collection of messages (oughts and ought-nots) which come from society's expectations, rules and demands.
5. The id is the collection of instincts and impulses (wants and don't wants) coming out of man's inner nature.
6. The ego has freedom (autonomy) and solicits help (if given permission) from the BODY, MIND and SPIRIT, to help it stay in command and bring harmony between the person’s id instincts and his or her perception of what society demands.
7. The more a person can neutralize accumulations of negative feelings in the unconscious the more rationally that person will function.
8. Positive Strokes and Warm Fuzzies are roughly equivalent to Freud's concept of libidinal nourishment for the psyche.
9. The psyche needs the nourishment, just like food for the body, education for the mind, and values for the spirit.
10. The psyche has the ability (like an elephant's trunk) to reach out and bring back nourishment, give away nourishment, and receive gifts of emotional nourishment.
11. If the psyche doesn't get fed enough, either in childhood or later, it tends to pulls back in, become slightly passive and withdrawn.
12. If the psyche gets overloaded with excessive amounts of abuse, yelling, put-downs, unfair treatment and beatings, the psyche's arm pulls back in and the person withdraws.
13. People must talk through their problems, their conflicts and defuse the negatives in the unconscious.
14. People who have been hurt by violence and abuse need to confront the abuser mildly, wait for remorse, and then forgive.
15. Persons who have withdrawn and shy need to practice being more outgoing by becoming intereste