psychology 230s: personality and its transformations jordan b. peterson

Psychology 230S: Personality and its Transformations

Jordan B. Peterson

Social Cognition

• Primate Social Cognition

• The internal representations of language meaning evolved partly from our pre-linguistic ancestors’ knowledge of social relations .

• Like modern monkeys and apes, our ancestors lived in groups with intricate networks of relationships that were simultaneously competitive and cooperative.

• The demands of social life created selective pressures for just the kind of complex, abstract, conceptual, and computational abilities that are likely to have preceded the earliest forms of linguistic communication.

Social Cognition

• Although baboons have concepts and acquire propositional information from other animals’ vocalizations, they cannot articulate this information. They understand dominance relations and matrilineal kinship but have no words for them.

• This suggests that the internal representation of many concepts relations, and action sequences does not require language, and that language did not evolve because it was uniquely suited to representing thought .

– Seyfarth, R.M. et al. (2005). Primate social cognition and the origins of language. Trends in Cognitive Science, 9, 264-266.

• Triangles

The Animated World

The constituent elements of the world

The Unknown

• nature – the unconscious, Dionysian force of the id– the terrors of the darkness– the source and resting place of all things

• the great mother – the queen, the matrix, the matriarch, the

container, the cornucopia

• the object to be fertilized, – the source of all things, – the fecund, the pregnant

The Unknown, continued

• the strange, the emotional, the foreigner, the place of return and rest

• the deep, the valley, the cleft, the cave

• hell, death and the grave• the moon, ruler of the night and the

mysterious dark• matter and the earth

The Known

• culture, appolinian control, superego, the conscious• the king, the patriarch, the plough, the phallus• order and authority and the crushing weight of tradition • the wise old man and the tyrant • dogma, the day sky• the countryman• the island, the heights• the ancestral spirits• the activity of the dead

Order and chaos constitute the stage

and something mediates between them

• The knower– ego, consciousness– the trickster, the fool– the hero, the coward– spirit

• as opposed to matter• as opposed to dogma

• the sun – son of the unknown

• the great mother – and the known

• the great father

which also has its enemy

Heroic and Shamanic Initiations

The Scandinavian World Tree: Ygddrasil

Amazonian Shamanic Vision

• Cosmos Encoiled: Indian Art of the Peruvian Amazon

– Angelika Gebhart-Sayer (1987)– New York: Americas Society, p. 26

Julian’s drawing (age 8)

Cathedral of Trees: Giulano Mauri

Initiation: Archaic Conceptions

• The shamanic initiation– Three routes to Shamanism

• Spontaneous vocation• Hereditary transmission• Personal quest

• “But, by whatever method he may have been designated, a shaman is recognized as such only after having received two methods of instruction.

• The first is ecstatic (e.g., dreams, trances, visions); the second is traditional (e.g., shamanic techniques, names and functions of the spirits, mythology and genealogy of the clan, secret language.

• This twofold teaching, imparted by the spirits and the old master shamans, constitutes initiation.”

» Eliade, M. Heroic and Shamanic Initiations. Rites and Symbols of Initiation

• “In Siberia, the youth who is called to be a shaman attracts attention by his strange behavior; for example, he seeks solitude, becomes absent-minded, loves to roam in the woods or unfrequented places, has visions, and sings in his sleep.

• In some instances this period of incubation is marked by quite serious symptoms: among the Yakut, the young man sometimes has fits of fury and easily loses consciousness, hides in the forest, feeds on the bark of trees, throws himself into water and fire, cuts himself with knives.

• The future shamans among the Tungus, as they approach maturity, go through a hysterical or hysteroid crisis, but sometimes their vocation manifests itself at an earlier age -- the boy runs away into the mountains and remains there for a week or more, feeding on animals, which he tears to pieces with his teeth.

• He returns to the village, filthy, bloodstained, and it is only after ten or more days have passed that he begins to babble incoherent words.”

» Eliade, M. Heroic and Shamanic Initiations. Rites and Symbols of Initiation

• “The strange behavior of future shamans has not failed to attract the attention of scholars, and from the middle of the past century several attempts have been made to explain the phenomenon of shamanism as a mental disorder.

• But the problem was wrongly put. For on the one hand, it is not true that shamans always are or always have to be neuropathics;

• on the other hand, those among them who had been ill become shamans precisely because they had succeeded in becoming cured.

» Eliade, M. Heroic and Shamanic Initiations. Rites and Symbols of Initiation

• Eadwine Psalter: 9th -12th C– Canterbury, England

Griffiths R.R., Richards W.A., McCann, U. & Jesse, R. (2006). Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. Psychopharmacology,187, 268–83.

Shamanism

• Reduction to a skeleton• Communion with the ancestors• Climbing the world tree

• According to a Yakut informant, the spirits carry the future shaman to Hell and shut him in a house for three years.

• Here he undergoes his initiation; the spirits cut off his head (which they set off to one side, for the novice much watch his own dismemberment with his own eyes) and hack his body to bits, which are later distributed among the spirits of various sicknesses.

• It is only on this condition that the future shaman will obtain the power of healing.

• His bones are then covered with new flesh, and in some cases he is also given new blood.

» Eliade, M. Heroic and Shamanic Initiations. Rites and Symbols of Initiation

• One of the specific characteristics of shamanic initiations, aside from the candidate’s dismemberment, is his reduction to the state of a skeleton.

• We are here in the presence of a very ancient religious idea, which belongs to the hunter culture.– Bone symbolizes the final root of animal life, the mold

from which the flesh continually rises.– It is from the bone that men and animals are reborn, for

a time, they maintain themselves in an existence of the flesh; then they die, and their “life” is reduced to the essence concentrated in the skeleton, from which they will be born again.

» Eliade, M. Heroic and Shamanic Initiations. Rites and Symbols of Initiation

• I should like even now to stress the fact that the psychopathology of the shamanic vocation is not profane; it does not belong to ordinary symptomatology.

• It has an initiatory structure and signification; in short, it reproduces a traditional mystical pattern.

• The total crisis of the future shaman, sometimes leading to complete disintegration of the personality and to madness, can be valuated not only as an initiatory death but also as a symbolic return to the precosmogonic chaos, to the amorphous and indescribable state that precedes any cosmogony.”

» Eliade, M. Heroic and Shamanic Initiations. Rites and Symbols of Initiation

What is the “precosmogonic chaos?”

• LATENT INFORMATION: Explicit philosophy– “Pure experience” is the name which I give to the original

flux of life before reflection has categorized it.– Only new-born babes, and persons in semicoma from

sleep, drugs, illnesses or blows can have an experience pure in the literal sense of a that which is not yet any definite what, tho’ ready to be all sorts of whats;

– full both of oneness and of manyness, but in respects that don’t appear; changing throughout, yet so confusedly that its phases interpenetrate, and no points, either of distinction or of identity, can be caught.

» William James (1905). Journal of Philosophy, January 19, p. 29

• LATENT INFORMATION: Imagistic or dramatic representation– “No verbiage can give it, because the verbiage is other,

– Incoherent, coherent – same.

– And it fades! And it’s infinite! AND it’s infinite!…

– Don’t you see the difference, don’t you see the identity?

– Constantly opposites united!

– The same me telling you to write and not to write!

– Extreme – extreme, extreme!…

– Something, and other than that thing!

– Intoxication, and otherness than intoxication.

– Every attempt at betterment, – every attempt at otherment

– – is a –

– It fades forever and forever as we move.”» William James, in the throes of nitrous oxide intoxication. Quoted by Tymoczko, D. (1996). The

nitrous oxide philosopher. Atlantic Monthly, May, 93-101, p. 100.

• Now, as we know, for archaic and traditional cultures, a symbolic return to Chaos is equivalent to preparing a new Creation.

• It follows that we may interpret the psychic chaos of the future shaman as a sign that the profane man is being dissolved and a new personality being prepared for birth.

» Eliade, M. Heroic and Shamanic Initiations. Rites and Symbols of Initiation

Mikhaila’s idea:

• Spontaneous fantasy manifested August 10, 1997, by my daughter, Mikhaila (aged five years, eight months) while playing “prince and princess” with Julian (her three-year old brother): – Dad, if we killed a dragon, we could use his skin as

armor, couldn’t we? – Wouldn’t that be a good idea?

Mikhaila’s idea 2:

• The following dream was described by my daughter, Mikhaila (three years nine months old), about my son, Julian (one year eleven months old) (October 5, 1995). Julian was in the process of toilet training and rapid speech development, and was having some trouble controlling his emotions. Mikhaila liked to call him “baby.” We had several discussions about the fact that he really wasn’t a baby anymore. She told me this story, while I was at the computer, so I was able to get it verbatim:

Mikhaila’s idea 2:

• Mikhaila: Julian’s eyes falled out,a nd then he falled into pieces

• Dad: (what sort of pieces?)• Mikhaila: Julian pieces. And the bones falled

out too. Then a hole got him, and there was water in it, and when he came out he was big.

• Mom: (Julian isn’t a baby anymore?)• Mikhaila: No he’s a big boy. And a bug with

legs got him out, cause bugs can swim. And the hole was in the park. And it moved into the back yard and he falled in it. A tree burned and left the hole.

• Ellenberger described the characteristic elements of the creative illness as follows:– A creative illness succeeds a period of intense

preoccupation with an idea and search for a certain truth. – It is a polymorphous condition that can take the shape of

depression, neurosis, psychosomatic ailments, or even psychosis.

– Whatever the symptoms, they are felt as painful, if not agonizing, by the subject, with alternating periods of alleviation and worsening.

– Throughout the illness the subject never loses the thread of his dominating preoccupation.

The Creative Illness

– It is often compatible with normal, professional activity and family life. But even if he keeps to his social activities, he is almost entirely absorbed with himself.

– He suffers from feelings of utter isolation, even when he has a mentor who guides him through the ordeal (like the shaman apprentice with his master).

– The termination is often rapid and marked by a phase of exhilaration.

– The subject emerges from his ordeal with a permanent transformation in his personality and the conviction that he has discovered a great truth or a new spiritual world.”

• Ellenberger, H.F. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York: Basic Books, pp. 447-448.

• Many of the nineteenth and twentieth century figures recognized universally as “great” – Nietzsche, Darwin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Freud, Jung – were all additionally characterized by lengthy periods of profound psychological unrest and uncertainty.

Transformation

• Paradise• Paradise Lost• Redemption

Graham’s dream:

• Graham’s dream– entering kindergarten, at five:– descent into the belly of the beast

• He told me, in the presence of his family, that dwarf-like beaked creatures who came up to his knees had been jumping up at him and biting him.

• Each creature was covered with hair and grease, and had a cross shaved in the hair on the top of its head.

• The dream also featured a dragon, who breathed fire. After the dragon exhaled, the fire turned into these dwarves, who multiplied endlessly, with each breath.

– I asked him, “what could you do about this dragon?”

– He said, without hesitation, and with considerable excitement:

• I would take my dad, and we would go after the dragon.

• I would jump on its head, and poke out its eyes with my sword.

• Then I would go down its throat, to where the fire came out.

• I would cut out the box the fire came from, and make a shield from it.”

An evolutionary arms race between early snakes and mammals triggered the development of improved vision and large brains in primates, a radical new theory suggests.

The idea, proposed by Lynne Isbell, an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis, suggests that snakes and primates share a long and intimate history, one that forced both groups to evolve new strategies as each attempted to gain the upper hand.

To avoid becoming snake food, early mammals had to develop ways to detect and avoid the reptiles before they could strike. Some animals evolved better snake sniffers, while others developed immunities to serpent venom when it evolved.

Early primates developed a better eye for color, detail and movement and the ability to see in three dimensions—traits that are important for detecting threats at close range.

Humans are descended from these same primates.

Personality

• habits and schemas of interpretation– designed to extract desired resources from

the environment• exploration (a process) produces adaptation (a

state) to the unknown (a “place”)

Personality and its Transformations

• Psychotherapy– reconstructs habits and schemas of

interpretation– promotes exploration in the attempt to produce

adaptation• the extraction of desired resources from the

environment

– alters habit and category• what makes a category “real”?

– functionality– accordance with the empirical facts, as they might be

established