Top XV Questions asked by French & English people over the years

Mis à jour le Dimanche, 6 Août 2023

15 des meilleures questions posées par les français et les anglais au fil des ans / 15 of the Best Questions asked by French & English people over the years

 

QUESTION I.

[FR] – En quoi consiste la théorie organique ?

[EN] – What is the Organic Theory About?

[FR] Réponse:

La théorie organique est une théorie du 21ème siècle principalement axée sur la conception de l’individu. Elle s’appuie sur l’école de pensée française après la révolution où l’individu embrasse ses propres choix et se définit par ses capacités, ses désirs et ses réalisations. Elle est également fondée sur la théorie de l’évolution, parce qu’elle considère l’individu comme un organisme façonné par son environnement, capable de s’adapter, d’évoluer et de changer en fonction des environnements psychologiques, sociaux et culturels dont il veut faire partie. Cependant, ce qui est unique dans la théorie organique, c’est que c’est la première théorie qui porte la conception unique de l’organisme individuel à un autre niveau, parce qu’elle reste centrée sur la structure des pensées et l’interprétation du monde en considérant ce qui compte pour l’individu et n’est pas fondée sur des généralisations d’hypothèses comme les théories anciennes, ce qui élimine beaucoup de confusion car elle déplace le point de focalisation sur ce qui compte pour l’organisme individuel unique.

Un autre aspect important de la “Théorie Organique” en tant que théorie scientifique que je voudrais éclaircir dans l’esprit des masses est qu’une théorie scientifique n’a rien à voir avec ce que la plupart des gens ont tendance à appeler des “théories générales”. Une théorie générale est une théorie commune qui est généralement utilisée pour expliquer au quotidien des questions d’importance parfois discutable liées à des questions sociales ; cet usage du terme “théorie” englobe généralement des croyances subjectives et des idées sur des sujets non liés à l’universalité de la vie humaine ou à la psychologie, mais plutôt des conversations sociales que la plupart des gens tiennent dans des endroits comme les cafés pour discuter et expliquer des raisons ou causes possibles sur des sujets communs comme “Pourquoi la Deuxième Guerre mondiale est-elle réellement arrivée ? “Pourquoi Jean a-t-il quitté son travail ?” ou “Pourquoi Jeanne a-t-elle épousé Jean ?”. Les explications à ces questions tendent à être qualifiées par la foule commune de “théorie”, et ce genre de théorie n’a absolument rien à voir avec une “théorie scientifique” telle que la Théorie organique.

Une théorie scientifique repose sur la combinaison de deux méthodes anciennes : le rationalisme et l’empirisme. Ces deux méthodes font de la science un outil puissant. Par exemple, les rationalistes affirment que la validité ou l’invalidité d’une proposition donnée peut être déterminée en appliquant soigneusement les règles de la logique. L’école de pensée empiriste soutient d’autre part que la source de toute connaissance est l’observation sensorielle, de sorte que pour les empiristes rigides, la vraie connaissance ne peut être dérivée de ou validée que par l’expérience sensorielle. Après des siècles d’enquête, nous avons constaté que le rationalisme et l’empirisme avaient tous deux une utilité limitée, de sorte que la science moderne a combiné les deux écoles de pensée, et depuis lors, les connaissances se sont accumulées à un rythme exponentiel.

Par conséquent, le mouvement rationaliste a ajouté son aspect à la science et l’a empêchée de simplement recueillir une gamme infinie de faits empiriques déconnectés, parce que nous, intellectuels, devons en quelque sorte donner un sens à ce que nous observons, donc, nous formulons des théories scientifiques. Une théorie scientifique a deux fonctions principales : (1) il organise les observations empiriques et (2) il sert de guide pour les observations futures et génère des propositions confirmables. En d’autres termes, une théorie scientifique suggère des propositions qui peuvent être testées expérimentalement dans une certaine mesure avec certaines méthodes statistiques réductionnistes. Si les propositions générées par une théorie sont raisonnablement confirmées par l’expérimentation, la théorie gagne en force ; si les propositions ne sont pas confirmées, la théorie perd de sa force. En science, l’observation est souvent guidée par la théorie.

La théorie organique est une théorie que j’ai présentée à la table intellectuelle, mais ses fondements étaient dormants dans la psychologie et la littérature scientifique pendant des décennies. Il semble que je n’ai eu qu’à rassembler ces observations objectives et à les organiser méthodiquement pour en arriver à la déduction et à la réalité qu’elle révèle. Nous ne sommes pas maîtres de notre vie, mais nous avons un grand contrôle sur notre propre conception individuelle basée sur nos désirs, notre éducation, notre direction, nos capacités et nos choix dans la vie.

La théorie organique suit la vision organique du monde qui existait déjà dans les grands débats psychologiques du siècle et j’ai construit sur cette perspective, l’ai affinée et étendue avec la littérature empirique et philosophique des temps modernes pour donner à l’individu plus de pouvoir de définition de soi dans notre société moderne et parfois confuse. En fait, j’ai aussi pris quelques concepts de Jacques Lacan pour donner à l’individu le pouvoir et la capacité de réaliser ses rêves et aussi pour ouvrir l’esprit de la foule environnante pour faire savoir et comprendre à la société que les gens ne sont pas des objets statiques, mais ont la capacité de se créer et de se récréer.

Le seul message fondamental de la théorie organique est que nous ne sommes pas simplement définis par l’endroit où nous sommes nés ou par les personnes qui nous sont liées que nous n’avons pas choisies, ou par les lignées sanguines, mais plutôt par nos propres choix, efforts, capacités, réalisations et orientations, et aussi par le fait que tout organisme peut être conditionné pour faire partie de l’environnement de tout autre organisme par le processus sans fin d’apprentissage et d’adaptation, comme le montrent les exemples d’Adolf Hitler ou de Napoléon Bonaparte, pour ne citer que deux cas célèbres de grands dirigeants issus d’une modeste éducation étrangère, qui ont grandi au plus haut niveau dans des pays où ils ne sont pas nés, mais se sont recréés pour devenir le cœur de ces nations à un moment donné.

Le Jeune Napoleon dpurb d'purb website

Image: Le jeune Napoléon

La Théorie Organique démontre que la construction individuelle [formation], qui ” peut être ” mécanique et structurée dans son application [par exemple l’apprentissage à distance par texte / vidéo / audio], se développe indirectement pour créer et donner une dimension socioculturelle à l’individu une fois que les compétences souhaitées [modèles de communication et de comportement] ont été pleinement adoptées, maîtrisées et déployées dans la vie. Le terme ” social ” est aussi beaucoup trop vague pour être important en tant que tel… le terme ” social ” peut simplement être défini comme l’interaction [de tous types] entre organismes. Le terme ” social ” n’est donc pas vraiment valide sur le plan scientifique et il manque de précision puisqu’il peut se référer à un large éventail de variables. Il ne nous reste alors que les choix, le(s) langage(s) et les capacités de développement personnel de l’individu [par exemple la synthèse culturelle et psycholinguistique] : les facteurs majeurs dans l’explication psychologique et philosophique de sa conception singulière [à noter que chaque conception est unique à l’organisme humain individuel tel que ses empreintes digitales, sa forme crânienne ou sa structure corporelle : singularité]. Ainsi : formation, méritocratie, ordre et amour [simple… en théorie].

VivreLibreOuMourir dpurb d'purb site web.jpg

Marcel Gauchet l’a bien formulé en expliquant que quand on vit dans un monde structuré par la méritocratie républicaine et quand on est bon élêve, on sait qu’il y a des voies d’ascension sociale. Malheureusement et de façon choquante, dans certaines sociétés préhistoriques, ataviques, mal-informées et barbares encore gouvernées et hantées par des structures obscures, anciennes, peu sophistiquées et non scientifiques des Anciens régimes du Moyen Âge, un grand nombre de personnes sont encore forcées de croire à tort que l’individu est né pour être l’esclave de sa condition de naissance, vivre sur ses genoux dans une infériorité éternelle et être défini par les vues de leurs masses [pour la plupart] apathiques et misérables par conditionnement. Nous restons donc déterminés sur notre mission de changer la perception des esprits, car lorsque nous changeons les esprits, nous avons aussi un impact sur l’esprit de leurs enfants et petits-enfants ; l’impact de la psychanalyse sauve des générations de la misère et a un effet éternel.

“Les hommes de génie sont des météores destinés à brûler pour éclairer leur siècle.”

-Napoléon

Pour comprendre la logique simple de la conception individuelle de l’organisme unique, prenons l’exemple d’un homme profondément ancré dans la culture française et qui est aussi un grand professeur de littérature, mais qui a un fils qui décide de rejoindre un monastère au Tibet, et une fille qui se convertit à l’hindouisme, et une sœur qui apprend l’arabe, épouse un marchand et déménage dans son pays, cela signifie-t-il que cet homme lui-même est maintenant un arabe hindou tibétain ? Bien sûr que non ! Un autre exemple serait d’imaginer un grand philosophe d’Europe de l’Ouest qui a une sœur qui, par manque d’attention, est influencée par un petit cercle social et devient strip-teaseuse dans la banlieue française, est-ce que cela signifie aussi que le philosophe fait maintenant partie de l’industrie du sexe ? Bien sûr que non ! Pourtant, comme la société et, malheureusement, les hommes adultes en 2021 ne comprennent toujours pas la conception individuelle – ce qui vient avec le fait fondamental que chaque organisme est responsable de sa propre conception et de sa destinée et non de celle des autres – je pense que la théorie organique devrait clairement aider la société mondiale à comprendre que le choix de vie d’un organisme individuel ne relève ni de la responsabilité d’autrui, ni du fardeau d’autrui.

C’est une théorie qui apporte des preuves neuroscientifiques pour expliquer la plasticité, des arguments philosophiques pour expliquer la perception et des explications psychanalytiques pour expliquer le fonctionnement de l’esprit, ainsi que la construction et les désirs symboliques qui guident l’individu dans la réalisation de son but dans la vie. Par la suite, il souligne également que ces faits scientifiques et ces arguments philosophiques ne peuvent être ignorés ni par l’individu ni par la société en général, parce que nous sommes une nouvelle génération d’êtres humains et que nous devrions agir comme des organismes éclairés face à la découverte et non comme des êtres ataviques et rigides d’un passé lointain, car nous ne sommes pas prisonniers du passé.

La philosophie et la science font partie de la culture humaine après tout, et les progrès scientifiques et techniques suivent une évolution rapide et c’est donc fondamentale de comprendre leur impactes sur notre réalité sur terre. Comme l’a souligné un des membres de l’Académie des sciences, notamment Sanchez-Palencia, la culture est un élément fondamental de notre vie et n’est pas un luxe de riches; elle nous permet de comprendre les diverses facettes de notre environnement sur terre, nous permettant de nous y situer, de prévoir l’avenirs ou les avenirs possibles et de prendre des décisions responsables en assumant les conséquences. Certes, les connaissances scientifiques ne sont pas exactes, mais approchées. Les théories nous donne une compréhension approximative des fragments de notre réalité et la recherche contribue à l’amélioration des théories. Malgré les limites imposés par la simplicité des modèles dans la recherche scientifique pour étudier la réalité, ces modèles simples nous permettent de comprendre leurs mécanismes de transformation et d’évolution et aussi de les manipuler pour obtenir un but désiré. Il est aussi important de comprendre que les connaissances scientifiques forment un réseau compatible et cohérent qui est toujours en évolution comme notre monde sur terre, et donc, la recherche ajoute de nouvelles connaissances, et en le faisant, elle modifie et restructure les anciennes – la synthèse et l’imagination créative philosophique sont toujours présents dans la recherche de qualité. Sanchez-Palencia cita aussi Francois Jacob:

«Contrairement à ce que j’avais pu croire, la démarche scientifique ne consistait pas simplement à observer, à accumuler des données expérimentales et à en tirer une théorie. Elle commençait par l’invention d’un monde possible, ou d’un fragment de monde possible, pour la confronter, par l’expérimentation, au monde extérieur. C’était ce dialogue sans fin entre l’imagination et l’expérience qui permettait de se former une représentation toujours plus fine de ce qu’on appelle la réalité ».

Ce qu’il faut que la société comprenne, c’est que les nouvelles découvertes de la science ont aussi un impact philosophique et modifient et redéfinissent notre réalité et rend celle du passé obsolète. Donc, notre culture [notre compréhension et notre relation à notre environnement sur terre) évolue en accord avec et grâce au progrès scientifique. Un bel exemple serait le premier essai du phonographe d’Edison, comme l’a aussi souligné Sanchez-Palencia dans son essai à l’Académie des sciences française. Edison dans son essai avait chanté une courte chanson pour tester le phonographe en présence de ses collaborateurs; et le son fut enregistré et reproduit par l’appareil quelques instants après. A ce moment là, toute l’assistance fut saisie d’admiration mais aussi d’effroi, et parmi les auditeurs, certains firent même le signe de la croix; pourtant ils savaient tous qu’Edison travaillait sur l’enregistrement et la reproduction du son, mais la parole humaine semblait trop pour ces auditeurs choqués. A cette époque, reproduire la voix humaine était vu comme une transgression des limites de ce qui était permis aux mortels sur terre, et c’était dans le domaine de la transcendance. Aujourd’hui, au XXIe siècle, quelque 150 ans plus tard, tout cela a été parfaitement oublié, les jeunes d’aujourd’hui sont devenus des connaisseurs de l’informatique, des smartphones et des médias numériques, et les personnes qui publient et regardent des vidéos sur l’internet à haut débit n’ont pas l’impression d’avoir affaire au monde de la sorcellerie – c’est ainsi que la culture humaine a évolué.

Dans ce même essai de l’Académie des sciences, Sanchez-Palencia décrit un sentiment que bon nombre d’innovateurs ont subit; celui de devoir payer pour transgresser les limites de la réalité de l’humain de son époque, un sentiment qu’il pense être ancrée dans la conviction des masses, qui inventent des mythes pour se racheter de dépasser les limites supposées des divinités majoritairement païennes. Comme par exemple, pour l’invention de l’allumage du feu, qui a conduit à forger le mythe de Prométhée, censé en avoir volé le secret aux dieux et qui fut condamné à être éternellement enchaîné pour qu’un aigle vienne chaque jour lui dévorer le foie, qui serait ensuite renouvelé chaque nuit pour que la douloureuse expérience de se faire dévorer continue chaque jour avec l’animal. Une version moins sanglante de la libération de Prométhée a été imaginé par le peintre Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834 – 1890).

Prometheus'_Liberation,_1864_Carl Heinrich Bloch

La Libération de Prométhée (1864) par Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834 – 1890)

Donc, ce n’est plus surprenant que comme la plupart des innovateurs intellectuels, j’ai rencontré quelques obstacles que j’ai franchis avec succès, en me basant sur des arguments scientifiques et philosophiques sains et forts [Descartes, Lacan, Voltaire, Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer et Rousseau] tout en fusionnant des perspectives objectives et des observations rationnelles basées sur des théories évolutionnaires avancées par Charles Darwin et Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck. En effet, je n’ai commencé à questionner le comportement humain, le cerveau et la construction de nos réalités qu’après avoir sacrifié des années de ma vie dans la recherche et acquis les connaissances et les compétences pour le faire. Les fondements de ma théorie reposent sur des faits empiriques tirés d’un large éventail de revues scientifiques réputées, même si l’empirisme ne peut pas tout saisir précisément lorsqu’il s’agit du fonctionnement interne de l’esprit – comme la plupart des psychologues cognitivo-comportementaux le savent très bien puisqu’ils ont choisi d’entreprendre des recherches qui portent uniquement sur ce qui peut être observé et mesuré, et malheureusement pas tout sur l’esprit peut être, car nous avons trop de variables confusionnelles et de plus le domaine du psychisme est non physique.

Psychisme Définition - Centre National de Resources Textuelles et Lexicales

Définition du mot “Psychisme” sur le site du Centre National de Resources Textuelles et Lexicales

La théorie organique est pour conclure, une théorie qui vise à libérer l’individu de barrières absurdes et imaginaires et à lui faire savoir qu’il n’est lié par rien ni à personne avec qui il n’a signé aucun accord à respecter. Les individus sont libres de se construire, de créer des liens sociaux autant qu’ils peuvent aussi se défaire des charges sociales et des liens avec tout organisme qui n’est en aucune façon bénéfique ou progressif pour leur développement, et cela s’étend à tout organisme extérieur qui n’est pas sous leur responsabilité ou qui ne fait pas partie de leur réalité choisie (par exemple, les petites connaissances, collègues, famille, etc).

Ce que j’insinue simplement, c’est que les organismes individuels sont maîtres de leur propre destin et que, pour réaliser leurs rêves, ils devraient être assez intelligents pour savoir quoi sacrifier, car ce n’est pas leur fardeau ou leur responsabilité et ce qu’ils doivent créer et/ou conserver. En effet, on m’a toujours dit que la mesure du succès d’une personne est la mesure de son sacrifice, et cela semble être une simple question de raisonnement. Peut-être que d’une certaine manière la “Théorie Organique” met aussi à l’épreuve la notion de “liberté” dans nos sociétés modernes. Si nous vivons vraiment dans des sociétés libres, l’individu devrait être libre dans ses choix, car la liberté elle-même implique des choix. La philosophie de la “Théorie Organique” semble aussi suggérer que dans une société éclairée, éduquée, cultivée, sophistiquée et moderne, un individu libre devrait être capable de dire ce qu’il veut, quand il veut, où il veut, comment il veut, à qui il veut, et selon ses capacités, il devrait aussi pouvoir choisir son propre chemin, identité, domaine et cercle, et lorsque ces actes ne causent la mort à personne, cela semble totalement noble et juste.

L'individu libre dans une société éclairée Danny D'Purb dpurb site web 2019

« Dans une société éclairée, éduquée, cultivée, sophistiquée et moderne, un individu libre devrait être capable de dire ce qu’il veut, quand il veut, où il veut, comment il veut, à qui il veut, et selon ses capacités, il devrait aussi pouvoir choisir son propre chemin, identité, domaine et cercle, et lorsque ces actes ne causent la mort à personne, cela semble totalement noble et juste. » -Danny d’Purb // Traduction(EN): “In an enlightened, educated, cultivated, sophisticated and modern society, a free individual should be able to say what he wants, when he wants, where he wants, how he wants, to whomever he wants, and according to his abilities, he should also be able to choose his own path, identity, domain and circle, and when these acts do not cause death to anyone, this seems totally noble and right.” -Danny D’Purb | (2019)

Le modèle de communication, aussi connu sous le nom de “langue”, est également un élément fondamental de la Théorie Organique car c’est l’une des plus grandes facettes de l’identité d’une personne. A travers la langue, un individu peut être attribué à une civilisation ou à des civilisations particulières s’il en maîtrise plus d’une, c’est ce que l’on appelle la maîtrise des schémas de communication qui est également liée aux modèles de comportement hérités d’une sphère linguistique particulière. Une discussion publiée dans l’Oxford Journal of Applied Linguistics, basée sur le domaine émergent des études bilingues des locuteurs avec l’héritage linguistique natif, a remis en question la position généralement acceptée dans les sciences linguistiques, consciente ou non, selon laquelle le monolinguisme et la nativité sont exclusivement synonymes ; Les discussions universitaires modernes ont permis de reconnaître que les personnes bilingues et multilingues qui sont des locuteurs avec l’héritage linguistique natif et exposées à une langue dans la petite enfance sont également natives ; elles ont plusieurs langues maternelles et la nativité peut s’appliquer à un état de connaissance linguistique qui se caractérise par des différences significatives par rapport à la base monolingue (Rothman et Treffers-Daller, 2014).

En conclusion, la Théorie Organique est une théorie de la conception et de l’évolution individuelle. En 2021, en ce qui concerne “La théorie organique”[qui se concentre sur la singularité de l’organisme individuel], il n’y a pas de débat entre intellectuels en psychologie, mais simplement la découverte des nouvelles perspectives mécaniques / scientifiques qu’elle introduit pour expliquer la conception psychologique et philosophique de l’individu – comme le disait Carl Sagan, « La science est une manière de penser bien plus qu’un corps de savoir ». J’ai sacrifié des années de ma vie à étudier le cerveau, le développement, la psychologie, l’art, la littérature, le langage, la conception et la singularité, et … et vous, vous croyez en quoi?

Monique de Kermadec : L’adulte surdoué : bien vivre sa douance (2012)

Je crois fermement que nous, intellectuels de la psychologie et de la philosophie, avons encore un travail énorme à faire en ce qui concerne l’éducation des masses à la construction de leur propre monde intérieur qui structure la vie mentale afin d’adapter la société à une réalité moderne et éclairée : un esprit positif aide chacun. Cette procédure aidera aussi à la sophistication de l’esprit des masses en développant un sens fondamental de compréhension scientifique et philosophique, et en saisissant le concept de l’organisme libre sur terre avec plus de similitudes que de différences [Organismes différents dans leurs modèles de communication et leur QI, mais en répétant quotidiennement les mêmes modèles vitaux avec de légères variations géographiques]. Par conséquent, la localisation géographique de la fécondation d’un embryon ne peut sceller son destin si les bons choix sont faits et si les ressources appropriées pour son développement sont fournies. Un organisme biologique a un nombre presque illimité de façons de se reconstruire, de se modifier et de se redéfinir [reprogrammer] en fonction des capacités de l’individu et cela conduit à un produit scientifiquement et psychologiquement valable – les gens ordinaires doivent encore intégrer et partager ce principe pour ouvrir de nouvelles perspectives à leur propre vie et, le faisant, se permettre de se développer psychologiquement et culturellement. Après avoir étudié l’humilité intellectuelle, les psychologues ont constaté que les individus possédant ce trait de personnalité ont des connaissances générales supérieures (Krumrei-Mancuso, Haggard, LaBouff et Rowatt, 2019). L’humilité intellectuelle a des conséquences sur l’apprentissage et les styles de pensée ; le processus d’apprentissage lui-même requiert de l’humilité intellectuelle pour reconnaître que l’on manque d’une connaissance particulière et que l’on a donc quelque chose à apprendre pour continuer à évoluer. Dans la même étude publiée dans le Journal of Positive Psychology, Krumrei-Mancuso et ses collègues ont constaté que l’humilité intellectuelle était associée à une moindre revendication des connaissances que l’on n’a pas, ce qui indique une évaluation plus précise de ses propres connaissances. Dans l’étude, l’humilité intellectuelle était également corrélée à une plus grande inclination à la réflexion, à un plus grand “besoin de connaissance” (c’est-à-dire le plaisir de réfléchir et de résoudre des problèmes), à une plus grande curiosité et à une ouverture d’esprit. Dans la revue Self and Identity, les résultats d’une étude réalisée par Porter et Schumann (2017) suggèrent que l’humilité intellectuelle peut être accrue chez les individus grâce à une croissance de l’intelligence ; nous pourrions donc tous bénéficier de l’humilité intellectuelle dans le développement de notre vie. Les auteurs ont conclu qu’ « enseigner aux gens une vision malléable de l’intelligence peut être un moyen prometteur de favoriser l’humilité intellectuelle et ses avantages associés ».

Si vous voulez en savoir plus sur la théorie organique qui est un projet en cours, faites une recherche sur mon nom “dpurb” ou “danny dpurb” et vous tomberez sur mon site où vous trouverez plus d’informations sur le sujet. Les bases de la théorie organique ont déjà été jetées, mais il s’agit d’un projet de toute une vie qui sera affiné et mis à jour dans une série de livres au cours des prochaines décennies avec d’autres travaux que j’ai l’intention de présenter au grand public du monde entier.

En attendant, je vous recommande de lire les essais académiques:

(i) Histoire de la philosophie occidentale, des cultures religieuses, de la science, de la médecine et de la sécularisation ;

(ii) Explications psychologiques des préjugés et discrimination ;

(iii) Relativisme moral : N’avons-nous pas tous droit à une opinion laide ? ;

(iv) Conception, sélection et stress en psychologie du travail et de l’organisation ;

(v) Les causes du comportement agressif chez les primates humains ;

(vi) Origines du modèle cognitivo-comportemental : Contraintes biologiques dans l’apprentissage par le conditionnement “Opérant” ;

(vii) Le monde comme volonté et représentation ;

(viii) Les troubles d’apprentissage, l’anxiété, la dépression et la schizophrénie et l’efficacité de la psychothérapie ;

(ix) Les controverses qui entourent la pratique moderne de la santé mentale ;

(x) Les trois principales théories du développement de l’enfant ;

(xi) Lobes frontaux, Impulsivité chez l’enfant & La Théorie de Jean Piaget ;

(xii) Comment fonctionnent nos neurones ;

(xiii) Vision, son et conscience ;

(xiv) Le concept de soi et

(xv) Psychanalyse ; Histoire, fondations, héritage, impact et évolution.

Ces essais sont le fruit d’environ 16 ans de recherche indépendante, sont référencés, révisés et mis à jour en permanence; ceux qui ont choisi de travailler pour et sont employés par des entreprises éducatives telles que les universités devraient se sentir libres d’évaluer le nombre de thèses de doctorat que constitue l’ensemble du site dpurb.com, mon opinion modeste semble indiquer environ une demi-douzaine ou plus peut-être ?

L’un des principaux objectifs de la théorie organique est de souligner toutes les choses que nous faisons mal depuis le début des temps; comment le manque de développement philosophique et de gestion de l’ego mènera à la fin de l’humanité: une espèce qui ne peut pas encore gérer sa propre existence, n’ayant toujours pas compris les lois fondamentales de l’évolution environnementale.

ad meliora - towards better things

vers de meilleures choses / towards better things

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[EN] Answer to Question I. “What is the Organic Theory About?”

The organic theory is a theory of the 21st century mainly focussed on the conception of the individual. It is based on the French school of thought after the revolution where the individual embraces his own choices and defines himself through his abilities, desires and achievements. It is also founded on the theory of evolution, because it sees the individual as an organism that is shaped by its environment with the ability to adapt, evolve and change depending on the psychological, social and cultural environments it wants to be a part of. However, what is unique the Organic Theory, is that it is the first theory that takes the unique conception of the individual organism to another level, because it remains focussed on the structure of thoughts and the interpretation of the world by considering what matters to the individual and is not founded on generalisations of assumption like most ancient theories do, hence this discards a lot of confusion because it shifts the focus on what matters to the unique individual organism.

Another important aspect of the “Organic Theory” as a scientific theory that I would like to make clear in the mind of the masses is that a scientific theory is nothing like what most people tend to refer as “general theories”. A general theory is a common theory that generally used to explain every day matters of sometimes questionable importance related to social matters; this usage of the term “theory” generally encompasses subjective beliefs and insights about matters not related to the universality of human life or psychology, but instead tend to occupy social conversations that most people have in places such as coffee shops to discuss and provide explanations about possible reasons or causes on common matters such as “Why did World War II really happen?”, “Why did John quit his job?” or “Why did Jane marry John?”. Explanations to these questions tend to be referred by the common crowd as some “theory”, and this kind of theory has absolutely nothing to do with a “scientific theory” such as the Organic Theory.

A scientific theory is based on a combination of two ancient methods: rationalism and empiricism. These two methods are what make science a powerful tool. The rationalist school of thought go by the belief that mental operations or principles must be employed before knowledge can be attained, for example, rationalists state that the validity or invalidity of a certain proposition can be determined by carefully applying the rules of logic. The empiricist school of thought maintains on the other hand that the source of all knowledge is sensory observation, so for rigid empiricists true knowledge can be derived from or validated only by sensory experience. After centuries of inquiry, we found that by themselves, rationalism and empiricism both had limited usefulness, so modern science combined the two schools of thought, and since then, knowledge has been accumulating at an exponential rate.

Hence, the rationalist movement added its aspect to science and prevented it from simply collecting an endless array of disconnected empirical facts, because we intellectuals must somehow make sense out of what we observe, hence, we formulate scientific theories. A scientific theory has two main functions: (1) it organises empirical observations, and (2) it acts as a guide for future observations and generates confirmable propositions. In other words, a scientific theory suggests propositions that may be tested experimentally to a certain extent with some reductionist statistical methods. If the propositions generated by a theory are confirmed reasonably through experimentation, the theory gains strength; if the propositions are not confirmed, the theory loses strength. In science observation is often guided by theory.

The Organic Theory is a theory that I brought forward to the intellectual table but its foundations were lying dormant in the psychology and scientific literature for decades. It seems that I only had to piece together these objective observations and methodically arrange them to come to the deduction along with the reality it revealed. We are not complete masters of our life, but we do have a great amount of control of our own individual conception based on our desires, education, direction, capabilities and choices in life.

The organic theory follows the organismic worldview that already existed in the great psychological debates of the century and I have built upon this perspective, refined and extended it with modern day empirical and philosophical literature to give the individual more power of self-definition in our modern and sometimes confused society. In fact, I also took some concepts from Jacques Lacan to give the individual the power and the ability to achieve their dreams and also to open the minds of the surrounding crowd to let society know and understand that people are not static objects, but have the ability to create and recreate themselves.

PrinciplesOfPsychology

The one fundamental message the Organic Theory brings are that we are not defined simply by where we are born or the people connected to us that we did not choose, or by bloodlines, but rather by our own choices, efforts, abilities, achievements and directions, and also the fact that any organism can be conditioned to become part of the environment of any other organism through the never ending process of learning and adaptation, as we can see from the examples of Adolf Hitler or Napoléon Bonaparte, to name two famous cases of great leaders who came from modest foreign origins and who raised to the highest level in countries where they were not born, but recreated themselves to become the heart of these nations at a given point in time.

The Organic Theory shows that individual construction [training], which ‘can be’ mechanical and structured in its application [e.g. distance learning by text / video / audio], develops indirectly to create and give a socio-cultural dimension to the individual once the desired skills [communicative and behavioural patterns]have been fully adopted, mastered, and deployed in life. The term ‘social’ is also far too vague to be important as such… the term ‘social’ can simply be defined as the interaction [of all types] between organisms. So the term ‘social’ is not really valid scientifically and it lacks precision itself since it may refer to a wide range of variables. What we are left with then is only the individual’s choices, language(s) & abilities of personal development [e.g. cultural & psycholinguistic synthesis]: the major factors in the psychological & philosophical explanation of his/her singular conception [to note that each conception is unique to the individual human organism such as his/her fingerprints, skull shape, or body structure: singularity]. Thus: training, meritocracy, order and love [simple… in theory]. Marcel Gauchet put it well by explaining that when we live in a world structured by republican meritocracy and when we are a good student, we know that there are paths to social ascension. Unfortunately and shockingly, in some prehistoric, atavistic, misinformed and barbaric societies still governed and haunted by obscure, ancient, unsophisticated and unscientific structures of the Ancient regimes of the Middle Ages, many people are still forced to wrongly believe that the individual was born to be a slave to his birth condition, to live on his knees in eternal inferiority and to be defined by the views of their masses, who are [mostly] apathetic and miserable by conditioning. So we remain focussed on our mission to change the perception of minds, as when we do change minds, we also have an impact on the mind of their children and grand-children; the impact of psychoanalysis saves generations from misery and has an eternal effect.

“Men of genius are meteors destined to burn to enlighten their century.”

-Napoleon

To understand the simple logic of individual conception of the unique organism, let us use the example of a man who is deeply embedded in French culture and is a great teacher of literature, but has a son who decides to join a monastery in Tibet, and a daughter who converts to Hinduism, and a sister who learns Arab, marries a merchant and moves to his country, does this mean that the man himself is now a Tibetan Hindu Arab? Of course not! Another example would be to imagine a great philosopher of the Western world who happens to have a sister who due to a lack of attention is influenced by a petty social circle and becomes a strip dancer in the suburbs of France, similarly does this mean that the philosopher is now part of the sex industry? Of course not! Yet since society and sadly fully grown up men in 2021 still do not understand individual conception – which comes with the fundamental fact that each organism is responsible for his/her own conception and destiny and not that of others – I feel that the organic theory should clearly help society worldwide understand that an individual organism’s choice in life is not the responsibility or the burden of another.

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Human brain specimen being studied in neuroscience professor Ron Kalil’s Medical School research lab. © UW-Madison News & Public Affairs 608/262-0067 Photo by: Jeff Miller Date: 5/00 File#: color slide

It is a theory that brings neuroscientific evidence to explain plasticity, philosophical arguments to explain perception and psychoanalytic explanations to explain the proceedings of the mind, along with construction and symbolic desires that guide the individual in achieving its goal in life. Subsequently, it is also making the point that these scientific facts and philosophical arguments cannot be ignored by both the individual and societies at large, because we are a new generation of human beings, and we should be acting as enlightened organisms in the face of discovery, not atavistic and rigid beings of a long dead past, because we are not prisoners of the past.

Philosophy and science are part of human culture after all, and scientific and technical progress is evolving rapidly, so it is fundamental to understand its impact on our reality on earth. As one of the members of the Academie des Sciences in France, Sanchez-Palencia, pointed out, culture is a fundamental part of our lives and is not a luxury of the rich; it allows us to understand the various facets of our environment on earth, allowing us to situate ourselves in it, to foresee the future or possible futures and to make responsible decisions while assuming the consequences. Of course, scientific knowledge is not exact, but it is close. Theories give us an approximate understanding of the fragments of our reality, and research contributes to the improvement of theories. Despite the limitations imposed by the simplicity of models in scientific research to study reality, these simple models allow us to understand their mechanisms of transformation and evolution and also to manipulate them to achieve a desired goal. It is also important to understand that scientific knowledge forms a compatible and coherent network that is always evolving like our world on earth, and therefore research adds new knowledge, and in doing so, it modifies and restructures old knowledge – synthesis and philosophical creative imagination are always present in quality research. Sanchez-Palencia also quoted Francois Jacob:

« Contrary to what I had thought, the scientific approach was not simply a matter of observing, accumulating experimental data and deriving a theory. It began with the invention of a possible world, or a fragment of a possible world, to confront it, through experimentation, with the outside world. It was this never-ending dialogue between imagination and experience that made it possible to form an ever finer representation of what we call reality. »

What society needs to understand is that new discoveries in science also have a philosophical impact and change and redefine our reality and make the past obsolete. Thus, our culture [our understanding of and relationship to our environment on earth] evolves in accordance with and through scientific progress. A good example would be the first trial of Edison’s phonograph, as also pointed out by Sanchez-Palencia in his essay to the Académie des Sciences. Edison in his trial had sung a short song to test the phonograph in the presence of his collaborators; and the sound was recorded and reproduced by the apparatus a few moments later. At this point, the whole audience was filled with admiration but also fear, and some of the listeners even made the sign of the cross; yet they all knew that Edison was working on the recording and reproduction of sound, but the human voice seemed too much for these shocked listeners. At that time, reproducing the human voice was seen as a transgression of the limits of what was permitted to mortals on earth, and this was in the realm of transcendence. Today, in the 21st century, some 150 years later, all this has been perfectly forgotten, today’s young people have become connoisseurs of technology, smartphones and digital media, and people posting and watching videos on the high-speed internet do not feel that they are dealing with the world of witchcraft – that is how human culture has evolved.

In the same essay published by the Académie des Sciences’, Sanchez-Palencia describes a feeling that many innovators have suffered from; that of having to pay to transgress the limits of reality of the human of his time, a sentiment that he believes is rooted in the conviction of the masses, who invent myths to redeem themselves from exceeding the supposed limits of the predominantly pagan deities. For example, the invention of the ignition of fire, which led to the myth of Prometheus, who was supposed to have stolen the secret from the gods and who was condemned to be eternally chained so that an eagle would come every day to devour his liver, which would then be renewed every night so that the painful experience of being devoured would continue every day with the flesh eating animal. A less bloody version of Prometheus’ liberation was imagined by the painter Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834 – 1890) [as shown above].

Therefore, it is no longer surprising that like most intellectual innovators, I have encountered some obstacles that I have successfully overcome, basing my arguments on sound and strong scientific and philosophical arguments [Descartes, Lacan, Voltaire, Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Rousseau] while merging objective perspectives and rational observations based on evolutionary theories put forward by Charles Darwin and Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck. Indeed, I only started questioning human behaviour, the brain and the construction of our realities after having sacrificed years of my life in research and earned the knowledge and skills to do so. The foundations of my theory are based on empirical facts gathered from a wide range of reputable scientific journals even if empiricism cannot capture everything precisely when dealing with the inner workings of the mind – as most cognitive-behavioural psychologists themselves know very well since they chose to embark in research that only deals with what is observable and measurable, and unfortunately not everything about the mind is measurable since we have too many confounding variables, and the psyche is after all a non-physical domain.

The organic theory is to conclude, a theory that is meant to free the individual from nonsensical and imaginary barriers and to let them know that they are not bound by anything or anyone with whom they did not sign any agreement to abide by. Individuals are free to build themselves, to create social connections just as much as they can also discard of social burdens and links with any organism that is not in any way beneficial or progressive to their development, and this extends to any outside organism that is not their responsibility or part of their chosen reality [e.g. petty acquaintances, colleagues, family, etc].

What I am simply implying is that individual organisms are masters of their own destiny and to be able to achieve their dreams they should be smart enough to know what to sacrifice since it is not their burden or responsibility and what to create and/or keep. Indeed, I was always told that the measure of one’s success is the measure of one’s sacrifice, and this seems to be a simple matter of reasoning. Perhaps in some way the “Organic Theory” is also putting to the test the notion of “freedom” in our modern societies.

If we really do live in free societies then the individual should be free in his or her choices, because freedom itself entails having choices. The philosophy of the “Organic Theory” also seems to be suggesting that in an enlightened, educated, cultivated, sophisticated and modern society, a free individual should be able to say what he wants, when he wants, where he wants, how he wants, to whomever he wants, and depending on his abilities, he should also be able to choose his own path, identity, domain and circle, and when such acts do not cause death to anyone, this seems totally noble and right.

Communicative pattern, also known as “language” is also a fundamental element of the Organic Theory as it is one of the biggest facets of one’s identity. Through language an individual can be allocated to a particular civilisation or civilisations if the individual masters more than one, this is known as the mastery of communicative patters that is also related to behavioural patterns that are inherited from a particular linguistic sphere. A discussion published in the Oxford Journal of Applied Linguistics based on the emerging field of heritage speaker bilingual studies challenged the generally accepted position in the linguistic sciences, conscious or not, that monolingualism and nativeness are exclusively synonymous; from modern academic discussions, it is now being acknowledged that heritage speaker bilinguals and multilinguals exposed to a language in early childhood are also natives; they have multiple native languages, and nativeness can be applicable to a state of linguistic knowledge that is characterized by significant differences to the monolingual baseline (Rothman and Treffers-Daller, 2014).

To conclude, The Organic Theory is a theory of individual conception and evolution. In the 21st century, as far as ‘The Organic Theory’ [which focuses on the singularity of the individual organism] is concerned, there is no debate between intellectuals in psychology, but simply the discovery of the new mechanical / scientific perspectives that it introduces to explain the psychological and philosophical conception of the individual – as Carl Sagan phrased it, ‘Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge’. I have sacrificed years of my life studying the brain, development, psychology, art, literature, language, conception and singularity, and… and you, what do you believe in?

I firmly believe that we, intellectuals of psychology and philosophy, have a tremendous work remaining to be done regarding the education of the masses about the construction of their own inner worlds that structures mental life in order to adjust society to a modern and enlightened reality: a positive mind helps everyone. This procedure will also help in the sophistication of the mind of the masses as it develops a basic sense of scientific and philsophical understanding, and grasp the concept of the free organism on earth with more similarities than differences [Organisms differing in communicative patterns and IQ, but still repeating the similar vital patterns daily with minor variations geographically]. Hence, the geographical location of an embryo’s fertilisation cannot seal its destiny if the right choices are made and the appropriate resources for development are provided. A biological organism has an almost limitless number of ways in which it can be rebuilt, modified and redefined [re-programmed] depending on the individual’s abilities and this leads to a scientifically and psychologically valid product – the mainstream people at large are still to embed and share this principle to open new perspectives to their own lives and in doing so allow themselves to grow psychologically and culturally]. After studying intellectual humility, psychologists have found that individuals with this personality trait have superior general knowledge (Krumrei-Mancuso, Haggard, LaBouff and Rowatt, 2019).

Psychology Intellectual Humility is related to more General Knowledge

Image: British Psychological Association (BPS)

Intellectual humility has consequences for learning and styles of thinking; the process of learning itself requires intellectual humility to acknowledge that one lacks a particular knowledge and hence has something to learn in order to continue evolving. In the same study in the Journal of Positive Psychology, Krumrei-Mancuso and her colleagues found that intellectual humility was associated with less claiming of knowledge that one does not have, indicating a more accurate assessment of one’s own knowledge. In the study, intellectual humility was also correlated with being more inclined to reflective thinking, and also possessing more “need for cognition” [i.e. enjoying thinking hard and problem solving], greater curiosity, and open-minded thinking. In the journal Self and Identity, the results from a study by Porter and Schumann (2017) suggest that intellectual humility can be increased in individuals through a growth mindset of intelligence; hence we could all benefit from intellectual humility in our lifetime development. The authors concluded that “teaching people a malleable view of intelligence may be one promising way to foster intellectual humility and its associated benefits.”

If you want to know more about the organic theory which is an ongoing project, please do a search of my name “dpurb” or “danny dpurb” and you will come across my website where more information can be found on the topic. The foundations of the Organic Theory have already been laid, but it is a lifetime project that will be refined and updated in a series of books in the coming decades along with other works that I intend to bring to the mainstream audience worldwide.

In the meantime, I recommend reading the academic essays:

(i) History on Western Philosophy, Religious cultures, Science, Medicine & Secularisation;

(ii) Psychological Explanations of Prejudice & Discrimination;

(iii) Moral Relativism: Aren’t we all entitled to an ugly opinion?;

(iv) Design, Selection & Stress in Occupational & Organisational Psychology;

(v) Causes of Aggressive Behaviour in Human Primates;

(vi) Origins of the Cognitive-Behavioural Model: Biological Constraints in Learning By Operant Conditioning ;

(vii) The World as Will and Idea;

(viii) Learning Disabilities, Anxiety, Depression & Schizophrenia and the Effectiveness of Psychotherapy;

(ix) Controversies that surround modern day mental health practice;

(x) The 3 Major Theories of Childhood Development;

(xi) Frontal Lobes, Impulsiveness in Children & Jean Piaget’s Theory;

(xii) How our Neurons work;

(xiii) Vision, Sound & Awareness;

(xiv) The Concept of Self, and

(xv) Psychoanalysis; History, Foundations, Legacy, Impact & Evolution.

These essays are the products of about 16 years of independent research, are referenced and constantly revised and updated; those who have chosen to work for and are employed by educational businesses such as universities should feel free to evaluate the number of doctoral theses the whole dpurb.com website constitutes, my modest opinion seems to point to about half a dozen or more perhaps?

One of the main objectives of organic theory is to highlight all the things we have been doing wrong since the beginning of time; how the lack of philosophical development and ego management will lead to the end of humanity: a species that cannot yet manage its own existence, having still not understood the fundamental laws of environmental evolution.

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QUESTION II.

[FR] – Le terme “race” que vous qualifiez de “composition organique” semble dénué de sens pour votre théorie mais comment vous classifiez-vous par rapport à la “composition organique” ?

[EN] – The term “race” which you qualify as “organic composition” seems meaningless to your theory but how do you classify yourself in regards to “organic composition”?

[FR] Réponse:

Je me classe comme un organisme avec les schémas de communication et de comportement hérités de la sphère franco-britannique.

Danny D'Purb XV Questions

Image: Danny D’Purb

La race scientifiquement parmi les êtres humains peut simplement être définie comme un type particulier de “composition organique”. Cela signifie que les gens de différentes parties du monde ont simplement des compositions organiques particulières qui correspondent à leur histoire évolutive. Cependant, du point de vue scientifique universel, tout organisme, quel que soit son type de composition organique, peut procréer avec un autre. Par conséquent, cette observation simple mais fondamentale suggère que si les lois de la nature qui régissent toutes les espèces vivantes sur cette planète avaient des plans différents pour les organismes présents sur cette planète, la procréation entre les membres d’une même espèce avec des compositions organiques différentes ne serait pas possible – ce qui n’est évidemment pas le cas du point de vue de l’évolution.

J’aimerais répondre à votre question sur la composition organique [ce que vous appelez la race] et ma propre classification. Il est fondamental de comprendre que je me suis assimilé à la société d’Europe occidentale qui est une société d’héritage indo-européen, les deux langues que je parle, le français et l’anglais étant également des langues indo-européennes, et parce que j’avais tous les éléments pour faire partie des sociétés française et anglaise pour être plus spécifique quand je parle de l’Europe de l’Ouest, j’ai toujours ressenti une attraction naturelle et un sentiment instinctif d’appartenance à ces sociétés avec les gens qui constituent sa majorité.

Comme c’est moi qui innove avec une théorie scientifique qui aborde la question de l’assimilation et qui a aussi commencé à ébranler les fondements de la psychologie, de la culture et de la perception, ce fut toujours une tâche immense de clarifier cette question de l’assimilation et de la composition organique, que beaucoup de sociétés ataviques appellent “race”, sans réaliser qu’aucune race sur terre n’est “pure” et que notre race humaine actuelle, les “Homo sapiens” sont le résultat de croisements et de l’évolution. J’aimerais aller droit au but pour répondre à votre question et expliquer aussi comment j’ai raisonné pour expliquer mon point sur la composition organique et ma propre classification.

Je suis une personne pleinement assimilée dans la société française et britannique. Et tout en ne cachant pas le fait que mon côté français est dominant, je ne peux pas cacher le fait que j’ai un côté britannique très fort, ayant vécu et côtoyé le peuple anglais en Angleterre pendant des années. Cependant, la France est une société plus avant-gardiste philosophiquement et a toujours permis à des individus talentueux de s’assimiler dans leur société tout au long de leur histoire (par exemple Napoléon qui était corse est devenu l’empereur du peuple français) et est aujourd’hui un pays composé d’un mélange de compositions organiques qui s’est parfaitement adapté aux Français, apportant au patrimoine génétique français leur originalité et leur gènes surdoués. En 2018, une méta-analyse d’association à l’échelle du génome chez 267, 867 individus a identifié 1,016 gènes liés à l’intelligence, qui est un trait hautement héréditaire et un déterminant majeur de la santé et du bien-être humain (Savage, Jansen, Stringer et al., 2018). Ainsi, d’après les découvertes scientifiques actuelles, il semble que la civilisation française ait toujours été en avance sur son temps et beaucoup plus sophistiquée que tout autre empire de sa ligue.

Les Enfants de France

Image: Des jeunes français

Quelle que soit la composition organique ou la nuance de couleur des individus en France, il existe un fort sentiment de préoccupation nationale et d’identité française ancré dans la grande majorité des Français qui sont fiers de leur société en évolution et qui veulent valoriser la France et sont amoureux de son patrimoine et de son peuple. En France, en effet, ce qui semble le plus important, c’est votre identité culturelle et votre loyauté envers la nation et vos sentiments français, votre vision et votre sentiment de connexion et d’amour pour les français de souche, plutôt que la pâleur de votre peau.

Étant quelqu’un qui a été élevé dans la littérature française, qui a lu la bible en français étant d’une mère chrétienne, qui a étudié la littérature française sous la direction d’un tuteur privé nommé Christian Rivalland, un grand maître et une figure paternelle pour moi qui nourrissait de nombreuses élites et personnalités politiques et qui me surnommait “Le Seigneur” [à cause de mes cheveux longs et de ma chemise blanche avec un bouclier de préfet royal doré] et qui me traitait comme son propre fils et m’enseignait Molière, Maupassant, Victor Hugo, Rousseau et la Révolution française dans sa propre maison, en étudiant aussi profondément la littérature shakespearienne et victorienne, il était clair que je me sentirais et me classerais comme une personne appartenant aux sociétés d’Europe occidentale de France et d’Angleterre – on m’appelait même affectueusement “Banane” à cause du ton de ma peau mais avec ce que beaucoup décrivaient aussi comme une forme de “blancheur” à l’intérieur, bien que j’aie toujours dit aux gens qu’il n’y a pas de “blancheur” car chaque pays a sa propre langue et sa propre façon de se comporter et est pour le plus incompatible en valeurs et en philosophie, avec de nombreux pays qui semblent presque sauvagement préhistoriques par rapport à l’empire français, donc être de la même couleur ne signifie certainement pas être du même niveau ou de la même finesse psychologique ou avoir les mêmes sentiments et perspectives sur la vie. J’ai aussi figuré en tant que chanteur principal d’un groupe alternatif indépendant et « underground » (j’ai toujours mis en doute ma flexibilité à le faire quand je portais de la littérature du début du siècle avec des paroles, heureusement le film « La Reine des Damnés » est sorti et m’a fait m’a fait sourire avec le personnage Seigneur Lestat de Lioncourt, qui transcendait les siècles des châteaux et manoirs vers une scène rock contemporaine).

Lestat de Lioncourt

Image: La Reine des Damnés (2002)

L’héritage intellectuel de l’Europe de l’Ouest s’est enraciné en moi tout au long des années où j’ai vécu à Londres et étudié en tant que chercheur profondément imprégné de la psychologie et de la philosophie des grands esprits de l’Europe de l’Ouest [par exemple Darwin, Lacan, Freud, Descartes, Rousseau, Lacan, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer & Kant] et toutes mes interactions professionnelles avec quelques-uns des meilleurs intellectuels du continent au fil des ans, tant personnellement que dans le média moderne que constitue Internet. Le français et l’anglais sont les deux seules langues dans lesquelles je parle et pense, et elles me permettent d’exister, en effet, je rêve même en français et en anglais avec tous les personnages qui sont de ces sphères, donc, je ne pourrais absolument rien faire sans ces langues.

Maintenant, si nous devions poser la simple question de savoir si le français et l’anglais sont des langues d’origine d’Europe de l’Ouest, la réponse serait simplement “oui”. Et comme je suis fait de ces langues, cela conclut que mes propres racines culturelles et psychologiques seraient européennes occidentales. Et comme l’Europe de l’Ouest est principalement composée de personnes de composition organique qui sont communément appelées “Blanches” par la majorité non-sophistiquée scientifiquement [ce qui est faux, puisque personne au monde n’est blanc, sauf les statues, les sculptures de marbre et les clowns dans le cirque qui se maquille], je me considère comme un dérivé de la civilisation de “L’Europe de l’Ouest”, et puisque la majorité des personnes de la classe intellectuelle sont “Blanches”, je me qualifie de “Blanc [Autre]”. Oui, pas les Blancs [britanniques], ou les Blancs [français], mais les Blanc [autres] pour indiquer que je ne suis pas le “Blanc” typique, mais un Blanc qui a subi quelques modifications dans l’histoire de l’expansion et de la conquête impériale de Europe occidentale, d’où la nuance d’olive.

ad lucem - into the light

dans la lumière / into the light

D’ailleurs, on ne m’interroge jamais à ce sujet sauf pour remplir des formulaires dans les pays de la sphère anglo-saxonne, alors je coche la case “Blanc [Autre]”. Simplement parce qu’il résume, clarifie, donne la description de quelqu’un qui reflète la langue, la culture, les valeurs et les perspectives de la civilisation française de l’Europe de l’Ouest principalement et la majorité des gens d’une telle civilisation sont caucasiens ou au moins plus clairs dans le teint, et cela ne servirait à rien et n’aurait certainement aucun sens sauf à créer une énorme confusion de me qualifier comme Marsien, Noire, asiatique, indien, hispanique, orientale, juif ou toute autre description empirique qui n’est pas affiliée au patrimoine de l’Europe de l’Ouest et qui ne s’en rapproche en aucune façon en donnant une forme de description de ma personne, de mon identité, de mon patrimoine et de mes capacités – les choses ont changé radicalement et le monde devrait savoir et changer aussi une fois qu’ils comprennent. En effet, ce n’est pas parce que le monde de la politique est à la traîne que je devrais faire de même. La théorie de l’évolution de Darwin révèle qu’il n’y a pas d’essence éternelle et qu’il n’existe aucune idée d’une entité exceptionnellement pure qui serait au-delà de l’évolution – tout est dans un état constant de flux[donc, d’un point de vue évolutionnaire et organique, la race est une absurdité totalement archaïque puisque nous sommes tous simplement de la matière organique sur une petite planète bleue dans le vaste univers, en train d’être recyclée, recrée et transformée en un procédé continu]. La philosophe Barbara Stiegler a sagement suggéré que la tâche de créer le consentement des masses devrait être laissée entre les mains d’experts en psychologie[c’est-à-dire ceux qui comprennent la structure psychique et les philosophies de la façon dont les humains et les sociétés fonctionnent, se développent et évoluent].

On ne m’interroge jamais sur la “race” ou, comme je préfère l’appeler d’un point de vue scientifique, sur la “composition organique” parce que dès que les gens me voient et m’entendent parler, ils arrivent instantanément à la conclusion que c’est un homme qui fait partie intégrante des sociétés française et britannique, et bien qu’il ait un teint d’olive, il parle et représente l’élite des sociétés française et britannique avec son accent et son dialecte cultivé dans les deux langues, et il ne pouvait représenter ou représenter aucun autre peuple que la majorité de ces sociétés, qui s’avèrent être des personnes d’origine indo-européenne et des langues indo-européennes et sont donc ce que la plupart ont tendance à appeler “Blanc” [qui comme je l’ai dit ne sont pas blancs mais vont du rose pâle au jaune rougeâtre] ou les personnes de la “race aryen”.

C’est pourquoi, sans surprise, j’ai répondu à votre question que je me considère comme un “produit” de la civilisation caucasienne de l’Europe de l’Ouest, pour être précis, “blanc” comme on le dit communément et mesquinement [le produit de civilisations où la majorité de la foule intellectuelle est caucasienne], bien sûr j’ai une nuance de peau d’olive, provenant d’un endroit géographique où le soleil est abondant et où un mélange organique sain a eu lieu tout au long de l’histoire de l’expansion impériale et de la conquête de l’Europe occidentale, et après tout, si nous regardons la zone géographique de l’Europe occidentale, nous pouvons observer que les tons de peau varient de très pâle à des teintes olive et jaune rougeâtre. Mais j’aimerais aussi vous donner plus de détails sur la façon dont j’en suis arrivé à cette conclusion et pourquoi je ne suis pas fou après tout, mais plutôt en train de vivre la réalité des quelques élites de la classe intellectuelle de ma génération au XXIe siècle.

Au début, j’ai dû éliminer des possibilités en me posant quelques questions :

La première question est : Suis-je un nègre ? Non
En second lieu, suis-je Indien ? Non, je ne parle pas hindi et je n’ai jamais mis les pieds en Inde.
Troisième, suis-je africain ? Il est clair que non, je n’ai jamais marché en Afrique continentale ou n’ai jamais eu de caractéristiques et de traits africains.
Quatrième être, suis-je asiatique ? Clairement non aussi, parce que je n’ai jamais marché sur le continent asiatique et que je n’ai pas non plus l’air, ni le son, ni la parole d’un Asiatique.
Cinquièmement, suis-je originaire d’un pays avec un héritage d’origine européenne ? Oui, tous les livres que j’ai lus, la musique que j’ai écoutée et les langues dans lesquelles j’ai vécu sont originaire de l’Europe de l’Ouest ! En effet, tous les hommes et les femmes qui m’ont fait ressentir toutes les émotions qui complètent un homme cultivé sont d’origine européenne, principalement de France, d’Angleterre et de quelques autres pays influencés par leur patrimoine linguistique.

Partir en Livre Bibliothèque nationale de France dpurb d'purb site web .jpg

Image: Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Alors, comment un homme qui a été fait par l’Europe de l’Ouest et son héritage ne pourrait-il pas ressentir un fort sentiment d’identification et de loyauté envers ces gens qui l’ont fait, et sans qui il ne serait même rien aujourd’hui ? Des gens qui l’ont fait rire, pleurer et évoluer à travers leur travail artistique ? Si vous pouviez trouver un Indien, un Pakistanais, un Asiatique de l’Est, un Africain, un Caucasien[Blanc] en dehors de l’Europe de l’Ouest, un cow-boy sauvage, ou l’héritier d’un vieux clown arriéré avec un handicap linguistique déguisé en chien brun foncé aboyant dans un cirque sur une île, qui connaît tous les albums de Francis Cabrel, qui ont lu la poésie de Stéphane Mallarmé, qui a chanté dans un groupe alternatif bilingue aux influences rock et classiques, qui a étudié Shakespeare, Dickens et parle anglais avec un accent d’Oxford et français comme l’héritier d’Honoré de Balzac, alors faites-moi savoir, je serais stupéfait.

BNF aventure écriture & livre d'purb dpurb site web

“Chaque civilisation se forge un mythe destiné à expliquer son apparition et construit sa tradition écrite autour d’un support privilégié” / Découvrez (Liens): (i) l’aventure des écritures et (ii) l’aventure du livre | Source: La Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF)

Il s’agit simplement de faire valoir avec fermeté l’argument simple mais fondamental que sur cette planète, les individus ne sont pas ce que la foule environnante croit qu’ils sont, mais ce qu’ils sont, deviennent ou sont devenus parce que cela résulte du chemin qu’ils ont choisi ou qui leur a été imposé, consciemment ou inconsciemment.

Je suis né dans un pays relativement petit et nouveau d’environ 1 million d’habitants, fondé par les Français et les Britanniques avant son indépendance, et après cela, il a gardé ses saveurs françaises et britanniques et je fais partie d’une nouvelle génération d’un nouveau petit pays républicain qui a dû définir sa propre identité par rapport à son héritage intellectuel. Et comme toutes les sociétés du monde, la petite île a aussi des classes différentes, des régions différentes et des gens différents avec des langues, des dialectes, des visions et des désirs différents. Ce que je veux dire, c’est que le lieu où je suis né suit aussi une structure similaire à celle de tous les pays modernes du monde, avec des paysans, des villages, des ruraux simples, des régions pauvres, des régions riches, des sauvages, des migrants, des ouvriers étrangers pour les usines[par exemple d’Afrique, du Bangladesh, de Chine, d’autres parties de l’Asie, etc], des gens laids, des gens bons, des gens mauvais, des gens beaux, des gens d’affaires, des touristes [provenant principalement des grandes économies européennes car ils en ont les moyens, qui sont constamment présents partout et qui ont toujours bénéficié d’un accueil chaleureux], des personnalités publiques, des classes dirigeantes, des classes intellectuelles, des villes et différents niveaux d’éducation que les parents peuvent offrir à leurs enfants.

J’ai eu beaucoup de chance, car grâce à mes propres efforts intellectuels, j’ai réussi à me hisser à la toute première place dans l’élite d’une minuscule minorité qui a choisi le meilleur établissement, le Collège royal de Port-Louis, qui est une école pour enfants doués et impitoyablement sélective. Et étant une minorité d’élite d’une petite population d’environ 1 million d’habitants, je suis entrée dans un segment encore plus restreint de ces élites assez courageuses qui ont osé suivre la voie littéraire comme Chateaubriand et Balzac [la majorité veut simplement être comptable, médecin, avocat, banquier, chef d’entreprise, et tous les emplois qui vous garantissent une maison avec une voiture pour impressionner la famille de votre future femme avec une route facile à un parti politique – qui est un groupe dépassé.] J’ai toujours eu des problèmes à cause de la taille de l’île et de la carrière littéraire et philosophique que j’avais envisagée en raison du nombre limité d’esprits [quelques dizaines d’individus solitaires environ] avec mes choix éducatifs et mon niveau de compétence linguistique en français et en anglais [étant une élite universitaire, cela s’étend globalement en fait], et je me suis donc installée sur le continent qui est la base de mon héritage, à savoir l’Europe de l’Ouest [France et Angleterre], avec l’intention de m’inscrire sur un terrain mieux adapté à celui que je voulais être et suis devenu ! Comme Napoléon après avoir décroché une bourse d’étude où le petit corse allait devenir plus français que les français après avoir beaucoup subi dans sa phase d’adaptation.

ad vitam aeternam - to eternal life

à la vie éternelle / to eternal life

Et étant d’origine indo-européenne, il était clair que j’avais toutes les chances de m’assimiler dans les sociétés d’Europe de l’Ouest, c’est-à-dire que la France et l’Angleterre qui sont aussi d’origine et de langues indo-européennes, même si mon nuance d’olive me donne une identité très personnelle et ajoute parfois à mon caractère unique. En tant que personne originaire d’un pays relativement petit et nouvellement créé, avec des liens culturels d’origine d’Europe occidentale, il était clair que les élites avaient besoin d’une voix intellectuelle du XXIe siècle pour dissiper toute confusion et remettre les pendules à l’heure pour guider une génération de la classe intellectuelle qui luttait parfois pour trouver un sentiment d’identité et d’appartenance. Je crois que cela dissipe beaucoup de confusion au sujet de la classification et c’était l’un de mes objectifs avec la théorie organique pour les individus perdus et doués ; après tout, beaucoup d’intellectuels avant moi ont aussi donné une voix à ceux qui se sont perdus à travers leurs arguments et découvertes incroyables tout au long de l’histoire de la civilisation, de grands hommes, des penseurs innovants tels que Charles Darwin, Jean-Baptiste de Lamarque, Sigmund Freud, Napoléon Bonaparte, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et Jacques Lacan. Je n’ai fait que marcher dans leurs pas pour poursuivre cette tradition intellectuelle et académique des penseurs d’Europe occidentale. Il est vital de comprendre que lorsque Charles Darwin a formulé sa théorie de l’évolution, il a changé la vie telle que nous la connaissions – c’est peut-être pour cela qu’il a bâti la réputation d’une rockstar de la science et de la biologie – car il a annulé cette erreur du concept stable et permanent, mais a révélé que tout continue à évoluer désormais. Par conséquent, il est d’une importance vitale et fondamentale pour tous les groupes[du monde entier] de considérer le processus continu et sans fin de l’évolution et de la sélection naturelle, un processus qui affecte tous les organismes de la planète Terre de la même manière et aussi l’évolution adaptative singulière de certains organismes supérieurs et génétiquement doués [Voir : (i) Psychologie : Le concept de soi, (ii) Comment fonctionnent nos neurones, (iii) Les lobes temporels : Vision, son et conscience, et (iv) Les trois grandes théories du développement de l’enfant].

Danny D'Purb Repond Sur Sa Vie

Image: Danny D’Purb

Nous devons comprendre l’identité d’une société en termes d’authenticité linguistique, culturelle (surtout les modèles comportementaux et perceptifs) et génétique, mais aussi considérer et suivre le cours progressif de l’évolution en tant qu’êtres modernes et sophistiqués pour inclure les organismes évolués qui s’assimilent, améliorent, stabilisent et renforcent le groupe avec des gènes supérieurs ou doués qui montrent aussi de l’intérêt, un sens d’appartenance, de la fierté, de l’interaction, une certaine parole et une identification à la culture et la nation. Tous les humains sont semblables oui, mais pas égaux… semblables physiologiquement[sang, os, organes, etc] mais pas égaux en tout cas[culture, philosophie, langue(s), QI, génétique, forme physique / santé, intelligence, vocabulaire, sensibilité, compétences, etc].

Après tout, il s’agit d’une question concernant mon identité au XXIe siècle en tant qu’homme faisant partie de la nouvelle génération qui a hérité des technologies d’apprentissage accéléré et qui ne peut parler que pour lui-même et ce en quoi il croit, comment il se sent et comment il voit sa propre histoire intellectuelle que beaucoup n’ont jamais osé analyser dans une perspective systématique et complexe du XXIe siècle, l’évolution psychologique qui a lieu par transmission culturelle, le progrès individuel et l’éducation transmise, mais sont au contraire perdus et confus à leur sujet sans comprendre plus largement le monde et ses divers sphères ; sans aucune direction pour améliorer leur vie et profiter au maximum des opportunités de faire partie de quelque chose de plus grand, comme l’empire français par exemple.

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[EN] Answer to Question II. “The term “race” which you qualify as “organic composition” seems meaningless to your theory but how do you classify yourself in regards to “organic composition”?”

I classify myself as an organism with the communicative and behavioural patterns inherited from the Franco-British sphere. Race scientifically among human beings can simply be defined as a particular type of “organic composition”. This means that people from different parts of the world simply have particular organic compositions in line with their evolutionary history. However, from the universal scientific view, any organism of whatsoever type of organic composition can procreate with another. Hence, this simple but fundamental observation suggests that if the laws of nature that govern all living species on this planet had different plans for organisms present on this planet, procreation between members of the same species with different organic compositions would not be possible – yet this is clearly not the case from an evolutionary perspective.

I would like to respond to your question about organic composition [what you call race] and my own classification. It is fundamental to understand that I assimilated into the Western European society which is a society of indo-european heritage, with both languages that I speak, i.e. French and English also being indo-european languages, and because I had all the elements to be part of the French and English societies to be more specific when talking about Western Europe, I always felt a natural attraction and an instinctive sense of belonging to these societies along with the people that constitutes its majority.

Since, I am the one to innovate with a scientific theory that would tackle the issue of assimilation and one that has also started to shake the foundations of psychology, culture and perception, it was always going to be an immense task to clarify this issue about assimilation and organic composition, what many atavistic societies call “race”, still not realising that there is no race on earth that is “pure” and that our current breed of human beings, being the “Homo-sapiens” are the result of interbreeding and evolution. I would like to get straight to the point to answer your question and also explain how I reasoned to explain my point on organic composition and my own classification.

I am a person who fully assimilated in both French and British society. And while not hiding the fact that my French side is dominant, I cannot also hide the fact that I have a very strong British side, having lived and mixed with the English people in England for years. However, French being a more avant-garde society always allowed talented individuals to assimilate in their society throughout their early history [e.g. Napoléon who was Corsican became the emperor of the French people] and is a country today composed of a blend of organic compositions who mixed and adapted perfectly with the native people of France, bringing in their individuality and gifted genes to the French gene pool. In 2018, a genome-wide association meta-analysis in 267, 867 individuals identified 1,016 genes linked to intelligence, which is a highly heritable trait and a major determinant of human health and well-being (Savage, Jansen, Stringer et al., 2018). Hence, going by today’s scientific findings, it seems that the French civilisation is one that was always ahead of its time and far more sophisticated that any other empire of its league. Whatever the organic composition or colour shade of individuals in France, there is a strong sense of national concern and French identity embedded in the vast majority of French people who are proud of their evolving society and who want to enhance France and are in love with its heritage and people. In France, indeed, what seems to matter the most is your cultural identity and your loyalty to the nation and your French sentiments, outlook and sense of connection and love for the native people, rather than the paleness of your skin.

All Men of Genius - Napoleon site web dpurb.jpg

Being someone, who was brought up on French literature, who read the bible in French being from a Christian mother, who studied French literature under a private tutor named Christian Rivalland, a great master and a father figure for me who spoon fed many elites and political figures and who also nicknamed me “Le Seigneur” [meaning The Lord – because of my long hair and white shirt with a golden Royal Prefect shield] and who treated me as his own son and taught me Molière, Maupassant, Victor Hugo, Rousseau and the French Revolution in his own home, while also studying Shakespearean and Victorian literature to its depth, it was clear that I would feel and classify myself as a person belonging to the Western European societies of France and England – I was even affectionately called “Banana” due to the tone of my skin but with the what many also described as a form of “whiteness” within, although I always told people that there is no such thing as “whiteness” as each country have their own language and ways of behaving and are for the most incompatible in values and philosophy, with many countries seeming nearly savagely prehistoric when compared with the French empire, so being of the same colour certainly does not mean being of the same league or of the same psychological finesse or with the same sentiments and outlook on life. On the side I also was performing as the lead singer of an independent and underground alternative band [I always questioned my flexibility in doing this when carrying early century literature with lyrics, luckily the movie Queen of the Damned came out and made me feel better with the character Seigneur Lestat de Lioncourt, who transcended the centuries from castles and manors to a contemporary rock stage].

The Western European intellectual heritage was further embedded in me through the years of living in London and studying as a scholar deeply drenched in the psychology and philosophy of the great minds of the Western European region [e.g. Darwin, Lacan, Freud, Descartes, Rousseau, Lacan, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer & Kant] with all my professional interactions being with some of the finest intellectuals of the continent over the years, both personally and through the now modern medium that is the internet. French and English are the only two languages I speak and think in, and they allow me to exist, indeed, I even dream in French and English with all the characters being from those realms, hence, I would not be able to do absolutely anything without these languages.

Now if we were to ask the simple question of whether French and English are languages of Western European roots, then they answer would simply be “yes”. And since I am made of these languages, this concludes my own cultural and psychological roots would be Western European. And since Western Europe is mostly composed of people of organic composition who are commonly referred to by the unsophisticated majority as “White” [which is untrue, since no one in the world is white, except statues, marble sculptures and clowns in the circus who wear makeup], I see myself as a derivative of the “Western European” civilisation, and since the majority of people from the intellectual classes are “Caucasian” hence I classify myself as “White [Other]”. Yes, not White British, or White French, but “White [Other]” to indicate that I am not the typical “White” but one that has had some modification through the history of Western European Imperial expansion and conquest, hence the olive tone.

Besides, I am never asked about this except when filling forms in countries of the Anglo sphere, so I tick the “White [Other]” box. Simply because it summarises, clarifies, gives the description of someone who reflects the language, culture, values and outlook of the Western European civilisation of France mainly and the majority of people from such a civilisation are Caucasian or at least lighter in complexion, and it would not serve any purpose and certainly would not make any sense except create tremendous confusion to classify myself as Marsian, Black, Asian, Indian, Hispanic, Oriental, Jewish or any other empirical description that is not affiliated with the Western European heritage and does not in any way come even close giving a form of description of my person, identity, heritage and abilities – things have changed drastically and the world should know and change too once they do. Indeed, it is not because the world of policy is lagging behind that I should too. Darwin’s theory of evolution revealed, there is no eternal essence, and any idea of an exceptionally pure entity that would be beyond evolution does not exist – everything is in a constant state of flux [so from an evolutionary and organic standpoint, race is a totally archaic absurdity since we are all simply organic matter on a small blue planet in the vast universe being recycled, recreated and reshaped in a continuous process]. The philosopher Barbara Stiegler wisely suggested that the task of creating the consent of the masses should be left in the hands of experts in psychology [i.e. those who understand the psychic structure and philosophies of how humans and societies operate, develop and evolve].

I never get asked about “race” or as I prefer to call it from a scientific perspective, “Organic Composition” because the moment people see and hear me speak they instantly come to the conclusion that this is a man who is fully part of French and British societies, and while he may have a slight olive tone, he speaks for and represents the elite of both French and British society with his cultivated dialect and accent in both languages, and he could not possibly stand for or represent any other people but the majority of those societies, which turn out to be people of Indo-European heritage and Indo-European languages and hence are what most tend to call “White” [that as I said are not white but range from shades of pale pink to reddish-yellow] or the people of the “Aryan Race”.

Hence, your question answered, unsurprisingly, I see myself as a “product” of the Caucasian Western European civilisation to be precise, “White” as it is commonly and pettily said [the product of civilisations where the majority of the intellectual crowd are Caucasian], of course I have an olive tone, being from a geographical location where the sun is abundant and where some healthy organic blending has taken place through the history of Western European imperial expansion and conquest, and after all, if we look at the Western European geographic area we may observe that skin tones vary from very pale to hues of olive and reddish-yellow. But I would also like to give you some more details of how I also proceeded to come to this conclusion and why I am not insane after all, but rather living the reality of the few elites of the intellectual class of my generation in the 21st century.

At first I had to eliminate possibilities by asking myself a couple of questions:

First question being, am I a negro? No
Second being, am I Indian? No, I do not speak hindi or have ever stepped foot in India.
Third being, am I African? Clearly No, I have never stepped in mainland Africa or have any African features and traits.
Fourth being, am I Asian? Clearly no also, because I have never stepped in the Asian continent and also do not also look, sound or speak like an Asian either.
Fifth being, am I from a country with European intellectual heritage? Yes, all the books I read, music I listened to and languages I lived in are of Western European heritage! Indeed, all the men and women who made me feel all the emotions, that complete a cultured man are of European heritage, mostly from France, England and a few other countries influenced by their linguistic heritage.

So how could a man who was made by Western Europe and its heritage, not feel a strong sense of identification and loyalty to these people who made him, and without whom he would not even be anything today? People who made him laugh, cry and evolve through their art work? If you could find an Indian, a Pakistani, an Eastern Asian, an African, a Caucasian [White] outside of Western Europe, a savage cowboy, or the heir to an old backward clown with a linguistic disability disguised as a dark brown dog barking in a circus on an island, who knows all the albums of Francis Cabrel, who read the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé, who sang in a bilingual alternative band with rock and classical influences, who studied Shakespeare, Dickens and speaks English with an accent from Oxford and French like the heir of Honoré de Balzac, then please let me know, I would be amazed. This is simply to adamantly make the simple but fundamental argument that on this planet, individuals are not what the surrounding crowd believes them to be, but are what they are, are becoming or have become because it results from the path they chose or that was imposed on them – consciously or unconsciously.

I was born in a relatively tiny and new country of about 1 million in population founded by the French and the British before its independence, and after that it still kept its French and British flavours and I am part of a new generation of a tiny new republican country who had to define his own identity in relation to his intellectual inheritance. And as all societies in the world, the small island too has different classes, different regions and different people with different languages, dialects, visions and desires. What I mean is that the location where I was born also follows a similar structure to all modern countries in the world, with peasants, villages, simple rural people, poor regions, rich regions, savages, migrants, foreign labour for factories [e.g. from Africa, Bangladesh, China, other parts of Asia, etc], ugly people, good people, bad people, beautiful people, business people, tourists [mainly from the major economies of Europe since they can afford to, who are constantly present everywhere and have always enjoyed a warm welcome], public figures, leading classes, intellectual classes, cities and different levels of education that parents are able to afford for their children.

I turned out to be quite lucky, because through my own intellectual efforts, I managed to rise to the very cream of the crop into the elite segment of a tiny minority who took the route of literary studies at the best institution, the Royal College of Port-Louis which is an unforgiving and highly selective elite oriented school for gifted children. And being an elite minority of a small population of about 1 million, I went into an even tinier segment of those elites courageous enough who dared to follow the literary road like Chateaubriand and Balzac [the majority just want to be accountants, doctors, lawyers, bankers, business owners, and all the jobs that land you in a house with a car safely to impress your future in laws with an easy route to joining the obsolete group that is a political party]. I always had problems existing because of the size of the island along with the literary and philosophical career I had envisioned due to the limited amount of minds [about a few dozens of solitary individuals] with my educational choices and level of linguistic proficiency in French and English [being an academic elite, this extends globally in fact], and hence moved to the continent that is the root of the inheritance I am made of, which is Western Europe [France and England], with the intention of being part of a terrain more suited to the person that I wanted to be and today, have become! Quite similar to Napoleon who after having obtained a scholarship to an elite academy in France, the little Corsican would later grown to become more French than the French themselves after having suffered a lot in his early adaptation phase to the culture and people.

And being of Indo-European heritage it was clear that I had all the chances of assimilating in the societies of Western Europe, i.e. France and England being also of Indo-European heritage and languages, although my olive tone does give me a very individual identity and sometimes adds to my unique character. As a person from a relatively tiny and newly created country that is of Western European heritage, it was clear that the elites needed an intellectual voice of the 21st century to clear out all the confusion and set the record straight to guide a generation of the intellectual class sometimes struggling to find a sense of identity and belonging. I believe this clears out a lot of confusion about classification and this was one of my purposes with the organic theory for lost and gifted individuals; after all many intellectuals before me also gave a voice to those who were lost through their amazing arguments and discoveries throughout the history of civilisation, great men, innovating thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Jean-Baptiste de Lamarque, Sigmund Freud, Napoléon Bonaparte, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Jacques Lacan. I only walked in their steps to pursue this intellectual and academic tradition of Western European thinkers. It is vital to understand that when Charles Darwin formulated his theory of evolution he changed life forever as we knew it – perhaps this is why he built the reputation of a rockstar of science and biology – because he cancelled this once believed fallacy of the stable and permanent concept, but revealed that everything continues to evolve from here on. Hence, it is of vital and fundamental importance for all groups [around the world] to consider the never-ending and ongoing process of evolution and natural selection, a process that affects all organisms on planet Earth similarly and also the singular adaptive evolution of some superior and genetically gifted organisms [See: (i) Psychology: The Concept of Self, (ii) How our Neurons work, (iii) The Temporal Lobes: Vision, Sound & Awareness and (iv) The 3 Major Theories of Childhood Development]

We need to understand the identity of a society in terms of linguistic, cultural [mostly behavioural and perceptive patterns], and genetic authenticity but also consider and follow the progressive course of evolution as modern and sophisticated beings to include evolved organisms that assimilate, enhance, stabilise, and strengthen the group with superior or gifted genes that also care about, have a sense of belonging, take pride, interact, speak for and identify with the culture and nation. All humans are similar yes, but not equal … similar physiologically [blood, bone, organs, etc] but not equal in any case [culture, philosophy, language(s), IQ, genetics, fitness/health, intelligence, vocabulary, sensibility, skills, etc].

After all this is a question about my identity in the 21st century as a man who is part of the new generation who inherited accelerated learning technologies and who can only speak for himself and what he believes in, how he feels and how he sees in regards to his own intellectual history that many have never dared to analyse from a systematic and sophisticated perspective by embracing the 21st century and the psychological evolution that took place through cultural transmission, individual progress and education, but are instead lost and confused about themselves without a wider understanding of the world and its different realms; without any direction to make their lives better and make the most of the opportunities to become part of something bigger, such as the French empire for example.

 

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Franco-Britannique

QUESTION III.

[FR] – Qu’est-ce que cela signifie pour vous d’être franco-britannique ?

[EN] – What does it mean to you to be Franco-British?

[FR] Réponse:

Eh bien, cela signifie être français dans la pensée, les sentiments, la philosophie, les valeurs, l’art et la vision, mais aussi avec un côté britannique fort qui se reflète dans l’anglais parlé et écrit. Être franco-britannique pour moi, c’est pouvoir naviguer dans les deux environnements avec la facilité d’un natif au niveau d’une élite et se sentir à l’aise dans les deux sphères tout en étant capable de voir le monde du point de vue des deux peuples et de parler pour les deux peuples dans les questions liées à la gestion de la société.

La philosophie française enseigne à l’individu à repousser ses limites, tandis que la sphère anglaise semble inculquer la notion de connaître ses propres limites, évidemment le royaume anglais est moins progressiste et décourage l’individu dans des efforts créatifs et favorise plutôt une vie mondaine et captive sans aucune faim pour le type d’innovation qui englobe la grandeur du cerveau humain.

Franco étant devant les Britanniques signifie que le Français est l’identité dominante, et sans manquer de respect au sphère anglaise, il serait impossible pour n’importe quel individu avec mes capacités intellectuelles de prendre la décision de renoncer complètement à leur côté français pour être entièrement anglais, car cela signifierait simplement gâcher la chance de faire partie de la civilisation la plus sophistiquée sur terre avec un amour absolu et un respect admirable des droits des individus dans la société.

UneNation

Traduction(EN): « A great aggregation of men sane in mind & warm in the heart, creates a moral conscience that is known as a nation » – Ernest Renan / Source: Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Enfin, être franco-britannique signifie pour moi diffuser progressivement les valeurs françaises et la “joie de vivre” à la société britannique et à la sphère anglo-saxonne afin de changer cette réputation stéréotypée de “rocher froid irréceptif et irréactif” et motiver les gens de tous horizons à croire aux philosophies de l’épanouissement personnel et de l’évolution individuelle, ainsi qu’à une bonne conscience héroïque axée sur la morale, la dignité, le sens des responsabilités, la solidarité civique, la fraternité et la loyauté où les individus se poussent et se motivent mutuellement pour avancer, en considérant le succès comme un bien commun, dans le grand sens d’une société harmonieuse et en phase avec la grandeur de l’être, en harmonie, qui est mieux en accord avec les principes et perspectives françaises. Ce qui est surprenant et malheureux, c’est que cette réputation stéréotypée typique de « l’Anglais misérable, négatif, déprimant et ennuyeux » semble être justifiée par les récents rapports de l’OCDE qui ont placé la Grande-Bretagne parmi les pays les plus déprimés d’Europe occidentale, avec les problèmes de santé mentale coûtant environ 94 milliards de livres par an. Quant à l’autre grand continent de l’anglosphère, les États-Unis, ils sont en tête de liste pour les taux de troubles anxieux et de dépression.

Documentaire: Le Week-end de Benoit Chaumont chez les accros du jeu au Royaume-Uni

Ainsi, en tant qu’intellectuel plongé dans le monde de la psychologie, cette mission de changer le psychisme de l’anglosphère et du reste du monde apparaît comme un effort justifié et noble pour aider progressivement l’évolution du psychisme typique “d’artisan” vers un psychisme “artistique, dynamique, créatif et humain”. Bien sûr, c’est aussi motiver les gens de la sphère anglo-saxonne et le reste du monde à apprendre la langue française, car avec la langue vient la magie de l’âme, les sentiments, la perspective, l’art, la sophistication, la créativité et le courage inhérents au patrimoine alors qu’ils apprennent à naviguer dans le bleu profond de la sphère française en apprenant à se dépasser et à se perfectionner psychologiquement pour modifier leur perception de manière progressive tout en respectant les droits des autres à croître.

Impossible n'est pas français - Napoleon

Traduction (EN): “Impossible is not French” – Napoleon

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[EN] Answer to Question III. “What does it mean to you to be Franco-British?”

Well, it means to be French in thought, sentiments, philosophy, values, artistry and vision, but with also a strong British side that is reflected in spoken and written English. To be Franco-British to me means to be able to navigate both environments with the ease of a native at the level of an elite and to feel at home in both realms along with the ability to see the world from the perspective of both people and speak for both people in matters connected to the management of society.

The French philosophy teaches the individual to push the limits, while the English realm seems to inculcate the notion of knowing one’s own limits, to me the latter is less progressive and discourages the individual into creative endeavours and instead promotes a mundane and captive life without any hunger for the type of innovation that embraces the greatness of the human brain.

Franco being before British means that the French is the dominant identity, and without being disrespectful to the English realm, it would be impossible for any individual with my intellectual abilities to take the decision to completely give up their French side to be fully English, because it would simply mean throwing away the chance to be part of the most sophisticated civilisation on earth with an absolute love and respect for the rights of the individual in society.

French Escape Room Activity For UK Schools

Finally, for me, being Franco-British means gradually spreading French values and “joie de vivre” to British society and the Anglo-Saxon sphere in order to change this stereotyped reputation of “unreceptive and unreactive cold rock” and motivate people from all walks of life to believe in the philosophies of personal development and individual evolution, as well as in a heroic conscience based on morals, dignity, a sense of responsibility, civic solidarity, fraternity and loyalty where individuals push and motivate each other to move forward, considering success as a common good, in the great sense of a harmonious society and in phase with the greatness of humankind, in harmony, which is more in line with French principles and perspectives. What is surprising and unfortunate is that this typical stereotyped reputation of the “Miserable, negative, depressing and boring Englishman” seems to be justified with recent OECD reports that have placed Britain among the most depressed countries of Western Europe, with mental health problems costing about 94 billions pound a year. As for the other major continent of the anglosphere, the US, they are topping the charts for rates of anxiety disorders and depression.

Prevalence of Common Mental Health Problems since 1993 in the UK

Mental health statistics for England: prevalence, services and funding / Source: www.parliament.uk

So, as an intellectual drenched in the world of psychology, this mission of changing the psyche of the anglosphere and the rest of the world seems like a justified and noble endeavour to gradually help the evolution of the typical “artisan” psyche into an “artistic, dynamic, creative and human” one. Of course, it also means motivating people in the Anglo-sphere and the rest of the world to learn the French language, because with language comes the magic of the soul, the sentiments, the perspective, the artistry, the sophistication, the creativity and the courage inherent to the heritage as they learn to navigate in the deep blue of the French sphere by learning to surpass themselves and to perfect themselves psychologically and modify their perception in a progressive way while respecting the rights of others to grow.

L’histoire de France commence avec la langue française - Jules Michelet - danny d'purb dpurb site web

Traduction(EN): “The history of France begins with the French language. Language is the principal sign of a nationality. ” – Jules Michelet

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QUESTION IV.

[FR] – Quelle est la meilleure langue entre le français et l’anglais selon vous ?

[EN] – Which one is the best language between French and English according to you?

[FR] Réponse:

C’est une question délicate car le terme “meilleur” est ici assez vague. Ainsi, j’aurai tendance à penser qu’un langage de première classe devrait être clair, précis, pratique, agréable à l’oreille, et les yeux, bien structurés avec la prononciation reflétée dans la structure grammaticale pour empêcher les gens de mal prononcer les mots et aussi tenir une quantité de profondeur qui se reflète lors de l’expression des pensées du penseur de haut niveau, et qui a une valeur artistique qui lui permet de se sentir plein d’émotions lorsque parlé comme langue humaine à travers son timbre et son ton.

La langue anglaise, bien que pratique en raison de son usage répandu, manque de synchronisation entre sa structure grammaticale et la façon dont les mots sont prononcés, ce qui fait que même les anglophones de langue maternelle expérimentés peuvent mal prononcer de nombreux mots, ce qui, dans de rares cas, peut même conduire à considérer les gens comme dyslexiques phonologiques. Pour moi, cela rend la langue anglaise inférieure à la langue française puisque la dernière a un plus grand nombre de “signes accentués” qui indiquent précisément au lecteur comment prononcer les mots. En effet, dans la langue française, la majorité des mots se prononce exactement comme ils sont écrits une fois que l’on apprend les terminaisons des temps verbaux et quelques règles grammaticales.

L’autre facteur, lorsqu’on compare les deux langues les plus répandues dans le monde civilisé, est le fait que la langue anglaise a une variété d’accents provenant des différentes régions où elle est parlée [par exemple Scouse, Geordie, Cockney, Scottish, Irish, etc] et est souvent étouffée dans les vidéos et peut souvent conduire à des malentendus ou exiger de l’auditeur de répéter des segments pour bien comprendre, ce qui est un désavantage de la langue anglaise. Ce n’est guère le cas avec le français, car même dans les différents accents dans lesquels la langue peut être parlée, ils conduisent toujours à un son plus clair en raison de la structure grammaticale et des règles de la langue et donc une audition plus claire et donc une compréhension plus rapide en comparaison de l’anglais.

La langue anglaise a aussi une histoire fondée sur l’empirisme et semble simplement remplir la tâche de communiquer des instructions et des textes scientifiques, mais elle manque de l’émotivité des œuvres d’art [par exemple le romantisme] et des arguments philosophiques [par exemple I think, therefore I am !] par rapport à la langue française. Notez que je n’ai pas dit qu’il ne peut pas être utilisé dans les œuvres d’art, mais seulement qu’il est moins intense que la langue française. L’anglais me semble diminuer l’intensité des arguments philosophiques et des conversations humaines étant une langue assez plate dans sa forme écrite et orale. Cela peut aussi s’expliquer par le fait que l’anglosphère est issue d’une majorité de sociétés où les valeurs de l’humanité, de la fraternité et de l’individu ne sont pas au cœur de la civilisation comme en France, mais plutôt de sociétés industrialisées et mécaniques qui ne peuvent offrir la liberté que comme une forme d’individualité extrême à la limite de l’égoïsme basée sur une formule du type ” chacun pour soi ” dans un jeu sauvage de survie et de préservation à tout prix. C’est bien sûr le principal courant de pensée, parce que nous avons une minorité d’individus incroyables de la sphère anglaise qui se distinguent par leur propre investissement dans la cultivation de leurs personnalités uniques et captivantes et qui n’agissent pas et ne pensent pas comme la majorité commune et on peut le constater par leur comportement, leurs sentiments et leurs œuvres artistiques. De plus, les racines de la langue anglaise sont toujours liées au système monarchique désuet qui semble rendre la société obsédée par les histoires médiévales de capes et d’épées : un système qui semble inculquer à l’individu le sens de connaître les limites de ses droits et une obéissance incontestable ; alors que la langue française est enracinée dans les valeurs de la révolution qui inculque le sens du questionnement et aussi de repousser ses propres limites pour libérer en soi l’Empereur/le Roi/le Maître”, avec la légende de Napoléon comme preuve – la philosophie et les valeurs des deux langues semblent opposées entre elles.

Ainsi, pour moi, étant quelqu’un qui a reçu une bourse et étudié la littérature, la linguistique, la psychologie et la philosophie tout en ayant écrit pendant longtemps et qui a été plongé profondément dans le domaine culturel de l’anglais et du français, l’anglais semble être une langue de communication, alors que le français est une langue qui peut absolument tout faire comme l’anglais, mais qui permet aussi à l’individu non seulement de communiquer, mais aussi de “s’exprimer” [leur profondeur, leurs pensées, leurs émotions] d’une manière que la langue anglaise ne parvient pas à saisir à une telle intensité en raison de son histoire et de sa structure fondatrices qui ne sont pas aussi axées sur le timbre, la philosophie, les arts et l’expression des sentiments que l’est la langue française.

Ainsi, puisque la langue française peut faire tout ce que l’anglais peut faire dans le monde formel, comme les instructions, les écrits scientifiques et la simple communication, mais qu’elle peut aussi aller plus loin pour toucher plus profondément l’être « humain » par sa subtilité dans le timbre et le son qui s’inscrivent dans une histoire de grands poètes, philosophes et penseurs qui se sont imposés dans la pierre, je dois dire que le français est meilleur que l’anglais. Bien qu’il soit important de noter que ces deux langues sont très proches l’une de l’autre dans leur structure puisque beaucoup de mots sont épelés de façon similaire dans les deux langues avec des changements mineurs d’une langue à l’autre [par exemple Psychologie/Littérature est français pour psychology/literature (anglais)]. Comme les deux langues sont d’origine indo-européenne, il est plus facile pour les anglophones d’évoluer et de passer au français que la plupart des autres langues – du moins sous forme écrite puisque le français oral exige de la pratique et du dévouement à la maîtrise ; tandis qu’une “âme” est une autre histoire impliquant une vision métaphorique, des capacités de synthèse, des valeurs, une vision et une profondeur de pensée… et bien sûr la personnalité, les émotions et la sensibilité.

Les personnes qui entendent partager leur sagesse et contribuer au développement du monde auraient un avantage d’adopter et de maîtriser un mode de communication (c’est-à-dire une langue) jugé supérieur par le fait qu’il est accompagné de valeurs humaines modernes et qu’il est tissé dans le tissu d’un patrimoine intellectuel, psychosocial, philosophique et artistique plus raffiné et sophistiqué [par exemple le français, qui est la deuxième langue la plus désirée et la plus parlée au Royaume-Uni et en Allemagne] puisqu’il serait compris par un public plus large du monde civilisé, où se produit la principale évolution/révolution intellectuelle et culturelle.

Je voudrais également faire remarquer à la majorité des anglophones et des compatriotes anglais qui connaissent à peine leur propre évolution culturelle qu’il y a du français sur l’emblème de la monarchie britannique.

Les mots “Dieu et mon droit” sont la devise depuis l’époque d’Henri V (1413 – 1422), et depuis cette époque, le vieil anglais n’est plus la langue de l’élite anglaise, ce qui a entraîné l’utilisation de mots et d’expressions d’origine française et normande qui sont maintenant largement utilisés dans la langue anglaise.

Le français a également été identifié comme une langue importante pour l’avenir du Royaume-Uni. Dans un article publié par le British Council en 2014, le professeur Michael Kelly, qui dirige le département des langues modernes à l’université de Southampton, a décrit le “je ne sais quoi” dans l’apprentissage de la langue française ; les Britanniques considèrent le français comme la langue de l’amour, comme il l’a souligné, et la langue française a une romance à l’oreille de l’anglophone. C’est la culture française qui a suscité l’enthousiasme de Kelly, qui a avoué avoir été “renversé par la profondeur des sentiments” et avoir encore des frissons en découvrant les œuvres de Charles Baudelaire. “L’invitation au voyage” l’a fait voyager dans un pays où “tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté, luxe, calme et volupté” [cité du poème de Baudelaire]. Le professeur Kelly a fait valoir que, pour lui, cela résume la France sous son meilleur jour. Il écrit que lorsque les mots sont dits en français, ils évoquent un monde au-delà de leurs équivalents anglais ordinaires ; ce qui caractérise le français comme une langue romantique pour les Britanniques, c’est qu’elle peut être presque mais pas complètement comprise. Puisqu’elle n’est pas utilisée tout le temps, les Anglais n’ont pas la surcharge de significations quotidiennes qui peuvent faire disparaître la magie pour certains francophones natifs, et selon Kelly, c’est peut-être la raison pour laquelle les Britanniques considèrent le français comme la “langue de l’amour”.

Le français a laissé une impression durable sur la langue anglaise et, comme la plupart des autres pays, les Français parlent, écrivent et chantent sur l’amour. Cependant, les Britanniques, souligne Kelly, soupçonnent les Français de mieux s’exprimer sur l’amour, contrairement aux Anglais plus “coincés”, qui pataugent comme Hugh Grant dans “Quatre mariages et un enterrement”. La différence, fait remarquer M. Kelly, tient à la culture, et pas seulement à la langue. La culture est un facteur essentiel, et une partie du romantisme de la langue française pour les Britanniques est liée au fait qu’elle était la langue de l’aristocratie anglaise au Moyen Âge : les Normands et les Plantagenêts ont régné sur l’Angleterre pendant 300 ans et sont toujours très présents dans l’imaginaire britannique. Dans une courte vidéo réalisée en 2022 pour History Hit, l’historienne britannique Suzannah Lipscomb a confirmé que l’aristocratie anglaise appréciait la langue française, Thomas Boleyn (le meilleur francophone de la cour Tudor) souhaitant que sa fille, l’emblématique Anne Boleyn, maîtrise la langue française. Il faut également noter que la langue française jouit d’un incroyable prestige international puisqu’elle était la langue de culture des élites européennes et aussi la langue de la diplomatie internationale jusqu’à la Première Guerre mondiale. Les négociations de l’armistice de 1918 se sont déroulées en français, avec des interprètes du français vers l’allemand, mais les généraux français et les amiraux britanniques se parlaient en français.

Le français a laissé son empreinte sur la langue anglaise. Depuis le XVIe siècle, les Français sont fiers de la précision et de la clarté de la langue, incarnées dans les œuvres de grands esprits tels que René Descartes et Voltaire. Ces facteurs ont attiré l’écrivain irlandais Samuel Beckett, qui s’est mis à écrire en français, car en utilisant la langue anglaise, il finissait par en dire plus que ce qu’il voulait. Le professeur Kelly observe que le français dispose également d’un large éventail de ressources pour transmettre des nuances subtiles. Par exemple, nous avons l’utilisation délicate du “tu” familier et du “vous” formel pour s’adresser à une autre personne en disant “you” [la seule option en anglais], ce qui permet d’indiquer clairement le degré de familiarité [proximité] que l’on pense avoir [ou avoir développé] avec la personne, ou le statut que l’on pense que la personne a par rapport à nous, ou à la situation sociale spécifique et au contexte de l’interaction (par exemple, dans les affaires formelles/professionnelles ou dans les interactions sociales détendues/personnelles). Pour les anglophones s’intéressant à la langue et la culture française, il serait utile de savoir que l’utilisation du “tu” pour s’adresser à une personne est connue comme l’acte de tutoyer (le tutoiement) et l’utilisation du terme “vous” comme l’acte de vouvoyer (le vouvoiement). Il est généralement poli dans le monde Francophone de demander à une personne qu’on pense être devenue proche : « Permettez-vous qu’on se tutoie? » ou « Ça vous dérangerait si on se tutoyait ? »

Le professeur Kelly a fait remarquer que “Ce qui n’est pas clair n’est pas français”, cette expression inventée par l’écrivain du XVIIIe siècle Antoine Rivarol est devenue une expression favorite dans les écoles françaises : “si ce n’est pas clair, ce n’est pas français”, même si “cela peut être de l’anglais, de l’italien, du grec ou du latin”, Rivarol aurait ajouté. M. Kelly pense que beaucoup craignent que la précision finement aiguisée du français ne soit pas bien adaptée au monde actuel, qui évolue rapidement, où le langage sert souvent d’instrument émoussé et d’outil jetable, où de nombreux nouveaux mots dans les domaines de la science, de la technologie et de la culture populaire sont venus de l’anglais, ce qui a incité les universitaires français à dresser une liste d’équivalents français. Les mots français sont sans aucun doute plus beaux, mais ont tendance à être longs, ce qui, selon M. Kelly, ne convient pas toujours au langage abrégé des médias sociaux de l’ère technologique moderne.

Le professeur Kelly rappelle que le français est une langue importante à apprendre pour l’industrie britannique, car ses proches voisins européens [Belgique, Suisse, Luxembourg, régions du nord de l’Italie, îles Anglo-Normandes] fonctionnent aussi dans cette langue, et avec un empire global comparable et rivalisant à celui des Britanniques dans le passé, la langue Française est également largement répandue dans le monde francophone [par exemple, le Canada francophone, certaines parties de l’Afrique, l’Amérique du Nord, les Caraïbes, l’Amérique du Sud].

Londres est aujourd’hui considérée comme la sixième ville de France, avec un grand nombre de Français vivant au Royaume-Uni. M. Kelly observe que, malheureusement, trop peu d’Anglais ont les compétences linguistiques en français requises pour travailler dans les industries du monde francophone [par exemple, l’aérospatiale (du Concorde à Airbus), la défense, les télécommunications, l’énergie, l’eau (Compagnie Lyonnaise des Eaux), la mode et la beauté (L’Oréal, Chanel) et la finance (BNP Paribas). Le tourisme est également un facteur majeur de l’importance de la langue puisque les Britanniques représentent la plus grande proportion de visiteurs en France et qu’inversement, la Grande-Bretagne accueille plus de visiteurs de France que de n’importe où ailleurs, d’où l’intérêt d’apprendre la langue de l’autre en attendant que le monde devienne complètement francophone. Le français reste la langue la plus populaire auprès des apprenants à l’école, sur le lieu de travail et pour les loisirs au Royaume-Uni ; bien que d’autres langues gagnent également en popularité [comme l’espagnol], le Professeur Kelly souligne que la situation géographique du Royaume-Uni continuera à faire du français une langue vitale et une invitation constante au voyage.

Pour les étudiants avancés du français dans le monde anglo-saxon, l’essai “The «FRANÇAIS»: Verbs & Tenses for Advanced English Learners of French” peut aider.

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[EN] Answer to Question IV. “Which one is the best language between French and English according to you?”

This is a tricky question because the term “best” here is quite vague. So, I will tend to think that a first class language should be clear, precise, practical, pleasant to ears, and the eyes, well-structured with the pronunciation reflected in the grammatical structure to prevent people from mispronouncing words and also hold an amount of depth that is reflected when expressing the thoughts of the high-level thinker, and one that holds an artistic value that allows it to be full of emotions when spoken as a human language through its timbre and tone.

The English language although practical because of its widespread use does lack the synchronisation between its grammatical structure and the way words are pronounced which results in even experienced native English speakers to mispronounce many words, in rare cases this could even lead to people being thought of as phonological dyslexics. This to me makes the English language inferior to the French language since the latter has a greater number of “accentuated signs” that precisely instruct the reader how to pronounce the words. Indeed, in the French language the majority of words are pronounced exactly as they are written once we learn the endings of verbal tenses and some grammatical rules.

The other factor when comparing the 2 most widespread languages of the civilised world, is the fact that the English language comes with a variety of accents from the different regions it is spoken [e.g. Scouse, Geordie, Cockney, Scottish, Irish, etc] and is often muffled in videos and can often lead to misunderstanding or may require the listener to repeat segments to fully comprehend, so this is another disadvantage of the English language. This is hardly the case with French because even in the different accents in which the language may be spoken, they always lead to a clearer sound due to the grammatical structure and rules of the language and hence a clearer hearing and hence a faster understanding when compared to English.

The English language also has a history grounded in empiricism and seems to simply fulfil the task of communicating instructions and scientific texts, but lacks the emotionality in works of art [e.g. Romanticism] and in philosophical arguments [e.g. Je pense, donc je suis!] compared to the French language. Note that I did not say that it cannot be used in works of art, but only pointing out that it is less intense when compared to the French language. English to me seems to lessen the intensity of philosophical arguments and human conversations being a fairly flat language in its written and spoken form. This may also be due to the fact that the anglosphere is generated from a majority of societies where the values of humanity, brotherhood and the individual are not at the heart of the civilisation as it is in France, but rather tend to be industrialised and mechanical societies that can only offer freedom as a form of extreme individuality bordering on selfishness based on an “each to their own” type formula in a savage game of self-survival and preservation at whatever cost. This is of course the major train of thought, because we do have a minority of incredible individuals from the English realm who stand out because of their own investment in cultivating unique and captivating personalities and who do not act and think like the common majority where it reflects in their behaviour, feelings and art works. Furthermore, the roots of the English language still connect to the outdated system of monarchy which seems to make the society obsessed with medieval stories of capes and swords: a system that seems to inculcate in the individual a sense of knowing the limits of one’s rights and unquestionable obedience; while the French language is rooted in the values of the revolution which inculcates questioning and a sense of pushing one’s own limits to unleash the “Emperor/King/Master” within ourselves, with the legend of Napoléon as proof – the philosophy and values of these two languages seem to oppose each other.

Hence, to me, being someone who received a bursary and studied literature, linguistics, psychology and philosophy while also having written for a long time and been drenched deeply in the cultural realm of both English and French, English seems like a language for communication, while French is a language that can achieve absolutely everything that English can, but also goes further by allowing the individual to not simply communicate, but also to “express themselves” [their depth, their thoughts, their emotions] in a way that the English language fails to capture at such intensity because of its founding history and structure that is not as focussed on timbre, philosophy, arts and the expression of feelings as the French language is.

So, since the French language can do everything that English can in the formal world, such as instructions, scientific writings and simple communication, but can also go to greater depth to touch humans deeper through its subtlety in timbre and sound embedded in a history of great poets, philosophers and thinkers who set their mark in marble and stone, I would have to say that the French language is superior to English.

rootsoftheenglishlanguage

Image: Tree diagram showing the tangled roots of English / Source: NYT

Although it is important to note that these 2 languages are very close to each other in structure as many words are spelled similarly in both languages with minor changes from one to the other [e.g. Psychologie/Littérature is French for psychology/literature (English)]. Since both languages are of Indo-European origin, it is easier for English speakers to evolve and shift to French than most other languages – at least in written form since oral French requires practice and dedication to master; while a “soul” is another story involving metaphorical vision, abilities of synthesis, values, insight and depth of thought… and of course personality, emotions and sensibility.

Individuals who intend to share their wisdom and contribute to the world’s development would have an advantage in adopting and mastering a communicative pattern (i.e. language) deemed superior by the fact that it comes with modern human values and is weaved in the fabric of a more refined and sophisticated intellectual, psychosocial, philosophical and artistic heritage [e.g. French, which is the most desired and most spoken second language in the UK and in Germany] since it would be understood by the wider audience of the civilised world, where the major intellectual and cultural evolution/revolution takes place.

I would also like to point out for the majority of anglophones and fellow English people out there who hardly know their own cultural evolution that there is French on the emblem of the British monarchy.

Dieu et mon droit [Royal_Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom]

Image: The « Français » on the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom

The words, “Dieu et mon droit” have been the motto since the time of Henry V (1413 – 1422), and since those times old English is not the language of the English elite anymore which resulted to the use of words and expressions of French and Norman origin that are now widely used in the English language.

French has also been identified as an important language for the UK’s future. In an articled published by the British Council in 2014, Professor Michael Kelly, who heads the Modern Langages Department at the University of Southampton described the “je ne sais quoi” in learning to master the French language; the British see French as the language of love as he pointed out, and the French language has a romance to the English speaker’s ear. It is the French culture that sparked the “wow” factor for Kelly who admitted being “bowled over by the depth of feeling” and still getting the tingles when coming across the works of Charles Baudelaire, with “L’invitation au voyage” taking him on a journey to a country where “tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté, luxe, calme et volupté” [French for : “all is order and beauty, luxury, peace, and pleasure” – quoted from Baudelaire’s poem]. Professor Kelly argued that to him, this sums up France at its best. Kelly writes that when words are said in French, they conjure up a world beyond their ordinary English counterparts; what marks French as a romantic language for the British is that it can almost but not fully be understood. Since it is not used all the time, the English do not get the overlay of everyday meanings that may crowd out the magic for some native French speakers, and according to Kelly, this may be why the British see French as the “language of love”.

French has left a lasting impression on the English language and like most other countries, the French do talk, write and sing about love, however, the British, Kelly points out, suspect that the French are more articulate about love, unlike the more ‘buttoned-up English’, who flounder like Hugh Grant in “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. The difference, Kelly observes, is the culture, not simply the language. Culture is a vital factor, and part of the romance of the French language to the British is linked to the fact that it was the language of the English aristocracy in the Middle Ages: the Normans and the Plantagenets ruled England for 300 years and still have a strong presence in the British imagination.

In a short video in 2022 for History Hit, British historian, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb brought in the confirmation that the English aristocracy valued the French language, with Thomas Boleyn [the best French speaker at the Tudor court] wanting his daughter, the iconic Anne Boleyn to master the French language.

It is also to be noted that the French language has incredible international prestige since it was the language of culture for the European elites and also the language of international diplomacy up to the First World War. The negotiations for the Armistice in 1918 were conducted in French, with interpreters of French to German, however, the French generals and British admirals spoke to each other in French.

French left its mark on the English language, and since the 16th century the French have taken pride in the precision and clarity of the language, embodied in the works of great minds such as René Descartes and Voltaire. Those factors attracted the Irish writer Samuel Beckett, who switched to writing in French, since in using the English language, the latter would end up saying more that he intended. French also has a wide range of resources to convey subtle nuances, for example, we have the delicate use of the familiar ‘tu’ and formal ‘vous’ to address another person as ‘you’ [the only option in English], making it clear what degree of familiarity [closeness] one feels one has [or has developed] with the person, or the status one thinks the person has in regards to oneself or the specific social situation and context of the interaction [e.g. in formal/professional matters or relaxed/personal social interaction]. The use of “tu” to address a person is known as the act of “tutoyer” (the “tutoiement”) and the use of “vous” as the act of vouvoyer (the “vouvoiement”). It is generally polite to ask someone in the Francophone sphere whom one believes to have become closer to, “Permettez-vous qu’on se tutoie?” or « Ça vous dérangerait si on se tutoyait ? » [French for: “Would you mind if we used ‘tu’ towards each other?].

Professor Kelly observed that ‘Ce qui n’est pas clair n’est pas français’, coined by the 18th century writer Antoine Rivarol, became a pet phrase in French schools: ‘if it’s not clear, it’s not French’, though ‘it could be English, Italian, Greek or Latin’, Rivarol had added. Kelly points out that many fear that the finely honed precision of French may not be well suited to the fast-moving world of today, where language often serves as a blunt instrument and a disposable tool, where many new words in science, technology and popular culture have come from English, which has sparked the French academics to generate a list of French equivalents; he however admits that French words undoubtedly sounds more beautiful, but tends to be rather long-winded, which Kelly believes does not always fit in the abbreviated language of social media of the modern technological era.

Kelly notes that French is a significant language to learn for the UK industry since close neighbours in Europe [Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, regions of Northern Italy, Channel Islands] also function with it, and with a global empire comparable  to and competing with that of the British in the past, the french language is also widely distributed across the Francophone world [e.g. French-speaking Canada, some parts of Africa, North America, the Caribbean, South America].

London is nowadays considered as France’s sixth biggest city with large numbers of French people living in the UK. Kelly observes that unfortunately, not enough English people have the French language skills required to work in industries in the Francophone world [e.g. aerospace (from Concorde to Airbus), defence, telecommunications, energy, water (Compagnie Lyonnaise des Eaux), fashion and beauty (L’Oréal, Chanel) and finance (BNP Paribas). Tourism is also a major factor in the importance of language since the British are the largest proportion of visitors to France and conversely, Britain welcomes more visitors from France than from anywhere else, hence there is every incentive in learning each other’s language until the world becomes fully francophone. French remains the most popular language for learners in school, in the workplace and for leisure in the UK; although other languages are also growing in popularity [such as Spanish], Kelly reminds that the geographical situation of the UK will continue to make French a vital language and a constant invitation to a journey.

For advanced learners of French in the Anglo-Saxon world, the essay “The «FRANÇAIS»: Verbs & Tenses for Advanced English Learners of French” may help.

_________________________________

QUESTION V.

[FR] – De quelle civilisation vous sentez-vous faire partie ?

[EN] – What civilisation do you feel a part of?

[FR] Réponse:

C’est certainement la question la moins compliquée jusqu’à présent car je me suis toujours présenté et décrit comme un Européen occidental franco-britannique qui vit en Angleterre et qui a l’intention d’alterner périodiquement avec la France à l’avenir. Donc, en passant par-là, je peux honnêtement dire que je défends la civilisation de l’Europe de l’Ouest et la France avant tout, avec bien sûr, une forte connexion et une préoccupation pour la société anglaise puisque c’est ici que j’ai vécu et que c’est aussi là que j’ai grandi et évolué pour devenir la personne que je suis aujourd’hui et qui n’est plus qu’à deux pas de la France. Pour moi, en tant qu’individu faisant partie de la classe intellectuelle de sa génération, c’était toujours l’Europe de l’Ouest où mon destin allait se dérouler et où mes œuvres allaient atteindre le public qui leur était dû. Mon passé d’adolescent n’a porté que sur les fondements de mon éducation qui allait toujours être poursuivie et affinée en France ou en Angleterre car l’île où je suis né aujourd’hui est trop petite et compte une population d’environ 1 million d’habitants, et bien plus comme une mini station de vacances 5 étoiles aux paysages naturels à couper le souffle, c’est un endroit parfait pour se déconnecter, méditer dans la solitude, se détendre, réfléchir, créer et écrire, mais pour moi ce n’est pas assez grand en géographie et en population pour favoriser le développement d’une élite littéraire qui a étudié toutes les grandes œuvres européennes et qui a une vision universelle de la psychologie, de la philosophie et de la gestion de la civilisation. C’est une histoire similaire à celle de Napoléon qui a dû quitter la Corse et aller en France pour découvrir et libérer sa propre grandeur et son génie.

Donc, pour en revenir à la question, pour moi, un homme qui vit dans le présent, je suis et je me sens partie de l’empire français avec des liens forts avec la société britannique et surtout les intellectuels d’Oxford qui m’ont soutenu au fil des ans dans mes recherches en tant que consultant indépendant, intellectuel, chercheur, philosophe et écrivain qui trouve son inspiration dans le monde. Je dis donc que je suis un ami du peuple et de la société britannique et le réveil de l’empire français à une époque où la passion est morte et où la corruption et les bureaucrates ennuyeux, inaptes et peu créatifs se sont surtout concentrés sur leurs propres poches sans aucune vision ont mis un terme déprimant à la civilisation. D’une certaine manière, j’ai parfois l’impression qu’il est de mon devoir de consacrer cette vie à remettre la société française et l’Europe de l’Ouest sur sa glorieuse voie.

Académie Française Crepuscule

Image: L’Académie Française, Paris

M’attaquer, c’est attaquer l’empire français et la civilisation d’Europe de l’Ouest ! Parce qu’à l’heure actuelle, il n’y a pas d’autre personne qui ait un cœur entièrement dévoué à son avenir et un cerveau à la hauteur de la grandeur qui l’accompagne ! Il s’agit d’un simple énoncé des faits, et non d’une vantardise insensée !

Europe de l'Ouest

—-|—-

[EN] Answer to Question V. “What civilisation do you feel a part of?”

This is definitely the less complicated question so far because I have always introduced and described myself as a Franco-British western European who lives in England and who intends to periodically alternate with France in the future. So, going by this I can honestly say that I stand for the Western European civilisation and France primarily, with of course, a strong connection and concern for the English society since this has been my home and also the place where I matured and evolved into the person that I am today and which is only a stone’s throw away from France. To me, as an individual who is part of the intellectual class of his generation, it was always going to be Western Europe where my destiny would unfold and where my works would reach its rightful audience. My teenage past only involved the foundations of my education that was also always going to be pursued and refined in France or England since the island where I was born today is too small in size and a population of 1 million approximately and much more like a mini 5-star holiday resort with stunning natural sceneries, making it a perfect place to disconnect, meditate in solitude, relax, brain storm, create and write, but to me it is not large enough in geography and population, to foster the development of an elite literary man who studied all the great European works and who has a universal outlook on psychology, philosophy and the management of civilisation. It is a similar story to that of Napoleon who had to leave Corsica and go to France to discover and unleash his own grandeur and genius.

So, getting back to the question, for me, a man who lives in the present, I am and I feel part of the French empire with strong links with British society and especially the intellectuals of Oxford who have supported me in my research over the years as an independent consultant, intellectual, researcher, philosopher and writer who finds his inspiration in the world.

So I say that I am a friend of the British people and the awakening of the French Empire at a time where passion has died because corrupt, boring, incompetent and uncreative bureaucrats focused mainly on their own pockets without any vision have brought civilization to a depressing halt. In a way, I sometimes feel that it is my duty to devote this life to putting French society and Western Europe back on its glorious path.

Attacking me, means attacking the French empire and Western European civilisation! Because at this point in time there is no other person with a heart completely dedicated to their future with a brain that matches the grandeur to go along with it! This is a simple statement of facts, not mindless boasting!

_________________________________

QUESTION VI.

[FR] – Êtes-vous un fan d’Hitler ?

[EN] – Are you a Hitler fan?

Hitler Walking Out

[FR] Réponse:

Je suppose que cette question m’est posée parce que j’ai souvent lié des vidéos d’Hitler dans mes essais et mes écrits.

Eh bien, pour commencer, je n’ai jamais tout à fait compris le terme “fan”, parce que cela semble impliquer une certaine forme d’obsession pour une personne en particulier. Non, j’ai admiré les œuvres et les valeurs de beaucoup de gens, et si cela me qualifie de “fan”, alors je le suis peut-être. “Admiration” pour “certains” aspects des œuvres de nombreux grands hommes et femmes à travers l’histoire – ce qui fait de moi un admirateur d’œuvres étonnantes avec du respect pour l’artiste ou le créateur. Cela s’étend à Adolf Hitler, qui, je dirais, avait raison sur bien des points en ce qui concerne la gestion d’une civilisation, mais pas sur tout. Lui ou ses conseillers ont commis des erreurs, comme la plupart des humains, qui lui ont tout coûté, à lui et à son régime.

Je dirais donc que j’admire beaucoup de philosophies et de réalisations d’Hitler, comme la nécessité d’unir le peuple en débarrassant le pays des divisions de gauche, du centre et de droite, tout en critiquant certaines de ses procédures, car après tout, il était un être humain qui n’a vécu que la réalité de son époque, alors que je vis en 2021 et vois les choses sous un autre angle car je suis privilégié d’avoir reçu une grande part des connaissances et découvertes scientifiques que l’époque d’Hitler n’avait pas encore mises au point. L’avancement de la technologie a permis aujourd’hui d’être extrêmement mobile puisque la plupart des grands travaux et recherches sont maintenant disponibles sous forme numérique, ce qui a rendu le monde plus connecté sans qu’il soit absolument nécessaire de se rendre dans d’anciennes bibliothèques pour trouver des ressources universitaires, et d’une certaine manière, nous pourrions gérer une équipe ou une entreprise en Europe depuis la jungle amazonienne, depuis une cabane forestière au Mexique ou une tente au Danemark, tant que nous aurons la haute vitesse et la bonne technologie – imaginez ce que de Vinci aurait réalisé si nous avions ceux-là en son temps !

Léonard de Vinci - Accélérateir de Science (2017)

Source: Leonard de Vinci: Accélérateur de Science (2017)

Pour commencer par le dossier hitlérien, ce n’est pas une réponse simple car il y a beaucoup de choses à dire et à expliquer pour que les gens du monde entier puissent comprendre mon point de vue et aussi comprendre toute la controverse entourant le “Führer”. En répondant à cette question, je me référerai également à la “Théorie organique” pour expliquer l’existence, l’adaptation et l’évolution de l’homme et je me référerai également à mon propre cas en tant qu’Européen de l’Ouest franco-britannique assimilé, assez similaire au cas de Hitler ou de Napoléon qui n’étaient tous deux pas originaires de leur société, mais étaient assimilés, étonnamment, il semble que les deux dirigeants les plus puissants d’Europe occidentale aient dû venir d’un autre pays comme envoyés par le destin pour résoudre les problèmes d’une civilisation qui n’avait pas de chef légendaire avec une vision parmi son peuple, et qui a reçu un chef qui a gagné son appartenance et est devenu plus national que les nationaux eux-mêmes. Hitler est né en Autriche, tandis que Napoléon est né en Corse, et peut-être étonnamment 7 ans avant la naissance du futur empereur de France, Rousseau disait que la Corse allait secouer l’Europe.

Je dois dire que, dès mon plus jeune âge, j’ai été fasciné par la réputation d’Adolf Hitler parce que, comme la grande majorité d’entre nous, on nous a tous enseigné qu’il était la personne la plus horrible qui ait jamais existé dans l’histoire humaine, et son obsession meurtrière pour le génocide des Juifs était une chose que tout homme sain ne pouvait justifier. Comme la plupart des gens qui ont grandi entre la fin des années 80 et la fin des années 90, l’information était et est toujours principalement diffusée par les principaux médias à majorité juive, à une époque où l’Internet était encore en plein essor – en particulier les sites de streaming vidéo – j’ai donc été obligé de digérer la seule perspective à ma disposition jusqu’à une décennie dans le millénaire où un grand nombre de fichiers Hitler qui étaient enterrés commençait à apparaître partout sur Internet, donnant une perspective plus claire du monde et ses implications économiques, philosophiques et religieuses des deux côtés du débat.

Il y a aussi la grande confusion, la mauvaise interprétation et la fabrication médiatique de commérages qui existent concernant le prétendu désir de conquête du monde et l’obsession d’Hitler pour la prétendue supériorité de la race caucasienne germanique, particulièrement le sous-type nordique aux cheveux blonds et aux yeux bleus qui devrait à la longue remplacer toutes les autres races qui ne sont pas d’origine allemande – comme beaucoup de sociétés inférieures en Europe de l’Est avec un certain nombre de juifs et musulmans, etc. par e.x. La Pologne, la Bosnie, la République tchétchène et la Russie, qu’il considérait comme bon marché et de culture inférieure, les comparant à des animaux mineurs – du moins c’est ce qu’on disait et faisait croire à la majorité. Si les sociétés d’Europe de l’Est ne sont peut-être pas aussi sophistiquées que les sociétés d’Europe de l’Ouest, cette hypothèse de sous-type inférieur et supérieur ne reposant que sur l’héritage génétique et les attributs physiques n’est pas scientifiquement valable car nous savons maintenant que les organismes peuvent être formés avec les conseils et l’éducation appropriés pour s’adapter à leurs sociétés choisies et cela devrait être le cas si un empire conquiert et prend de l’ampleur, et aussi que le talent et le génie, bien que très rare, peuvent apparaître et a émergé de différentes sociétés et compositions organique, de n’importe quel coin du globe, et cela prouve qu’un organisme supérieur [intellectuellement ou physiquement] peut naître de n’importe quelle société et faire partie de n’importe quel type de composition organique, non seulement le sous-type nordique de la race caucasienne germanique, voire même Mussolini qui était un autre dirigeant fasciste et nationaliste était en désaccord avec Hitler sur cette question du sous-type nordique, et il a dit ne croire à la supériorité d’un seul sous-type particulier mais de la qualité générale de tous les sous-types, dont le sous-type méditerranéen aux cheveux bruns qui crée un mélange sain parmi le peuple national.

Cependant, l’amplification de l’argument d’Hitler en un désir d’extermination a créé beaucoup de confusion et a été encore exagérée et amplifiée par la presse commérageuse majoritairement détenue et gérée par les Juifs pour donner au régime hitlérien une mauvaise publicité et une haine mondiale. En ce qui concerne les enregistrements, nous savons seulement qu’Hitler s’est concentré sur des questions nationales et a clairement demandé à tous les autres pays de le laisser, lui et l’Allemagne, se concentrer seuls sur leur propre société et d’être autorisés à façonner leur société comme ils l’ont souhaité, car ils ont tout hérité de leurs ancêtres et ont voulu préserver leur société après avoir reçu l’autorisation de le faire dans des élections démocratiques, et aussi garder la race nationale allemande “pure”[ce qui n’avait bien sûr aucun sens car aucune race n’est pure puisque nous sommes le résultat de la migration, du métissage et de l’évolution de différents sous-types et Hitler lui-même était le résultat de la consanguinité entre un homme et sa nièce, le type d’union que Charles Darwin, l’homme derrière la théorie de l’évolution, s’opposait lui-même ainsi que le mariage entre cousins qu’il tentait de rendre illicite par loi à cause des nombreuses malformations et de l’incapacité des enfants qu’a entraîné ainsi que les mauvaises gènes que cela propagerait].

Donc, pour commencer à répondre à votre question, je dirai d’abord que Hitler était un patriote convaincu et un défenseur de la société et du peuple qu’il représentait [pas différent de moi et de mes vues pour la France et l’Europe occidentale en fait] et que pour renforcer un pays de plusieurs façons, l’accent devrait d’abord être mis sur ceux qui font partie du peuple natif du pays, s’y reconnaissent et l’aiment, c’est une philosophie qui s’inscrit dans le droit fil de la bonne gestion d’une civilisation et de ma propre philosophie de la “Théorie organique”, mais seulement en partie parce que la solution complète implique aussi la prise en compte de l’afflux de talents et l’adaptation évolutive d’autres organismes qualifiés qui contribuent également au maintien et au progrès de la nation et qui ont acquis leur origine nationale et s’identifient complètement à la nation, en faisant partie intégrante de celle-ci.

Malheureusement, Hitler et ses conseillers ont exagéré et mal interprété la compréhension de l’évolution organique et ont suivi une politique atavique et rétrograde avec une équipe qui a procédé sauvagement, sans considérer attentivement la logique fondamentale qui existe dans tous les domaines de la vie, à savoir que nous avons toujours eu des exceptions aux règles pour les cas exceptionnels – cela s’applique aux mathématiques, aux arts, à la médecine, aux sciences – qui devraient également s’appliquer à tout système jugé pratique, moderne et évolué. Tous les organismes de cette planète s’adaptent et évoluent d’un point de vue organique et sociolinguistique, mais pas de la même façon et comme je l’ai dit, si les lois de la nature et de l’évolution qui contiennent toute vie sur terre en décidaient autrement, alors les organismes de différentes compositions organiques ne seraient pas capables de procréer.

L’équipe d’Hitler était aussi composée de nombreux traîtres avec une éducation assez élémentaire qui ont pris des décisions meurtrières qu’ils ont cachées au “Führer”, entraînant sa chute et l’annihilation complète de ses plans et de son système ; vers la fin ils ont tous mis la faute sur un homme comme si Hitler avait drogué une nation entière et les avait hypnotisés en marionnettes mécaniques – qui est aussi clairement impossible sans la foi, la volonté et le désir de la nation à se diriger vers la vision.

Hitler embrassant une fillette juive

Cette photo de Hitler embrassant une fillette juive s’est vendue 11 520 dollars aux enchères / Source: VanityFair

Il convient également de mentionner qu’à ce jour, pas un seul enregistrement ou message écrit n’a été trouvé de Hitler donnant le feu vert à l’extermination d’un peuple, et ce qui peut être conclu aujourd’hui est que Hitler croyait que toutes les sociétés et races devraient simplement être nationalisées afin que toutes les sociétés et races puissent se comporter mieux et se perfectionner comme le Reich allemand. Sur la question des massacres de masse, le blâme aujourd’hui, selon les faits qui ont été recueillis, est principalement attribué à Göring et Himmler, ce dernier passant par les anciennes écritures aryennes de l’hindouisme se croyant agir comme le grand guerrier Arjuna qui purgeait son peuple et le monde entier du mal et qui croyait qu’à long terme les gens le verraient comme le héros mythologique nettoyant la terre du mal qui était pour lui les Juifs et leurs valeurs étant la cause de toute souffrance humaine sur terre comme ils détruisent les autres civilisations et déforme et contrôle les pensées des masses par leurs activités médiatiques.

Tout d’abord, j’expliquerai ce que je critique à l’égard du régime hitlérien avant d’expliquer ce que je considère comme admirable dans la légende d’Adolf Hitler en tant que leader et être humain sur cette planète. Il y a deux ou trois choses que je pense sincèrement ne sont pas acceptables dans la société éclairée d’aujourd’hui en 2021, et Hitler aurait construit un Reich plus fort s’il avait été mieux conseillé dans des politiques plus intelligentes concernant la gestion, le maintien et la formation d’une population productive et sophistiquée avec des sentiments patriotiques forts et un sentiment de synchronisation et de compréhension. Hitler ne visait pas simplement à créer une entreprise de boulettes de viande roses, mais était un leader cultivé guidé par la philosophie, l’éthique, la morale, la dignité, les valeurs et les arts et voulait que le monde entier regarde l’allemand comme un modèle héroïque à suivre et à être inspiré par. Hitler voulait que les gens voient les honorables SS comme des héros légendaires qui voulaient faire du monde un endroit meilleur. Adolf Hitler n’était pas un porc ou un simple soldat.

adolf-hitler-archive-national-nazi-hoffmann

Image: Des photos de Henrich Hoffmann, le photographe d’Hitler, numérisés, restaurés et publiés pour la première fois (2019)

Il est fondamental de comprendre qu’à l’époque d’Hitler, l’Allemagne se faisait conquérir par des communistes méthodiquement concentrés sur la prise de pouvoir de l’Allemagne sans véritable sentiment d’appartenance, avec l’intention de la transformer en une forme de zone commerciale et une arrière-cour économique en Europe, semblable à ce que les génies influents du monde des affaires, principalement juifs, ont fait des Etats-Unis aujourd’hui – une société mécanisée, industrialisée, dépourvue d’humanité et de valeurs, où l’individualisme égoïste a laissé chacun dans une lutte constante pour survivre à tout prix, même si cela signifie se tuer mutuellement, ce qui est aussi courant lorsque les armes sont légales là-bas. Les dirigeants de ces groupes communistes en Allemagne à l’époque d’Hitler étaient composés d’une majorité d’étrangers, dont de nombreux Juifs. Alors que le nombre de morts de Juifs a été exagéré et utilisé pour diffamer Hitler, aucune attention particulière n’a été accordée au nombre de morts horribles que les Juifs ont causées pendant la révolution russe et de nombreux historiens révisionnistes ont affirmé que le nombre de morts était beaucoup plus élevé que le régime hitlérien. Cependant, il était clair qu’en plus de l’immigration juive et des influences politiques des communistes juifs qui affaiblissaient et corrompaient progressivement la société allemande, il y avait aussi un énorme problème avec l’immigration de populations qui n’étaient pas des Allemands de souche. Cela impliquait que pour qu’un homme comme Hitler puisse réaliser son rêve d’une Allemagne forte, stable et moderne, il aurait fallu s’attaquer à la question de l’immigration, et comme il avait une vision nationale et d’excellence, le fait de se débarrasser d’une foule excessive, incompatible et étrangère qui ne voulait pas s’assimiler pleinement et devenir citoyen allemand était une chose nécessaire dans sa vision.

Cependant, il ne fait aucun doute qu’Hitler aurait aussi dû se rendre compte qu’il y avait un grand nombre d’êtres humains très talentueux et complètement assimilés dans la société allemande qui devaient être conservés et traités comme des citoyens qui avaient acquis leur origine et un fort sentiment d’identification avec la foule native par leur propre adaptation et évolution. Et comme ce n’était pas le cas, nous nous sommes retrouvés avec la Seconde Guerre mondiale, de nombreuses personnes mourant dans des camps de détention mal approvisionnés après que les alliés eurent bombardé les voies ferrées de liaison et perturbé l’approvisionnement alimentaire et hygiénique, provoquant une épidémie de typhus qui a fait des milliers de morts. En outre, de nombreux Allemands qui avaient un lien lointain avec la population juive ont été traités comme des criminels à déporter, ce qui a conduit à une opération irrationnelle qui a écarté des personnes qui étaient parfaitement aptes à faire partie d’une société fonctionnelle, les normes scientifiques actuelles ayant prouvé, avec une interprétation correcte de la théorie de l’évolution, que nous sommes des organismes qui peuvent adapter et changer leur identité pour qu’elle soit en accord avec les nouveaux environnements, si nous faisons les bons choix et avons les capacités et la motivation pour le faire. Les lois de Nuremberg qui définissaient celui qui devait être qualifié d’allemand sur la base de la généalogie étaient l’une des décisions les plus irrationnelles et les plus stupides du Reich allemand puisqu’elle n’était fondée sur aucune bonne science. Il était alors nécessaire pour les Allemands de prouver que leurs parents et grands-parents n’avaient pas d’ascendance juive ; c’était hypocrite car Hitler lui-même ne pouvait prouver qu’il n’avait aucun lien génétique juif parce que son grand-père[le père de son père] est inconnu ; et beaucoup ont suggéré qu’il était l’enfant illégitime d’un riche membre d’une grande famille juive après une relation adultérine avec sa grand-mère que la famille avait engagée comme servante ou cuisinière. De plus, d’après la définition de l’Aryen soi-disant “parfait” qui est censé être blond, aux yeux bleus, mince, grand, aucun des plus hauts dirigeants nazis ne partageait ces caractéristiques physiques : Hitler n’était pas blond, Goebbels n’était pas grand et Goering n’était pas mince.

L’autre côté, c’était celui de la supériorité du peuple allemand dont Hitler était obsédé et qui s’avéra en fait peu créatif en ne considérant pas les personnes ayant une part d’héritage et d’appartenance culturelle allemande comme un exemple de conquête allemande, car c’était aussi un moyen pour une civilisation de diffuser ses gènes plus largement et d’encourager les personnes résultant de ce mélange à se mélanger avec la civilisation fondatrice qui conduirait à leur future lignée de partager une quantité encore plus importante de gènes allemands. En fait, si la science et l’évolution ainsi que la supériorité en moyenne de la “race aryenne” ont guidé la politique du régime national-socialiste, elles auraient dû également encourager la diffusion du génome aryen en encourageant les hommes et les femmes les plus sains et les meilleurs de la race aryenne à donner des ovules et du sperme et encourager les couples à utiliser des donneurs sains de la race aryenne pour élever leurs enfants, et ce service aurait dû être offert aux couples de toutes conditions sociales pour prévenir la formation de malformations et d’organismes malsains. Cela aurait été une façon sophistiquée et moderne de penser l’évolution humaine et l’évolution sociétale à la manière hitlérienne. Une façon de dire est que pour changer leur société biologiquement, une bonne façon est de s’assurer qu’ils ont assez de “tartelettes à la crème”. Parce qu’après tout, je crois qu’il faut donner aux êtres humains la liberté de choisir leur partenariat, ce qui n’était pas le cas dans le Reich, car les Allemands natifs qui ne se reproduisaient pas avec des Allemands natifs étaient considérés comme des traîtres.

Par conséquent, cette forme d’extrémisme était l’une des principales doctrines qui ont conduit à tant de haine et de ressentiment envers le Troisième Reich de la part d’un grand nombre d’Allemands eux-mêmes, amenant une armée alliée à travailler constamment pour faire tomber tout le spectacle, bien que la partie adverse représente les valeurs d’une société qui ne sont pas meilleures en fournissant une solution à une civilisation harmonieuse mais qui sont surtout alimentés par la haine, de fortes motivations financières juives et le désir de paralyser l’Allemagne à tout prix, mais surtout de faire tomber le charismatique et trop puissant Adolf Hitler, comme c’est souvent le cas quand un homme doué monte au sommet et éclipse sa compétition avec son talent et son magnétisme.

Judea declares war on Germany

C’est aussi le cas de Napoléon, lorsque l’Europe entière avait rassemblé toutes ses forces pour le faire tomber, cette vieille et sclérosée Europe des Rois unie pour détruire tous les acquis de la Révolution [la liberté et l’égalité des chances pour tous] et rétablir l’Ancien Régime inégalitaire en France. Cela semble être le cas aujourd’hui, comme si la société ne pouvait accepter que certains organismes soient supérieurs à la majorité médiocre. Cela semble hypocrite puisque nous pouvons tous aujourd’hui accepter que nous avons une nourriture supérieure d’un point de vue nutritionnel, des ordinateurs supérieurs, des voitures supérieures, des joueurs de football supérieurs, des montres supérieures, des caméras supérieures, des guitares supérieures, des pianos supérieurs, des chevaux supérieurs, donc cela devrait aussi s’appliquer à l’organisme humain, ce qui signifie que nous avons aussi des individus supérieurs avec une intelligence supérieure, donc une vision et une gestion supérieures. Il est également important de noter que les objets supérieurs sont toujours rares, et donc minoritaires, c’est pourquoi leur valeur est immense. Si les diamants étaient aussi abondants que l’acier et si l’acier était aussi rare que les diamants, alors les bijoux seraient faits d’acier et les diamants seraient utilisés dans la construction. Ainsi, nous semblons vivre dans un monde où la médiocrité des masses semble avoir de la difficulté à accepter que certains individus soient supérieurs dans leur ensemble, et au lieu d’encourager, d’apprendre, d’être inspirés et fiers d’être dirigés par de tels individus, nous semblons plutôt trouver une union de médiocrité qui fait tout son possible pour faire tomber ces individus. C’est quelque chose sur quoi la société doit travailler à l’échelle mondiale, pour favoriser l’excellence ! Le respect et l’appréciation sont après tout des mots qui existent dans tous les dictionnaires, et les êtres nobles et cultivés savent comment les montrer, et ceux qui n’ont jamais considéré ces valeurs peuvent essayer d’apprendre, cela en ferait certainement des êtres plus complets.

Pour en revenir à la gestion de la population de l’Allemagne pour une nation saine, forte et stable, Hitler aurait dû trouver une forme systématique de ” filtration “, impliquant des formes d’interview, d’évaluation de la santé, d’évaluation des compétences et d’évaluation culturelle qui analysaient tout le segment de la population allemande d’origine étrangère en tout ou en partie, et les diviser en deux groupes : ceux qui étaient aptes, sûrs et synchronisés avec la société allemande à garder, et ceux qui constituaient un fardeau en raison de leur incapacité à s’adapter et de leur refus d’être allemands en raison de convictions religieuses ou étrangères fermes d’être transférés diplomatiquement dans un environnement et une société plus adaptés à leurs caractéristiques, de la manière la plus respectueuse qui soit. Ceux qui ont été jugés aptes à la société allemande auraient même pu bénéficier d’une forme de classification [sous-type de la société allemande] s’ils l’avaient jugé nécessaire et auraient également dû prêter serment d’allégeance et de priorité à leur identité nouvellement trouvée et aux personnes qu’ils auraient dû respecter si c’était là où ils pensaient appartenir, sinon, il serait préférable pour un individu de se déplacer et de vivre dans une société compatible avec son patrimoine et avec les personnes dont il se sent membre, car aujourd’hui, en 2021, l’inégalité des revenus a diminué et le monde devient une planète plus égalitaire ainsi que les progrès technologiques qui rendent la vie assez semblable d’une partie du monde à une autre. Les organismes assimilés pourraient également avoir droit à 3 avertissements avant d’envisager de les expulser pour non-respect de leur contrat d’allégeance après des infractions graves, devenant ainsi des “traîtres” à la nation.

La solution de la filtration n’a pas été facile, mais en fait, c’était une solution sophistiquée qui aurait été plus adaptée à une civilisation qui évoluait et devenait de plus en plus complexe, décennie après décennie – nous ne pouvons pas nous attendre à des solutions faciles pour convenir à une civilisation complexe. Ce n’était bien sûr pas la solution choisie par le régime, mais la voie la plus rapide et la plus facile pour déporter tous les Juifs, non allemands et partiellement juifs, ce qui a entraîné tant de souffrances inutiles et de malentendus, alors que beaucoup de ces personnes n’étaient même pas religieuses et se considéraient plus allemandes que toute autre religion, comme Sigmund Freud qui était un produit de la pensée intellectuelle de la tradition allemande et qui, par la suite, a influencé la psychologie globalement, ou encore Albert Einstein qui était également sans sentiments religieux et a dû se rendre aux Etats-Unis pour s’exiler.

Il est également important de rappeler que les politiques conçues par le régime national-socialiste visaient également toutes les personnes considérées comme un fardeau et inutiles au progrès de la société allemande, ce qui a également conduit à l’euthanasie de nombreux Allemands pour des maladies génétiques et autres maladies incurables considérées comme impures pour une société et une race saine, ainsi que de nombreuses personnes âgées considérées comme inaptes à vivre.

Maladies Génétiques

Image : Dégénérés / Certains médecins controversés sous le Troisième Reich ont proposé que la malédiction des gènes malades détruisent des familles entières, et que les dégénérés ne peuvent que donner naissance à leurs semblables. Cela a conduit à la stérilisation qui devait les empêcher de répandre leur misère sur des enfants innocents [car l’objectif était un peuple fort et génétiquement sain], ainsi qu’au programme ” Aktion T4 ” qui était l’euthanasie massive involontaire. Certains médecins allemands étaient autorisés à sélectionner des patients ” réputés incurablement malades, après un examen médical des plus critiques ” et à leur administrer ensuite une ” mort par miséricorde ” (Gnadentod). De septembre 1939 jusqu’à la fin de la guerre en 1945, de 275 000 à 300 000 personnes furent euthanasiées dans des hôpitaux psychiatriques en Allemagne et en Autriche, la Pologne occupée et le Protectorat de Bohême et de Moravie (maintenant la République tchèque). Le Saint-Siège annonça le 2 décembre 1940 que cette politique était contraire à la loi divine naturelle et positive et que ” le meurtre direct d’une personne innocente en raison de défauts mentaux ou physiques n’est pas permis ” mais la déclaration ne fut pas confirmée par certaines autorités catholiques en Allemagne. Au cours de l’été 1941, l’évêque de Münster, Clemens von Galen, mena des protestations en Allemagne, dont l’intervention conduisit au ” mouvement de protestation le plus fort, le plus explicite et le plus étendu contre toute politique depuis le début du Troisième Reich “, selon l’historien Richard J. Evans.

Cela montre donc que même un grand nombre d’Allemands ont perdu la vie, pas seulement des Juifs et des étrangers piégés dans des camps de déportation lors d’un bombardement massif des sols allemands.

Je trouve également important d’attirer l’attention sur le fait que l’Allemagne d’Hitler n’était pas une forme de société purement caucasienne, purement native et allemande, où toute autre personne jugée différente était enlevée, enfermée et abattue. Non… bien sûr, Hitler n’était pas un tel idiot, et s’est rendu compte qu’il avait besoin de nombreux travailleurs étrangers pour achever la construction de son pays (routes, bâtiments, etc.) et qu’il avait en effet de nombreux travailleurs d’Europe de l’Est et étrangers sur ses chantiers, il savait aussi que l’économie allemande devrait comme tous les pays adopter le tourisme, et donc les gens de toutes sortes étaient autorisés à visiter l’Allemagne. En effet, Hitler a même accueilli les Jeux Olympiques où des athlètes du monde entier étaient présents. Beaucoup d’historiens modernes qui revisitent la Seconde Guerre mondiale ont tendance à oublier ces détails.

Jeux Olympiques de 1936

Image: Les Jeux Olympiques de 1936

Hitler voulait en effet se concentrer sur les Allemands, mais il s’est rendu compte qu’il était impossible de diriger un pays sans une part équitable de la population étrangère qui étaient fondamentaux. Et cela se reflète aujourd’hui dans l’exemple de l’amour absolu des Européens de l’Ouest pour la cuisine étrangère, par exemple la cuisine chinoise ou la cuisine indienne qu’ils aiment avoir à portée de main par simple pression d’un bouton. Et en utilisant ces exemples pour expliquer la logique, il serait impossible de fournir des aliments asiatiques de qualité au marché européen sans la présence de certaines personnes de ces régions pour gérer la distribution et assurer la qualité des aliments. Cela s’étend à la cuisine italienne, mexicaine, grecque et/ou française. Un autre exemple serait les bienfaits scientifiquement prouvés du yoga en tant que discipline de santé, qui a été adopté par la société française et de nombreuses autres sociétés occidentales, de même, il serait impossible de s’attendre à la généralisation du style de vie si nous n’avions pas certains des fondateurs du yoga pour former une génération, et logiuement les experts devraient être d’où vient la discipline, qui est en Inde, ce qui conduirait à la formation d’autres experts dans d’autres parties du monde, une logique qui s’applique également pour les disciplines telles que les arts martiaux, également originaires du continent asiatique.

Le fait est que l’Europe de l’Ouest n’est pas une région comme les autres, parce qu’elle est le lieu de naissance de certains des plus grands intellectuels, penseurs et inventeurs qui ont eu un impact majeur sur le monde, ce qui a également conduit à la création des meilleures institutions éducatives dans divers domaines en Europe. Cela attire certains des meilleurs universitaires du monde entier qui paient d’énormes frais de scolarité pour étudier dans ces établissements, ce qui stimule également l’économie de l’Europe et lorsque cela se produit, cela signifie que le gouvernement a plus d’argent à dépenser pour sa propre population, son système et ses infrastructures. Lorsque ces meilleurs universitaires étrangers terminent leurs études, une grande partie d’entre eux retournent dans leur pays d’origine, mais certains sont également employés en tant que spécialistes hautement qualifiés et travailleurs qualifiés dans leur domaine par des géants du monde européen des affaires dans des domaines allant de l’ingénierie à la médecine. Il est également important de comprendre que la contribution de ces personnes aide au progrès des institutions européennes et à leur réputation. Ainsi, ces travailleurs qualifiés, bien qu’ils ne fassent pas partie de la sphère culturelle ou de l’industrie du spectacle ou de l’industrie hollywoodienne majoritairement juive, font parfois partie de l’équipe qui trouve une nouvelle invention, un nouveau moteur, une façon plus propre de récolter l’énergie, une nouvelle cure, un nouveau traitement, et où le monde est en train de se diriger dangereusement en ce moment en avec la perte de utilité des antibiotiques, qui sait si l’un d’entre eux trouvera l’antibiotique ultime, et si c’est le cas, cela permettra de sauver tant de producteurs, compositeurs, méso-sopranos, pianistes, danseurs de ballet et peintres, ainsi que leurs proches et enfants, de mourir de petites infections comme Frédéric Chopin. Il est donc important de noter que certaines choses sont plus grandes que la beauté extérieure, mais ont plus à voir avec la beauté intérieure de l’esprit qui se reflète dans l’intelligence et les capacités académiques. D’ailleurs en répondant à vos questions, et en révisant ces écrits durant la période du confinement en Mars 2020 face à la crise mondiale du Coranavirus (COVID-19) qui a déjà fait des milliers de victimes dans le monde, j’ai encore une fois par « coïncidence », un phénomène spirituel qui est devenu très normale dans ma vie et que ceux qui nous suivent et nous lisent auront aussi remarqué que j’ai appris à vivre avec ces coïncidences et ces similitudes sans fin en interrogeant les étoiles et Dieu, retrouvé mes pensées dans les mots de Didier Raoult dans une de ses présentations faites en 2015 [voir la vidéo ci-dessous].

« Le processus de l’innovation peut-il respecter la règle ? » -Pr Didier Raoult, 2015

L’autre scénario est que, dans de nombreux cas, ces travailleurs qualifiés ayant passé une grande partie de leur vie dans la civilisation occidentale finissent par se marier avec une femme du pays où ils travaillent, par exemple, des médecins étrangers qualifiés qui épousent leur infirmière et lui offrent une vie dont elle n’a jamais rêvé. Donc, ce sont des choses qui se produisent dans le monde humain, et ces mélanges mineurs de gènes se sont toujours produits depuis le début de l’humanité, comme je l’ai expliqué à maintes reprises que notre race actuelle est le résultat du mouvement à travers les plaines de la terre, le croisement et l’évolution. Donc, essayer d’arrêter une telle force qui a façonné notre espèce, semble être une lutte contre la nature elle-même, donc cela semble contre nature. La seule chose que l’on puisse faire est de guider les gens vers une meilleure compréhension de leur propre société, de son peuple et de son identité, ainsi que de sa continuité et des efforts que cela exige de tous ses citoyens – sinon tout système s’écroule et se désintègre – et ceux qui font partie d’une société devraient savoir que s’ils ne s’assimilent pas et ne font pas partie de ce peuple, ils auront toujours une vie mondaine et incomplète, qui pourrait être comparable à celle d’un rat. Dans certains cas, des cas mineurs de fusion génétique ajoutent également des gènes très talentueux au patrimoine génétique d’une civilisation, car l’excellence peut provenir de n’importe quelle composition organique et, lorsqu’elle fait partie d’une civilisation, ne fait que la renforcer, car elle se propage dans la civilisation à travers le temps. La chose décente à faire serait que l’État contrôle toujours le nombre d’étrangers dans le pays en imposant une limite stricte par rapport à la population native, peut-être s’entendre sur un pourcentage qui ne devrait jamais être dépassé, en excluant les étudiants universitaires.

Par conséquent, le régime hitlérien aurait dû savoir qu’il n’allait qu’échouer et créer beaucoup de ressentiment et de haine en essayant de séparer les êtres humains légalement par des formalités rigides et des preuves d’identité génétique par des idées obsolètes telles que la généalogie allemande, comme le faisait le régime national socialiste. En effet, la société avait déjà évolué et de nombreux liens s’étaient tissés entre les personnes qui se sont mariées et ont eu des enfants, entre les différentes confessions religieuses, origines et nationalités de la nation allemande. Et ces types de règles rigides qui expulseraient ceux qui ne s’y conforment pas par le biais de la généalogie et de l’ascendance ne pourraient que conduire à la séparation des familles et même à la déportation des femmes ou des maris de nombreux Allemands, et lorsque ces scénarios se produisent, les humains ont tendance à lutter à mort pour sauver ceux qui leur sont chers. Le régime hitlérien aurait dû savoir que ce genre de politique était vouée à l’échec.

Ce qui, selon moi, aurait plutôt fonctionné, c’est une exécution “informelle” de la vision d’une Allemagne forte. En d’autres termes, Hitler aurait dû créer une société centrée sur les citoyens allemands – à la fois les natifs et ceux qui se sont fermement assimilés et qui se considéraient comme des Allemands de souche – avec une forte identité allemande et un sentiment d’intérêt pour le peuple et la nation, tout en nationalisant les industries et en s’assurant que les gens au sommet se consacrent entièrement sans autre motif que le progrès de la nation et ont les valeurs nationales, la dignité humaine et comprennent l’identité religieuse de la nation en favorisant des personnes aux sentiments allemands forts et reconnus. Après cela, le régime et la nation auraient automatiquement créé un climat qui illustrerait la vision d’une Allemagne nationaliste forte, avec des industries axées sur le peuple allemand, et sans une politique formelle de déportation et de dépistage génétique, le peuple se serait rapidement retrouvé dans une société remodelée pour refléter les valeurs d’une Allemagne nationaliste, avec fierté dans son histoire, son peuple, sa culture et ses valeurs sans attaquer systématiquement les autres. Après cela, les entreprises qui ne pouvaient pas s’adapter fermeraient automatiquement et partiraient si les autorités déclaraient catégoriquement qu’aucune tradition juive ne serait tolérée sur le sol allemand et qu’aucune personne de la religion ou de la communauté juive ne serait autorisée à faire des affaires, sauf celles qui ont abandonné leur identité juive et adopté pleinement la tradition allemande avec la religion officielle comme option. Les personnes qui voulaient rester dans l’Allemagne nationale-socialiste évalueraient automatiquement leurs capacités et leurs possibilités et se forceraient à respecter les règles et à embrasser, à se développer et à apprendre à être citoyens allemands ou à partir. Elle aurait automatiquement généré un sentiment de logique d'”adaptation, de périr ou de partir” dans l’esprit de la population allemande, ce qui aurait conduit les peuples assimilés d’Allemagne à se rapprocher et à renforcer leurs liens avec le peuple natif allemand pour faire partie de la grande vision d’une Allemagne nationaliste, ou ils seraient partis à cause de leur incapacité ou refus de s’adapter, participer et contribuer à l’amélioration de la société.

C’est donc ce qu’il aurait fallu faire, selon moi, les idées et la vision du régime national-socialiste auraient dû être appliquées de manière informelle et non formelle par le biais d’un régime militaire strict, de camps de déportation, d’enquêtes généalogiques et de l’affirmation atavique et non scientifique du “sang”. En effet, il n’existe pas de “sang” comme on l’appelle dans la culture, le sang est un liquide qui coule dans les veines des êtres humains, mais même la famille n’a parfois pas de sang compatible car ils diffèrent par groupe et ont parfois besoin d’étrangers ou des individus d’une société différente pour donner du sang pour sauver la vie des autres qui ne sont pas liés à eux. Ainsi, cette idée de “sang” devrait être utilisée avec soin et convient mieux aux métaphores de “culture et littérature” que la réalité, puisqu’elle semble être utilisée pour expliquer la loyauté, l’unité et la parenté à travers une nation, une société, des valeurs et des perspectives similaires. Avec cet exemple, je peux dire aujourd’hui que j’ai du sang franco-britannique dans les veines et que cela fonctionnerait culturellement, mais médicalement cela n’aurait pas beaucoup de sens, puisque mon sang ne sera compatible qu’avec des individus de mon groupe sanguin qui peuvent être de n’importe quelle partie du monde et de n’importe quelle composition organique ou société, tant qu’ils sont humains et non des animaux.

La dernière chose que je mets aussi en doute dans la situation du régime hitlérien, c’est le véritable pouvoir de la démocratie à notre époque, oui ! Je veux dire, le peuple allemand avait voté pour l’arrivée au pouvoir des national-socialistes après avoir clairement connu leur manifeste et leurs idées d’une Allemagne nationaliste sans présence juive. Par conséquent, je me demande si demain, si je fais campagne et si je dis par exemple – notez que ce n’est qu’un exemple, et non une déclaration d’intention – que je rendrai illégal dans le pays toute forme de lieux de culte islamique, car nous savons par les faits historiques que c’est une religion qui a mené d’énormes guerres violentes contre la civilisation classique occidentale et toutes les autres religions non musulmanes et qui est une secte de guerre, de sang, de conquête et de domination par tous les moyens ; et si je suis élu, je serai bombardé par les alliés et emprisonné pour avoir essayé de le faire ! Cela signifie que même si une forme de référendum démocratique soutenait mes idées, toutes les autres conventions m’en empêcheraient, ce qui semble indiquer que les pays ont perdu leur pouvoir démocratique et ne peuvent plus satisfaire leur propre population, ce qui devrait laisser aux autorités beaucoup à réfléchir.

L’autre question de l’assimilation culturelle, qui consiste à faire partie intégrante de la nation, exige que l’on adopte le thème culturel de la nation, et cela s’applique aux individus et à leurs noms. Ce que je veux dire, c’est que l’assimilation implique généralement de porter un nom en accord avec l’héritage de la société, et beaucoup de Juifs l’ont compris, malheureusement le reste ne semble toujours pas comprendre qu’avec un nom comme “Mangia Fazula”, “Okolo Sambaweh”, “Munjabar Sakalamaktoum”, “Soupovic Boringov”, “Adnan Sawey” ou “Aharon Azriel” ils seront automatiquement considérés comme étrangers dans un pays d’Europe de l’Ouest fondée sur la culture chrétienne occidentale. Ainsi, les personnes qui veulent faire partie intégrante d’une nation par le biais de l’assimilation devraient aussi être assez intelligentes pour comprendre le thème culturel qui s’applique aussi aux noms, ainsi que la combinaison de la condition physique qui facilite simplement le processus et une maîtrise des modèles de communication et de comportement et un fort sentiment de solidarité avec la nation, tout en acceptant également l’identité religieuse de la nation même si cela est facultatif – étant une question de connexion spirituelle et le caractère sacré de son âme et c’est une question entre la personne et sa conscience et “Dieu” si elle croit en lui.

Quant à la rhétorique catholique forte encouragée par Hitler et son régime en faveur de l’éducation des jeunes à la religion et aux valeurs, il est important de se rappeler que Jésus Christ, le Messie qui a conduit à la fondation et à la diffusion du christianisme, n’est pas né d’origine européenne ni ne parlait français, allemand ou anglais. Jésus-Christ est né de la population d’Israël et parle en araméen. Bien sûr, il n’était pas de foi juive, et les textes religieux et l’héritage du christianisme ont été traduits dans les langues occidentales pour atteindre un large public. Par conséquent, cela aurait aussi pu être fait pour n’importe quelle autre religion si c’était celle qui avait été adoptée et répandue en Europe, par exemple l’hindouisme. Si tel était le cas, tous les textes hindous et les hindous d’Europe parleraient et prieraient dans leurs propres langues européennes, pas nécessairement dans la langue maternelle des dieux, c’est-à-dire l’hindi, puisque tous les textes religieux auraient été traduits dans les langues respectives de la région européenne. De même, les chrétiens modernes d’Europe occidentale ne parlent pas l’araméen, la langue que Jésus parlait.

Le fait est que, comme l’explique la théorie organique, les modèles de communication des primates humains peuvent varier d’une région à l’autre, mais la créativité et le QI ne varient pas, et par conséquent, une fois que l’héritage de l’humanité est traduit dans le langage approprié [modèle de communication], la société devrait être immédiatement soulagée dans sa capacité à se comprendre mutuellement.

Globe Escargot Snail Danny D'Purb dpurb site web

La synchronisation linguistique devrait donc être une chose qui apaiserait un monde en désaccord, même si les valeurs et les croyances religieuses sépareront toujours les groupes, de sorte que le débat aujourd’hui vers une civilisation harmonieuse devrait certainement commencer sur le langage global de l’humanité à adopter. Un bon exemple serait de voir le succès commercial et l’influence créative de la forme d’art moderne connue sous le nom de “manga” – qui vient d’Asie – sur la France et les autres sociétés d’Europe de l’Ouest une fois qu’elles sont doublées dans la bonne langue. Par exemple, un des grands classiques de la littérature française, le roman écrit en 1844 par Alexandre Dumas, « Le compte de Monte Cristo », un titre qui a fait l’objet de nombreuses reprises cinématographiques, télévisuelles, musicales et animées a aussi reçu une interpretation graphique en manga.

Alexandre Dumas Comte de Monte-Cristo d'purb dpurb site web

« Le Comte de Monte-Cristo » d’Alexandre Dumas interprété graphiquement par le mangaka Ena Moriyama (2017) / Image: Kurokawa

Et maintenant, après avoir parlé de la Théorie Organique ci-dessus, j’aimerais expliquer son application à une civilisation humaine moderne ainsi qu’à l’évolution et à l’assimilation organiques individuelles, afin que la plupart des non-académiques et des non-initiés qui lisent ceci puissent avoir une vision claire de ce qu’est l’assimilation d’un point de vue objectif et rationnel et aussi de ce que cela implique et exige pour un organisme de considérer si elle a le potentiel et les exigences pour être assimilée dans une société particulière, et comment cela renforce une société sophistiquée, et ici, comment cela aurait aidé dans la politique d’Hitler à créer une Allemagne moderne ou la vision de n’importe quel dirigeant à créer un pays moderne.

En parlant d’évolution, il faut tenir compte de l’évolution et de la condition physique de chacun, car toutes les formes d’Homo Sapiens évoluent ensemble sur cette minuscule planète qu’est la Terre d’une manière si rapide que les manuels scolaires ne peuvent espérer l’expliquer et l’égaler, d’où l’importance des ressources et la créativité de penseurs d’avant-garde dotés d’une intelligence fluide.

Tout d’abord, je voudrais aborder la question de l’assimilation d’un point de vue organique et, étant donné que je suis un parfait exemple de l’école de pensée française avec un côté britannique fort, je vais expliquer ce processus en m’en servant moi-même comme exemple. Maintenant, j’ai hérité des connaissances, de la langue, des valeurs et des philosophies de l’empire français et de l’empire britannique par la transmission culturelle après que ces empires aient conquis des terres et étendu leur royaume. Je ne me suis donc pas réveillé un matin, parlant soudainement français et anglais tout en connaissant l’histoire et la littérature de ces langues. Et si l’île minuscule que je suis née était située près de l’Europe occidentale, elle ferait partie de l’Europe, je n’aurais probablement pas à répondre à toutes ces questions, car elle aurait été considérée comme un produit de la civilisation européenne, à la simple différence que certaines des personnes qui constituent sa nation viennent avec une variété de tons de peau dont beaucoup ont une couleur et une texture très différentes de la majorité commune du rose clair à cause d’un mélange qui a été fait pendant la conquête occidentale européenne. Pourtant, cela n’aurait pas été un tel problème parce qu’il y a beaucoup de pays d’Europe où les gens ne sont pas aussi pâles que la majorité commune, par exemple l’Espagne, le Portugal, l’Italie et la Grèce – c’est simplement une légère similitude dans les attributs physiques, pas la langue, ou autre chose, donc il ne serait d’aucun sens de placer ces nations dans un groupe ! Mais, comme le lieu de ma naissance est un lieu éloigné de l’Europe géographiquement bien que né sur le patrimoine de l’Europe de l’Ouest, et que j’ai voyagé pour rejoindre les racines de mon héritage culturel en Europe occidentale puisque je fais partie des élites littéraires de la nouvelle génération née dans une république indépendante avec un nouveau système culturel et éducatif, une langue et des valeurs française, je pense être un bon exemple pour expliquer le processus de l’assimilation dans une perspective individuelle, en m’aidant de ma propre Théorie organique.

Maintenant que j’ai expliqué que l’organisme individuel né sur la planète terre selon les lois de la nature et de l’évolution est libre et évolue encore puisque l’évolution est un processus sans fin. J’attirerai également l’attention du public sur le fait que, selon les lois de la nature, les barrières érigées par l’homme ne font pas partie des lois naturelles, ce sont simplement des barrières érigées par les groupes politiques. Ainsi, l’organisme individuel naît sur une planète et peut s’adapter et changer en fonction de ses capacités et de son choix d’environnement. Grâce aux progrès d’aujourd’hui grâce à la technologie et à ses installations d’apprentissage accéléré, les organismes peuvent apprendre et se façonner linguistiquement et philosophiquement en fonction de l’environnement dont ils veulent faire partie. Cependant, il y a aussi des limites à ce processus, car un haut niveau de compétence en termes de modèles comportementaux et de communication sera nécessaire pour qu’un organisme s’assimile parfaitement à un environnement choisi et soit vu comme une partie intégrante de celui-ci tout en étant synchronisé avec les natifs. Par exemple, j’avais hérité des modèles communicatifs, comportementaux et sociaux de la France et de l’Angleterre, qui étaient enracinés en moi et j’ai également fait des choix pour approfondir ma compréhension de ces sociétés à travers mes choix éducatifs et, dès mon plus jeune âge, j’ai toujours voulu poursuivre ma carrière et terminer ma vie en Europe de l’Ouest : France et Angleterre. Cela signifie que j’ai investi beaucoup d’efforts pour me redéfinir en tant que Franco-Britannique d’Europe occidentale parce que rien n’arrive à personne sans sacrifice, travail et dévouement.

Il s’agit maintenant d’expliquer que pour qu’un organisme sur terre puisse envisager de s’assimiler dans un environnement choisi, ce n’est pas un processus facile, mais il comporte d’immenses défis et sacrifices. Si nous voulons faire partie d’une nouvelle société, nous ne pourrons pas le faire en restant ce que nous sommes, mais nous devrons nous remodeler et nous ajuster à la société et nous efforcer de ne faire qu’un avec son peuple, et d’une certaine façon les voir comme notre propre “sang” – métaphoriquement. En outre, il y a aussi la question de la condition physique, qui n’a rien à voir avec la “beauté”, mais plutôt avec la capacité de se fondre dans les organismes de cette société par une certaine forme de synchronisation physique. Ce n’est qu’une partie et non le seul facteur qui définit l’assimilation, mais c’est un facteur qui facilite le processus d’assimilation, bien que ce ne soit pas tout. Par exemple, en utilisant l’organisme que je suis, je suis né avec un héritage indo-européen et bien que je sois peut-être un peu moins pâle que la majorité moyenne des organismes de la sphère occidentale européenne, j’ai encore plus de similitudes physiques avec ces gens puisqu’ils sont aussi d’origine indo-européenne et de ce qui est aussi connu comme la “race aryen”. Ce que j’essaie de dire, c’est que j’ai choisi une société où l’assimilation était réalisable parce qu’il y avait des liens forts dans mon propre patrimoine génétique, linguistique et culturel avec ces pays : Je parlais la langue, lisais la littérature, connaissais l’histoire, chantais, jouais et écoutais la musique, partageais la même religion et étudiais et comprenais la philosophie de ses plus grands esprits. Cela signifie donc que l’organisme que je suis a eu toutes les chances de s’assimiler dans la sphère de l’Europe de l’Ouest, en France comme en Angleterre.

Cela n’aurait peut-être pas été aussi facile si, par exemple, j’avais décidé de m’assimiler dans la civilisation négrière de l’Afrique parce que pour commencer, la forme physique entre l’organisme que je suis et le peuple négrier est incroyablement loin l’un de l’autre ; mais encore plus, je n’ai aucun lien avec la culture, les langues, l’histoire ou la philosophie négrière. Cela ne veut pas dire que ce serait impossible, mais cela aurait été très difficile en raison des différences de civilisation et de mode de vie.

Puisqu’il s’agit du sujet des nègres, si dans les années 1950 une personne avait déclaré que les nègres sont une race et un patrimoine inférieurs, les gens autour d’elle auraient pu dire que l’homme est partial et raciste. Cela ne signifie pas pour autant que tous les nègres sont inadéquats ou non qualifiés, bien sûr, nous avons de grands nègres qui excellent dans la plupart des disciplines physiques comme le sport et quelques autres qui sont devenus des professeurs dans des domaines spécifiques. Mais ce qu’il est généralement sous-entendu par l’affirmation que “les nègres sont une race inférieure” semble suggérer qu’en moyenne, c’est-à-dire que si nous prenons tous les nègres et faisons la moyenne de leurs réalisations et les comparons à toutes les autres civilisations, nous arriverons au fait qu’ils sont en retard sur tout, d’où le terme “inférieur”. Aujourd’hui, si nous regardons toutes les statistiques mondiales concernant les nègres, nous verrons qu’ils sont en effet derrière toutes les autres civilisations. Pourtant, chaque fois que ce sujet revient sur le tapis, nous voyons soudain tous les médias à majorité juive, jetant soudain tous les nègres singuliers des États-Unis qui ont fait de l’argent ; nous voyons des joueurs de basket-ball, des rappeurs avec des diamants dans la bouche, et tous les autres nègres qui ont réussi financièrement grâce aux industries des médias à capitaux juifs des États-Unis. Ce n’est donc pas encore une fois la question, car je ne dis pas que tous les nègres sont inférieurs, mais simplement que la civilisation négrière est en moyenne inférieure à toutes les autres civilisations de la planète Terre. Et comme si cela ne suffisait pas, ils sont aussi physiquement incroyablement uniques en termes de caractéristiques et de traits par rapport à toutes les autres civilisations de la Terre, ce qui en fait une énigme en matière d’assimilation dans toutes les cultures. Donc, pour moi, les nègres devraient en tenir compte et avec le monde développé dans lequel nous vivons maintenant et avec la technologie qui rend le monde beaucoup plus connecté et qui rend la vie assez semblable sur n’importe quelle partie de la Terre, je crois fermement qu’ils devraient commencer à s’unir et s’organiser pour combler le fossé avec le reste du monde et envisager le développement du continent africain où ils pourraient tous trouver assez de place pour vivre.

S’installer en Afrique: les clés pour réussir ses projets sur le continent

World Charity by Country

Dons de charité par pays / Source: GDTB

Le monde a été très charitable envers les causes négrières, mais il est temps pour eux de commencer à s’aider eux-mêmes. L’autre point avec les nègres, c’est qu’eux aussi sont assez semblables aux Juifs lorsqu’ils déménagent dans d’autres sociétés, parce qu’ils se concentrent généralement sur les questions négrières et les nègres, et ainsi forment un groupe de personnes qui cherchent davantage à accroître leur nombre dans un pays qui n’est pas le leur, et ne se concentrent pas sur les questions nationales et les peuples natifs, ce qui ne constitue pas une assimilation, et ce n’est pas une solution avantageuse pour un système. Donc, encore une fois du point de vue de la théorie organique, cela ne fait que générer et créer des organismes plus problématiques qui ne font pas partie d’un système et qui ont des problèmes d’assimilation en raison d’énormes différences dans la composition organique, les modèles comportementaux, les objectifs et les perspectives et ne fait que ralentir et affaiblir tout système.

Reportage: Paris-Jerusalem, Alya.

En 2021, il semble juste d’expliquer ce qu’est la véritable assimilation, et aussi avec le monde plus développé, plus égal et plus connecté, de guider ceux qui ne peuvent ou ne veulent pas s’assimiler en leur expliquant comment des organismes partageant des compositions organiques, valeurs, culture, vision et histoire similaires ont tous les facteurs pour créer des sociétés harmonieuses en étant ensemble. Les nègres et les juifs devraient tous les deux y réfléchir, et peut-être méditer sur la question de savoir s’ils seraient plus heureux dans une société composée de leur propre espèce, ce qui pourrait générer moins de tensions et un sentiment d’être à l’aise dans une atmosphère noire ou juive reflétant leurs croyances et rituels. Parce que la civilisation occidentale est loin d’être parfaite et elle a aussi ses propres problèmes à résoudre, son propre peuple et ses propres questions de gestion à cibler, et si la nation a une foule qui n’est pas déterminée à y contribuer, elle ne fait qu’aggraver ces problèmes.

Reportage: La vie dans la rue

Nous voyons parfois des gens de la foule occidentale se comparer aux membres des foules du tiers monde et des tribus étrangères pour générer un faux sentiment de supériorité. Je voudrais rappeler aux gens que cela n’améliore en rien leur vie. La société occidentale a beaucoup de problèmes qui sont profondément enracinés et qui ne peuvent pas être perçus à l’œil nu depuis la surface, puisque c’est une société qui semble amoureuse de tout emballer proprement, mais étant un intellectuel qui a étudié la psychologie, je peux dire avec confiance qu’il y a d’immenses problèmes en Occident concernant la culture de l’esprit pour le bien de nos vies. Beaucoup de gens sont malades dans leur esprit et ne s’en rendent pas compte et il reste énormément de travail à faire pour fixer les mentalités et inculquer des valeurs pour une société harmonieuse et saine.

Le Désastre de l'Alcool chez les jeunes

Documentaire: Le désastre de l’aIcool chez les jeunes ! [Cliquez pour regarder]

Un regard inédit sur le monde de la toxicomanie

Les personnes qui ne s’assimilent pas n’ont généralement pas ces questions à cœur et ont tendance à se garer en Europe occidentale pour un revenu tout en restant étrangères dans leur identité. Ces gens devraient comprendre que s’ils ne s’assimilent pas, ils ne devraient pas s’attendre à être traités comme les organismes natifs qui font partie intégrante du système parce que le système dépend de ses organismes pour sa continuité et son existence, et cela arrivera aussi à leurs enfants s’ils sont élevés selon des croyances, une identité et des valeurs étrangères qui sont incompatibles avec la nation où ils vivent.

Les gens qui sont en Occident en tant que travailleurs hautement qualifiés et qui ne veulent pas s’assimiler devraient clairement se qualifier d’organismes temporaires qui n’ont pas l’intention de rester pour toujours et d’accepter la vie d’un étranger et le fardeau qui l’accompagne, car je ne dis pas que les natifs sont parfaits ou que tous sont supérieurs puisque nous avons des classes et différents niveaux de scolarité dans toutes les sociétés, mais ce que je répète, c’est que les problèmes de l’Occident ont besoin de la contribution et des préoccupations de sa population pour être résolus et que ceux qui n’y contribuent pas ne contribuent pas à améliorer leur vie et celle du pays, qu’ils soient natifs ou non-natifs. Ce n’est bien sûr pas un problème pour les touristes qui ne visitent que pour des photos et retournent dans leur pays après le voyage – sans problèmes.

Chine, chez les Maoïstes – Cinquante ans après la Révolution culturelle en Chine

Maintenant que j’ai parlé de l’exemple de moi essayant de m’assimiler dans la civilisation noire, une situation similaire se présenterait si, par exemple, je décidais de m’assimiler dans la sphère orientale asiatique, car les différences tant physiques que culturelles sont immenses et, bien que pas impossible, je me heurterais à d’énormes obstacles avec de telles différences qui rendraient ma tâche difficile pour être considéré comme membre de leur société en accord avec leurs propres natifs – et il est inutile de discuter des autres obstacles avec des énormes différences de choix alimentaire, de comportement, de communication et de style de vie.

Documentaire: Inde: Auroville, le Lien d’Or

Comme troisième exemple, une situation similaire se produirait si je décidais de m’assimiler en Inde, parce que bien qu’ils puissent être liés au peuple indo-européen, ils sont clairement une civilisation distincte qui s’est divisée et a acquis ses propres modèles de communication et de comportement, que je ne connais pas un seul mot et ne comprends ni ne gère, pour empirer les choses, je n’ai pas non plus l’air d’un Indien parce que bien évidemment je ne le suis pas, même si certains peuvent partager une teinte de peau olive, et pour finir, ils sont une civilisation principalement hindoue qui se reflète à travers leur culture et leur art, alors que je suis un chrétien profondément enraciné dans l’art de la civilisation française et de l’Europe de l’Ouest.

Le quatrième exemple, c’est celui d’une tentative d’assimilation dans une civilisation musulmane, l’Algérie par exemple. Encore une fois, je ne pourrais pas, parce que je ne parle pas la langue, je ne reflète pas les valeurs, je ne crois pas en l’islam et enfin, ma vision et mon style de vie sont totalement incompatibles avec les cultures du monde musulman, et pour couronner compliquer le tout je ne ressemble pas vraiment aux Algériens non plus.

Par conséquent, si je devais être jeté en Inde, en Asie de l’Est, en Afrique ou dans une société musulmane, regarder dans les yeux de ces organismes serait comme regarder dans les yeux d’un cerf, que je crois être une très bonne métaphore que j’utilise ici pour décrire une créature complètement ignorante, en partie à cause de son innocence, car elle n’a jamais été jetée et n’aura jamais à connaître le drame angoissant et incessant de devoir résoudre les problèmes du monde prétendument moderne de la civilisation occidentale tout en devant constamment endurer l’insécurité et la petitesse de “certains” des plus vils reptiles et cannibales immoraux comme des personnalités publiques vêtues d’un costume que personne n’aurait envie de présenter à ses proches ou d’inviter à dîner une fois qu’ils auront découvert la vérité sur les possibilités illimitées de leur profondeur sauvagement hédoniste et de leur esprit obscur, immoral et pourri.

Cerfs de toutes les couleurs

En fait, en tant qu’élite littéraire, je crois que ce sentiment d’être toujours entouré de cerfs de toutes les couleurs, formes, tailles et origines dans la plupart des endroits de la terre, d’ouest en est, doit être partagé par les autres esprits littéraires, car la plupart des organismes existent simplement, alors que les gens de lettres dans des domaines tels que la psychologie et la philosophie doivent porter le fardeau de penser pour la société et c’est une tâche morale énorme qui vient avec beaucoup de pression et de responsabilité, tout en étant rarement en mesure de communiquer avec les esprits simples que nous rencontrons parfois sur notre route méditative, qui nous laisse seulement l’option soit de sourire, soit de dire quelque chose de doux et anodin, comme de parler du temps.

CITATION Nietzsche les hommes aux pensées profondes d'purb dpurb site web

Traduction [EN]: “Deep-thinking men, in their dealings with other men, always feel like actors, because they are forced, in order to be understood, to simulate a superficiality.” -Nietzsche

Donc, pour en revenir à la question de la synchronisation physique, comme je l’ai répété, la condition physique [qui a à voir avec de légères similitudes et non avec la “beauté” comme on le croit communément] ne fait qu’aider et faciliter le processus d’assimilation mais n’est qu’une indication peu profonde d’appartenance, car la profondeur de l’individu est un point encore plus déterminant, car la véritable valeur de l’organisme est dans le mental, la vision et les valeurs. Pour aller plus loin dans cette logique, je donnerai l’exemple de quelques autres organismes à peau blême de certaines sociétés étrangères qui, malgré leur ton pâle, sont absolument incompatibles avec la société française, ce n’est donc pas parce qu’ils se fondent de manière trompeuse en donnant une impression superficielle d’appartenance à la majorité par une couleur de peau qu’ils sont parfaitement adaptés pour s’y intégrer car ils ne reflètent ni le patrimoine linguistique ni les valeurs, ni les principes fondamentaux des libertés individuelles, la pensée chrétienne qui, même sans être religieux, ont marqué la civilisation et le caractère humain et récepteur de la France.

Sibérie: Les Enfants du Bagne / Tomsk, colonie pour filles, et Mariinsk, camp pour garçons, voici un aperçu de l’univers carcéral en Sibérie où règne le désespoir. Les conditions de vie dans ces bagnes contemporains sont régulièrement dénoncées par les organisations humanitaires. Un témoignage unique.

Un bon exemple serait de considérer les Juifs, les Européens de l’Est, les Russes, les mennonites ou certains segments de la population syrienne qui ont des fois une peau blême. Et puisque nous sommes sur le sujet, je n’ai aussi jamais remarqué “Juif” comme une catégorie séparée empirique dans les formulaires ataviques du monde Anglo-Saxon, pourquoi ?

Des Juifs

Image: Des Juifs Haredim

Jérusalem:le pouvoir des ultra orthodoxes

Après tout, les Juifs sont une race distincte, comme ceux qui semblent obsédés par la recherche empirique l’ont découvert – moi ça ne me dérange pas puisque je vois les choses de la perspective évolutionnaire avancée de la « Composition Organique », mais je me pose la question pour les obsédés du laboratoire. Ce que la génétique semble avoir révélé, c’est qu’il existe de puissants marqueurs génétiques de la judéité, de sorte que l’intuition d’Hitler s’est avérée vraie. Ainsi, les juifs ne sont pas nés de conversions en Europe parce que les juifs géographiquement et culturellement éloignés ont encore plus de gènes en commun qu’avec les non-juifs et ces gènes sont d’origine levantine [région où se trouve Israël] ce qui indique un mélange de sociétés caucasiennes de l’est [région entourant la Russie, la Géorgie, l’Azerbaïdjan, l’Arménie, l’Europe de l’Est et l’Asie de l’Ouest], européennes et sémitiques qui semblent compléter le lien manquant de la descendance européenne des juifs. On croit maintenant que les juifs ashkénazes descendent d’une population iranienne hétérogène qui s’est ensuite mélangée à des peuples slaviques orientaux et occidentaux et peut-être même à des Turcs et des Grecs sur le territoire de l’Empire khazar vers le VIIIe siècle après J.-C. Bien que ma perspective sur la race se résume à une simple question de “compositions organiques différentes”, c’est simplement une petite observation pour les scientifiques obsédés par la génétique. Encore une fois, il est important de considérer l’évolution globale de tous les organismes, et aussi de ne jamais oublier qu’un organisme supérieur peut venir de n’importe où sur terre – l’évolution de la race humaine est continue et sans fin.

Je ne dis pas que certaines personnes sont des animaux ou qu’elles devraient être exterminées, alors ne considérez pas mes observations comme discriminatoires, car j’ai déjà expliqué que l’organisme individuel a tous les pouvoirs d’auto-création et d’auto-définition et que du point de vue de l’évolution, les organismes humains de n’importe quelle “composition organique” [race] peuvent procréer avec qui ils veulent, et l’organisme supérieur peut apparaître de n’importe où, mais cette réalité scientifique n’est pas suffisant pour s’assimiler. Ce que je dis, c’est que “s’assimiler” dans une civilisation sophistiquée ne se résume pas à une simple forme physique, il ne s’agit pas simplement d’accepter les “Gros jambons roses” comme le disait Christian Clavier dans la mini-série “Napoléon” de Yves Simoneau en 2002, car on ne cherche pas simplement à créer une société sans structure, dont le seul point fort serait une peau blême et ensuite d’inonder la société de boules de chair roses non civilisées…pour la photo !

TOTALEMENT ISOLÉS : Les Mennonites, communauté coupée du monde

Seule l’industrie hollywoodienne, majoritairement juive, semble voir les choses de cette façon et c’est peut-être parce que les Etats-Unis sont simplement une colonie d’Europe bâtardisée composée principalement de migrants et de juifs de la sphère allemande et anglo-saxonne qui ont tendance à être très pâles pour ne pas dire blême en termes de teint contrairement à beaucoup d’européens.

État de bâtard

Ils ont été forcés de trouver un moyen de survivre dans le Far West et ont dû s’unir autour de quelque chose en commun, ce qu’ils ont fait autour du whisky, des armes à feu, du poulet frit, des affaires et de la langue anglaise qu’ils ont également bâtardisé dans leur propre version, tout en restant un groupe industrialisé et mécanique sans aucune structure culturelle – pour la grande majorité bien sûr qui semble avoir une profonde frustration qui se reflète par un mépris des Européens modernes parfaitement assimilés aux sociétés qui forment leur racine.

D’ailleurs en 2021 mes opinions sur la démocratie américaine fondées sur des années de recherches et de preuves empiriques, mais aussi sur des observations fondées sur les valeurs discutables que certains des produits de leurs industries entendent donner au monde, semble presque similaires aux perspectives des grands esprits de la famille intellectuelle française du XIXème et du XXème siècle.

Jacques Derrida sur l’«American Attitude»

Pour Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867), le système mis au point en Amérique pour transformer une foule de migrants en un sorte de nation synchronisée artificiellement causait le déracinement des Européens en Amérique. Baudelaire allait trouver ses pensées dans les textes d’Edgar Poe (1809 – 1849), qui était un écrivain moraliste américain qui était lui-même anti-américain et qui peignit un portrait littéraire macabre et sombre sur le thème de la vulgarité américaine. L’Amérique n’est pas libre culturellement et Edgar Poe était pour Baudelaire un des rares cas de rafinnement et de sensibilité au milieu de cette jungle sauvage; l’écrivain américain qui nous permit de percer le mensonge médiatique et cinématographique, le coeur révélateur de l’Amérique – comme le feront certains artistes plus modernes après lui tel que Hunter Thompson et Chuck Palahniuk. C’est une façon de laisser l’Amérique elle-même à travers ses écrivains nous montrer ses côtés sombres et répugnants. Pour Poe, qui avait une acuité de vision incroyable, l’Amérique était l’endroit où étaient réunis les génies mécaniques et les forces animales. Quant à Jules Verne (1828 – 1905), il pensait que les américains étaient des mécaniciens, tout comme les italiens sont des musiciens et les allemands des méta-physicistes. Chez Jules Verne, un des auteurs qui a beaucoup influencé les esprits littéraires de son époque dans leur enfance, l’Amérique a toujours été la nation de la violence et il était particulièrement dégouté par les “Gun Club” qui pour lui était l’image des États-Unis: une nation impérialiste et militaire et un pays d’extrême. Pour Jules Verne l’Amérique était le pays de la brutalité et de la vitesse des moyens de transport. D’ailleurs dans “Le Tour du monde en 80 jours” nous voyons le train utilisé par Verne comme un de ces lieux mobiles où on va rencontrer des échantillons différents de la population humaine sur terre. Paul Claudel (1868 – 1955) avait décrit Chicago comme la ville du sang. Apollinaire avait fait un tour du monde en paroles sur la “machine” qu’est l’Amérique, une terre d’immigrants ou l’européen sauvage est connecté à l’indien sauvage et était particulièrement intéressé par la moralité sexuelle des Mormons de l’état d’Utah qui avaient transformé la polygamie en une activité permit religieusement et faisait des États-Unis un pays avec une sexualité violente. Apollinaire décrivit les gens de Utah comme des Scandinaves en culottes, des Russes en blouse rouge, des anglais étalant leur barbes en collier, avec des Américains, des Juifs, des Allemands, etc. Le continent Américain était vénéré mais aussi repoussé. Guillaume Apollinaire trouvait que Montparnasse à l’époque de la guerre était une projection de l’Amérique à Paris: une juxtaposition des gens du monde entier. Dans ses écrits Apollinaire décrivit aussi la froideur des gens d’Utah ou il comparait les yeux rigides d’un spectateur lors de la pendaison d’un nègre à celui d’un mangeur d’opium. Apollinaire pensait que la démocratie Américaine était insuffisante et aurait toujours besoin de l’Europe malgré leur symbole maçonnique adopté du triangle avec l’oeil qui était supposé tout voir. Pour Apollinaire, à cause de la culture mormone et la polygamie, l’Amérique apparaissait comme le pays des femmes pour les Européens. L’Europe était masculine et l’Amérique féminine [LE rope & LA mérique / jeu de mots], et donc Apollinaire voyait l’Amérique comme une femme qui attendait le conquérant Européen, alors que la France était le pays des hommes debout qui devrait se méfier de la démocratie Américaine. Blaise Cendrars (1887 – 1961) qui était comme Guillaume Appolinaire (1880 – 1918) un grand admirateur de la peinture nouvelle qui était la peinture cubiste de cette époque [les artistes de cette forme, les Delaunay créèrent un mouvement culturel à eux tout seul], qui réunissait des vues différentes d’un même objet, avait lui aussi conclut que New-York avait échoué comme le nouveau Rome parce que le le côté nouveau [new] l’avait emporté sur le côté Romain. L’autre écrivain français André Breton (1896 1966), qui était avant-garde et un grand poète de la ville avait refusé de visiter New York pendant son séjour à l’époque où la France était sous l’occupation allemande, souffrant d’une nostalgie de Paris et avait constaté que les États-Unis étaient devenu beaucoup plus étranger en seulement 5 ans.

LesFrancaisNapproventPasLaPolitiquedesUSASondage

Une majorité de 80% des citoyens français se méfient des Etats-Unis et n’approuvent pas leur politique / Source: Le Figaro

Et Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) qui comme beaucoup avait un rêve transmit par le cinéma américain allait voir son rêve tourner en cauchemar le moment où il découvrit la vérité sur l’Amérique durant son visite juste après la libération. Sartre comme Breton décrit l’Amérique comme un pays mystérieux qu’on connaissait moins bien qu’auparavant et un pays qui était profondément différent des villes Européennes, qui malgré fascinante, était dangereux et dont il fallait s’en méfier. Pendant la guerre l’Amérique s’était imposé comme la nation la plus puissante militairement, et l’enthousiasme initial des Européens occidentaux de leur arrivée allait vite s’éteindre après la découverte de leur esprits simples et ignorants. Les États-Unis subirent les attaques de Jean-Paul Sartre pour être une société fragmentée, que Sartre décrivit comme ayant plus d’acier et d’aluminium que d’êtres humains: la ville la plus mécanique du monde où l’hiver est beaucoup plus froid et l’été est beaucoup plus chaud. Sartre trouvait que New-York ressemblait beaucoup plus à une ville d’Afrique du nord comme Dakar qu’une cité Européenne. En Amérique, Sartre cherchait et pensait trouver une cité Européenne avec ses sentiments, comme une mère qui voyait les habitants comme ses enfants qui devaient être couvés et gardés, mais ne l’a pas trouvé, puisque pour lui les États-Unis n’ont pas la même tradition historique où la nature Européenne, ce qui s’avéra décevante pour une colonie d’Europe. Sartre trouva New-York terriblement étranger.

Et finalement, une figure qui est presque paternel pour moi, Michel Butor (1926 – 2016), un des grands professeurs de la littérature moderne française visita les États-Unis inspiré par la curiosité des grands écrivains Européens en Amérique constata qu’on pouvait faire de l’argent, qu’on pouvait voir certaines choses intéressantes, mais qu’on ne pouvait pas vivre aux États-Unis, et que l’étrangeté de l’autre côté de l’Atlantique faisait que la plupart des livres semblaient mensongers – les anecdotes de Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) étaient exactes.

20200123_Capitalism

Où perd-on foi dans le capitalisme ? / Source: Statista France

Remarquons ici toute littérature est une oeuvre collective car les mots n’ont pas été inventé par les écrivains puisque la langue est une création collective et crée donc un lien social; les villes aussi sont des créations collective, tout comme le paysage autour de ces villes et les noms des grands hommes et femmes qui marquent les lieux [le génie du lieu], et ce, dans l’espoir que l’esprit de ces hommes marquera les générations futures.

Beaucoup d’Américains semblent également excités de souligner leur longue ascendance européenne perdue, tout en étant déconnectés de celle-ci en termes de valeurs et de philosophie, et ils semblent aussi ignorer l’évolution sociétale des grands empires européens tels que la France. Cette perspective Hollywoodienne peut marcher pour qu’une agence d’escorte, un bar de strip-tease, pour que certains puissent travailler en tant que femmes de loisirs ou répondre aux critères de travailleuses du sexe, mais en dehors de ces entreprises, une société exige davantage de ses citoyens, et ici des organismes avec un sens d’appartenance et de responsabilité ainsi que les comportements et les noms appropriés qui correspondent au domaine thématique pour être en parfaite synchronisation avec les exigences de la société – donc la condition physique ne suffit pas mais facilite simplement le processus d’assimilation, surtout parmi le cerveau courant et non pensant.

En effet, les juifs ont longtemps utilisé cette illusion visuelle pour se fondre parmi ceux qu’ils qualifient de “gentils” ou de “goy” de la sphère européenne, les non-juifs qui, selon leurs écritures, sont des êtres inférieurs nés pour servir les juifs et qui, selon leurs textes religieux, peuvent être traités en animaux et même tués si nécessaire. Il s’agit simplement d’une observation factuelle de ce qui est écrit dans les textes religieux des juifs. Ce sont des écritures qui ont façonné la pensée des sociétés juives depuis l’antiquité, et c’est un fait dont les gens devraient être conscients pour comprendre le train principal de pensée d’un groupe particulier, il est important de connaître les faits des écritures qui les ont façonnées, leurs valeurs et perspectives et pourquoi une grande partie de leurs industries saignent les civilisations et sont desséchées de toute humanité. Cela semble tout à fait contraire au concept de karma que l’on trouve dans l’hindouisme, par exemple, qui croit en la causalité à travers un système où les effets bénéfiques sont dérivés des actions bénéfiques passées et les effets néfastes des actions néfastes passées, créant un système d’actions et de réactions dans la vie réincarnée d’une âme (Atman), formant un cycle de renaissance. La causalité de l’hindouisme s’applique non seulement au monde matériel, mais aussi à ses pensées, ses paroles, ses actions et celles que d’autres font selon nos instructions. Tout au long de l’histoire, les juifs utilisant leur peau pâle pour se répandre et se cacher au sein de la civilisation chrétienne de l’Europe occidentale, ont souvent eu un parcours plus facile, et lorsqu’ils changent de nom pour adopter des noms chrétiens pour leur intégration thématique, il est parfois difficile de les distinguer des peuples natifs de la civilisation occidentale née de la pensée et des arts chrétiens.

Le problème avec les Juifs est que, bien qu’ils se mélangent, agissent, s’habillent et se nomment comme les natifs des nations européennes dans lesquelles ils se déplacent, ils se classent toujours clairement comme Juifs, se concentrent sur l’amélioration des autres Juifs, et travaillent systématiquement ensemble dans les affaires pour promouvoir les intérêts des Juifs, et même ont des conventions mondiales entre Juifs, et présentent avec fierté les réalisations des Juifs. Si nous remarquons que tous les groupes étrangers le font, sauf les chrétiens occidentaux qui semblent préférer s’entretuer et vivre une vie d’hédonisme égoïste.

Pourtant, ce que font ces groupes étrangers n’est pas l’assimilation, mais simplement le mélange et l’intégration pour dominer systématiquement une société ou un système, et les juifs ont été connus pour le faire méthodiquement et habilement dans de nombreux pays européens à travers l’histoire, avec de violents sacrifices religieux à leurs dieux assoiffés de sang, qui impliquent le sacrifice des enfants chrétiens, comme ils ont fait au fil des ans à travers l’histoire européenne avec de nombreux corps d’enfants chrétiens jeunes mutilés trouvés à travers toute l’Europe vidés de leur sang. C’est pourquoi les Juifs sont le seul groupe qui, tout au long de l’histoire de l’humanité, a été persécuté et banni de tant de pays. Oui, beaucoup de gens ne connaissent pas ces faits car la plupart d’entre eux n’ont pas d’autre choix que de prendre leurs informations dans les industries des médias grand public appartenant aux Juifs, alors apprenez quelque chose de nouveau ici !

Documentaire: Dans la tête des SS (2017)

Le régime hitlérien n’a pas été le premier régime à interdire et persécuter les Juifs, les Juifs ont même été bannis d’Angleterre en 1290 par Edouard Ier, et aussi en 1306 de France par Philippe IV et ce ne sont que 3 exemples. Les Juifs ont été interdits dans un grand nombre de sociétés où ils se sont installés en raison de leur insolence, de leur manque de respect pour la nation et les valeurs de leur patrimoine qui ont encouragé la destruction systématique et l’asservissement de toutes les civilisations non-juives, de leur habitude de monopoliser la presse pour déformer la perception et aussi de leurs rituels occultes et violents impliquant le meurtre de jeunes enfants chrétiens pour offrir leur sang à leur Dieu païen violent, Baal dont le terme “Holocauste” est tiré – qui a conduit au sacrifice des personnes dans un Tophet de flammes. En fait, les Juifs ont été interdits dans un grand nombre de pays depuis l’an 1 200 AVANT J.-C. jusqu’en 2014 où ils viennent d’être banni au Guatemala, ce qui conduit à environ 3213 ans de persécutions constantes et d’interdictions dans les pays où ils ont migré. En fait, ils ont été interdits à Carthage, à Rome, en Égypte, en Espagne, en Italie, en Suisse, en Hongrie, en Belgique, en Autriche, aux Pays-Bas, en Pologne, en République tchèque, en Lituanie, dans les États baltes et en Russie, pour ne citer que quelques exemples. Si les gens veulent connaître la liste complète, ils peuvent utiliser Internet et chercher “Pays où les Juifs ont été bannis/expulsés” [aussi voir: Les Résolutions contre Israël].

Voici ce qui, à mon avis, a suscité tant de dégoût et de ressentiment envers les Juifs des nations chrétiennes. Et si quelqu’un avait le temps de lire le Talmud, il comprendrait pourquoi les Juifs ont été persécutés dans tant de pays chrétiens et haïs par le Pape Innocent III lui-même. De même que dans nos langues les chrétiens tirent leur nom du Christ, de même dans la langue du Talmud les chrétiens sont appelés Notsrim, de Jésus le Nazaréen. Mais les chrétiens sont aussi appelés par les noms utilisés dans le Talmud pour désigner tous les non-juifs : Abhodah Zarah, Akum, Obhde Elilim, Minim, Nokhrim, Edom, Amme Haarets, Goim, Apikorosim, Kuthrim.

Hilkhoth X, 2 : Les juifs baptisés doivent être mis à mort.

Les juifs enseignent que, puisque les chrétiens suivent les enseignements de cet homme[Jésus], que les juifs considèrent comme séducteur et idolâtre, et qu’ils l’adorent comme Dieu, il est clair qu’ils méritent le nom d’idolâtres, qui ne diffèrent en rien de ceux parmi lesquels les juifs ont vécu avant la naissance du Christ, et qu’ils ont appris à exterminer par tous les moyens possibles.

Dans le même livre Sanhedrin (107b) nous lisons :
« Mar a dit : Jésus a séduit, corrompu et détruit Israël. »

Le livre Zohar, III, (282), nous dit que Jésus est mort comme une bête et a été enterré dans ce ” tas de terre… où ils jettent les cadavres des chiens et des ânes, et où les fils d’Ésaü[les chrétiens] et d’Ismaël[les Turcs], Jésus et Mahommed, incirconcis et impur comme des chiens morts, sont enterrés. »(25)

Dans Iore Dea (81,7, Hagah) il est dit : ” Un enfant ne doit pas être nourri par un Nokhri, si un Israélite peut être eu ; car le lait du Nokhrith durcit le cœur de l’enfant et construit en lui une nature mauvaise. »

Dans Iore Dea (153,1, Hagah) il est dit : ” Un enfant ne doit pas être donné à l’Akum pour apprendre les bonnes manières, la littérature ou les arts, car ils le conduiront à l’hérésie. »

Dans Zohar (1,25b) il est dit : ” Ceux qui font du bien à l’Akum… ne ressusciteront pas des morts. »

Hilkhoth X, 6 : Nous pouvons aider les goyim dans le besoin, si cela nous évite des problèmes plus tard.

C’est ainsi qu’ils expliquent les paroles du Deutéronome (VII,2)… et tu ne leur montreras aucune pitié[Goim], comme cité dans la Gémarah. Rabbi S. Iarchi explique ce passage de la Bible comme suit : “Ne leur faites pas de compliments, car il est interdit de dire : combien il est bon ce Goi. »

Le rabbin Bechai, expliquant le texte du Deutéronome sur la haine de l’idolâtrie, dit : ” L’Écriture nous apprend à haïr les idoles et à les appeler par des noms ignominieux. Ainsi, si le nom d’une église est Bethgalia – “maison de la magnificence”, elle devrait s’appeler Bethkaria – une maison insignifiante, une porcherie, une latrine. Pour ce mot, karia, désigne un bidonville en bas de l’échelle. »

JÉSUS est ignominieusement appelé Jeschu – ce qui signifie, que son nom et sa mémoire soient effacés. Son nom propre en hébreu est Jeschua, qui signifie Salut.

MARIE, LA MERE DE JESUS, s’appelle Charia-dung, excrément (épave allemande). En hébreu, son nom propre est Miriam.

Les SAINTS CHRÉTIENS, dont le mot hébreu est Kedoschim, sont appelés Kededchim (cinaedos) – hommes féminins (fées). Les femmes saintes s’appellent Kedeschoth, les putes.

Une FILLE CHRETIENNE qui travaille pour les Juifs le jour de leur sabbat s’appelle Schaw-wesschicksel, Sabbath Dirt.

Eben Haezar 44, 8 : Les mariages entre goyim et juifs sont nuls.

Puisque les Goïm servent les Juifs comme des bêtes de somme, ils appartiennent à un Juif avec sa vie et toutes ses facultés : “La vie d’un Goi et tous ses pouvoirs physiques appartiennent à un Juif. “(A. Rohl. Die Polem. p.20)

C’est un axiome des rabbins qu’un juif peut prendre tout ce qui appartient aux chrétiens pour quelque raison que ce soit, même par fraude ; on ne peut pas non plus parler de vol, car il ne fait que prendre ce qui lui appartient.

Dans Babha Bathra (54b), il est dit : ” Tout ce qui concerne le Goim est comme un désert ; la première personne qui l’emporte peut le réclamer pour le sien. »

Dans Babha Kama (113b) il est dit : ” Il est permis de tromper un Goi. »

Le Babha Kama (113b) dit : ” Le nom de Dieu n’est pas profané quand, par exemple, un Juif ment à un Goi en disant : ” J’ai donné quelque chose à ton père, mais il est mort ; tu dois me le rendre ” tant que le Goi ignore que tu mens. »

(4) cf. supra, p.30, Un texte similaire se trouve dans Schabbuoth Hagahoth of Rabbi Ascher (6d) : “Si le magistrat d’une ville oblige les Juifs à jurer qu’ils ne s’échapperont pas de la ville et n’en sortiront rien, ils peuvent jurer faussement en se disant qu’ils ne s’échapperont pas aujourd’hui et qu’ils ne sortiront rien de la ville aujourd’hui. »

Dans Zohar (I, 160a) il est dit : ” Rabbi Jehuda lui dit[Rabbi Chezkia]:’Il faut louer celui qui est capable de se libérer des ennemis d’Israël, et les justes sont beaucoup à louer ceux qui s’en libèrent et combattent contre eux’. Rabbin Chezkia a demandé : “Comment devons-nous les combattre ? Rabbi Jehuda a dit : ” Par de sages conseils, tu leur feras la guerre ” (Proverbes, ch. 24, 6). Par quel genre de guerre ? Le genre de guerre que chaque fils de l’homme doit mener contre ses ennemis, que Jacob a utilisé contre Esaü par tromperie et ruse chaque fois que possible. Il faut les combattre sans cesse, jusqu’à ce que l’ordre soit rétabli. C’est donc avec satisfaction que je dis que nous devons nous libérer d’eux et régner sur eux. »

Dans Choschen Ham. (425,5) il est dit : ” Si vous voyez un hérétique qui ne croit pas en la Torah, tombez dans un puits dans lequel il y a une échelle, dépêchez-vous immédiatement de l’emporter et de lui dire : ” Je dois descendre mon fils d’un toit ; je vais vous ramener immédiatement l’échelle ” ou autre chose. Les Kuthaei, cependant, qui ne sont pas nos ennemis, qui prennent soin des brebis des Israélites, ne doivent pas être tués directement, mais ils ne doivent pas être sauvés de la mort. »

Et dans Iore Dea (158,1) il est dit : ” Les Akum qui ne sont pas nos ennemis ne doivent pas être tués directement, cependant ils ne doivent pas être sauvés du danger de mort. Par exemple, si vous voyez l’un d’eux tomber à la mer, ne le sortez pas à moins qu’il ne vous promette de vous donner de l’argent. »

Enfin, le Talmud ordonne que les chrétiens soient tués sans pitié. Dans l’Abhodah Zarah (26b), il est dit : ” Les hérétiques, les traîtres et les apostats doivent être jetés dans un puits et non sauvés. »

Et dans Choschen Hamm. encore une fois (388,15) il est dit : ” S’il peut être prouvé que quelqu’un a trahi Israël trois fois, ou a donné l’argent des Israélites à l’Akum, un moyen doit être trouvé après une réflexion prudente pour l’effacer de la surface de la terre. »

Même un chrétien qui étudie la loi d’Israël mérite la mort. Dans le Sanhédrin (59a), il est écrit : ” Rabbi Jochananan dit : Un Goi qui prêche dans la Loi est coupable de mort. »

Dans Hilkhoth Akum (X, 2) il est dit : ” Ces choses[supra] sont destinées aux idolâtres. Mais les Israélites[Juifs] aussi, qui abandonnent leur religion et deviennent épicuriens[Chrétiens], doivent être tués, et nous devons les persécuter jusqu’au bout. Car ils affligent Israël et détournent le peuple de Dieu. »

A Choschen Hamm. (425,5) il est dit : “Les juifs qui deviennent épicuriens[chrétiens], qui adorent les étoiles et les planètes et péchent malicieusement ; aussi ceux qui mangent la chair d’animaux blessés, ou qui s’habillent en vain, méritent le nom d’épicuriens ; de même ceux qui renient la Torah et les prophètes d’Israël – la loi veut que tous soient tués ; et ceux qui ont le pouvoir de vie et de mort doivent les faire tuer ; et si cela ne peut être fait, ils doivent être conduits à leur mort par des moyens trompeurs. »

Le rabbin David Kimchi écrit dans Obadiam : ” Ce que les prophètes ont prédit sur la destruction d’Édom dans les derniers jours était destiné à Rome, comme l’explique Ésaïe (ch. 34,1) : Approchez, nations, pour entendre … Car quand Rome sera détruite, Israël sera racheté. »

UN JUIF QUI TUE UN CHRISTIEN NE COMMET PÉCHER, MAIS OFFRE UN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE À DIEU / En Sépher Ou Israël (177b) il est dit : ” Prenez la vie du Kliphoth et tuez-les, et vous plairez à Dieu comme celui qui lui offre l’encens. »

Et dans Ialkut Simoni (245c. n. 772), il est dit : ” Quiconque verse le sang des impies est aussi agréable à Dieu que celui qui offre un sacrifice à Dieu. »

APRÈS LA DESTRUCTION DU TEMPLE DE JÉRUSALEM, LE SEUL SACRIFICE NÉCESSAIRE EST L’EXTERMINATION DES CHRÉTIENS

Dans Zohar (III, 227b), le Bon Pasteur dit : ” Le seul sacrifice exigé est que nous retirions de nous les impurs. »

Abhodah Zarah 22a : Ne pas s’associer avec les goyim, ils versent du sang.

Rashi Erod.22 30 : Un goy est comme un chien. Les Écritures nous enseignent qu’un chien mérite plus de respect qu’un goy.

Kerithuth 6b p. 78 : Les Juifs sont des humains, pas des goyim, ce sont des animaux.

Dans Kallah (1b, p.18), il est écrit : ” Elle (la mère de la mamzer) lui a dit:’Jure-moi’. Et Rabbi Akibha jura de ses lèvres, mais dans son coeur il invalida son serment. »(4)

Tout Juif est donc tenu de faire tout ce qui est en son pouvoir pour détruire ce royaume impie des Édomites (Rome) qui règne sur le monde entier. Mais comme il n’est pas toujours et partout possible de procéder à cette extermination des chrétiens, le Talmud ordonne qu’ils soient attaqués au moins indirectement, à savoir : en les blessant de toutes les manières possibles, et en réduisant ainsi leur pouvoir, aider à leur destruction finale. Partout où c’est possible, un Juif devrait tuer les chrétiens, et le faire sans pitié. Les Juifs ne doivent pas ménager leurs moyens pour combattre les tyrans qui les détiennent dans cette quatrième captivité afin de se libérer. Ils doivent combattre les chrétiens avec astuce et ne rien faire pour empêcher le mal de leur arriver : leurs malades ne doivent pas être soignés, les femmes chrétiennes en couches ne doivent pas être aidées, ni être sauvées quand elles sont en danger de mort.

Zohar I, 28b : Les goyim sont les enfants du serpent de la Genèse.

Yebamoth 98a : Tous les enfants de goyim sont des animaux

Abhodah Zarah 35b : Toutes les filles de non-croyants sont niddah (sales, impures) depuis leur naissance.

Sanhédrine 52b : L’adultère n’est pas défendu avec la femme d’un goy, parce que Moïse n’a interdit que l’adultère avec “la femme de ton prochain”, et les goy s ne sont pas des prochains.

Abhodah Zarah 4b : Vous pouvez tuer un goy de vos propres mains.

Hilkhoth goy X, 1 : Ne pas faire d’accord avec un goy, ne jamais montrer de pitié à un goy. Vous ne devez pas avoir pitié des goyim parce qu’il dit : “Vous ne les regarderez pas avec pitié”.

Hilkkkkoth X, 1 : ne pas sauver les goyim en danger de mort.

Orach Chaiim 57, 6a : Pas plus de compassion devrait être montré pour les goyim que pour les porcs, quand ils sont malades de l’intestin.

Jalkut Rubeni Gadol 12b : Les âmes des goyim viennent des esprits impurs appelés cochons.

Babha Kama 113a : Les Juifs peuvent mentir et se parjurer eux-mêmes, si c’est pour tromper ou condamner un goy.

Choschen Ham 26, 1 : Un Juif ne devrait pas être poursuivi devant un tribunal goy, par un juge goy, ou par des lois non-juives.

Babha Kama 113a : Les incroyants ne bénéficient pas de la loi et Dieu a rendu leur argent disponible à Israël.

Pesachim 49b : Il est permis de décapiter goyim le jour de l’expiation pour les péchés, même si elle tombe également un jour de sabbat.

Rabbin Eliezer : “Il est permis de couper la tête d’un idiot, un membre des peuples de la Terre (Pranaitis), c’est-à-dire un animal charnel, un chrétien, le jour de l’expiation des péchés et même si ce jour tombe un jour de sabbat”. Ses disciples répondirent : “Rabbi ! Vous devriez plutôt dire “sacrifier” un goy. “Mais il répondit : “En aucun cas ! Car quand un sacrifice est fait, il faut prier pour demander à Dieu de l’accepter, alors qu’il n’est pas nécessaire de prier quand on décapite quelqu’un.”

Sanhédrine 58b : Si un goy frappe un Juif, il doit être tué, parce que c’est comme frapper Dieu.

Chagigah 15b : Un Juif est toujours considéré comme bon, malgré les péchés qu’il peut commettre. C’est toujours sa coquille qui se salit, jamais son propre derrière.

Zohar I, 131a : Les Gentils souillent le monde. Le Juif est un être supérieur

Chullin 91b : Les juifs possèdent la dignité que même un ange n’a pas.

Iore Dea 151, 11 : Il est interdit de donner un cadeau à un goy, il encourage l’amitié.

Orach Chaiim 20, 2 : Les Gentils se déguisent pour tuer les Juifs.

Shabbath 116a (p. 569) : Les Juifs doivent détruire les livres goyim (Nouveau Testament).

Sanhédrin 90a : Ceux qui lisent le Nouveau Testament (chrétiens) n’auront pas de place dans le monde pour venir.

CEUX QUI TUENT LES CHRÉTIENS AURONT UNE HAUTE PLACE DANS LES CIEUX

Dans Zohar (I, 38b, et 39a) il est dit : ” Dans les palais du quatrième ciel se trouvent ceux qui se sont lamentés sur Sion et Jérusalem, et tous ceux qui ont détruit les nations idolâtres… et ceux qui ont tué les gens qui adorent les idoles sont revêtus de vêtements pourpres afin qu’ils soient reconnus et honorés. »

LES JUIFS NE DOIVENT JAMAIS CESSER D’EXTERMINER LES GOIM ; ILS NE DOIVENT JAMAIS LES LAISSER EN PAIX ET NE JAMAIS SE SOUMETTRE À EUX

Dans Hilkhoth Akum (X, 1) il est dit : ” Ne mangez pas avec les idolâtres, et ne leur permettez pas d’adorer leurs idoles, car il est écrit : Ne faites pas d’alliance avec eux, et n’ayez pas pitié d’eux (Deut. ch. 7, 2). Soit vous vous détournez de leurs idoles, soit vous les tuez. »

Ibidem (X,7) : ” Là où les Juifs sont forts, aucun idolâtre ne doit être autorisé à rester… “

Avec tes camarades sous le signe du SS.jpg

Image: Une affiche du Reich Allemand durant l’occupation Allemande en France

Le 25 juin 1940, l’armistice divise la France en deux, livrée au Nord à l’occupation allemande. Paris, ville ouverte, voit sur la Tour Eiffel se dresser le drapeau du Reich.
Les Juifs de France seront la première cible, tant dans la zone occupée où est appliquée la politique raciale du Reich, que dans la zone libre où la Révolution nationale prônée par le maréchal Pétain permet l’instauration d’un antisémitisme d’État. En France, à la veille de la guerre, on dénombre environ 300.000 Juifs, divisés en deux groupes bien distincts :
– 150.000 “Israélites” citoyens français (bourgeois et professions libérales)
– 150.000 “Juifs” étrangers (majoritairement en bas de l’échelle sociale) Ces derniers seront les victimes privilégiées de Vichy.

La communauté juive en France: Si la France est le foyer de la plus grande communauté juive en Europe, de nombreux juifs de France sont tentés de partir, victimes d’actes de vandalisme ou d’agressions antisémites.

Maintenant, nous pouvons nous poser quelques questions simples : “Est-ce que tous ceux qui ont banni les Juifs pourraient être sans raison de le faire ?” et “Est-ce que les gens pourraient simplement se promener et soudainement décider sans raison de haïr les Juifs ?” et aussi “Si cela leur arrive depuis tant d’années, n’est-il pas probable que le problème soit en fait avec les Juifs eux-mêmes ? Je crois qu’il vaut mieux laisser le public répondre à ces questions et y réfléchir seul.

Je voudrais qu’il soit clair que je parle de la mentalité et de la pensée juive dans son ensemble, mais je ne dis pas que chaque Juif est mauvais ou n’a rien à offrir aux sociétés dans lesquelles il vit. Bien sûr, il y a des personnes étonnantes, admirables et aimables qui s’assimilent complètement, et même abandonnent leur identité juive et se convertissent au christianisme, ou deviennent athées. Il y a bien sûr des gens décents d’origine juive qui deviennent des citoyens à part entière de leurs nouvelles sociétés, qui parlent au nom des natifs et se considèrent comme faisant partie de la nation, et cela se voit en France, où certains sont devenus plus français que les natifs et se sont intégrés au cœur de la nation. Il s’agit cependant d’une très petite minorité de juifs qui, après l’avoir fait, considèrent souvent les juifs étrangers comme inadéquats pour la France parce qu’ils se considèrent comme faisant partie du peuple français et comprennent l’identité religieuse du pays qu’est le christianisme. Cependant, la majorité des Juifs ne suivent pas l’exemple des nobles qui s’assimilent, mais ils restent distincts et travaillent pour leurs camarades et organisations juives tout en adoptant leurs valeurs et croyances de circoncision et de supériorité.

Le fait que tous les organismes étrangers doivent comprendre, c’est que pour faire partie de la civilisation de l’Europe occidentale, il faut accepter le fait que le christianisme fait partie de la culture fondatrice, et bien que de nombreuses personnes ne soient pas religieuses, on ne peut ignorer que l’histoire, l’héritage et la littérature ont été fondés par des hommes et des femmes chrétiens, dont certains ne sont pas religieux mais qui étaient indéniablement influencés directement et indirectement par les pensées et l’héritage chrétiens, ce que peuvent refléter les nombreuses allégories et métaphores relatives à la Bible dans les écrits. C’est aussi une immense coïncidence qu’au moment même où je réponds à vos questions que la cathédrale de Notre Dame vient d’être mystérieusement frappée par un incendie le 15 avril 2019, certains y voient peut-être un signe des fondements d’une civilisation en feu – et les coïncidences avec ma vie ne me surprennent plus. Quand le hasard multiplie les coïncidences, ce n’est plus le hasard.

En fait, être pleinement assimilé signifie renoncer à son identité étrangère et adopter l’histoire, la langue, le thème linguistique, la nation et la religion de la nouvelle société comme une option supplémentaire si possible. Les juifs devraient réfléchir à ceci : le fait que l’Europe occidentale est une civilisation chrétienne, tout comme Israël est une société juive et les Etats arabes sont une civilisation musulmane, les gouvernements de ces deux derniers pays considérant la religion comme une question de culture sérieuse sans jamais faire de compromis sur les priorités et les nécessités religieuses par rapport à toute autre religion étrangère. En effet, dans de nombreux États arabes, le crucifix en tant que symbole du christianisme est interdit et illégal, et ils n’y trouvent aucune excuse, parce qu’ils sont de fermes musulmans et que cela fait partie intégrante du tissu de leur gouvernement et de leur culture. Pour compléter cet exemple, il est également ridicule que la Grand-Croix de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur qui est le plus haut ordre français du mérite militaire et civil, établi en 1802 par Napoléon Bonaparte, ait été remise au sultan de Brunei en 1997, un homme qui a récemment institué un nouveau code pénal qui applique aussi strictement que possible la charia – la loi islamique : la mort par lapidation pour punir les homosexuels et l’adultère, l’amputation d’une main ou d’un pied pour les voleurs, la peine de mort pour insulte au prophète. Être juif ou musulman se présentera toujours comme une personne aux valeurs étrangères issues de l’histoire et des valeurs de ces religions les plus incompatibles avec celles de la civilisation européenne de l’ouest.

Lorsque des personnes qui ont la capacité de s’assimiler choisissent de le faire, elles devraient d’abord trouver leur place dans la nouvelle société en fonction de leurs choix, de leurs désirs, de leurs compétences, et de leurs aptitudes [par ex. de synthèse psychosociale et culturelle]. On attendra d’eux des efforts et un désir sincères d’assimilation et cela commence normalement par un nom occidentale de culture chrétienne. Les personnes qui ne s’assimilent pas complètement, qui ne se reconstruisent pas, qui ne se remodèlent pas et qui n’adoptent pas une identité complètement nouvelle doivent toujours se rappeler qu’elles ne sont pas chez elles et ne doivent pas s’attendre à être traitées de la même manière que celles qui le sont – c’est une simple question de bon sens. Ceux qui s’assimilent correctement feront automatiquement partie du peuple natif et partageront une existence avec des opportunités similaires, parce qu’ils sont devenus natifs par leurs efforts et leur décision d’être loyaux et dévoués à leur nouvelle société et à son peuple, en respectant l’héritage fondateur et les sensibilités religieuses, et bien sûr en maîtrisant les modèles comportementaux et de communication. Cela ne veut pas dire qu’après s’être assimilés, ils doivent être soumis et ne peuvent pas faire une observation critique pour aider à développer le pays et à le faire avancer, mais leur allégeance devrait être à la nation et aux peuples natifs parce qu’ils devraient se considérer comme faisant partie de ce peuple. Après tout, l’objectif est de créer des citoyens loyaux qui se sentent concernés par la société, pas des esclaves ! Les natifs aussi devraient apprendre à agir comme des êtres humains et adopter les valeurs de la décence pour comprendre qu’une société fonctionne mieux quand la population est en harmonie et heureuse tout en voyant les citoyens véritablement et convenablement assimilés comme leur propre “sang”.

Ainsi, comme l’explique la théorie organique, un autre facteur est plus fondamental que la condition physique pour l’assimilation, comme nous pouvons le voir en utilisant les Juifs comme exemple pour expliquer que la similarité dans le ton de la peau n’est pratiquement rien, sauf un petit facteur qui aide avec la majorité qui pense rarement. La partie la plus importante et la plus déterminante de l’assimilation concerne la gestion des modèles de comportement et de communication appropriés de la société dont l’organisme veut faire partie intégrante. Pour une assimilation réussie et complète, les organismes doivent aussi intégrer la philosophie, comprendre le cœur du peuple en fonction de son histoire, maîtriser la langue, ne faire qu’un avec la nation, ressentir la joie et la douleur du peuple et aussi être capables d’utiliser le terme “nous” pour se décrire eux-mêmes et les natifs ; en d’autres termes voire le peuple comme leur propre “sang”, et c’est ainsi que cela se passe dans la civilisation la plus complexe, cad. La France, où le peuple est prêt à vous aimer et à vous considérer comme son propre sang si vous manifestez le désir sincère de faire partie de la patrie nationale et la loyauté envers la nation.

L’assimilation n’est malheureusement pas facile à réaliser et c’est pourquoi l’assimilation ne doit pas être confondue avec l’intégration, car l’intégration est simplement l’acquisition d’un passeport pour la légalité ; mais l’assimilation, c’est sculpter son cœur et son âme pour être un avec les gens et faire partie du sang national par loyauté et engagement tout en jouant son rôle de citoyen avec ses devoirs civiques. En effet, dans la Grèce antique, tous les membres de la société qui ne participaient pas aux affaires communes ou qui ne s’impliquaient pas et ne s’intéressaient pas aux questions concernant le fonctionnement du pays et l’harmonie du peuple étaient considérés comme des “parasites”, et cela inclut tous les citoyens – natifs et non-natifs – car toute société a besoin que ses membres travaillent ensemble pour résoudre ses problèmes et suivent la voie sans fin du changement positif pour l’amélioration d’une civilisation.

En France, la plupart des gens comprennent qu’être citoyen est un devoir, et c’est pourquoi, jusqu’à aujourd’hui, ils sont la seule civilisation qui a défendu la fraternité de l’humanité comme individus à traiter avec respect, ils font partie des rares civilisations qui écoutent l’opinion du peuple et font l’éloge d’un empereur à un homme du peuple s’ils estiment que cet homme a la grandeur de ses arguments et le mérite – nous le savons par la légende de Napoléon – et enfin le peuple français est un des plus réceptifs qui est toujours disposé à raisonner avec de nouveaux arguments, quels que soient leurs origines. En fait, la France est la civilisation la moins atavique et la plus sophistiquée du monde moderne, et accomplir une tâche aussi glorieuse sans monarchie est étonnant – cela montre que lorsque les gens se considèrent comme un et se traitent mutuellement avec respect tout en ayant un sens moral et de dignité, ils incarnent un empire ensemble, sans ou avec un empereur – la tête avec une couronne étant simplement une option si nécessaire et jugé assez ingénieux pour guider une civilisation en conquête, mais non une nécessité ! Pour atteindre ce sens de l’harmonie, il faut des organismes qui peuvent trouver un fort sens de la synchronisation en tant que peuple et se considérer comme une nation et ressentir la douleur et la gloire des uns et des autres pour raisonner comme un. Bien sûr, comme n’importe quelle société sur terre, nous trouvons de mauvaises pommes, des hommes d’État corrompus et immoraux et des arguments mesquins, surtout parmi les petites classes, mais dans l’ensemble, c’est une société construite sur des valeurs et des philosophies conçues pour favoriser le développement des êtres humains où tout individu peut atteindre le sommet par son propre désir, ses efforts et son engagement. Ce qui est malheureux, c’est qu’à mesure que le temps passe et que la génération passionnée qui a participé à la fondation de ce nouveau monde meurt, ces valeurs s’estompent parfois dans l’esprit de la nouvelle génération et des médiocres hommes d’État “Fisher Price” qu’elle nous a donnés. Ce sont de grands hommes et femmes au caractère admirable qui ont eu le courage, au cours de l’histoire, de prendre la parole pour rappeler au peuple combien de personnes ont perdu la vie et se sont battus pour la société actuelle et combien il est urgent de poursuivre notre route du progrès humain sur la même direction à prendre.

Résistances, héros de la première heure (2016)

Témoignage du Waffen-SS inculpé pour le massacre d’Oradour-sur-Glane (2014)

Étant moi-même plus français qu’allemand, je dois dire que je crois en la supériorité de la langue, du patrimoine, des valeurs, du peuple et de l’industrie française sur l’Allemagne et tout autre patrimoine. Cela ne signifie pas que je ne respecte pas ou ne reconnais pas l’Allemagne et les autres pays et leurs réalisations, car des personnes compétentes dans des domaines spécifiques peuvent apparaître de n’importe où dans le monde en raison des capacités étonnantes de la technologie biologique qu’est le cerveau humain, un organe sur lequel j’ai fait des recherches et que j’ai étudié pendant des années. L’Allemagne a toujours été l’un des grands rivaux de la France, une rivalité qui a duré des siècles, bien avant Napoléon, étant parmi les autres vastes empires à vocation universelle. Certains universitaires allemands, tels que Kant, Freud, Schopenhauer et Nietzsche ont influencé d’autres dans le monde entier, notamment la philosophie et la psychologie française comme on peut le voir dans la théorie de la vie mentale de Jacques Lacan, tout comme d’autres ont influencé la pensée allemande, par exemple, Schopenhauer qui, après avoir été initié à la philosophie indienne par Friedrich Majer, s’y intéressa beaucoup et médita même sur l’Upanishad, partie des Védas (l’écriture sacrée des hindous) dans ses vieux jours, pour en associer une partie fondamentale à sa théorie sur le monde des représentations ; le concept hindou de “Maya”, qui définit le monde comme une illusion, c.a.d. en fin de compte, les sujets et les objets étaient tous “Maya” (illusion). Schopenhauer a quitté Berlin lorsque la Prusse s’est rebellée contre Napoléon, car il n’a jamais développé de forts sentiments patriotiques allemands, se considérant comme un cosmopolite sans aucune affiliation nationale, et son concept adopté de sujet, d’objet et d’imaginaire (illusion) réapparaît également dans les écrits de Freud, et a été développé plus tard par Jacques Lacan. Les écrits de Schopenhauer ont également éveillé l’intérêt de Nietzsche, dont les écrits ont été initialement falsifiés par sa sœur, Elizabeth, pour les ajuster à sa propre idéologie nationaliste allemande, adoptée par le régime nazi. La véritable philosophie de Nietzsche était explicitement opposée à l’antisémitisme et au nationalisme puisqu’il préconisait une perspective plus globale et individuelle ; heureusement, des éditions révisées ont été publiées après que des universitaires du XXe siècle eurent contesté cette interprétation incorrecte de son œuvre. Par conséquent, certains intellectuels individuels des institutions allemandes ont contribué à la philosophie moderne et à la pensée de l’Europe occidentale ; nous trouvons donc un certain respect et une certaine coopération dans certains domaines universitaires qui profitent à toutes les sociétés et économies, mais nous ne pouvons ignorer le fait qu’il existe également une concurrence dure et intense avec la France et d’autres pays dans toute une série de secteurs, par exemple, les industries scientifiques, médicales, du transport et technologiques.

La France face aux coalitions européennes (presque toute l’Europe) (2013)

Mais du point de vue d’un produit de la France et de son héritage intellectuel et linguistique avec une influence britannique indéniable, je ne me serais jamais plié à la vision d’Hitler d’un empire allemand gouvernant le monde avec toutes les langues progressivement éteintes pour un monde germanophone complet, donc je préférerais voir un monde francophone. L’empire français a aussi la sophistication et la flexibilité d’accueillir tous les patrimoines étrangers[ce qui est digne d’être conservé] sans les détruire ou les brûler, en traduisant simplement le patrimoine étranger pour qu’il fasse désormais partie du répertoire des savoir-faire de l’empire français. Ainsi, la France ne détruit pas le patrimoine des autres cultures, mais absorbe ce qui est digne d’être conservé (ex. gastronomie, technologie, industries, philosophie, arts, autres pratiques bénéfiques, etc), le partage avec la famille francophone et l’intègre à son propre sang dans son évolution constante. Je préférerais donc voir le monde devenir français comme l’empire absorbe et embrasse l’humanité entière comme une mère dans ses bras d’une manière harmonieuse, humaine, sophistiquée et stratégique plutôt qu’allemande.

Pour terminer, après avoir parlé de ce que je pensais ne pas avoir été bien planifié sous le régime hitlérien, et expliqué en profondeur la théorie organique et l’assimilation, voici les choses qui inspirent dans l’histoire d’Hitler, et cela commence avec le grand exemple que le peuple allemand a donné à l’époque en donnant le pouvoir absolu à un individu méritant en montrant au monde qu’un artiste en faillite pouvait devenir le tout premier dans une société moderne. Ce qui signifie que nous avons finalement vu un garçon aux prises avec des difficultés financières qui était le premier de sa classe à l’école primaire et qui n’a pas réussi à démarrer sa carrière artistique après avoir échoué à un examen à l’une des meilleures écoles d’art d’Europe de l’Ouest, l’Académie des beaux-arts de Vienne, puis par ses propres efforts après avoir été sans abri et en lutte pendant la guerre, monter au sommet. Cela démontre une mobilité sociale absolue, mais aussi comment un homme peut être un artiste, un soldat et un homme cultivé par ses propres efforts pour ensuite diriger une civilisation moderne et atteindre le sommet. C’est pour moi un exemple moderne clair de la Théorie Organique sur le processus d’autodéfinition et de développement progressif d’un organisme individuel basé sur ses propres désirs et capacités.

La deuxième facette étonnamment inspirante de l’histoire d’Hitler est la façon dont il a donné au monde un exemple avant-gardiste de la réponse à un environnement harmonieux, en étant un végétarien qui a été le premier à initier des lois de protection animale.

Le troisième côté admirable d’Hitler était son charisme et sa loyauté envers sa société, mais aussi sa modestie et sa confiance envers les gens de tous les milieux, étant la seule personnalité publique de son niveau à se promener librement dans son pays et à rencontrer des gens de tous horizons et de toutes classes sans aucune protection, tout en gagnant leur confiance absolue pour les guider.

Le quatrième côté d’Adolf Hitler était qu’il avait du style dans son goût pour l’architecture de son pays, comme on peut le constater aujourd’hui à travers les plans qu’il a élaborés avec Albert Speer. On peut imaginer ce qu’aurait été l’avenir de l’Allemagne et de Berlin. Ces plans révèlent les bâtiments et les plans d’une ville qui reflétait la grandeur de l’humanité et même les uniformes de son personnel ont été confiés à Hugo Boss – montrant un homme qui vénérait la perfection. Et si nous regardons les uniformes et les costumes du gouvernement national-socialiste, nous devrons peut-être accepter qu’il s’agît de certains des costumes les plus stylés et les plus beaux jamais vus dans l’histoire moderne, peut-être seulement égalés par des couturiers français comme Yves Saint Laurent.

Le cinquième côté étonnant avec Hitler était son amour pour la science et l’évolution et sa passion pour garder une perspective mise à jour de toutes les dernières découvertes. Il serait donc assez partial de supposer qu’Hitler est un homme rigide qui n’a aucun goût pour le changement. Cela se reflète dans son empressement à encourager la recherche afin de reconstruire les installations médicales, technologiques et militaires de l’Allemagne. Cela ajoute aussi à mon opinion qu’Hitler aurait été disposé à écouter les nouvelles découvertes et à changer ses opinions en conséquence s’il avait été conseillé et convaincu par des gens authentiques, avant-gardistes et honnêtes – il aurait dû me consulter. Haha ! Mais bien sûr, l’entourage proche du Führer n’était pas particulièrement composé des esprits les plus éthiques ou les plus sophistiqués où beaucoup se sont révélés déloyaux et maléfiques, ce qui a probablement conduit aux horreurs du régime sans aucun lien avec Hitler lui-même.

La sixième chose admirable à propos d’Hitler, c’est le fait qu’il était un leader qui voyait vraiment les gens comme des organismes qui avaient besoin des mêmes chances de réussir et de s’élever et non comme une foule qui devait être divisée en segments gauche, droite et centre. Hitler considérait tous ses citoyens comme des gens de son système et s’efforçait de synchroniser l’ensemble de la société pour travailler comme une machine singulière. C’est certainement admirable en comparaison avec les personnes corrompues et immorales à la tête de la plupart des systèmes actuels où les critères utilisés pour gouverner les êtres humains sont des facteurs économiques et commerciaux. Diriger une civilisation d’êtres humains sans valeurs, sans philosophie et sans morale est un moyen sûr d’échouer à long terme parce que les êtres humains ne sont pas des objets ou des biens, mais des organismes complexes qui nécessitent un système très sensible pour vivre harmonieusement, et toute personne qui se dit leader et ne comprend pas la psychologie, la philosophie et les éléments qui conduisent à un environnement humain moderne harmonieux se mentent à eux-mêmes et la société.

Hitler Person of the Year Time

Il faut aussi se rappeler comment Hitler a même proposé de démanteler l’armée allemande et de détruire toutes les armes si tous les autres pays faisaient de même, ce à quoi ils n’ont jamais répondu. Ainsi, nous comprenons maintenant pourquoi Hitler a même été présenté comme la personne de l’année par le magazine Time, et cela ne pourrait pas être pour transformer les Juifs en viande hachée. Et l’autre question énigmatique est de savoir pourquoi tant d’argent est consacré aujourd’hui à la défense et à l’armée alors qu’il est clair que nous sommes une civilisation solitaire sur une planète solitaire qui devrait chercher à étendre sa portée en commençant une nouvelle civilisation sur une planète de réserve pour obtenir le statut de civilisation spatiale ? Ces partis qui dépensent tant d’argent pour l’équipement et la technologie militaires n’ont-ils que la défense et rien d’autre à l’arrière de leur esprit, peut-être inconscient ? Est-ce simplement pour la décoration ?

La septième chose inspirante à propos d’Hitler, c’est qu’il n’était pas d’origine allemande, mais comme moi, pleinement assimilé dans la société allemande et de gagner aussi le cœur de toute une nation et de s’élever au sommet et finalement devenir plus d’Allemands que les Allemands eux-mêmes, est quelque chose d’assez spectaculaire. Peut-être, une autre chose admirable a été la réponse d’Hitler dans une procédure judiciaire après l’échec de son coup d’État contre pour prendre le pouvoir, où il a répondu après qu’on lui ait demandé s’il était allemand en demandant si cela est prouvé sur un morceau de papier ou dans le cœur d’un homme ; car bien qu’il avait déjà gagné le cœur de la nation, il n’avait toujours pas de passeport allemand. Dans ses premières années en Allemagne, alors qu’il luttait financièrement et qu’il était sans abri, certains Allemands lui ont également dit qu’il ressemblait à un Juif et qu’ils pensaient qu’il en était un, puis de surmonter tout cela pour atteindre le sommet est tout à fait admirable.

Hitler Photos Rares Digitalisé Pour La Première Fois

Des photos de Henrich Hoffmann, le photographe d’Hitler, numérisés, restaurés et publiés pour la première fois (2019)

Le huitième côté inspirant d’Hitler était sa capacité unique d’ouvrir complètement son cœur à la nation et de prononcer des discours bouleversants qui hypnotisaient les foules, avec son langage corporel passionné qui dépeignait son honnêteté et son dévouement envers les Allemands en les mettant devant son propre confort.

Documentaire: Les Waffen SS, unités d’élites d’Hitler (2013)

Le neuvième et dernier point que je crois inspirant pour Hitler, c’est qu’il ne semble pas avoir vu les choses du point de vue d’un cadre moyen ordinaire, d’un économiste, d’un banquier, d’un médecin ou d’un autre cadre financier qui a tendance à se frayer un chemin dans un parti politique simplement pour apparaître à la télévision ou dans un journal sans aucune présence, vision ou valeurs fortes et voir une civilisation comme une boutique à gérer.

Les planifications d'Hitler

Hitler avait une vision plus profonde comme les empereurs légendaires l’avaient, et voulait guider une nation avec la philosophie, l’architecture inspirante, les œuvres d’art intemporelles et voulait mélanger et synchroniser tous les départements allant des affaires, l’économie, l’éducation, la science, la recherche, l’histoire et les arts pour créer le genre de civilisation éternelle comme il est souvent décrit dans la littérature mythologique qui tient le test du temps en marbre et pierre.

Plus important encore, Hitler semblait être d’avis que si une civilisation n’est pas en expansion, elle ne progresse pas et cela reflétait les qualités d’un conquérant, rappelant celles d’Alexandre le Grand ou encore Napoléon.

Alexandre Le Grand vainqueur du lion de Bazaria, sculpté par jacques Dieudonné

Image: Alexandre Le Grand vainqueur du lion de Bazaria, sculpté par Jacques Dieudonné, Jardin des Tuileries, 1er arrondissement, Paris | Source: Les Musées de la Vile de Paris

Aujourd’hui, des cadres pathétiques et médiocres qui dirigent une équipe qu’ils appellent un parti politique sont guidés par le seul désir de rester au pouvoir, et en raison de leur allégeance aux donateurs de leur parti, ils doivent respecter et satisfaire certaines demandes pour rester financés, cela détruit une civilisation car elle n’est pas dirigée avec la liberté et les valeurs qu’elle exige, et donc, cela conduit à une atmosphère mondaine d’une société statique et ennuyeuse où le même genre d’hommes agissent et parlent d’une manière noble en public, mais se comportent comme des personnages ignobles et immoraux dans leur décision et leur gestion – ce cycle est déprimant et répétitif depuis des décennies sans qu’aucun personnage légendaire ne semble se dresser contre une telle absurdité et changer les choses. Aujourd’hui, avec tant de conventions, il n’est guère possible pour un grand empire de prendre les choses en main et d’envisager l’expansion et la conquête à cause de croyances hypocrites d’égalité absolue de toutes les sociétés et langues et de politiques du tiers monde qui ont piégé les grands empires occidentaux comme la France en soumission et à genoux pour se conformer à des règles irrationnelles, les exigences ridicules et hypocrites qui l’ont contraint à respecter les conventions et l’ont progressivement transformée, lui et bien d’autres empires, en pépinières paralysées par les exigences des sociétés inférieures, alors qu’elle a toutes les ressources pour transformer le monde entier en colonies et mieux le gérer tout en donnant à tous les peuples de la Terre le rêve de faire partie de son patrimoine, comme le faisaient autrefois les grands empires.

Il est également juste de noter qu’au cours de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, toutes les parties ont commis des atrocités sur des civils innocents, tant les Alliés que les Allemands, de sorte qu’aujourd’hui, lorsque nous regardons la plus grande guerre des hommes du XXe siècle, nous réalisons qu’aucun parti ne peut proclamer être des anges, car de nombreuses atrocités commises par les Alliés ont été ignorées jusqu’à récemment ; comme le massacre de Katyn commis par Staline, qui a été attribué à tort au Reich allemand, sans parler de l’horrible quantité de viols commis sur des femmes innocentes de tous bords en Allemagne occupée entre 1944 et 1954 [Anglais: 45 000 viols, Français 50 000 viols, Américains 190 000 viols et Soviétiques 430 000 viols]. Il ne faut aussi pas oublier les viols au cours de la libération de la France à la fois pendant et après l’avancée des forces armées des États-Unis à travers la France. Selon l’historien américain Robert Lilly, il y aurait eu 3 500 viols commis par des soldats américains en France entre juin 1944 et la fin de la guerre. Le nombre de viols est difficile à établir car de nombreuses victimes de viol n’ont jamais rapporté les faits auprès de la police. Les troupes américaines engagées ont commis 208 viols et une trentaine de meurtres dans le département de la Manche. Pour le seul mois de juin 1944, en Normandie, 175 soldats américains sont accusés de viol. [Voyez: Viols durant la libération de la France] Du fait du nombre important de cas de viols recensés et de la dégradation de l’image des soldats américains en France, le commandement américain juge entre le 14 juin 1944 et le 19 juin 1945, 68 cas de viol ordinaire concernant 75 victimes; au moins 50 % des soldats-violeurs sont ivres au moment de leur crime; sur les 152 accusés, 139 sont des Noirs, alors qu’ils ne forment que 10 % des troupes sur le théâtre européen [Voyez l’article: À l’automne 1944, Français et troupes américaines au bord de l’affrontement]

Donc, pour conclure avec une réponse à votre question, je ne suis ni un fan d’Hitler, ni un haineux Hitler, mais un homme qui voit “Le Führer” comme l’une des grandes figures du siècle dernier avec des éléments à s’inspirer et des erreurs à apprendre à ne pas commettre aussi. Un mouvement silencieux mais croissant d’Aryens modernes commence à réévaluer les idéologies du Führer avec une exposition récente à Montpellier présentant 200 photographies de son photographe Heinrich Hoffman.

Enfin, j’aimerais souligner que si personne ne parle, rien ne change… alors j’ai choisi de parler, qu’avez-vous choisi de faire ?

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[EN] Answer to Question VI. “Are you a Hitler fan?”

I guess this question is being asked to me because I have often linked Hitler videos throughout my essays and writings.

Well, to begin I have never quite understood the term “fan”, because this seems to involve some form of obsession to a particular person. No, I have admired many people’s works and values, and if this qualifies me as being “fan”, then perhaps I am. “Admiration” for “some” aspects of many great men and women’s works throughout history – that makes me an admirer of amazing work with respect for the artist or creator. This extends to Adolf Hitler, whom I would say had many things right in regards to managing a civilisation, but not everything. He, or his advisors did make some mistakes like most humans do, that cost him and his regime everything.

So, I would say, I do admire a lot of Hitler’s philosophies and achievements such as the need to unite the people by ridding the country of the divisions of left, centre and right, while also critical of some of his proceedings, because after all he was a human being who only went by the reality of his era, while I am living in 2021 and today see things from another perspective because I am lucky to have inherited a great amount of knowledge and scientific findings that were not yet available in the times of Hitler. The advancement of technology has today made it possible to be extremely mobile since most of the major works and research are now available in digital form and this has made the world more connected without the absolute need to travel to ancient libraries to find academic resources, and in some way, we could be managing a team or a company in Europe from the Amazonian jungle, from a tree house in Mexico or a tent in Denmark, as long as we have high speed broadband and decent technology – imagine what Da Vinci would have achieved if he had those in his time!

To begin with the Hitler dossier, this cannot be a simple answer since there are many things to say and explain so that people from the world over may understand my views and also have an understanding of all the controversy surrounding the “Fuhrer”. While answering this question I will also refer to the “Organic Theory” in explaining human existence, adaptation and evolution and also refer to my own case as an assimilated Franco-British Western European fairly similar to the case of Hitler or Napoleon who were both also not natives from the society they led, but were assimilated, surprisingly it seems that the two most powerful leaders in Western Europe had to come from another land as if sent by fate to solve the problems of a civilisation that had no legendary leader with vision among their own natives, and received a leader who won his nativity and became more national than the natives themselves. Hitler was born in Austria, while Napoleon was born in Corsica, and perhaps surprisingly 7 years before the birth of the future Emperor of France, Rousseau said that Corsica would shake Europe.

I have to say that from a very young age I was fascinated with the reputation of Adolf Hitler because like the great majority we were all taught that he was the most-evil person to have existed throughout human history, and his murderous obsession with the genocide of the Jews was something no sane human could possibly justify. Being just like most of people who grew up in the late 80s to the late 90s, information was and is still mainly distributed through the mainstream majority Jewish owned media outlets, a time when the internet was still blooming – specially video streaming websites – so, I was forced to digest the only perspective available to me until of course 10 decades into the millennium where a tremendous amount of Hitler files that were buried started to surface all over the internet, giving the world a clearer perspective of the war and its economic, philosophical and religious implications from both sides of the argument.

There is also the great confusion, misinterpretation and gossip media fabrication that exists regarding Hitler’s supposed desire for world conquest and obsession with the assumed superiority of the Germanic Caucasian race, especially the Nordic subtype with blond hair and blue eyes being one that should in the long run replace all the other races who are not of German descent – such as many inferior Slavic Eastern European societies with a fair amount of Jews & Muslims e.g. Poland, Bosnia, Chechen Republic and Russia, which he considered as cheap and inferior in culture, comparing them to minor animals – at least this is what the majority were told and made to believe. While the societies of Eastern Europe may not be as sophisticated as Western European societies, this assumption of inferior and superior subtype going only by genetic inheritance and physical attributes is not scientifically valid since we now know that organisms can be shaped with the right guidance and education to adapt to their chosen societies and this would have to be the case if an empire conquers and expands, and also that talent and genius, although very rare, can appear and have appeared from any corner of the earth in any society and of any organic composition, so a superior organism [intellectually or physically] can be born from any society and be part of any type of organic composition, not only the Nordic subtype of the Germanic Caucasian race, indeed even Mussolini who was another fascist and nationalist leader disagreed with Hitler on this Nordic subtype issue, and said that he did not believe in the superiority of just one particular subtype but in the overall quality of all subtypes, including the Mediterranean subtype with dark hair that creates a healthy mix among the nation.

However, the amplification of Hitler’s argument into a desire for extermination created a lot of confusion and which was further exaggerated and amplified by the mainstream gossip press mostly owned and managed by Jews to give the Hitler regime some bad publicity and worldwide hatred. As far as the recordings go, we only know of Hitler being focussed on national matters and clearly asking all other countries to leave him and Germany alone to focus on their own society and to be allowed to shape their society as they so wished since they inherited everything from their ancestors and wanted to preserve their society after having been given the authority to do so in democratic elections, and also keep the national German race “pure” [which of course made no sense because no race is pure since we are the result of migration, interbreeding and evolution from different subtypes and Hitler himself was the result of inbreeding between a man and his niece, the type of union that the man behind the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin was himself against along with marriage between cousins which he tried to make illegal by law due to the amount of deformities and disabled infants this led to and the dangerous genes this would spread].

So, to begin answering your question I will first say that Hitler was a firm patriot and a defender of the society and people he represented [not different from myself and my views for France and Western Europe in fact] and saw that to strengthen a country in more ways than one, the emphasis should first be on those who are part of, identify with and love the native people of the country, the latter being those who created the individual identity of the nation and those who represent the majority who drive the country and contribute to its functioning and continuation – this is a philosophy in line with the good management of a civilisation and my very own philosophy of the “Organic Theory” but only in part because the complete solution also involves taking into consideration the influx of talent and the evolutionary adaptation of other skilled organisms who also contribute to the maintenance and progress of the nation and who gained their nativity and completely identify with the nation, being a part of it.

Unfortunately, Hitler and his advisors exaggerated and misinterpreted the understanding of organic evolution and followed an atavistic and retrograde policy with a team who proceeded savagely, without carefully considering the fundamental logic that exist in all fields of life, which is that we have always had exceptions to the rules for exceptional cases – this applies to mathematics, arts, medicine, and science – which should also apply to any system deemed practical, modern and evolved. All organisms on this planet adapt and evolve from an organic and socio-linguistic standpoint, although not in equal measures and as I have said, if the laws of nature and evolution that contain all life on earth decided otherwise, then organisms from different organic compositions would not be able to procreate.

Hitler’s team was also composed of many traitors with fairly basic education who took murderous decisions that they hid from the “Fuhrer”, resulting in his downfall and the complete annihilation of his plans and system; towards the end they all placed the blame on one man as if Hitler had drugged a whole nation and hypnotised them into mechanical puppets – which is also clearly impossible without a nation’s faith, will and desire to go into the directions of his vision. It should also be mentioned that to date, not a single recording or written message has been found from Hitler giving the green light to the extermination of any people, and what can be concluded today is that Hitler believed that all societies and races should simply be nationalized so that all societies and races could behave better and perfect themselves like the German Reich. On the issue of mass murder, the blame today according the facts that have been collected are mainly attributed to Göring and Himmler, the latter going by ancient Aryan scriptures of Hinduism believing himself to be acting like the great warrior Arjuna who was purging his people and the whole world from evil and who believed that in the long run people would see him as the mythological hero cleaning the earth of evil which to him were the Jews and their values being the cause of all human suffering on earth as they destroy other civilisations and bend and control the minds of the masses through their media businesses.

First of all, I will explain what I am critical of the Hitler regime before also explaining what I believe is admirable about the legend of Adolf Hitler as a leader and a human being on this planet. There are a couple of things that I sincerely think are not acceptable in today’s enlightened society of 2021, and Hitler would have built a stronger Reich if he was better advised into smarter policies regarding the management, maintenance and shaping of a productive and sophisticated population with strong patriotic sentiments and a sense of synchronisation and understanding. Hitler did not simply aim to create a pink meatball company, but was a cultured leader guided by philosophy, ethics, morality, dignity, values and the arts and wanted the whole world to look to the German as a heroic role model to follow an be inspired by. Hitler wanted people to see the honourable SS men as legendary heroes who wanted to make the world a better place. Adolf Hitler was no pig or just a simple soldier.

It is fundamental to understand that at the time of Hitler, Germany was being taken over by communists who were methodically focussed in taking over Germany without any real sense of belonging to it, with the intention to simply turn it into a form of trading area and an economic backyard in Europe, similar to what the influential mainly Jew business geniuses have turned the United States into nowadays – a mechanised an industrialised society lacking a human touch and values, where selfish individualism has left everyone in a constant struggle to survive at whatever cost even if it means killing one another which is also common with firearms being legal there.

The Collapse of the American Empire?

The leaders of these communist groups in Germany at the time of Hitler were composed of a majority of foreigners which included many Jews. While the death count of Jews has been exaggerated and used to vilify Hitler, no major focus has been placed over the amount of horrific deaths that Jews caused in the Russian revolution and many revisionist historians have been claiming a much higher death count than the Hitler regime. However, it was clear that besides Jewish immigration and political influences from Jewish communists gradually weakening and corrupting German society, there was also a huge problem with the immigration of populations who were not native Germans. This implied that for a man like Hitler to achieve his dream of a strong, stable and modern Germany, the immigration issue would have had to be addressed, and being one with a vision of national focus and excellence, the offloading of excessive, incompatible and alien crowds who did not want to fully assimilate and become German citizens was something necessary to his vision.

However, there is no question also about the fact that Hitler should also have realised that there was a great amount of human beings who were highly talented and had completely assimilated in German society that had to be kept and treated as citizens who gained their nativity along with a strong sense of identification with the native crowd through their own adaptation and evolution. And since this was not the case, we ended up with World War II, many people dying in badly supplied detention camps after the allied bombed the connecting railways and disrupted food and hygienic supplies leading to an outbreak of typhus which killed thousands. Also many Germans who happened to have some distant link to the Jewish population where treated as criminals to be deported and this lead to an irrational operation that discarded people who were perfectly fit to be part of a functional society as today’s scientific standards have proven along with a proper interpretation of the theory of evolution: that we are organisms who can adapt and change identities to fit new environments if we make the choice and have the abilities and desire to do so. The Nuremberg laws which defined who should be qualified as a German based on genealogy was one of the German Reich’s most irrational and stupid decisions since it was not based on any good science. It was necessary for Germans then to prove that their parents and grand-parents had no Jewish ancestry; this was hypocritical since Hitler himself could not prove that he had no Jewish genetic links because his grand-father [the father of his father] is unknown; and many have suggested that he was the illegitimate child of a rich Jewish family’s member after an adulterous relationship with Hitler’s grandmother whom the family employed as a handmaid or a cook. Furthermore, from the defintion of the supposedly “perfect Aryan” who is supposed to be blond, blue-eyed, slim, tall, none of the top Nazi leaders shared these physical characteristics: Hitler was not blond, Goebbels was not tall, and Goering was not slim.

The other side, was that of the superiority of the German people that Hitler was obsessed about and who in fact turned out to be fairly uncreative by not considering people who had part German inheritance and cultural affiliation as an example of a form of German conquest, as it was also a way for a civilisation to spread its genes further and wider, and encourage the people resulting from this blending to mix with the founding civilisation which would lead to their future lineage to share an even greater amount of German genes. In fact, if science and evolution along with the average superiority of the “Aryan Race” was what guided the policy of the National Socialist regime, then they should have also encouraged the widespread of the Aryan genome by encouraging the healthiest and finest men and women from the Aryan race to donate eggs and sperm and encourage couples to use healthy donors of the Aryan race in breeding children, and this service should have been offered to couples from all walks of life to prevent the creation of malformations and unhealthy organisms. This would have been a sophisticated and modern way of thinking of human evolution and societal evolution in a Hitlerian way. A way of saying is that to change their society biologically, one great way is to make sure that they have enough “cream tarts”. Because, I believe that after all, human beings should be given the freedom of their choice of partnership, which was not the case in the Reich; as native Germans who did not breed with native Germans were considered as traitors.

Hence, this form of extremism was one of the major doctrines that lead to so much hate and resentment to the Third Reich from a large amount of Germans themselves, leading to an allied army to work consistently to bring down the whole show, although the opposing side represented values of a society that were not any better in providing a solution to a harmonious civilisation but were mostly fuelled by hate, strong Jewish financial motives and the desire to cripple Germany at any cost, but mostly to bring down the charismatic and overly powerful Adolf Hitler, as it is often the case whenever a gifted man rises to the top and dwarfs his competition with his talent and magnetism. This was also the case of Napoleon, when the whole of Europe had gathered all its forces to bring him down, this old and sclerosed Europe of the United Kings to destroy all the achievements of the Revolution [freedom and equal opportunities for all] and restore the unequal Ancien Régime in France. This seems to be the case nowadays, as if society cannot accept that some organisms are superior to the mediocre majority. This seems hypocritical since we can all nowadays accept that we have superior food from a nutritional standpoint, superior computers, superior cars, superior football players, superior watches, superior cameras, superior guitars, superior pianos, superior horses, so, this should also apply to the human organism; meaning we do also have superior individuals with superior intelligence, and hence superior vision and managerial skills. It is important to also note that superior objects are always rare, and hence a minority, in fact, that is why they have immense value. If diamonds were as abundant as steel and steel was as rare as diamonds, then jewellery would be made of steel and diamonds would be used in construction. So, we seem to live in a world where the mediocrity of the masses seem to find it hard to accept that some individuals are superior as a whole, and instead of encouraging, learning from, being inspired by, and being proud of being led by such individuals, we seem to instead find a union of mediocrity trying whatever they can to bring those individuals down. This is something society has to work on globally, to nurture excellence! Respect and appreciation are after all words that exist in all dictionaries, and noble and cultivated beings know how to display them, and those who have never considered these values may try to learn, it certainly would turn them into more complete beings.

Getting back to the management of the population of Germany for a healthy, strong and stable nation, Hitler should have found a systematic form of “filtration”, involving forms of interview, health assessment, skill assessment & cultural assessment that analysed the whole segment of German population who were of foreign origin in whole or in part, and divided them into 2 groups: those that were fit, safe and synchronised with the German society to keep, and those that were a burden due to their inability to adapt and unwillingness to be German due to firm religious or foreign convictions to be diplomatically relocated to an environment and society more suited to their characteristics in the most respectful of ways. Those who were deemed fit for German society could even have been given a form of classification [subtype of the German society] if deemed necessary and should also have been made to swear allegiance and priority to their newly found identity and people which they should have respected if this is where they thought they belonged, otherwise it would be best for an individual to move and live in a society compatible with their heritage and with people they feel a part of, after all nowadays in 2021, income inequality has gone down and the world is becoming a more equal planet along with the technological advances that make life fairly similar from one part of the world to another. The organisms who assimilated could also have the right to 3 warnings before considering deporting them for not respecting their contract of allegiance after serious offences, and hence becoming “traitors” to the nation.

The filtration solution was not an easy one but was in fact a sophisticated solution that would have been more apt for a civilisation that was evolving and getting more complex decade after decade – we cannot expect easy solutions to suit a complicated civilisation. This was of course not the solution the regime opted for, but instead chose the fastest and easiest route to deport all Jewish, non-German and part-Jewish people which resulted in so much unnecessary suffering and misunderstanding, when many of these people were not even religiously affiliated to any religion and considered themselves more German that anything else, such as Sigmund Freud for example who was a product of the intellectual thought of the German tradition who later influenced psychology globally and Albert Einstein, another great man of science who was also without any religious sentiments, and had to flee to the United States.

It is also important to remember that the policies devised by the National Socialist regime also targeted all the people who were deemed as burden and unnecessary to the progress of the German society, which also led to many Germans being euthanised for genetic and other incurable diseases that was seen as impure to a healthy society and race, along with a lot of elderly people who were thought as unfit to live. So, this shows that even a great amount of Germans lost their lives, not only Jews and foreigners trapped in deportation camps during a heavy bombardment of German soils.

I find it also important to bring to the discussion here the fact that Hitler’s Germany was not some form of 100% pure native-German Caucasian only society where any other person found to be different were taken away, locked and shot. No… of course, Hitler was not such an idiot, and realised that he needed many foreign workers to complete the construction of his country [roads, buildings, etc] and indeed had many Eastern European and foreign workers on his construction sites, he also knew that the German economy should like all countries embrace tourism, and hence people of all kinds were allowed to visit Germany. Indeed, Hitler even hosted the Olympic Games where athletes from all around the world were present. Many modern historians who revisit World War II tend to leave out those details.

Hitler indeed wanted to concentrate on the Germans, but did realise that it was impossible to run a country without a fair share of foreign population that were fundamental. And this can be reflected nowadays in the example of Western Europeans’ absolute love for foreign cuisine, for example Chinese food or Indian food that they love to have at hand with the touch of a button.

Curry Heat Ratings in the UK

Image: Chart showing the areas in England which enjoy the hottest curries / Source: The Telegraph

 

Britain's Ideal Pub George Orwell Moon Under Water

The single most important feature of Britons’ ideal pub is that it would serve meals (67%). Having a beer garden (63%) / Source: YouGov

And using those examples to explain the logic, it would be impossible to provide quality Asian food to the European market without some people from these regions present to manage the distribution and ensure the quality of the food. This extends to Italian food, Mexican food, Greek and/or French cuisine. Another example would be the scientifically proven benefits of Yoga as a health discipline, that has been adopted by the French society and many other Western societies, similarly, it would be impossible to expect the widespread of the lifestyle if we did not have some of the founders of Yoga to instruct a generation, and it is without doubt that the experts would have to be from where the discipline originates, which is India, who would lead to the training of other experts from other parts of the world, this also applies to other disciplines such as Martial Arts which also originates from the Asian continent.

The point is that Western Europe is not a region like any other, because it is the birth place of some of the greatest intellectuals, thinkers and inventors who have had a major impact on the world, and this has also led to the best learning institutions in various fields being in Europe. This attracts some of the finest academics from all over the world who pay huge fees to study in those institutions, which also bolsters the economy of Europe and when this happens, it means that the government has more money to spend on its own people, system and infrastructures. When these top foreign scholars complete their studies, a great amount move back to their homeland but some are also employed as highly trained specialists and skilled workers in their fields by giants of the European business world in fields ranging from engineering to medicine. It is important to also realise that these people’s contribution lead to the progress of European institutions and their reputation. Hence, these skilled workers while not part of the cultural sphere or show business or the mainly Jewish-owned Hollywood industry, are sometimes part of the team who find a new invention, a new engine, a cleaner way of harvesting energy, a new cure, a new treatment, and where the world is dangerously heading at the moment with antibiotics becoming useless, who knows whether one among them will find the ultimate antibiotic, and if they do, this will lead to saving so many producers, composers, meso-sopranos, pianists, ballet dancers and painters, along with their loved ones and children throughout time from dying from petty infections such as Frédéric Chopin. So, it is important to also note that some things are bigger than outer beauty, but has more to do with the inner beauty of the mind reflected in intelligence and academic abilities. Moreover, in answering your questions, and in reviewing these writings during the period of containment in March 2020 in the face of the global crisis of the Coranavirus (COVID-19) that has already claimed thousands of lives globally, I have once again by “coincidence“, a spiritual phenomenon that has become very normal in my life and and those who follow and read us will have also noticed that I have learned to live with these never-ending coincidences and similarities by questioning the stars and God, found my thoughts in the words of Didier Raoult in one of his presentations given in 2015 [See: Le processus de l’innovation peut-il respecter la règle ?].

The other scenario is that in many cases these skilled workers having spent so much of their life in the Western civilisation end up in a marriage with a wife from the countries they work, for example, skilled foreign doctors marrying their nurse, offering the latter a life that she never dreamt of. So, these are things that happen in the human world, and these minor blending of genes has always happened since the beginning of mankind, as I have repeatedly explained since our current breed is a result of movement across the plains of the earth, interbreeding and evolution. So, trying to stop such a force that has shaped our kind, seems like a fight against nature itself, hence it seems unnatural. The only thing that can be done is to guide people into a better understanding of their own society, its people and its identity along with its continuity and the efforts this requires from all its citizens – otherwise any system crumbles and disintegrates – and those who become part of a society should know that if they do not assimilate and become part of the people they will always live a mundane and incomplete existence, that could be compared to that of a rat. Minor cases of genetic fusion in some cases also adds highly talented genes to the gene pool of a civilisation since excellence may stem from any organic composition and when made part of a civilisation only strengthens it, because it spreads among the civilisation throughout time. The decent thing to do would be for the State to always control the amount of foreign people in the country by imposing a strict limit in relation to the native population, perhaps agree on a percentage that should never be exceeded, excluding university students.

Hence, the Hitler regime should have known that it was only going to fail and create a lot of resentment and hate by trying to separate human beings legally through rigid formalities and proof of genetic identity through obsolete ideas such as German genealogy as the National Socialist regime did. This is because, society had already evolved and many links had been made among people who married and had children, some of different religious faiths, origins and nationalities among the German nation. And these types of rigid rules that would expel those not conforming to them through genealogy and ancestry could only lead to families being separated and even many German individuals having their wife or husband deported, and when these scenarios happen, humans tend to fight to the death to save those who are dear to them. Hitler’s regime should have known that this kind of policy was doomed to fail.

What I believe would have instead worked, was an “informal” execution of the vision of a strong Germany. That is, Hitler should have created a society, focussed on German citizens – both natives and those who firmly assimilated and saw themselves as native Germans – with a strong German identity and sense of concern for the people and nation, while nationalising the industries and ensuring that the people at the top are completely dedicated without any other motive than the progress of the nation and have national values, humane dignity and understand the religious identity of the nation by favouring people with proven strong German sentiments. After doing this, the regime and the nation would automatically have generated a climate that would portray the vision of a strong nationalist Germany, with industries focussing on the German people, and without any formal policy of deportation and genetic screening, the people would have soon found themselves in a society that had been reshaped to reflect the values of a nationalist Germany, with pride in its history, people, culture and values without systematically attacking others. After this, the businesses that could not adapt would automatically close and leave if the authorities adamantly declared that no Jewish tradition will be tolerated on German soil and no person of the Jewish religion or community would be allowed to run any form of business except those who have given up on their Jewish identity and fully embraced German tradition with the official religion as optional. The people who wanted to remain in the National Socialist Germany would automatically evaluate their abilities and possibilities and would either force themselves to abide by the rules and embrace, develop and learn to be German citizens or leave. It would automatically have generated a sense of “adapt, perish or leave” logic in the minds of the population of Germany, which would have led to assimilated people of Germany to get closer and strengthen their links with the German native people to be part of the great vision of a Nationalist Germany, or they would have left due to their inability or refusal to adapt, take part and contribute in the betterment of society.

So, this is what I think should have been done, the ideas and vision of the National Socialist regime should have been applied informally and not formally through strict military regime, deportation camps, genealogy investigation, and the atavistic and unscientific claim of “blood”. Indeed, there is no such thing as “blood” as it is referred to in culture, blood is a liquid that runs in the veins of human beings, yet even family sometimes do not have compatible blood since they differ by group and sometimes need complete foreigners or individuals from a different society to donate blood to save the lives of others who are not related to them. So, this idea of “blood” should be carefully used and best suits metaphors in “culture and literature” than reality, since it seems to be used to explain loyalty, togetherness and relatedness through a similar nation, society, values and outlook. Using this example, I can today say that I have Franco-British blood running in my veins and that would work culturally, but medically it would not make much sense, since my blood will only be compatible to individuals of my blood group who may be from any part of the world and of any type of organic composition or society, as long as they are humans beings and not animals.

The last thing I also question in the Hitler regime situation is the true power of democracy in our times, yes! I mean, the people of Germany had voted for the National Socialists to come into power after clearly knowing their manifesto and ideas of a nationalist Germany without Jewish presence. Hence, I question whether if tomorrow I campaign and for example say – note that this is just an example, not a statement of intention – that I will make it illegal in the country to have any form of Islamic worship areas because we know from historical facts that it is a religion that has waged tremendous amounts of violent wars upon Western Classical civilisation and all other non-Muslim religions and is a cult of war, blood, conquest and domination by all means; and if I am elected, I guess I would be bombarded by allies and jailed for trying to do so! This means that even if a form of democratic referendum supported my ideas, all other conventions would prevent me from doing it, hence this seems to suggest that countries have lost their democratic power and cannot satisfy their own people anymore, and this should leave authorities out there with a lot to ponder about.

The other issue of cultural assimilation which involves becoming fully part of the nation requires embracing the cultural theme of the nation and this applies to individuals and their names. What I mean is that assimilating generally involves carrying a name in line with the society’s heritage, and many Jews understood that, unfortunately the rest still do not seem to understand that with a name like “Mangia Fazula”, “Okolo Sambaweh”, “Munjabar Sakalamaktoum”, “Soupovic Boringov”, “Adnan Sawey” or “Aharon Azriel” they will automatically be seen as outsiders in a country of Western Europe founded on Western Christian culture. So, people who want to be fully part of a nation through assimilation should also be intelligent enough to understand the cultural theme that also applies to names, along with the combination of physical fitness that simply eases the process and a mastery of communicative and behavioural patters and a strong sense of togetherness with the nation, while also accepting the religious identity of the nation even if this is optional – being a matter of spiritual connection and the sanctity of one’s soul and it is between the individual and his own conscience and “God” if he believes in him.

As for the strong Catholic rhetoric encouraged by Hitler and his regime towards the education of religion and values to the youth, it is somehow important to remember that Jesus Christ, the messiah who led to the foundation and widespread of Christianity was not born of European stock or speak French, German or English. Jesus Christ was born out of the population of Israel and spoke in Aramaic. Of course, he was not of Jewish faith, and the religious texts and inheritance of Christianity was translated to the Western languages to reach a wide public. Hence, this could have also been done to any other religion if it was the one to have been adopted and spread in Europe, e.g. Hinduism. If that was a scenario that took place, then all Hindu texts and hindus of Europe would sill be speaking and praying in their own European languages, not necessarily the native language of the gods, i.e. Hindi, since all the religious texts would have been translated into the respective languages of the European region. Similarly, modern day Christians of Western Europe do not speak Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke.

The point is that as the Organic Theory explains the communicative patterns of human primates may vary from one region to the other, but creativity and IQ do not, and hence, once the legacy of humanity is translated into the appropriate language [communicative pattern], society should instantly be relieved in the ability to understanding one another. So linguistic synchronisation should be one thing that would appease a world in disharmony although values and religious beliefs will always separate groups, so the debate today towards a harmonious civilisation should certainly begin on the global language of humanity to adopt. A good example would be to see the commercial success and creative influence of the modern art form known as “manga” – which originates from Asia – on France and other Western European societies once they are dubbed into the right language. For example, one of the great classics of French literature, the novel written in 1844 by Alexandre Dumas, “Le compte de Monte Cristo”, a title that has been the subject of numerous film, television, musical and animated adaptations, has also received a graphic interpretation in manga [see the picture above].

And now, having spoken of the Organic Theory above, I would like to explain its application to a modern human civilisation along with individual organic evolution and assimilation, so that most non-academics and lay people reading this out there may have a clear vision of what assimilation is from an objective and rational standpoint and also what it involves and requires for an organism to consider whether it has the potential and requirements to assimilate in a particular society, and how it enhances a sophisticated society, and here, how it would have helped in the policy of Hitler to creating a modern Germany or any leader’s vision to creating a modern country.

When talking evolution, the evolution and fitness of everyone should be taken into consideration, because all forms of Homo Sapiens are evolving together on this tiny planet called Earth in ways that are so fast that the textbooks cannot hope to match and explain – hence the importance of resourcefulness and creativity from avant-garde thinkers gifted with fluid intelligence.

First of all I would like to address the issue of assimilation from the organic stand point and since I am a perfect example of the French school of thought along with a strong British side, I will be explaining this process using myself as an example. Now, I have inherited the knowledge, language, values and philosophies of the French empire and the language of the British empire through cultural transmission after these empires conquered lands and expanded their realm. So, I did not wake up one morning, suddenly speaking French and English while also knowing the history and literature of these languages. And if the tiny island that I was born was near Western Europe, it would be part of Europe, then I probably would not have to answer all those questions, because it would have been seen as a product of European civilisation with the simple difference that some of the people that constitutes its nation come with a variety of skin tones with many being high in colour and texture differing from the common majority of pale pink because of some blending that happened through the course of Western European conquest. Yet, this would not have been such an issue because there are many countries of Europe where the people are not as pale as the common majority, for example Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece – this is simply a slight similarity in physical attributes, not language, or anything else, so it would not make any sense to place those nations in one group! But, since the location of my birth is a place far from Europe geographically although born on Western European heritage, and I travelled to join the roots of my cultural inheritance in Western Europe since I am among the literary elites of new generation that was born in an independent republic with a new culture and educational system, language and French values, I feel that I am a good example to explain the process of assimilation from the Individual Organism’s perspective using my very own Organic Theory.

Now since I explained that the individual organism born on planet earth according to the laws of nature and evolution is free and is still evolving since evolution is a never-ending process. I will also bring to the attention of the public that according to the laws of nature, man-made barriers are not part of natural laws, they are simply barriers that have been erected by political groups. Hence, the individual organism is born on a planet and can adapt and change according to its abilities and its choice of environment. With today’s advancements due to technology and its accelerated learning facilities, organisms can learn and shape themselves linguistically and philosophically for the environment that they want to be a part of. However, there are some limits to this process too, as a high level of proficiency in terms of behavioural and communicative patterns will be required for an organism to assimilate perfectly with a chosen environment and be seen a complete part of it while being synchronised with the natives. For example, I had inherited the communicative, behavioural and social patterns of France and England, these were embedded in me and I also made the choices to deepen my understanding of these societies through my educational choices and from a very early age always intended to pursue my career and end my life in Western Europe: France and England. This means that I invested a lot of effort in redefining myself as a Franco-British Western European because nothing happens to anyone without sacrifice, work and dedication.

The point now is to explain that for an individual organism on earth to consider assimilating into a chosen environment, it is not an easy process, but comes with immense challenges and sacrifices. If we are to become part of a new society, we will not be able to do it by remaining who we are, but we will have to reshape our selves and adapt to the society and strive to become one with its people, and in some ways see them as one’s own “blood”- metaphorically. Furthermore, there is also the issue of fitness, which has nothing to do with “beauty” but rather the ability to blend in with the organisms of this society through some form of physical synchronisation. This is only one part and not the sole factor that defines assimilation but it is one factor that eases the assimilation process, although it is not everything. For example, using the organism that I am, I was born with an Indo-European heritage and although I may be slightly less pale that the average majority of organisms from the Western European sphere, I still have more physical similarities with these people since they are also of Indo-European heritage and of what is also known as the “Aryan Race”. What I am trying to say is that I chose a society where assimilation was achievable because there were strong links in my own genetic, linguistic and cultural heritage with those countries: I spoke the language, read the literature, knew the history, sang, played and listened to the music, share the same religion and studied and understand the philosophies of its greatest minds. So, this means that the organism that I am had all the chances of assimilating in the Western European sphere of both France and England.

This may not have been as easy if for example I decided to assimilate in the Negro civilisation of Africa because to begin with the physical fitness between the organism that I am and the Negro people is incredibly far from each other; but even more, I do not have any links with Negro culture, languages, history or philosophy. This does not mean that it would be impossible, but it would have been very hard due to the difference in civilisation and ways of living.

Since we are on the negro topic, if in the 1950s a person had made the statement that negroes are an inferior race and heritage, people around may have said that the man is biased and racist. Yet, this is not implying that every single negro is inadequate or unskilled, of course we do have some great negroes who excel in mostly physical disciplines such as sports and a couple of others who have become professors in specific fields. But what it is generally implied through the statement that “negroes are an inferior race” seems to suggest that on average, meaning that if we took all the negroes and averaged their achievements and compared it to all other civilisations, we will come to the fact that they are lagging behind in everything, hence the term “inferior”. Nowadays, if we look at all the statistics globally concerning the negro people, we will see that indeed they are behind all other civilisations. Yet, every time this topic surfaces, we suddenly see all the mainly Jewish owned media, suddenly throwing all the singular negros in the United States that have made money; we see basketball players, rappers will grills in their mouth, and all the other negroes that have succeeded financially through the Jewish-owned media industries of the United States. Hence it is once again, not the point, because I am not saying that all negroes are inferior, but simply pointing to the fact that on “average” the negro civilisation is inferior to all other civilisations on planet Earth. And if this is not enough, they are also physically incredibly unique in terms of features and traits compared to all the other civilisations on Earth, which makes them a conundrum in matters of assimilation into any culture. So, for me, the negro people should take this into account and with the developed world that we now live in and with technology making the world a much more connected place that makes life fairly similar on any part of the Earth, I firmly believe that they should start uniting and organising themselves to bridge the gap with the rest of the world and consider the development of the African continent where they would all find enough space to live. The world has been very charitable to negro causes, but it is time for them to start helping themselves. The other point with negro people is that they too are fairly similar to Jews when they move to other societies, they are generally focussed on negro matters and negro people, they are a group of people who are more focussed on expanding their numbers in a country that is not theirs, rather than focussing on the national matters and the native people, this is not assimilation and if it is not, it is not beneficial to any system. So, once again from the Organic Theory’s perspective, this only generates and creates more problematic organisms that are not part of a system and that has problems with assimilation due to immense differences in organic composition, behavioural patterns, goals and outlook and only leads to slowing and weakening any system. In 2021, it seems fair to explain what true assimilation is, and also with the world more developed, more equal and more connected, to guide those who cannot or do not want to assimilate by explaining them how organisms sharing similar organic compositions, values, culture, vision and history have all the factors to create harmonious societies by being together. Negroes and Jews should both consider this, and perhaps meditate on whether they would be happier in a society composed of their own kind, which may generate less tension and a feeling of being at home in a negro or Jewish atmosphere reflecting their beliefs and rituals. Because, the Western civilisation is far from perfect and also has its own problems to tackle, its own people and matters of management to be focussed and if the nation has a crowd that is not focussed in contributing to this it only worsens the problems.

The Enemies Of Reason – The Irrational Health Service

We do sometimes see people of the Western crowd comparing themselves to members of third world crowds and foreign tribes to generate a fake sense of superiority. I would like to remind people that this by no means leads to the betterment of their lives. The Western society has a lot of problems that are deeply rooted and cannot be perceived with the naked eye from the surface, since it is a society that seems in love with packaging everything neatly, but being an intellectual who studied psychology, I can confidently say that there are immense problems in the West regarding the cultivating of minds for the betterment of our lives. Many people are sick in their minds and do not realise it and tremendous amounts of work remains to be done is fixing mentalities and instilling values for a harmonious and healthy society.

People who do not assimilate generally do not have these matters at heart and tend to simply park themselves in Western Europe for an income while remaining foreign in their identities. These people should understand that if they are not assimilating, they should not expect to be treated as the organisms that are native and are fully part of the system because the system relies on its organisms for its continuity and existence, and this will also happen to their children if they are raised on foreign beliefs, identity and values that are incompatible with the nation they live in.

People who are in the west as highly skilled workers and do not want to assimilate should clearly classify themselves as temporary organisms who do not intend to stay forever and accept the life of a foreigner and the burden that goes with it, because I am not saying that the natives are perfect or that all of them are superior since we do have classes and different levels of education in all societies, but what I am repeating is that the problems of the West need contribution and concern from its population to be resolved and those who do not contribute are not helping to make life better for themselves and the country – natives and non-natives alike. This is of course not a problem for tourists who are only visiting for photos and return to their countries after the trip is over – no problems.

Now having spoken of the example of me trying to assimilate in the negro civilisation, a similar situation would be faced if for example I decided to assimilate in the Eastern Asian sphere, since the differences both physical and cultural are immense, and although not impossible, it would come with huge hurdles with such differences that would make it a hard task for me to be seen as a member of their societies in line with their very own natives – and there is no point discussing the further hurdles with huge differences in eating, behavioural, communicative and living patterns.

As a third example, a similar situation would occur if I decided to assimilate in India, because although they may be linked to the Indo-European people, they are clearly a distinct civilization that has divided itself and acquired its own models of communication and behaviour, which I do not know a single word and do not understand or manage, to make matters worse, I don’t look like an Indian either because of course I’m not, even if some may share an olive skin tone, and finally, they are a mainly Hindu civilization that is reflected through their culture and art, while I’m a Christian deeply rooted in the art of French civilization and Western Europe.

The fourth example is an attempt at assimilation in a Muslim civilization, such as Algeria. Again, I couldn’t, because I don’t speak the language, I don’t reflect the values, I don’t believe in Islam and finally, my vision and lifestyle are totally incompatible with the cultures of the Muslim world, and to complicate things further, I don’t look like the Algerians either.

Hence, if I was to be thrown in India, Eastern Asia, Africa or a Muslim society looking in the eyes of these organisms to me would be like looking into the eyes of a deer, which I believe is a very good metaphor that I am using here to describe a completely ignorant creature partly because of its innocence since it has never been thrown into and will never have to know the agonising and non-stop drama of having to solve the problems of the supposedly modern world of the western civilisation while constantly having to endure the insecurity and pettiness of “some” of the vilest and immoral cannibalistic reptilian-like public figures dressed in suit whom no one with a sane mind and enough insight would ever want to introduce to their close ones or have over for dinner once they discover the truth about the limitless possibilities of their savagely hedonistic depth and immoral and rotting dark minds.

Reptiles from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Image: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

In fact, as a literary elite, I believe this feeling of always being surrounded by deer of all colours, shapes, sizes and origins in most places, all over the Earth from the West to the East, must be shared among other literary minds, because most organisms simply exist, while literary people into fields such as psychology and philosophy have to carry the burden of thinking for society and it is a huge moral task that comes with a lot of pressure and responsibility, while rarely being able to connect with the simple minds we sometimes come across on our meditative road, which only leaves us with the option of either smiling, or saying something insignificant and sweet, such as talking about the weather.

So, getting back to the issue of physical synchronisation, as I have repeated, physical fitness [which has to do with slight similarities and not “beauty” as it is commonly believed] only helps and eases the process of assimilation but is only a shallow indication of belonging, since the depth of an individual is an even more defining point, because the true worth of an organism lies in the mind, the outlook and the values.

Super‐recognisers in Action Evidence from Face‐matching and Face Memory Tasks

Image: Bobak, A., Hancock, P. and Bate, S. (2015). Super-recognisers in Action: Evidence from Face-matching and Face Memory Tasks. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 30(1), pp.81-91.

To further this logic, I will give the example of a few other pale skinned organisms from some foreign societies who despite a pale skin tone are absolutely incompatible with the society of France, so it is not because they blend deceptively by giving a surface impression of being part of the majority through their skin tone that it means they are perfectly adapted to assimilate, because they do not reflect the linguistic heritage, the values, the founding philosophies of individual freedom, the Christian thought that shaped the civilisation even if they are not religious, and the receptive and human character of France.

A good example would be to consider Jews, Eastern Europeans, Russians, Mennonites or some segments of the Syrian population who sometimes happen to share a paler skin tone. And since we are on the topic, I have also never noticed “Jew” as a separate empirical category in the atavistic forms of the Anglosphere, why? After all, Jews are a distinct race, as those who seem obsessed with empirical research have discovered – this is not a cause for concern to me because I see things from the advanced evolutionary perspective of “Organic Composition”, but I ask myself the question for those obsessed with the laboratory. What genetics seem to have revealed is that there are powerful genetic markers of Jewishness, so Hitler’s intuition seem to have been right. So, the Jews did not arise from conversions in Europe because geographically and culturally distant jews still have more genes in common than they do with non-jews and these genes are of Levantine origin [area where Israel is located] which points to a mixture of Eastern-Caucasus [area around Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Eastern Europe and Western Asia], European, and Semitic societies that seem to complete the missing link of the Jewish European Ancestry. It is now believed that the Ashkenazi jews descent from a heterogenous Iranian population that later mixed with Eastern and Western slavic people and possibly some Turks and Greeks in the territory of the Khazar Empire around 8th century A.D. Although my perspective on race comes to a simple matter of “different organic compositions”, it is simply a small observation for those scientists obsessed with genetics. Once again, it is important to consider the global evolution of all organisms, and also never forget that a superior organism can come from anywhere on earth – the evolution of the human race is continuous and never-ending.

I’m not saying that some people are animals or that they should be exterminated, so don’t consider my comments as discriminatory, because I’ve already explained that the individual organism has all the powers of self-creation and self-definition and that from an evolutionary point of view, human organisms of any “organic composition”[race] can procreate with whomever they want, and the superior organism can appear from anywhere, but this scientific reality is not enough to be assimilated.

Napoléon Gros Boudin Rose Scene (2002) dpurb site web

Image: Yves Simoneau / Napoléon (2002)

What I am saying is that to “assimilate” in a sophisticated civilisation requires more than only physical fitness, it is not simply a matter of accepting “Big pink sausages” as Christian Clavier termed it in the mini-series “Napoléon” by Yves Simoneau in 2002, because we are not simply trying to create a society that has no structure, with the only defining point being a pale skin tone and then to flood the society with uncivilised pink balls of meat for the photo… no! Only the mainly Jewish Hollywood industry seems to see it that way, and perhaps because the United States is after all nothing more than a simple bastardised European colony composed mainly of migrants and Jews from the German and Anglo-Saxon sphere who tend to be very pale, if not pallid in terms of complexion, unlike many Europeans. They were forced to find a way to survive in the Wild West and had to unite around something in common, which they did around whiskey, guns, fried chicken, business and the English language that they also bastardized in their own version, while remaining an industrialised and mechanical group without any cultural structure – for the vast majority of course, which seems to have a deep frustration that is reflected in a contempt for modern Europeans who are perfectly assimilated to the societies that form their roots.

US Leadership Approval Gallup Stats

World’s Approval of U.S. Leadership Drops to New Low (Source: GALLUP)

Moreover, in 2021, my opinions on American democracy, which are based on years of research and empirical evidence and also observations based on the questionable values that some of the products of their industries intend to give to the world, seem almost similar to the perspectives of the great minds of the French intellectual family of the 18th and 19th centuries. For Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867), the system developed in America to transform a crowd of migrants into a kind of artificially synchronized nation caused Europeans to be uprooted in America. Baudelaire would find his thoughts in the texts of Edgar Poe (1809 – 1849), who was an American moralist writer who was himself anti-American and who painted a macabre and dark literary portrait on the theme of American vulgarity. America is not culturally free and Edgar Poe was for Baudelaire one of the few cases of refinement and sensitivity in the middle of this wild jungle; the American writer who allowed us to pierce the media and cinematographic lie, the revealing heart of America – as will some more modern artists after him such as Hunter Thompson and Chuck Palahniuk also turn out to be. It is a way of letting America itself, through its writers, show us its dark and repulsive sides. For Poe, who had incredible acuity of vision, America was the place where mechanical geniuses and animal forces were gathered. As for Jules Verne (1828 – 1905), he thought that Americans were mechanics, just as Italians are musicians and Germans are metaphysicists. For Jules Verne, one of the authors who greatly influenced the literary minds of his time in their childhood, America was always the nation of violence and he was particularly disgusted by the “Gun Club” which for him was the image of the United States: an imperialist and military nation and a country of extremes. For Jules Verne, America was the land of brutality and speed of means of transport. Moreover in “Around the World in 80 Days” we see the train used by Verne as one of those mobile places where we will meet different samples of the human population on earth. Paul Claudel (1868 – 1955) described Chicago as the city of blood. Apollinaire had traveled around the world in words on the “machine” that is America, an immigrant land where the savage European is connected to the savage Red Indian and was particularly interested in the sexual morality of the Mormons of the state of Utah who had transformed polygamy into a religiously permitted activity and made the United States a country with violent sexuality. Apollinaire described the people of Utah as Scandinavians in panties, Russians in red coats, English people wearing beards in collars, with Americans, Jews, Germans, etc. The American continent was revered but also repelled. Guillaume Apollinaire thought that Montparnasse at the time of the war was a projection of America in Paris: a juxtaposition of people from all over the world. In his writings Apollinaire also described the coldness of the people of Utah where he compared the rigid eyes of a spectator when a negro was hanged to those of an opium eater. Apollinaire thought that American democracy was insufficient and would always need Europe despite their Masonic symbol adopted from the triangle with the eye that was supposed to see everything. For Apollinaire, because of Mormon culture and polygamy, America appeared to be the country of women for Europeans. Europe was masculine and America feminine [LE rope & LA meric / French wordplay of masculine and feminine words], and so Apollinaire saw America as a woman waiting for the European conqueror, while France was the country of standing men who should beware of American democracy. Blaise Cendrars (1887 – 1961) who was like Guillaume Appolinaire (1880 – 1918) a great admirer of the new painting which was the cubist painting of that time [the artists of that form, the Delaunays created a cultural movement on their own], which brought together different views of the same object, had also concluded that New York had failed as a new Rome because the new side had won over the Roman side. The other French writer André Breton (1896 1966), who was an avant-garde and a great poet of the city, refused to visit New York during his stay when France was under German occupation, suffering from a nostalgia for Paris and noted that the United States had become much more foreign in only 5 years. And Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) who like many had a dream transmitted by American cinema would see his dream turn into a nightmare when he discovered the truth about America during his visit just after the liberation. Sartre as Breton describes America as a mysterious country that was less well known than before and a country that was profoundly different from European cities, which despite its fascination, was dangerous and to be wary of. During the war America had established itself as the most militarily powerful nation, and the initial enthusiasm of Western Europeans for their arrival would soon fade after the discovery of their simple and ignorant minds. The United States suffered attacks from Jean-Paul Sartre for being a fragmented society, which Sartre described as having more steel and aluminium than human beings: the most mechanical city in the world where winter is much colder and summer is much hotter. Sartre thought that New York looked much more like a North African city such as Dakar than a European city. In America, Sartre was looking for and thought he would find a European city with his feelings, like a mother who saw the inhabitants as her children who had to be sheltered and cared for, but did not find it, since for him the United States did not have the same historical tradition or European nature, which proved disappointing for a European colony. Sartre found New York terribly foreign. And finally, a figure who is almost paternal to me, Michel Butor (1926 – 2016), one of the great professors of modern French literature visited the United States, inspired by the curiosity of great Western European writers in America, and found that one could make money, that one could also see some interesting things, but that one could not live in the United States, and that the strangeness on the other side of the Atlantic made most of the books seem false – Simone de Beauvoir’s anecdotes (1908 – 1986) were correct. Let us note here that all literature is a collective work because words were not invented by writers because language is a collective creation and hence creates a social bond; cities are also collective creations, as are the landscapes around these cities and the names of the great men and women who mark the places [the genius of the place], and this is done with the hope that the spirit of those men mark the future generations.

Écrivains Français baudelaire sartre butor verne dpurb site web

Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867), Jules Verne (1828 – 1905), Paul Claudel (1868 – 1955), Guillaume Apollinaire (1880 – 1918), Blaise Cendrars (1887 – 1961), André Breton (1896 – 1966), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) & Michel Butor (1926 – 2016)

Many Americans also seem eager to point out their long lost European ancestry while being disconnected from it in terms of values and philosophy, and they seem to be unaware of the social evolution of major European empires such as France. The Hollywood perspective may be fairly sufficient for an escort agency, a strip bar, to work as ladies of leisure or meet the criteria as sex workers, but apart from these businesses, a society requires more from its citizens, and here organisms with a sense of belonging and responsibility along with the appropriate behavioural and communicative patterns and names that fit the thematic sphere to be in complete synchronisation with the requirements of the society – so physical fitness is not enough but it simply eases the assimilation process especially among the common brains that do not think.

Indeed, the Jews have long used this visual illusion to blend among those they quality as “gentiles” or “Goy” of the European sphere, the non-Jews who according to their scriptures are inferior beings who were born to serve the Jewry and that can, according to their religious texts, be treated as animals and even killed if necessary. This is simply a factual observation of what is written in the religious texts of Jews. These are scriptures that have shaped the thought of Jewish societies since ancient times, and it is a fact that people should be aware of to understand the leading train of thought of a particular group, it is important to know the facts of the scriptures that shaped them, their values and outlook and why a great deal of their industries bleed civilisations dry of all their humanity. This seems completely opposite to [for example] the concept of Karma found in Hinduism which believes in causality through a system where beneficial effects are derived from past beneficial actions and harmful effects from past harmful actions, creating a system of actions and reactions throughout a soul’s (Atman’s) reincarnated lives – forming a cycle of rebirth. The causality in Hinduism is said to be applicable not only to the material world but also to one’s thoughts, words, actions and actions that others do under our instructions. Jews using their pale skin to spread and hide among the Christian Western European civilisation, have often throughout history had an easier ride, and when they change their names to adopt Christian ones in the process of blending in, it is sometimes hard to differentiate a great amount of them from the native people of the Western European civilisation that was born out of Christian thought and artistry.

The issue with Jews is that although they blend, act, dress and name themselves as the natives of the European nations they move to, they always clearly classify themselves as Jews, and focus on the betterment of other Jews, and work systematically together in business to further the interests of Jews, and even have worldwide conventions among Jews, and parade the achievements of Jews with pride. If we notice all foreign groups do this, except Western Christians who seem to prefer killing each other and live a life of selfish hedonism.

Yet, what these foreign groups do is not assimilation, but simply blending and integrating to systematically dominate a society or system, and Jews have been known to methodically and skilfully do this in many European countries throughout history, along with violent religious sacrifices to their blood thirsty gods that involve the sacrifice of Christian children, which they have done over the years throughout European history, with many mutilated corpses of young Christian children found across Europe drained of all their blood. This is why the Jews are the only group who throughout human history has been persecuted and banned from so many countries. Yes, many people do not know these facts since most people are without any choice but to take their information from Jewish owned mainstream media industries, so learn something new here!

The Hitler regime was not the first regime to ban and persecute the Jews, the Jews have even been banned from England in 1290 by Edward I, and also in 1306 from France by Philippe IV and these are only 3 examples. The Jews have been banned throughout a wide range of societies they moved to due to their insolence, their disrespect to the nation and the values of their heritage that encouraged the systematic destruction and enslavement of all non-Jewish civilisations, their habit of monopolising press business to distort perception and also their occult and violent rituals involving the killing of young Christian children to offer their blood to their violent pagan God, Baal from which the term “Holocaust” itself derives – which involved throwing people to their death in a burning Tophet. In fact, Jews have been banned in a wide range of countries since 1200 B.C until 2014 where they have recently been banned from Guatemala, which leads to about 3213 years of constant persecution and bans from countries they migrated to. In fact, they have been banned from Carthage, Rome, Egypt, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Hungary, Belgium, Austria, Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, the Baltic States, and Russia to name a few. If people want to know the full list, they can use the internet and search “Countries where Jews were banned/expulsed” [also: Resolutions aganst Israel].

Here is what I believe created so much disgust and resentment towards the Jews from Christian nations. And if anyone had the time to read the Talmud, they would come to understand why the Jews have been persecuted in so many Christian countries and hated by the  Pope Innocent III himself. As in our languages Christians take their name from Christ, so in the language of the Talmud Christians are called Notsrim, from Jesus the Nazarene. But Christians are also called by the names used in the Talmud to designate all non-Jews: Abhodah Zarah, Akum, Obhde Elilim, Minim, Nokhrim, Edom, Amme Haarets, Goim, Apikorosim, Kuthrim.

Hilkhoth X, 2: Baptized Jews must be put to death.

The jews teach that since Christians follow the teachings of that man [Jesus], whom the Jews regard as a Seducer and an Idolater, and since they worship him as God, it clearly follows that they merit the name of idolaters, in no way different from those among whom the Jews lived before the birth of Christ, and whom they taught should be exterminated by every possible means.

In the same book Sanhedrin (107b) we read:
« Mar said: Jesus seduced, corrupted and destroyed Israel. »

The book Zohar, III, (282), tells us that Jesus died like a beast and was buried in that « dirt heap…where they throw the dead bodies of dogs and asses, and where the sons of Esau [the Christians] and of Ismael [the Turks], also Jesus and Mahommed, uncircumcized and unclean like dead dogs, are buried. »(25)

In Iore Dea (81,7, Hagah) it says: « A child must not be nursed by a Nokhri, if an Israelite can be had; for the milk of the Nokhrith hardens the heart of a child and builds up an evil nature in him. »

In Iore Dea (153,1, Hagah) it says: « A child must not be given to the Akum to learn manners, literature or the arts, for they will lead him to heresy. »

In Zohar (1,25b) it says: « Those who do good to the Akum . . . will not rise from the dead. »

Hilkhoth X, 6: We can help goyim in need, if it saves us trouble later on.

In this way they explain the words of Deuteronomy (VII,2) . . . and thou shalt show no mercy unto them [Goim], as cited in the Gemarah. Rabbi S. Iarchi explains this Bible passage as follows: « Do not pay them any compliments; for it is forbidden to say: how good that Goi is. »

Rabbi Bechai, explaining the text of Deuteronomy about hating idolatry, says: « The Scripture teaches us to hate idols and to call them by ignominious names. Thus, if the name of a church is Bethgalia— »house of magnificence, » it should be called Bethkaria—an insignificant house, a pigs’ house, a latrine. For this word, karia, denotes a low-down, slum place. »

JESUS is ignominiously called Jeschu—which means, May his name and memory be blotted out. His proper name in Hebrew is Jeschua, which means Salvation.

MARY, THE MOTHER OF JESUS, is called Charia—dung, excrement (German Dreck). In Hebrew her proper name is Miriam.

CHRISTIAN SAINTS, the word for which in Hebrew is Kedoschim, are called Kededchim (cinaedos)—feminine men (Fairies). Women saints are called Kedeschoth, whores.

A CHRISTIAN GIRL who works for Jews on their sabbath is called Schaw-wesschicksel, Sabbath Dirt.

Eben Haezar 44, 8: Marriages between goyim and Jews are void.

Since the Goim minister to Jews like beasts of burden, they belong to a Jew together with his life and all his faculties: « The life of a Goi and all his physical powers belong to a Jew. » (A. Rohl. Die Polem. p.20)

It is an axiom of the Rabbis that a Jew may take anything that belongs to Christians for any reason whatsoever, even by fraud; nor can such be called robbery since it is merely taking what belongs to him.

In Babha Bathra (54b) it says: « All things pertaining to the Goim are like a desert; the first person to come along and take them can claim them for his own. »

In Babha Kama (113b) it says: « It is permitted to deceive a Goi. »

The Babha Kama (113b) says: « The name of God is not profaned when, for example, a Jew lies to a Goi by saying: ‘I gave something to your father, but he is dead; you must return it to me,’ as long as the Goi does not know that you are lying. »

(4) cf. supra, p.30, A similar text is found in Schabbuoth Hagahoth of Rabbi Ascher (6d): « If the magistrate of a city compels Jews to swear that they will not escape from the city nor take anything out of it, they may swear falsely by saying to themselves that they will not escape today, nor take anything out of the city today only. »

In Zohar (I, 160a) it says: « Rabbi Jehuda said to him [Rabbi Chezkia]: ‘He is to be praised who is able to free himself from the enemies of Israel, and the just are much to be praised who get free from them and fight against them.’ Rabbi Chezkia asked, ‘How must we fight against them?’ Rabbi Jehuda said, ‘By wise counsel thou shalt war against them’ (Proverbs, ch. 24, 6). By what kind of war? The kind of war that every son of man must fight against his enemies, which Jacob used against Esau—by deceit and trickery whenever possible. They must be fought against without ceasing, until proper order be restored. Thus it is with satisfaction that I say we should free ourselves from them and rule over them. »

In Choschen Ham. (425,5) it says: « If you see a heretic, who does not believe in the Torah, fall into a well in which there is a ladder, hurry at once and take it away and say to him ‘I have to go and take my son down from a roof; I will bring the ladder back to you at once’ or something else. The Kuthaei, however, who are not our enemies, who take care of the sheep of the Israelites, are not to be killed directly, but they must not be saved from death. »

And in Iore Dea (158,1) it says: « The Akum who are not enemies of ours must not be killed directly, nevertheless they must not be saved from danger of death. For example, if you see one of them fall into the sea, do not pull him out unless he promises to give you money. »

Lastly, the Talmud commands that Christians are to be killed without mercy. In the Abhodah Zarah (26b) it says: « Heretics, traitors and apostates are to be thrown into a well and not rescued. »

And in Choschen Hamm. again (388,15) it says: « If it can be proved that someone has betrayed Israel three times, or has given the money of Israelites to the Akum, a way must be found after prudent consideration to wipe him off the face of the earth. »

Even a Christian who is found studying the Law of Israel merits death. In Sanhedrin (59a) it says: « Rabbi Jochanan says: A Goi who pries into the Law is guilty to death. »

In Hilkhoth Akum (X, 2) it says: « These things [supra] are intended for idolaters. But Israelites [Jews] also, who lapse from their religion and become epicureans [Christians], are to be killed, and we must persecute them to the end. For they afflict Israel and turn the people from God. »

In Choschen Hamm. (425,5) it says: « Jews who become epicureans [Christians], who take to the worship of stars and planets and sin maliciously; also those who eat the flesh of wounded animals, or who dress in vain clothes, deserve the name of epicureans; likewise those who deny the Torah and the Prophets of Israel—the law is that all those should be killed; and those who have the power of life and death should have them killed; and if this cannot be done, they should be led to their death by deceptive methods. »

Rabbi David Kimchi writes as follows in Obadiam: « What the Prophets foretold about the destruction of Edom in the last days was intended for Rome, as Isaiah explains (ch. 34,1): Come near, ye nations, to hear . . . For when Rome is destroyed, Israel shall be redeemed. »

A JEW WHO KILLS A CHRISTIAN COMMITS NO SIN, BUT OFFERS AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE TO GOD / In Sepher Or Israel (177b) it says: « Take the life of the Kliphoth and kill them, and you will please God the same as one who offers incense to Him. »

And in Ialkut Simoni (245c. n. 772) it says: « Everyone who sheds the blood of the impious is as acceptable to God as he who offers a sacrifice to God. »

AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE AT JERUSALEM, THE ONLY SACRIFICE NECESSARY IS THE EXTERMINATION OF CHRISTIANS

In Zohar (III,227b) the Good Pastor says: « The only sacrifice required is that we remove the unclean from amongst us. »

Abhodah Zarah 22a: Do not associate with the goyim; they shed blood.

Rashi Erod.22 30: A goy is like a dog. The Scriptures teach us that a dog deserves more respect than a goy.

Kerithuth 6b p. 78: Jews are humans, not goyim, they are animals.

In Kallah (1b, p.18) it says: « She (the mother of the mamzer) said to him, ‘Swear to me.’ And Rabbi Akibha swore with his lips, but in his heart he invalidated his oath. »(4)

Every Jew is therefore bound to do all he can to destroy that impious kingdom of the Edomites (Rome) which rules the whole world. Since, however, it is not always and everywhere possible to effect this extermination of Christians, the Talmud orders that they should be attacked at least indirectly, namely: by injuring them in every possible way, and by thus lessening their power, help towards their ultimate destruction. Wherever it is possible a Jew should kill Christians, and do so without mercy. Jews must spare no means in fighting the tyrants who hold them in this Fourth Captivity in order to set themselves free. They must fight Christians with astuteness and do nothing to prevent evil from happening to them: their sick must not be cared for, Christian women in childbirth must not be helped, nor must they be saved when in danger of death.

Zohar I, 28b: The goyim are the children of the Genesis serpent.

Yebamoth 98a: All children of goyim are animals

Abhodah Zarah 35b: All daughters of unbelievers are niddah (dirty, impure) since birth.

Sanhedrin 52b: Adultery is not forbidden with the wife of a goy, because Moses only forbade adultery with “the wife of your similar”, and a goy is not a Hebrew’s similar.

Abhodah Zarah 4b: You can kill a goy with your own hands.

Hilkhoth goy X, 1: Do not make any agreement with a goy, never show mercy to a goy. You must not have pity on the goyim because it says: “You shall not look at them with pity”.

Hilkkkoth X, 1: do not save the goyim in danger of death.

Orach Chaiim 57, 6a: No more compassion should be shown for goyim than for pigs, when they are sick of the intestines.

Jalkut Rubeni Gadol 12b: The souls of the goyim come from impure spirits called pigs.

Babha Kama 113a: Jews can lie and perjure themselves, if it is to deceive or convict a goy.

Choschen Ham 26, 1: A Jew should not be prosecuted before a goy court, by a goy judge, or by non-Jewish laws.

Babha Kama 113a: Unbelievers do not benefit from the law and God has made their money available to Israel.

Pesachim 49b: It is permissible to behead goyim on the day of atonement for sins, even if it also falls on a Sabbath day.
Rabbi Eliezer: “It is lawful to cut off the head of an idiot, a member of the people of the Earth (Pranaitis), that is, a carnal animal, a Christian, on the day of atonement for sins and even if that day falls on a Sabbath day”. His disciples replied, “Rabbi! You should rather say “sacrifice” a goy. “But he replied: “In no way! For when a sacrifice is made, it is necessary to pray to ask God to accept it, whereas it is not necessary to pray when you behead someone.”

Sanhedrin 58b: If a goy hits a Jew, he must be killed, because it is like hitting God.

Chagigah 15b: A Jew is always considered good, despite the sins he may commit. It is always his shell that gets dirty, never his own bottom.

Zohar I, 131a: Goyim defile the world. The Jew is a superior being

Chullin 91b: Jews possess the dignity that even an angel does not have.

Iore Dea 151, 11: It is forbidden to give a gift to a goy, it encourages friendship.

Orach Chaiim 20, 2: Goyim dress up to kill Jews.

Shabbath 116a (p. 569): Jews must destroy the goyim books (New Testament).

Sanhedrin 90a: Those who read the New Testament (Christians) will have no place in the world to come.

THOSE WHO KILL CHRISTIANS SHALL HAVE A HIGH PLACE IN HEAVEN

In Zohar (I,38b, and 39a) it says: « In the palaces of the fourth heaven are those who lamented over Sion and Jerusalem, and all those who destroyed idolatrous nations … and those who killed off people who worship idols are clothed in purple garments so that they may be recognized and honored. »

JEWS MUST NEVER CEASE TO EXTERMINATE THE GOIM; THEY MUST NEVER LEAVE THEM IN PEACE AND NEVER SUBMIT TO THEM

In Hilkhoth Akum (X, 1) it says: « Do not eat with idolaters, nor permit them to worship their idols; for it is written: Make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them (Deuter. ch. 7, 2). Either turn away from their idols or kill them. »

Ibidem (X,7): « In places where Jews are strong, no idolater must be allowed to remain… »

Now, we can ask ourselves a few simple questions here, which is “Could all the people who have banned the Jews be without any reason to do so?” and “Could people simply walk around and suddenly without any reason decide to hate Jews?” and also “If this has happened to them for so many years, is it not likely that the problem is in fact with the Jews themselves?” I believe it is best to leave the audience to answer these questions and reflect on them alone.

Share-of-Deaths_Archaeological-Evidence-on-Violence.png

War has always been a part of human civilisation: studies show that human societies in the past were very violent with the share of people killed often greater than 10% / Source: OurWorldinData

I would like to make it clear, that I am talking of the Jew mentality and train of thought as a whole, but I am not saying that every single Jew is evil or has nothing to offer to the societies they move to. Of course, there are some amazing, admirable and loveable individuals who completely assimilate, and even give up their Jewish identity and convert to Christianity, or become atheists. There are of course, some decent people of Jewish heritage who become fully citizens of their new societies, speak for the natives and see themselves as part of the nation, and this can be seen in France, where some have become more French that the natives and have embedded themselves in the heart of the nation. However, this concerns a very tiny minority of Jews who after doing so, often see foreign Jews as inadequate for France because they see themselves as part of the French people and understand the religious identity of the country being Christianity. However, the majority of Jews do not follow the example of the noble ones who assimilate, instead they remain distinct and work for their Jew comrades and organisations while embracing their values and beliefs of circumcision and superiority.

The fact that all foreign organisms need to grasp is that to be part of the Western European civilisation, means accepting the fact that Christianity is part of the founding culture, and while many people are not religious, it cannot be ignored that the whole history, inheritance and literature were founded by Christian men and women with some not being religious but who were undeniably directly and indirectly influenced by Christian thoughts and inheritance and this can be reflected in the large amount of allegory and metaphors related to the bible in the literature. It is also an immense coincidence that right at the same period when I am answering your questions that the Notre Dame cathedral has been mysteriously struck by a fire on the 15th of April 2019, some may see it as a sign of the foundations of a civilisation burning – and coicidences with my life are today not suprising anymore to me. When hasard multiplies coincidences, it is not hasard anymore.

In fact, to be fully assimilated means giving up on one’s foreign identity and embracing the new society’s history, language, linguistic theme, nation and religion as an added option if possible. Jews should reflect on this: the fact that Western Europe is a Christian civilisation, just like Israel is a Jewish society and the Arab states are a Muslim civilisation, with the governments of the latter two countries taking religion as a serious matter of culture without ever compromising on religious priorities and necessities over any other foreign religion. Indeed, in many Arab states, the crucifix as a symbol of Christianity is banned and illegal, and they make no excuses for it, because they are firm Muslims and this is embedded in the fabric of their government and culture. To further this example, it is also ridiculous that the Grand Cross of the National Order of the Legion of Honour which is the highest French order of merit for military and civil merits, established in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte, was given to the Sultan of Brunei in 1997, a man who recently instated a new penal code that applies the sharia – Islamic law – as strictly as possible: death by stoning to punish homosexuals and adultery, amputation of a hand or foot for thieves, death penalty for insulting the prophet. Being Jewish or Muslim will always portray oneself as a person with foreign values derived from the history and values of those religions that are for the most incompatible with those of Western European civilisation.

When people who have the ability to assimilate choose to do so, they should first find their place in the new society based on their choices, desires, skills, and abilities [for e.g. psychosocial and cultural synthesis]. Genuine efforts and desire of assimilation will be expected of them and this normally starts with a Western name of Christian culture. People who do not assimilate fully, rebuild and reshape themselves and adopt a completely new identity should always remember that they are not at home and should not expect the same treatment as those who are – this is a simple question of common sense. Those who assimilate properly will automatically become part of the native people and share an existence with similar opportunities, because they have become natives through their efforts and decision to be loyal and dedicated to their new society and its people, by respecting the founding heritage and religious sensibilities, and of course by mastering the behavioural and communicative patterns. This does not mean that after assimilating, they have to be subservient and cannot make a critical observation to help develop the country and push it forward, but their allegiance should be to the nation and the native people because they should consider themselves as part of that people. The objective after all is to create loyal citizens with a strong sense of concern for the society, not slaves! Natives too should learn to act like human beings and adopt the values of decency to understand that a society works better when the population is in harmony and happy while seeing genuinely and properly assimilated citizens as their own “blood”.

So as the Organic Theory explains, another factor is more fundamental than physical fitness for assimilation as we can see using Jews as an example to explain that similarity in skin tone is hardly anything except a tiny factor that helps with the majority who rarely think. The most important and defining part of assimilation concerns handling the appropriate behavioural and communicative patterns of the society that the organism wants to fully be a part of. For successful and complete assimilation, organisms need to also embed the philosophy, understand the heart of the people according to their history, master the language, feel at one with the nation, feel the joy and pain of the people and also be able to use the term “us” to describe themselves and the natives; in other words see the people as their own “blood”, and this is how it is done in the most sophisticated civilisation, i.e. France, where the people are willing to love you and see you as their own blood if you show the genuine desire to be part of the people and loyalty to the nation.

Assimilation unfortunately is not easily achieved and this is why assimilation should not to be confused with integration, because integration is simply the acquisition of a passport for legality; but assimilation is sculpting one’s heart and soul to be one with the people and be part of the national blood through loyalty and dedication while playing one’s part as a citizen with civic duties. Indeed, in Ancient Greece, all members of society who did not partake in communal matters or get involved and take interest in matters concerning the running of the country and the harmony of the people were seen as “parasites”, and this includes all citizens – natives and non-natives alike – because all societies need its people to work together to address its problems and follow the never-ending course of positive change for the betterment of a civilisation.

In France, most people understand that being a citizen is like a duty, and hence until today they are the only civilisation who stood up for the brotherhood of mankind as individuals to be treated with respect, they are among the rare civilisations who listen to the opinions of the people and give the praise of an emperor to a common man if they feel the man has the grandeur in his arguments and deserves so – we know this from the legend of Napoléon – and finally the French people are one of the most receptive people who are always willing to reason with new arguments in the noblest of ways no matter who the arguments are from. In fact, France is the least atavistic and most sophisticated civilisation of the modern world, and to achieve such a glorious task without a monarchy is amazing – it shows that when people see themselves as one and treat each other with respect while having a sense of moral and dignity, they embody an empire together, without or with an emperor – the head with a crown being simply an option if needed and deemed ingenious enough to guide a conquering civilisation, but not a necessity! To achieve this sense of harmony requires organisms that can find a strong sense of synchronisation as a people and see themselves as a nation and also feel each other’s pain and glory to reason as one. Of course, just like any society on earth, we do find some bad apples, and corrupt and immoral statesmen along with petty arguments, especially among the minor classes, but as a whole, it is a society that was built on values and philosophies devised to foster the development of human beings where any individual can rise to the very top through his or her own desire, efforts and dedication. The unfortunate thing is that as time passes, and the passionate generation who were part of the foundation of this new world dies, these values sometimes fade in the minds of the new generation and the mediocre “Fisher Price” statesmen it has given us and it is great men and women with admirable character that throughout history have had the courage to stand up, speak and remind the nation of the number of people who fought and lost their lives for the society we now have and the need to push in the same direction to continue on the route of human progress.

Being more French myself than German, I have to say that I believe in the superiority of the French language, heritage, values, people and industry over Germany and all other heritage. This does not mean that I do not respect or acknowledge Germany and other countries and their achievements, since skilled individuals in specific fields can appear from anywhere on the globe due to the amazing abilities of the biological technology that is the human brain, an organ that I have researched and studied for years. Germany has always been one of the great rivals of France, a rivalry that lasted centuries, long before Napoleon, being among the other vast empires with a universal outlook. Some German academics, such as Kant, Freud, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche have influenced others worldwide including French philosophy and psychology as can be seen in Jacques Lacan’s theory of mental life, just as others have influenced German thought, for example, Schopenhauer who after being introduced to Indian philosophy by Friedrich Majer, maintained a great interest in it and even meditated on the Upanishad, part of the Vedas (the sacred script of the Hindus) as an old man, to associate a fundamental part from it to his theory on the world of ideas; the Hindu concept of “Maya”, which defines the world as illusion, i.e. in the end subjects and objects were all “Maya” (illusion). Schopenhauer left Berlin when Prussia rebelled against Napoleon since he never developed strong German patriotic sentiments, regarding himself as a cosmopolitan without any national affiliation, and his adopted concept of subject, object and imaginary (illusion) is also found in Freud’s writings, and was later further developed by Jacques Lacan. Schopenhauer’s writings also aroused Nietzsche’s interest, whose writings were initially falsified by his sister, Elizabeth, to fit her own German nationalist ideology which was adopted by the Nazi regime. Nietzsche’s true philosophy was explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism since he promoted a more global and individual perspective; fortunately, revised editions were released after 20th century scholars contested this incorrect interpretation of his work. Hence, some individual intellectuals from German institutions contributed to modern philosophy and Western European thought; so we find some respect and cooperation in some academic fields that benefit all societies and economies, but we cannot ignore the fact that there is also tough and intense competition with France and other countries on a range of industries, for example, the scientific, medical, transportation and technological industries.

Presentation: Napoleon crushes Prussia: Jena, 1806

But from the perspective of a product of France and its intellectual and linguistic heritage with an undeniable British influence, I would never have complied with Hitler’s vision of a German empire ruling the world with all languages being extinguished gradually for a complete German speaking world, hence I would rather see a French speaking world. The French empire also has the sophistication and the flexibility to accommodate all foreign heritage [what is worthy of keeping] without destroying or burning them, by simply translating foreign heritage so that it now becomes part of the repertoire of skills of the French empire. Hence France, does not destroy the heritage of other cultures, but absorbs what is valuable from it [e. g. gastronomy, technology, industries, philosophy, arts, other beneficial practices, etc], share it with the francophone family and make it a part of its own blood in its constant evolution. So, I would rather see the world turn French as the empire absorbs and adopts the whole of mankind as a mother would in her arms in a harmonious, humane, sophisticated and strategic way instead of German.

So now to finish off, having already spoken of what I thought was not well planned in Hitler’s regime, along with a fairly deep explanation of the Organic Theory and assimilation, here are the couple of things that are inspiring with Hitler’s story, and it starts with the great example the German people set at the time in terms of giving power to the deserving individual by showing the world that a failed artist could rise to the very top of a modern society. Which means that we eventually saw a financially challenged boy who was the top of his class in primary school who then failed to kickstart his artistic career after failing an exam to one of the finest art school in Western Europe, the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and then through his own efforts after being homeless and struggling through the war, rise to the very top. This to me shows absolute social mobility, but also how a man can be an artist, a soldier, and a cultivated man through his own efforts to then lead a modern civilisation and rise to the very top. This to me is a clear modern example of the Organic Theory on the process of self-definition and progressive development of an individual organism based on his/her own desires and abilities.

The second amazingly inspiring side to the story of Hitler is how he gave the world an avant-garde example of the answer to a harmonious environment; by being a vegetarian who was the first to initiate animal protection laws.

The third admirable side to Hitler was his charisma and his loyalty to his society, but also his modesty and confidence with people of all walks of life, being the only public figure of his level to freely walk around his country and meet the crowd from all walks of life and classes without any protection, while also gaining their absolute trust to guide them.

The fourth side to Adolf Hitler was that he had style in his taste in architecture for his country as we can today find through the blueprints he devised along with Albert Speer. We can imagine what would have been the future Germany and Berlin. These plans reveal buildings and plans of a city that reflected the grandeur of mankind and even the uniforms of his staff were contracted to Hugo Boss – showing a man who revered perfection. And if we take a look at the uniforms and the suits of the National Socialist government, we may have to accept that they were some of the sharpest and best-looking suits ever seen throughout modern history, perhaps only matched by French couturiers such as Yves Saint Laurent.

Adolf Hitler's agenda from Kladderadatsch 1933.jpg

Adolf’s Agenda

The fifth amazing side with Hitler was his love for science and evolution and his passion to keep an updated perspective of all the latest discoveries. So, it would be fairly biased to assume Hitler to be a rigid man who had no taste for change. This can be reflected is his eagerness to foster research in order to rebuild Germany’s medical, technological and military facilities. This also adds to my view that Hitler would have been willing to listen to new discoveries and shift his opinions accordingly if advised and convinced by genuine, avant-garde and honest people – he should have consulted me. Haha! But of course, the close entourage of the Fuhrer was not particularly composed of the most ethical of minds or the most sophisticated where many turned out to be disloyal and evil, which likely led to the horrors of the regime without any link to Hitler himself.

The sixth admirable thing about Hitler, is the fact that he was a leader who really saw people as organisms requiring the similar chances to succeed and rise and not as a crowd to be divided into segments of left, right and centre. Hitler saw all his citizens as people of his system and worked to synchronise the whole society to work as one machine. This is certainly admirable in comparison to the corrupt and immoral people at the head of most systems today where the criteria used to govern human beings are economic and business factors. To run a civilisation of human beings without values, philosophy and morals is a sure way to fail in the long run because human beings are not objects or goods, but are complex organisms that require a very sensible system to live harmoniously, and any person who calls himself a leader and does not understand psychology, philosophy and the elements that lead to a modern harmonious human environment are fooling themselves and lying to society. It is also to be remembered how Hitler even proposed to dismantle the German military and destroy all weapons if all other countries did the same, which they never responded to. So, we now understand why Hitler was even paraded as person of the year by Time magazine, and it could not possibly be for turning Jews into minced meat. And the other enigmatic question is why so much today is being spent on defence and military when it is clear that we are a lonely civilisation on a lonely planet that should be looking to extend its reach by starting a new civilisation on a backup planet to gain the status of a space civilisation? Do these parties spending so much on military equipment and technology only have defence and nothing else in the back of their perhaps unconscious minds? Is it simply for decoration?

The seventh inspiring thing about Hitler is that he was not a native German, but just like me, fully assimilated in German society and to also win the heart of a whole nation and rise to the very top and eventually become more Germans that the Germans themselves, is something quite spectacular. Perhaps, another admirable thing was Hitler’s reply in a court proceeding after his failed coup against the state to take power, where he responded after being asked if he was German by asking whether this is proved on a piece of paper or in a man’s heart; because although he had already won the heart of the nation, he still did not have a German passport. In his early years in Germany as he struggled financially and was homeless, he was also told by some Germans that he looked like a Jew and that they thought he was one, to then overcome all this to rise to the top is quite frankly admirable.

The eighth inspiring side to Hitler was his unique ability to open his heart completely to the nation and deliver shattering speeches that hypnotised the crowds, with his passionate body language that portrayed his honesty and dedication to the Germans by placing them before his own comfort.

The ninth, and final point that I believe is inspiring with Hitler is that he did not seem to have seen things from the perspective of the regular average exec, economist, banker, doctor or other financially motivated executive who tend to claw their way in a political party just to appear on television or newspaper without any presence, greater vision or strong values and see a civilisation as a store to manage. Hitler had a deeper view like legendary emperors had, and wanted to guide a nation with philosophy, inspiring architecture, timeless artworks and wanted to blend and synchronise all the departments ranging from business, economy, education, science, research, history and arts to create the kind of timeless civilisation as it is often depicted in mythological literature that stands the test of time in marble and stone. Most importantly, Hitler seemed to be of the opinion that if a civilisation is not expanding then it is not progressing and this reflected the qualities of a conqueror, reminiscing of those like Alexander the great or Napoleon. Nowadays, pathetic and mediocre execs who lead a team that they call a political party are guided by the sole desire to stay in power, and because of their allegiance to donors to their parties, they need to abide and meet some demands to remain funded, this destroys a civilisation because it is not being managed with the freedom and the values that it requires, and hence, this leads to a mundane atmosphere of a static and boring society where the same kind of men act and speak in a noble way public, but behave like ignoble and immoral characters in their decision and management – this has been a depressing and repetitive cycle for decades now without any legendary character appearing to stand against such absurdity and turn matters around. Today, with so many conventions, it is hardly possible for any great empire to take matters into their own hands and consider expansion and conquest because of hypocritical beliefs of absolute equality of all societies and languages along with third world policies that have trapped great empires of the West such as France into submission and onto its knees to comply with irrational, ridiculous and hypocritical demands that bound it to comply with conventions and gradually has today transformed it and many other empires into nurseries paralysed by the demands of inferior societies, when it has all the resources to turn the whole world into its colonies and manage it better while giving all the people on Earth the dream of being part of its heritage, like great empires once did.

It is also fair to note that during World War II, all sides committed atrocities on innocent civilians, both the Allies and the Germans, so today, when we look back at the greatest war of men of the 20th century, we realise that not a single party can proclaim to be angels because many atrocities comitted by the Allies were ignored until recently revised; such as the Katyn massacre comitted by Stalin which was wrongly attributed to the German Reich, not to mention the horrific amount of rapes comitted on innocent women from all parties in Occupied  Germany from 1944 to 1954 [English: 45,000 rapes, French: 50,000 rapes, American: 190,000 rapes and Soviet: 430,000 rapes]. We must also not forget the rapes during the liberation of France both during and after the advance of the United States armed forces through France. According to the American historian Robert Lilly, there were 3,500 rapes committed by American soldiers in France between June 1944 and the end of the war. The number of rapes is difficult to establish because many rape victims have never reported the facts to the police. The American troops involved committed 208 rapes and about 30 murders in the department of Manche. In June 1944 alone, in Normandy, 175 American soldiers were accused of rape [See: Viols durant la libération de la France]. Due to the large number of reported cases of rape and the deterioration of the image of American soldiers in France, the American command judged 68 cases of ordinary rape involving 75 victims between 14 June 1944 and 19 June 1945; at least 50% of the rapist soldiers were drunk at the time of their crime; of the 152 accused, 139 were black, although they made up only 10% of the troops on the European theatre [Read the article: À l’automne 1944, Français et troupes américaines au bord de l’affrontement]

Rapes in Occupied Germany.jpg

Company of Allied Rapists: Estimated no. of rapes from 1944 – 1954 in Occupied Germany by the Allies / See: The Real Genocide of the German people during World War 2

Hitler’s Shadow: In The Service Of The Führer [This is the personal story of Karl Wilhelm Krause, who was the valet. of the Fuehrer from 1934 to 1939, and was also responsible for his personal safety and security. Through his daily contact with Adolf Hitler, and those of his most intimate circle, both in his public life, as well as, inside the Fuehrer’s private quarters, no one had access like Herr Krause.]

So, to conclude with an answer to your question, I am neither a Hitler fan, nor a Hitler hater, but a man who sees “The Fuhrer” as one of the great figures of the last century with elements to be inspired by and mistakes to also learn from. A silent, yet growing movement of modern Aryans are beginning to re-evaluate the ideologies of the Fuhrer with a recent exposition at Montpellier showcasing 200 photographs from his photographer Heinrich Hoffman.

Finally, I would like to point out that if nobody speaks, nothing changes… so I chose to speak, what did you choose to do?

_________________________________

QUESTION VII.

[FR] – Qui est votre leader préféré de tous les temps et pourquoi ?

[EN] – Who is your all-time favourite leader and why?

[FR] Réponse:

Après avoir beaucoup réfléchi et éliminé d’une liste constituée de Chirac, Sarkozy, Hitler, De Gaulle, Alexandre le Grand et Napoléon Bonaparte, j’ai dû aller avec ce dernier, l’Empereur du peuple français, car il s’avère être un des chefs les plus énigmatiques jamais vu dans l’histoire des hommes. Je crois que l’humanité n’a pas eu de dirigeants de ce calibre depuis. Nous avons eu surtout des cadres médiocres qui ont dirigé des partis politiques et ont joué avec la civilisation jusqu’à ce que leur temps passe, tout en faisant le maximum pour assurer une retraite financièrement confortable et assez de photos encadrées avec des célébrités pour les accrocher à leurs murs.

Avant d’en arriver à Napoléon, je dois dire qu’il y a quelques personnalités publiques assez décentes qui avaient des éléments à leur sujet que je trouve inspirants. Nous avons l’ancien président français Chirac, qui, je crois, avait une personnalité incroyablement charismatique et magnétique, qui incarnait également la joie de vivre française et qui avait une touche de jeunesse éternelle dans son caractère, et cette touche d’humanité est admirable car je crois que être humain est un facteur fondamental pour gérer les autres humains. Chirac aimait la foule et était à l’aise avec les gens de tous les milieux tout en ayant un grand sens de l’humour.

Un autre président français que je trouve également inspirant est Nicola Sarkozy, qui est aussi un grand exemple d’assimilation et quelqu’un qui a également rencontré de nombreux obstacles dans ses premières années en tant que fils de Hongrois et petit-fils d’un Juif mais qui a finalement tout surmonté pour se prouver comme un vrai français qui avait la France dans son cœur. Sarkozy est aussi celui qui inspire les autres à monter, contrairement à beaucoup de personnalités égoïstes d’aujourd’hui qui, une fois au sein d’un parti, semblent haïr les jeunes générations et agissent en animaux vils et frustrés envers les personnalités de demain.

Hitler aussi a été un cas de grande assimilation et après avoir parlé de ce que je trouve inspirant à son sujet ci-dessus, je pense que nous pouvons passer au dernier, qui est Charles de Gaulle.

Juin 1958, l’Assemblée donne les pleins pouvoirs à De Gaulle

Ce dernier, pour moi, est un grand exemple d’un homme qui savait ce qu’il voulait et qui avait la grande vision d’une civilisation. De Gaulle faisait aussi preuve d’une modestie exemplaire et ne se noyait pas égoïstement dans le luxe mais pensait à l’Etat et au peuple avant son propre confort. De Gaulle a également joué un rôle essentiel dans la libération de la France, et il a tout fait depuis l’Angleterre sans être présent sur le sol français, étant le premier à montrer comment la technologie du XXe siècle pouvait être utilisée pour gérer, organiser et motiver tout un empire. L’autre chose admirable de Gaulle, c’est qu’il avait gagné la confiance de la France pour diriger librement comme un monarque et est peut-être aujourd’hui connu comme le dernier “roi démocratique de France”.

Le dernier avant Napoléon est Alexandre le Grand, qui fut la seule personne d’origine indo-européenne à avoir presque conquis le monde, de la Grèce au fleuve Indus. C’était un général et un explorateur qui était aussi incroyablement cultivé de ses enseignements par le grand Aristote qui lui avait enseigné la science, la philosophie, la littérature et les techniques de combat – toutes les compétences nécessaires pour un futur grand leader.

Aristote instruisant Alexandre le Grand et ses camarades

Image: Aristote instruisant Alexandre / Alexandre le Grand (2011) . Arte

Dès ses premières années, il a enduré un père incroyablement exigeant qui s’attendait à ce qu’il ne soit jamais faible et qu’il soit le plus grand dans tous les domaines. Alexandre était assoiffé de connaissances et était inspiré par le modèle grec et voulait être le meilleur comme Achille, le héros légendaire de la mythologie grecque à qui son père avait dit que pour se comporter comme un homme, il devait être le meilleur et avoir un meilleur jugement.

Alexander the Great

Après avoir été enseigné par Aristote pendant 3 ans, Alexandre dira plus tard qu’il aimait Aristote comme un père et si son père biologique lui a donné la vie, c’est Aristote qui lui a montré comment vivre. Ce dernier lui raconta comment l’empire perse s’est étendu jusqu’à la fin du monde jusqu’en Inde, et comment leur roi avait envahi la Grèce il y a environ 100 ans, détruisant toutes les villes, prenant Athènes et brûlant l’Acropole avant que les Grecs puissent s’unir et chasser les Perses. Aristote avait également dit à Alexandre comment les Perses étaient une menace permanente avec leurs troupes amassées aux portes de la Grèce avec le tombeau du valeureux Achille encore dans leurs mains, et que le rêve de gloire éternelle réside dans l’acte d’unir les Grecs et de poursuivre les troupes persanes comme ce serait l’acte d’un héros. Son père lui avait dit qu’il devait trouver un empire à sa taille car la Grèce est trop petite.

Alexander

Image: Alexandre le Grand (2011) . Arte

Après avoir commencé à conquérir la Perse, il vainquit l’armée de Darius III, bien qu’en infériorité numérique, et fit prisonniers la mère, l’épouse et les sœurs. Dans un acte de chevalerie, il leur promettait même qu’elles seraient traitées avec respect et qu’aucun de ses hommes ne serait impuni s’ils manquaient de respect aux femmes persanes, à la colère et à la frustration d’un de ses généraux les plus proches et les plus doués, Philotas. Il dira à ce dernier qu’après leur bravoure et leur victoire héroïque contre l’armée persane, comment pourraient-ils se comporter en lâches avec leurs femmes ? Alexandre a continué son exploration et a presque pris le monde avec de nombreuses villes, y compris Babylone le recevant comme un libérateur – il voulait surpasser ses ancêtres. Mais l’une de ses déclarations les plus nobles fut peut-être son désir d’avoir été Diogène de Sinope s’il n’avait pas été Alexandre. Diogène de Sinope était l’un des philosophes les plus célèbres de l’école de philosophie cynique dont le caractère a profondément marqué les Athéniens à travers une multitude d’anecdotes légendaires. Cela montre qu’au fond de son cœur, Alexandre n’était pas motivé par le luxe ou l’argent, mais voulait vraiment construire une civilisation noble de gens sophistiqués et humains. Cela montre aussi sa sensibilité et sa capacité à établir des relations avec les gens modestes, mais surtout sa sagesse dans l’évaluation de la grandeur d’un homme, non pas en fonction de ses possessions ou de ses vêtements, mais uniquement en fonction de son intelligence et du contenu de son discours; parce que Diogène de Sinope vivait dehors, dans la misère, vêtu d’un simple manteau, avec un bâton, un sac et un bol. Dénonçant l’artifice des conventions sociales, Diogène prônait une vie simple, plus proche de la nature, et se contentait d’un grand pot couché sur le côté pour dormir.

Diogène de Sinope 413 avJC - 327 avJC dpurb site web

Diogène (Diogenes) par John William Waterhouse, 1882

Diogène avait l’art de l’invective et de la parole mordante. Il semble qu’il n’ait pas hésité à critiquer ouvertement les grands hommes et autres philosophes de son temps (dont Platon). Les apostrophes les plus célèbres qui lui sont attribuées sont :

«Je fus un jour chez un adolescent d’une richesse considérable. On m’installe dans une salle à manger ornée de toute part de peintures et de dorures au point qu’il n’y avait même pas un endroit pour cracher. Comme une glaire me montait à la gorge, je l’expectorai et promenant les yeux autour de moi sans trouver un endroit où cracher, je crachai sur le jeune homme lui-même. Il m’en fit le reproche. A quoi je répondis en l’appelant par son nom: ‘Quoi, tu me reproche ce qui vient de se passer, et tu ne le reproche pas à toi qui a fait décorer les murs et le pavée de ta salle à manger et n’as laissé sans décoration que ta personne, invitant par là à cracher dessus’.» -Diogène

«Les autres chiens mordent leurs ennemis, tandis que moi je mords mes amis, de manière à les sauver.» -Diogène

«Je suis à la recherche d’un homme» – (c’est-à-dire un homme vrai, bon et sage), une phrase qu’il prononçait à la stupéfaction de ses concitoyens en marchant dans les rues, brandissant sa lanterne allumée en plein jour et approchant les visages des passants.

(réponse éblouissante à Alexandre le Grand, roi de Macédoine, qui était venu le voir pour lui demander s’il avait besoin de quelque chose, s’il pouvait l’aider d’une manière ou d’une autre…). – Oui, sortez de mon soleil, répondit Diogène.

Plusieurs anecdotes témoignent du mépris de Diogène pour la richesse et les conventions sociales. Selon Diogène Laërce, il n’a pas hésité à mendier avec les statues pour «s’habituer au refus». Il a abandonné son bol après avoir vu un enfant boire à la fontaine dans ses mains. Interrogé sur la façon d’éviter la tentation de la chair, Diogène aurait répondu “en se masturbant”, et aurait ajouté : «Il vaudrait mieux pour le ciel qu’il suffise aussi de se frotter le ventre pour ne plus avoir faim». Diogène aurait également été vu se promenant dans les rues d’Athènes en plein jour, avec une lanterne à la main, disant à ceux qui lui demandaient ce qu’il faisait : «Je cherche un homme.» (parfois traduit par «je cherche l’homme» ou «je cherche un vrai homme»). Cet «homme» désignerait celui théorisé par Platon, l’idéal de l’être humain, et Diogène aurait voulu réfuter son existence, puisque seuls des hommes concrets existent. Une autre anecdote rapporte que, Platon ayant défini l’homme comme un «bipède sans cornes et sans plumes», le lendemain Diogène se promenait dans la ville, tenant dans sa main un coq déplumé avec des ergots coupés, et déclarant : «C’est l’homme de Platon !» Diogène a d’abord vécu comme un homme libre, mais comme il se dirigeait vers Égine par bateau, ce dernier avait été pris par des pirates. Mis en vente comme esclave à Corinthe, il déclara au marchand qui lui demandait ce qu’il pouvait faire qu’il savait «gouverner les hommes», et qu’il devait donc être vendu à celui qui cherchait un maître. Il finit par être acheté par un riche Corinthien qui admirait son indépendance d’esprit, et qui lui donna sa liberté.

Puget_-_Diogenes_Alexandre_Louvre dpurb site web

La rencontre d’Alexandre le grand et de Diogène de Sinope / Pierre Pujet, vers 1680, Musée du Louvre

C’est à Corinthe, où Diogène vivait lorsqu’il n’était pas à Athènes, que s’est déroulée la célèbre rencontre du vieux clochard philosophe avec le jeune roi de Macédoine, Alexandre le Grand. Cet épisode est raconté en particulier par Plutarque dans la Vie d’Alexandre, XVIII, par Cicéron dans les Tosculans, 5, XXXII, et par Diogène Laertius dans la Vie des philosophes, Livre VI.

Voici la version la plus complète de leur conversation :

– Demande-moi ce que tu veux, je te le donnerai.

– Sors de mon soleil (littéralement : “Reste loin de mon soleil pendant un moment.”)

– Tu n’as pas peur de moi ?

– Qu’est-ce que tu es ?……… Un bon ou un mauvais ?

– Un bon, un bon.

– Qui pourrait craindre le bien ?

Diogène avait demandé qu’après sa mort, son corps soit jeté dans la rue, mais ses amis lui ont donné des funérailles honorables. Une colonne surmontée d’un chien de marbre a été placée sur sa tombe et sur laquelle les versets suivants ont été écrits :

“Même le bronze subit le vieillissement du temps,
Mais votre renommée, Diogène, l’éternité ne la détruira pas.
Car vous seul avez montré aux mortels la gloire d’une vie indépendante
Et le chemin le plus facile à suivre pour une vie heureuse.”

Marcel Aymé - Le Monde Souffre d'purb dpurb site web

Traduction(EN): “The world suffers from not having enough beggars to remind men of the gentleness of a fraternal gesture.” -Marcel Aymé

Aujourd’hui, l’héritage d’Alexandre le Grand est présent en politique aux côtés des légendes et dans la littérature. Il envisageait un empire universel où les sociétés auraient une administration autonome et pourraient coexister pacifiquement sous un gouvernement impérial. Alexandre n’a pas seulement conquis le monde, il a changé le cours de son histoire pour toujours.

Mais mon chef préféré de tous les temps est Napoléon. Napoléon pour sa grandeur en presque tout et sa présence motivante et inspirante qui a touché des hommes et des femmes du monde entier. Napoléon est quelqu’un à qui je semble me lier parce qu’il est peut-être l’une des plus grandes histoires d’assimilation étonnante et qu’il est passé d’un simple militaire à général, ensuite consul pour terminer comme empereur et tout cela avec à la reconnaissance du pays tout entier. Napoléon est un homme et un enfant de la Révolution et de la Première République et en est le plus célèbre héritier; c’était un Républicain et n’avait rien à voir avec l’Ancien Régime fait de castes et d’inégalités.

BONAPARTE AU PONT D'ARCOLE (1796) Antoine-Jean GROS (1771 - 1835) dpurb site d'purb

Image: Bonaparte au pond d’Arcole (1796) par Antoine-Jean Gros (1771 – 1835)

Napoléon m’inspire parce que, comme moi, il n’est pas né en France, mais a quitté sa maison en Corse et est parti étudier en France. Dans ses premières années, il ne maîtrisait même pas la langue française et avait un fort accent corse, et il a également été intimidé au collège alors qu’il était à Brienne, une académie d’élite et a été traité comme un petit immigrant étranger dans ces premières années. Pourtant, avec un tel dévouement, en tant qu’étudiant déjà étonnant et grand autodidacte solitaire, il a lu tous les grands esprits de l’Europe, s’est cultivé et est devenu l’un des plus grands Français à avoir jamais vécu. En effet, du petit étranger à l’accent louche, devenir alors plus français que les Français, et s’élever au rang d’Empereur est vraiment inspirant.

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Traduction(EN): “I accept this title that you believe is useful to the glory of the nation… The life of a citizen belongs to his motherland, the French people want mine to be fully devoted to them, I obey their desire.”  -Napoleon

Avant de recevoir sa couronne le jour de son couronnement après que le peuple français eut décidé de le faire empereur de la République française, il se retourna et regarda son frère en disant, en corse “sì u nostru babbu ci hà vistu”, qui signifie “si notre père pouvait nous voir”. Cela montre que bien qu’il ait incarné la France dans son cœur, il était respectueux de son humble passé alors qu’il est passé de simple lieutenant à empereur en seulement 11 ans.

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Source: Napoleon: La Conquête du Pouvoir, Les Grandes Réformes & Les Grandes Victoires (Cliquez pour regarder le documentaire)

Les exploits de Napoléon ont aussi inspiré les grands écrivains du courant Romantique, et surtout un des plus grands génies de l’écriture qu’était Honoré de Balzac. Lui qui comme Napoléon avait un côté mathématique dans l’organisation de tout ses œuvres, notamment une des plus fondamentale, «La Comédie Humaine» qui est divisé en trois parties: Études de Mœurs, Études Philosophiques et Études Analytiques. La Comédie Humaine montre que toute l’existence peut être interprétée avec tous les éléments du théâtre puisque le rôle que l’on joue dans la société et le rôle dans lequel un certains nombres d’acteurs différents pourront se succéder. Dans la nouvelle formant partie des études philosophique, «Adieu», nous voyons un épisode sur la retraite de Russie des troupes impériales Napoléoniennes en 1812 lors du passage de la Bérézina. Napoléon était un personnage mythique que Balzac voulait rivaliser avec dans son domaine, puisqu’il le voyait comme un génie qui nous avait montré l’avenir impérial mais qui avait aussi réussi a sauver les nobles de la terreur et trouver un moyen pour synchroniser harmonieusement la France toute entière en instaurant un système de progression par l’effort et la méritocratie [créant L’ordre national de la Légion d’honneur en 1802] pour tous après la pagaille, l’instabilité et la confusion qu’avait laissé la terreur juste après la révolution.

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Image: Croix d’Officier de la Légion d’Honneur (1806-1808) / “Au nom du peuple français,
BONAPARTE, premier Consul, proclame loi de la République le décret suivant, rendu par le Corps législatif, le 29 Floréal an X, conformément à la proposition faite par le gouvernement, le 25 du dit mois, communiquée au Tribunat le 27 suivant. DÉCRET.
TITRE PREMIER. Création et organisation de la Légion-d’Honneur.
Art. 1er. En exécution de l’article 87 de la constitution, concernant les récompenses militaires, et pour récompenser aussi les services et les vertus civiles, il sera formé une Légion d’Honneur…” / Source: La légion d’Honneur : ordre impérial, royal et national. La fondation

L’Ordre de la Légion d’honneur créé par Napoléon pour récompenser les services rendus à la Nation était un insigne avec sa propre figure qu’il épinglait sur la poitrine de ses sujets, ce qui était un signe très fort puisque les souverains d’Europe avaient plutôt les fondateurs de leur dynastie ou le symbole de leur pays, mais Napoléon, en tant qu’homme qui détruisit l’ancien régime, épingla son propre profil sur la poitrine de ses sujets avec l’aigle impérial au revers de l’insigne, ce qui était unique et universel comme Anne de Chefdebien l’a souligné, car ici le tambour et le prince recevaient la même décoration, l’intellectuel et le soldat qui ne pouvaient lire aussi ; c’était égalitaire, universel et très fort parce que tous ceux qui ont servi la Nation de tout leur cœur ont eu la même récompense, c’est exceptionnel parce qu’avant la révolution tous les pays y compris la France avaient plusieurs ordres qui la plupart du temps exigeaient des conditions de naissance. Napoléon avait aussi l’audace et le courage de vouloir unifier toute l’Europe sous le drapeau Français et ses valeurs sans intermédiaire, pour étendre les idées et acquis de la Révolution à tous les autres peuples d’Europe plongés eux aussi dans l’obscurantisme depuis des siècles par une caste minoritaire dirigeante qui se nomme elle-même “Noblesse”. Avec la République et l’Empire désormais tout le monde peut enfin – après tant de siècles – à travers ses qualités accéder à l’ascenseur sociale. L’Empire avait été créé par le peuple pour lutter contre les attaques incessantes contre la France [seule représentante en ce temps de l’Europe des Peuples] par la vieille et sclérosée Europe des Rois unie pour rétablir l’Ancien Régime et détruire les acquis de la révolution: la liberté et l’égalité des chances pour tous. L’Empire était surtout pour éloigner toujours plus loin le danger de ces incessantes attaques des frontières de la France et de calmer les velléités des rois et empereurs de l’Ancien Régime rétrograde et non progressif, car en ces temps la diplomatie n’existait que sous cette forme sauvage et l’on ne pouvait obtenir la paix que par elle [ce que voulait en premier la France et Napoléon I qui ont TOUJOURS été forcé à faire la guerre face aux attaques des rois, contrairement à ce qu’une perfide propagande veut faire croire depuis 200 ans] : “La diplomatie des canons”, seule diplomatie existante en ces temps agités et barbares tout simplement.

Le jour où Napoléon a mis la Prusse à genoux

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Des soldats napoléoniens lors de la reconstitution d’une bataille / (illustration)Crédit : CESAR MANSO / AFP / Source: RTL (Russie : le corps d’un général de Napoléon identifié 207 ans après sa mort)

En étudiant «Adieu», nous voyons que Balzac pensait que l’erreur principale de Napoléon était d’avoir mal planifié et lancé ses troupes en Russie, un pays que Balzac associa à la froideur de la neige et peignit littérairement comme une vision d’un enfer blanc: un pays de blancheur, de froid et de châtiment qui signifiait la fin du monde. Donc, pour Balzac la retraite de Russie était bouleversante pour la France, et c’est un événement qu’il voulait décrire comme une perspective de l’histoire qui se dirige vers un enfer froid, entre autres, ce qui risque d’arriver à notre société si nous baissons notre garde. La rivière Bérézina que devront traverser les troupes pour survivre dans «Adieu» devient la figure du déluge biblique et pour la traverser Balzac semblait insinuer qu’on devrait construire une arche de Noé qui était représentée par un radeau dans le récit, et Michel Butor a fait valoir qu’il semble suggérer que si nous ne sommes pas en mesure de mener des travaux de recherche et d’invention, alors la société perdra la générosité de la noblesse et la chaleur du cœur ancien et deviendra un lieu où les hommes se fragmentent.

Napoléon était aussi un exemple parfait de la théorie organique dans la création, le développement, l’évolution et la définition de soi dans une société sophistiquée qui croit en la force créatrice de l’individu pour réaliser ses rêves. C’est aussi tout l’oeuvre de Balzac, le thème de l’homme seul abandonné par presque tout où l’homme recommence et réécrit l’histoire du monde; Michel Butor l’a bien souligné: l’homme de génie est celui pour qui la terre se fait île déserte, parce que tout s’écarte de lui. Sa présence en tant que chef était unique et légendaire, ce qui a conduit le Maréchal Bon-Adrien Jeannot de Moncey après sa mort de dire: “Maintenant rentrons mourir!” Napoléon était un homme qui personnifiait le courage, tant sur le champ de bataille que dans les affaires officielles de l’État qui était guidé par des valeurs et non par l’argent, entièrement dévoué à la France, il plaçait le peuple et la grandeur de sa nation avant sa propre santé et son confort. Dans la mémoire de Sainte-Helène, Napoléon avait même prédit l’opposition future entre les États-Unis et l’Empire Russe, mais avait aussi essayé de faire comprendre à l’opinion que les coalitions qui se sont acharnées sur la France étaient des coalitions politiques et non pas militaires, qui cherchaient à abattre la République Française et ses valeurs et non pas l’Empereur.

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Traduction (EN): “When he has made a mistake or been a victim of misfortune, the man of genius always manages to recover.” -Napoleon

En plus d’être un génie militaire et politique, il prouva qu’un homme pouvait être un intellectuel, un soldat, un grand bâtisseur tout en étant amoureux des arts et de la musique. L’empereur avait aussi un sens de la dignité et des valeurs et voulait permettre aux gens de toutes les classes en France de croire en la capacité de grandir et de s’élever par leurs propres efforts – il voulait que tous les membres de sa société puissent rêver. Pour Napoléon, l’impossible n’était pas français !

Nous avons un maitre. Napoleon fait tout peut tout veut tout dpurb d'purb site

Traduction(EN): “We have a master. Napoleon Bonaparte does everything. He can do everything. He wants everything.” – Abbé Siéyès

Jean-Marie Rouart l’a aussi souligné, qu’il y a une religion Napoléonienne, un culte de Napoléon parce que les gens du peuple ont compris qu’a travers cet homme, ils sont tous devenus plus grands, et ce mythe Napoléonien parlera toujours parce que personne dans l’époque moderne n’a pu atteindre à ce point ses rêves; mais il y a aussi une leçon morale qui est une leçon d’espérance et si Napoléon est toujours présent c’est parce qu’il y aura toujours des gens pour aller se ressourcer dans son exemple, dans ses mots, dans le mémorial de Sainte-Hélène pour trouver dans la vie de Napoléon, un moment ou vraiment ils reprennent de l’optimisme, et donc c’est une leçon d’optimisme puisqu’il a ramené la politique à l’homme pour prouver qu’un homme peut être exceptionnel! Chateaubriand semble avoir bien décrit Napoléon comme “le plus puissant souffle de vie qui jamais anima l’argile humaine”.

Napoléon avait une vision instinctive de ce que devait être un pays moderne et fit des réformes d’une ampleur extraordinaire dans les domaines juridique, politique et économique pour les droits et les devoirs des citoyens afin de rendre fonctionnel la société d’après la révolution. Le Code civil, devenu plus tard le Code Napoléonien a aussi été écrit par lui, et il a influencé des pays du monde entier en donnant à la société française une structure nécessaire pour l’ordre et la sécurité après la révolution et la terreur. De nombreux autres pays se sont inspirés du code napoléonien et l’ont utilisé pour moderniser la vie dans leurs sociétés.

Rendre la république chère aux citoyens, respectable aux étrangers et formidable aux ennemis d'purb dpurb site web

Traduction(EN): “To make the republic dear to the citizens, respectable to foreigners and formidable to enemies.” -Napoleon

Napoléon croyait que tout devait être reconstruit sur des bases saines et c’est pourquoi il restera à jamais dans l’histoire de l’Europe comme une figure fondamentale de la conquête militaire et en essayant d’imposer un nouveau système[un Etat moderne, une nouvelle administration, un nouveau gouvernement central, une nouvelle législation et une nouvelle jurisprudence] qui avait créé un héritage rendant impossible un retour a l’ancien régime dans tous les territoires occupés par ses troupes ou influencé par ses idées.

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Le Code Civil ou Code Napoléonien a inspiré et aidé des sociétés du monde entier a trouver leur structure et leurs valeurs / Source: Toute L’Histoire (2011)

Après avoir été accueilli en héros et en sauveur de la République par une foule extatique, en seulement 3 mois au pouvoir en France, Napoléon avait instauré la paix civile, créé de nouvelles institutions et réformé le système fiscal, ce qui avait conduit à un redressement spectaculaire des finances publiques sous la direction du consulat. Il n’a pas seulement attaqué les institutions, il a aussi pris la responsabilité de moderniser et d’agrandir les infrastructures du pays [nouveaux navires construits, ports et arsenaux agrandis et modernisés]. Dans l’éducation, on a vu la naissance des lycées et une réforme profonde de l’enseignement et de l’université. Dans le secteur industriel, il a créé la chambre de commerce, modernisé le service postal avec de nouvelles lignes télégraphiques optiques qui relient les 29 grandes villes et créé et amélioré près de 50 000 km de routes avec des œuvres d’art et des ponts réalisés partout. Comme l’a expliqué Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, l’empire a créé une vraie dynamique des peuples, et a apporté un grand nombre d’avancés tant humaines qu’institutionnelles, les conquêtes Napoléoniennes en bouleversant les ordres établis, ont jetés les bases de nombreux changements étatiques qui ont servies a beaucoup d’autres pays pour accéder a leur unité ou indépendance; la vision du grand empire de Napoléon était unificatrice  et avant tout une vision européenne universelle dépouillée de son caractère autoritaire ou elle apparaît résolument moderne, méthodiquement organisée; et n’avait rien à voir avec les vieux mouvements xénophobes nationalistes et racistes qui se font appeler “identitaires” de nos jours et qui encouragent le renfermement sur soi, la division, le communautarisme et la haine envers les autres et une Europe unie sous le drapeau Français que rêvait tant Napoléon. Ces anciens mouvements nationalistes non progressif, statique et atavique salissent l’héritage de Napoléon.

Jacques-Louis David - 1801 - Le Premier Consul franchissant les Alpes au col du Grand Saint-Bernard

Image: « Le Premier Consul franchissant les Alpes au col du Grand Saint-Bernard » par Jacques-Louis David (1801)

L’empereur avait donc la grande vision d’étendre la France, sa langue et ses valeurs et semblait suivre les traces d’Alexandre le Grand comme un conquérant qui était à deux doigts de conquérir toute l’Europe. Napoléon était pour moi le vrai chef des hommes et pouvait les motiver avec son honnêteté ancrée dans ses discours électrisants et il était aussi quelqu’un qui avait les qualités d’un conquérant et qui croyait qu’un empire avait besoin d’expansion pour progresser. Je pense que Napoléon Bonaparte est l’exemple de la grandeur de la civilisation française et aussi la preuve que la France est la civilisation qui incarne la grandeur de l’humanité, ses rêves et les valeurs de méritocratie et d’excellence. “Napoléon grandira, à mesure qu’on le connaîtra mieux!”, disait Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

La Légende de Napoléon

“La Grande Armée” par Richard Grégoire / BO Napoléon (2003)

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Traduction(EN): “”I found a crown in the stream, wiped off the mud that covered it, put it on my head.” -Napoleon

—-|—-

[EN] Answer to Question VII. “Who is your all-time favourite leader and why?”

After a great amount of thinking and eliminating from a list constituted of Chirac, Sarkozy, Hitler, De Gaulle, Alexander the Great and Napoléon Bonaparte, I had to go with the latter, the Emperor of the French people because he turns out to be one of the most enigmatic leaders ever seen throughout the history of mankind. I believe that humanity has not had leaders of this calibre since. We have had mostly mediocre execs who became the head of political parties and played around with civilisation until their time passed while making the most to ensure a financially comfortable retirement and enough framed photographs with celebrities to hang on their walls.

Before getting to Napoleon, I have to say that there are somehow a couple of fairly decent public figures that had some elements about them that I find inspiring. We have the former French president Chirac, who I believe had an incredibly charismatic and magnetic personality who also embodied the French “joie de vivre” and had a touch of an eternal youth about his character, and this touch of humanity about him is admirable because I believe being human is one factor that is fundamental to manage other humans. Chirac loved the crowds and was at home with people from all walks of life while also having a great sense of humour.

Another French president that I also find inspiring is Nicola Sarkozy, who also is a great example of assimilation and someone who also faced many obstacles in his early years as the son of Hungarian and the grandson of a Jew but who eventually overcame everything and everyone to prove himself as a true Frenchman who had France in his heart. Sarkozy is also the one who inspires others to rise up, unlike many of today’s selfish personalities who, once within a party, seem to hate the younger generations and act as vile and frustrated animals towards tomorrow’s prominent figures.

Hitler too was also a case of great assimilation and having spoken about what I find inspiring about him above, I think we can skip to the last one, which is Charles de Gaulle. The latter, is to me a great example of a man who knew what he wanted and who had a grand vision of a civilisation along with an exemplary modesty who did not selfishly drown himself in luxury but thought of the state and the people before his own comfort. De Gaulle also played an integral part in the liberation of France, and he did it all from England without being present on French soil, being the first to show how technology in the 20th century could be used to manage, organise and motivate a whole empire. The other admirable thing about de Gaulle was that he had gained the confidence of France to lead freely like a monarch and is perhaps today known as the last “democratic King of France”.

The last one before Napoleon is Alexander the Great, who was the only person of Indo-European heritage to have nearly conquered the world starting from Greece to the Indus River. He was a general and an explorer who was also incredibly cultivated from his teachings by the great Aristotle who had taught him science, philosophy, literature and combat techniques – all the necessary skills for a future great leader. From his early years he endured an incredibly demanding father who expected him to never be weak and to be the greatest in all fields. Alexander had a thirst for knowledge and was inspired by the Greek model and wanted to be the best like Achilles the legendary hero of Greek mythology who was told by his father that to behave like a man he would have to be the best and have a better judgement. After being taught by Aristotle for 3 years, Alexander would later say that he loved Aristotle as a father and if his biological father gave him life, it was Aristotle who showed him how to live. The latter told him how the Persian empire extended to the end of the world until India, and how their king had invaded Greece about a 100 years ago, destroying all the cities, taking over Athens and burning down the Acropolis before the Greeks could unite and drive out the Persians. Aristotle had also told Alexander how the Persians were a permanent menace with their troops amassed at the doorsteps of Greece with the tomb of the valorous Achilles still in their hands, and that the dream of eternal glory lies in the act of uniting the Greeks and chasing the Persian troops as this would be the act of a hero. His father had told him that he should find an empire to his size since Greece is too small.

After he started conquering Persia, he defeated the army of Darius although outnumbered by the latter and made the mother, the wife and sisters prisoners. In an act of chivalry he would even promise them that they would be treated with respect and that none of his men would be unpunished if they disrespected Persian women, to the anger and frustration of one of his closest and most talented generals, Philotas. He would tell the latter that after their bravery and heroic win against the Persian army, how could they act like cowards with their women? Alexander continued his exploration and nearly took over the world with many cities including Babylon receiving him as a liberator – he wanted to surpass his ancestors. But perhaps one of his noblest declaration was his desire to have been Diogenes the Cynic if he had not been Alexander. Diogenes was one of the most famous philosophers from the school of cynic philosophy whose character had a profound impact on the Athenians through a mass of legendary anecdotes. This shows that deep in his heart, Alexander was not motivated by luxury or money, but truly wanted to build a noble civilisation of sophisticated and humane people. It also shows his sensibility and ability to relate to modest people but more importantly his wisdom in assessing the greatness of a man not based on his possessions or clothes but solely based on his intelligence and the contents of his discourse; because Diogenes lived outside, in destitution, dressed in a simple coat, with a stick, a bag and a bowl. Denouncing the artifice of social conventions, Diogenes advocated a simple life, closer to nature, and was satisfied with a large jar lying on its side to sleep.

Diogenes had the art of invective and biting speech. It seems that he did not hesitate to openly criticize the great men and other philosophers of his time (among whom Plato). The most famous apostrophes attributed to him are:

“I was once in the home of a teenager of considerable wealth. I was installed in a dining room decorated with paintings and gilding on all sides to the point that there was not even a place to spit. As a mucus rose to my throat, I expectorated it out and looking around me without finding a place to spit, I spat on the young man himself. He reproached me for it. To which I replied, calling him by his name: “What, you blame me for what just happened, and you don’t blame yourself for having the walls and floor of your dining room decorated while leaving only your person without decoration, thus inviting to spit on it’.” -Diogenes

“The other dogs bite their enemies, while I bite my friends, in order to save them.” -Diogenes

“I am looking for a man” – (meaning a true, good and wise man), a phrase he used to utter to his amazed fellow citizens as he walked the streets, brandishing his lantern lit in broad daylight and approaching the faces of passers-by.

“Get out of my sun” – (dazzling reply to Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, who had kindly come to see him and asked him if he needed something, if he could help him in any way… – Yes, get out of my sun, Diogenes replied.)

Several anecdotes testify to Diogenes’ disregard for wealth and social conventions. According to Diogène Laërce, he did not hesitate to beg with the statues in order to “get used to the refusal”. He abandoned his bowl after seeing a child drinking at the fountain in his hands. When asked about how to avoid the temptation of the flesh, Diogenes would have replied “by masturbating”, and would have added: “It would be better for heaven that it is also enough to rub your stomach to no longer be hungry!” Diogenes was also reportedly seen walking the streets of Athens in broad daylight, with a lantern in his hand, saying to those who asked him what he was doing: “I am looking for a man. “(sometimes translated as “I am looking for man” or “I am looking for a real man”). This “man” would designate the one theorized by Plato, the ideal of the human being, and Diogenes would have wanted to refute his existence, seeing only concrete men exist. Another anecdote reports that, Plato having defined man as a “biped without horns and feathers”, the next day Diogenes walked around the city holding in his hand a deplumed rooster with dewclaws cut off, and declaring: “This is Plato’s man!” Diogenes first lived as a free man, but as he was heading for Aegina by boat, the latter was taken by pirates. Put up for sale as a slave in Corinth, he declared to the merchant who asked him what he could do that he knew how to “govern men”, and that he must therefore be sold to someone who is looking for a master. He ended up being bought by a rich Corinthian who admired his independence of mind, and who gave him his freedom.

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Alexander visits Diogenes at Corinth by W. Matthews (1914)

It is in Corinth, where Diogenes lived when he was not in Athens, that the famous meeting of the old bum-philosopher with the young king of Macedonia, Alexander the Great, took place. This episode is told in particular by Plutarch in the Life of Alexander, XVIII, by Cicero in the Tusculans, 5, XXXII, and by Diogenes Laertius in the Lives of Philosophers, Book VI.

Here is the most complete version of their conversation:

” – Ask me what you want, I’ll give it to you.

– Get out of my sun (literally: “Stay away from my sun for a while.”)

– Aren’t you afraid of me?

– What are you?….. A good or a bad?

– A good one.

– Who could fear good?

Diogenes had asked that after his death, his body be thrown on the streets, but his friends gave him an honorable funeral. A column surmounted by a marble dog was placed on his tomb and on which the following verses were written:

“Even bronze undergoes the ageing of time,
But your fame, Diogenes, eternity will not destroy it.
For only you have shown mortals the glory of an independent life
And the easiest path to happy life to follow.”

Alexander the Great: Mutiny at Opis

Today Alexander the Great’s heritage is present in politics along with legends and in literature. He envisioned a universal empire where societies would have an autonomous administration and could co-exist peacefully under an imperial government. Alexander did not only conquer the world; he changed the course of its history forever.

But my all-time favourite leader is Napoleon. Napoleon for his grandeur in nearly everything along with his motivating and inspiring presence that touched men and women from all around the world. Napoleon is someone I seem to connect to because he is perhaps one of the greatest stories of amazing assimilation and rose from a simple military, to general, consul then emperor and all through the acknowledgement of the whole country. Napoleon was a man and child of the Revolution and the First Republic and was its most famous heir; he was a Republican and had nothing to do with the Ancient Régime made up of castes and inequalities.

Napoleon is inspiring to me because like myself he was not born in France, but left his home in Corsica and went to study in France. In his early years, he did not even handle the French language properly and had a strong Corsican accent, and he was also bullied in college while at Brienne, an elite academy and was treated as a little foreign immigrant in these early years. Yet, with such dedication, as an already amazing student and a great self-educated solitary, he would read all the great minds of Europe, cultivate himself and become one of the greatest Frenchmen to ever live. Indeed, from the little foreigner with a dodgy accent, to then become more French than the French, and rise to become the Emperor is truly inspiring. Before receiving his crown on the day of his coronation after the people of France had decided to make him Emperor of the French republic, he turned around and looked to his brother saying, in Corsican « sì u nostru babbu ci hà vistu », meaning « if our father could see us ». This shows that although he embodied France in his heart he was respectful of his humble past as he rose from simple lieutenant to Emperor in only 11 years.

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“You dare order me to give up my conquest? And to restore the old boundaries? So hundreds of thousands of French men will have suffered and died for nothing? You’re insane! Your emperor is insane!”, Napoléon puts Austrian statesman, Klemens Wenzel von Metternich in his place (From: Napoleon (2002) by Yves Simoneau, with Christian Clavier as Napoléon – Click HERE to watch the extract)

Napoleon’s exploits also inspired the great writers of the Romantic movement, and especially one of the greatest writing geniuses of all time, Honoré de Balzac. He who, like Napoleon, had a mathematical side to the organization of all his works, notably one of the most fundamental, “La Comédie Humaine” which is divided into three parts: Studies of Manners, Philosophical Studies and Analytical Studies. La Comédie Humaine shows that the whole of existence can be interpreted with all the elements of the theatre since the role we play in society is the role in which a certain number of different actors can succeed each other. In the short story forming part of the philosophical studies, “Adieu”, we see an episode on the retreat from Russia of the Napoleonic imperial troops in 1812 during the passage of the Berezina. Napoleon was a mythical character whom Balzac wanted to compete with in his field, since he saw him as a genius who had shown us the imperial future but who had also succeeded in saving the nobles from the terror and finding a way to synchronize the whole of France harmoniously by establishing a system of progression by effort and meritocracy [creating the National Order of the Legion of Honour in 1802] for everyone after the mess, instability and confusion that the terror had left just after the revolution.

The Order of the Legion of Honour created by Napoleon to reward services to the Nation was a badge with his own figure that he pinned on the chest of his subjects, which was a very strong sign as the Sovereigns of Europe instead had the founders of their dynasty or the symbol of their country, but Napoleon as a man who destroyed the ancient regime pinned his very own profile on the chest of his subjects with the imperial eagle on the reverse of the badge, this was unique and universal as Anne de Chefdebien pointed out, as here the drummer and the prince received the same decoration, so did the intellectual and the soldier who could not read; this was egalitarian, universal and very strong because all those who served the Nation with all their heart had the same reward, this is exceptional because before the revolution all countries including France had several orders which most of the time required birth conditions. Napoleon also had the audacity and courage to want to unify all of Europe under the French flag and its values without intermediaries, to extend the ideas and achievements of the Revolution to all the other peoples of Europe, who had also been plunged into obscurantism for centuries by a ruling minority caste that calls itself “Nobility”; with the Republic and the Empire now everyone can finally access the social ladder based on their abilities after so many centuries. The Empire was created by the people to fight against the incessant attacks against France, the only representative in those times of the Europe of the People, by the old and sclerosed Europe of the United Kings to restore the Ancient Régime and destroy the achievements of the revolution: freedom and equal opportunities for all. The Empire was above all to keep the danger of these incessant attacks further and further away from France’s borders and to calm the desires of the kings and emperors of the retrograde and non-progressive Ancient Régime, because in those days diplomacy existed only in this wild form and peace could only be achieved through it[what France and Napoleon I wanted first and foremost, who were ALWAYS forced to wage war against the attacks of kings, contrary to what a treacherous propaganda has wanted to make us believe for 200 years]: “Cannon diplomacy”, the only existing diplomacy in these turbulent and simply barbaric times.

By studying “Adieu”, we see that Balzac thought that Napoleon’s main mistake was to have badly planned and launched his troops in Russia, a country that Balzac associated with the cold of the snow and literally painted as a vision of a white hell: a country of whiteness, cold and punishment that meant the end of the world. So, for Balzac, the Russian retreat was shocking for France, and it is an event that he wanted to describe as a perspective of history that is heading towards a cold hell, among other things, which could happen to our society if we lower our guard. The Berezina River that the troops will have to cross to survive in “Adieu” becomes the figure of the biblical deluge and to cross it Balzac seemed to imply that we should build a Noah’s Ark that was represented by a raft in the story and Michel Butor argued that it seems to suggest that if we are not able to conduct works of research and invention, then society will lose the generosity of the nobility and the warmth of the ancient heart and become a place where men fragment one another.

Clavier Napoleon Bonaparte dpurb site web

Image:  (From: Napoléon (2002) by Yves Simoneau, with Christian Clavier as Napoléon – Click HERE to watch an extract in French

Napoleon was also a perfect example of organic theory in creation, development, evolution and self-definition in a sophisticated society that believes in the creative power of the individual to realise his dreams. It is also the whole work of Balzac, the theme of the lonely man abandoned by almost everything where man begins again and rewrites the history of the world; Michel Butor has clearly underlined it: the man of genius is the one for whom the earth becomes a deserted island, because everything deviates from him. His presence as leader was unique and legendary, which led Marshal Bon-Adrien Jeannot de Moncey after his death to say: “Now let’s go home and die!” Napoleon was a man who personified courage, both on the battlefield and in the official affairs of the state, he was guided by values and not money, entirely devoted to France, he placed the people and the greatness of his nation before his own health and comfort. In The Memorial of Saint Helena, Napoleon had even predicted the future opposition between the United States and the Russian Empire, but had also tried to make the public understand that the coalitions that attacked France were political and not military coalitions, seeking to bring down the French Republic and its values and not the Emperor.

 

In addition to being a military and political genius, he proved that a man could be an intellectual, a soldier, a great builder while being in love with the arts and music. The emperor also had a sense of dignity and values and wanted to allow people of all classes in France to believe in the ability to grow and rise through their own efforts – he wanted all members of his society to be able to dream. For Napoleon, the impossible was not French! Jean-Marie Rouart also pointed out that there is a Napoleonic religion, a cult of Napoleon because the people have understood that through this man, they have all become greater, and this Napoleonic myth will always speak because no one in modern times has been able to achieve his dreams to such an extent; but there is also a moral lesson that is a lesson of hope and if Napoleon is always present it is because there will always be people to go and recharge their batteries in his example, in his words, in the memorial of Saint Helena to find in Napoleon’s life, a time when they really regain optimism, and so it is a lesson in optimism since he has brought politics back to the Man to prove that a man can be exceptional. Chateaubriand seems to have described Napoleon well as “the most powerful breath of life that ever animated human clay”.

10 Tips From Napoleon

Napoleon had an instinctive vision of what a modern country should be and made extraordinary reforms in the legal, political and economic fields for the rights and duties of citizens in order to make society functional after the revolution. The Civil Code, which later became Napoleonic code was also written by him, and he influenced countries all over the world by giving French society a necessary structure for order and security after the revolution and terror. Many other countries were inspired by the Napoleonic code and used it to modernise life in their societies.

Napoleon believed that everything had to be rebuilt on a sound foundation and this is why he will forever remain in the history of Europe as a fundamental figure in military conquest and by trying to impose a new system [a modern state, a new administration, a new central government, a new legislation and a new jurisprudence] that created a heritage which made a return to the ancient regime impossible in all the territories occupied by his troops or influenced by his ideas.

After being welcomed as a hero and savior of the Republic by an ecstatic crowd, in only 3 months in power in France, Napoleon had instated civil peace and created new institutions and reformed the tax system which had led to a spectacular recovery of public finances under the consulate. He did not only attack the institutions but also took the responsibility to modernise and enlarge the country’s infrastructures [new ships manufactured, port and arsenals enlarged and modernised]. In education, we have seen the birth of high schools and a profound reform of education and the university. In the industrial sector, he created a chamber of commerce, modernised the postal service with new optical telegraph lines that linked the 29 major cities together and created and upgraded nearly 50 000 km of roads with artworks and bridges made everywhere. As Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord explained, the empire created a real dynamic of peoples, and brought a great number of human and institutional advances, the Napoleonic conquests by disrupting established orders, laid the foundations for many state changes that served many other countries to achieve their unity or independence; Napoleon’s vision of the great empire was unifying and above all a universal European vision stripped of its authoritarian character where it appears resolutely modern, methodically organized; and had nothing to do with the old xenophobic nationalist and racist movements that preach “identity” nowadays and that encourage self-confinement, division, communitarianism and hatred towards others and a united Europe under the French flag that Napoleon dreamed of so much. These ancient non-progressive, static and atavistic nationalist movements stain Napoleon’s legacy.

Video: Writer Andrew Roberts shows his admiration and defends the Emperor, arguing that if any ruler deserves the epithet ‘the Great’ it should be Napoleon

The emperor therefore had the great vision to extend France, its language and values and seemed to follow in Alexander the Great’s footsteps as a conqueror who was on the brink of conquering all of Europe. Napoleon was for me the true leader of men and could motivate them with his honesty rooted in his electrifying speeches and he was also someone who had the qualities of a conqueror and who believed that an empire needed expansion to progress. I think that Napoleon Bonaparte is an example of the greatness of French civilization and also the proof that France is the civilization that embodies the greatness of humanity, its dreams and the values of meritocracy and excellence. “Napoleon will grow, as we get to know him better,” said Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

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Ce billet de 100 Nouveaux Francs Bonaparte de la Banque de France a été imprimé du 5 mars 1959 au 2 avril 1964 et mis en circulation à partir du 4 janvier 1960. / Source: Bourse du Collectionneur

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QUESTION VIII.

[FR] – Avez-vous l’intention de vous lancer en politique?

[EN] – Do you plan in getting into politics?

[FR] Réponse:

Après avoir constamment critiqué les systèmes politiques mondiaux et la race des politiciens pour la plupart médiocres, corrompus et désagréables qui ont fait surface au cours des 5-6 dernières décennies, il serait certainement controversé que je réponde “oui” à cette question. Cela semblerait hypocrite à mon auditoire. J’ai toujours pensé qu’il était de mon devoir de guider la civilisation sur la bonne voie et je crois fermement que le modèle actuel de gouvernement politique n’est pas approprié pour atteindre un tel objectif.

La démocratie est un concept qui donne une voix au peuple, mais la politique est quelque chose de très différent qui n’est pas à l’abri des âmes immorales et corrompues et de leur égoïsme. En plus d’avoir constamment critiqué la politique comme un concept dépassé et mal appliqué qui découle d’une mauvaise application de la démocratie, ainsi que les politiciens qui, tout au long de la civilisation, ont joué un rôle significatif dans les tragédies de la civilisation humaine, ce ne serait certainement pas ma fierté de devenir un homme politique.

Là où la corruption fait rage dans le monde

Là où la corruption fait rage dans le monde / Source: Statista

Les organisations connues sous le nom de “partis politiques” sont à l’origine d’un grand nombre de problèmes auxquels la civilisation humaine est confrontée, puisqu’il s’agit de diviser la population en segments qui correspondent à leurs politiques de gauche, du centre et de droite. Je ne voudrais donc jamais être considéré comme un “politicien”, mais plutôt comme un leader d’êtres humains sans affiliation politique parce qu’ils imposent trop à la vision créative d’un grand leader et conduisent à trop de concessions pour satisfaire les donateurs et satisfaire des motifs financiers qui ne sont pas vraiment dans l’intérêt de la nation et du pays. Je crois en la science et la philosophie et je considère les gens comme des organismes d’un système que nous devons trouver un moyen de synchroniser pour réaliser le rêve d’une civilisation noble et sophistiquée. Même la logique de ma théorie organique conduit à la même conclusion.

Ainsi, aujourd’hui, en 2021, j’ai pu toucher les esprits et les cœurs des gens grâce aux outils technologiques extraordinaires que notre civilisation moderne nous a donnés, et il y a peut-être 200 ans, il serait impossible de se bâtir une réputation publique et de se faire un nom en tant que leader sans un parti, des donateurs et des fonds.

Pourtant, pour changer la vie des gens et le système qui est utilisé pour les gérer aujourd’hui, il n’est malheureusement pas possible de le faire sans emprunter la voie sale de la politique. Je ne peux donc pas dire avec certitude que je n’emprunterai jamais cette voie, car c’est peut-être la seule, jusqu’à ce que quelqu’un de sophistiqué et de juste change le système et en crée un nouveau qui puisse gouverner les hommes et apporter la stabilité dans la gestion de la civilisation tout en appliquant la démocratie de manière optimale.

Pourtant, si jamais je me lance en politique, je veux que les gens sachent que je ne me qualifierai jamais comme politicien, mais comme un homme qui veut conduire sa civilisation et ses hommes et femmes à la grandeur. Les termes “politique” et “homme politique” sont aujourd’hui des symboles d’inadéquation, de corruption, de méchanceté, de mesquinerie, de division, d’égoïsme, de mensonge, de tromperie et bien d’autres choses qui ne sont pas dans l’intérêt du genre humain.

Louis Léopold Boilly, Etude de trente-cinq têtes d'expression, 1825 Danny D'Purb dpurb site web

Image: « Etude de trente-cinq têtes d’expression », vers 1825 par Louis Léopold Boilly

Je m’efforcerai de faire de tout cela une histoire morte et de construire un nouveau système.

Aujourd’hui, nous vivons dans un monde où la corruption fait rage et même les associations connues sous le nom de “presse libre” se sont transformées en outils politiques qui n’ont absolument aucune valeur et aucun respect pour la société et ses citoyens. Bien sûr, je ne dis pas que tous les journalistes sont des êtres méchants et vils parce que nous avons une petite section d’écrivains et de chroniqueurs vraiment travailleurs, nobles, authentiques et professionnels qui sont des maîtres dans leur domaine spécialisé, mais pour la majorité, ils semblent être simplement des outils d’écriture médiocres dans la couverture d’événements et des pantins de diffamation appartenant entièrement aux entreprises pour lesquelles ils travaillent – des écrivains du dimanche sans âme, sans art littéraire, amour des mots, profondeur de réflexion, vision, style ou philosophie.

Photo de l'agence france presse

Image : Les travailleurs de l’Agence France-Presse (Août 1944)

Cette race particulière d’ordure a tendance à jeter de la saleté sur les gens par ordre et s’ils le font avec moi aujourd’hui, ils le feront demain avec vous, vos enfants et les enfants de vos enfants.

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L’indépendance des journalistes / Source: LaCroix

Par conséquent, nous ne pouvons pas rester dociles en tant que société si nous voulons créer un système équitable et transmettre à nos enfants la liberté pour laquelle beaucoup sont morts et aussi le droit de s’élever par leurs propres efforts dans une société juste et noble qui croit aux débats et aux arguments sophistiqués et non à l’intimidation et aux moqueries sans raison qui étouffe les idées incroyables et détourne l’attention aux bêtises. En effet, j’ai été l’objet de beaucoup de méchanceté de la part de la presse qui sert ses maîtres politiques.

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L’inévitable chutes des Présidents auprès des Français / Source: Statista

La seule question qui me frappe toujours quand ces imbéciles essaient de se moquer de moi, c’est « Qu’est-ce que je pourrais apprendre de toi ? », c’est-à-dire « Avec quelles connaissances concrètes et intelligentes pourraient-ils m’éclairer ? » Probablement pas grand-chose ! La plupart du temps, c’est moi qui ai envie de dire « Si les limites de votre intelligence et de votre cerveau empêchent la compréhension en raison du niveau de l’écriture, une question poliment posée en levant la main semble être une démarche productive. »

Les Limites de votre intelligence et de votre cerveau danny d'purb dpurb site web

Traduction(EN):”If the limits of your intelligence and brain prevent understanding because of the level of the writings, a politely asked question while raising one’s hand seems like a productive move.”

Ainsi, il semble assez évident qu’une grande métaphore pour expliquer la façon dont je perçois les outils corrompus, vils et bas de gamme de la presse, serait un “insecte”, oui, dans son propre cirque avec d’autres insectes, dans une sorte de comédie où la médiocrité par frustration essaie de noyer le noble débat académique, scientifique, philosophique, psychologique et logique dans une mesquinerie absolue. Pour citer Aymeric Caron: «Un ver de terre n’a évidemment pas le même rapport au monde qu’un humain», et à cela j’ajouterai qu’il n’as pas non plus la connaissance culturelle des différents milieux, la maîtrise linguistique, la compréhension et la perception du monde qu’un humain.

Heureusement la société est devenue plus intelligente en 2021 et les gens brillants savent maintenant que plus rien ne peut suffoquer la véritable intelligence, la science, la philosophie, la psychologie et la raison. En fait, je ne peux pas permettre qu’une telle mesquinerie me fasse perdre mon temps, en effet je sais que j’ai affaire à des insectes inférieurs parce que je suis un personnage assez connu dans le monde depuis près d’une décennie maintenant et ils n’ont toujours pas eu le cran et le courage de me faire face devant une audience publique avec leurs voix tremblantes et leurs arguments paysans auxquels je ne pense pas même devoir me préparer, du moins dans la majorité des cas.

Les métiers qui inspirent le plus (et le moins) confiance d'purb dpurb site web

Les métiers qui inspirent le plus (et le moins) confiance / Source: Statista France

Mes arguments sont donc une façon de dire que la noblesse d’esprit, l’intelligence et la classe ne s’inclineront jamais devant des insectes frustrés. Je crois qu’ils devraient aussi arrêter de rêver parce que je ne leur dois absolument rien, à eux et à leur cirque comique. Les seuls domaines auxquels je dois des choses sont ceux de la recherche, de la psychologie, de la philosophie, de la littérature, de la poésie et des arts et il y a des livres sur lesquels je travaille actuellement. Il semble que ces personnes puissent souffrir d’une certaine forme légère de trouble d’apprentissage parce qu’elles ne cessent de répéter des débats qui ont déjà été scellés, comme si elles jetaient constamment leur propre insécurité sur les autres pour voir comment elles réagissent. J’ai déjà expliqué que les insécurités d’une personne n’affectent pas le monde entier, mais seulement cette personne qui peut avoir besoin d’une intervention psychologique pour évoluer vers un être éclairé. C’est comme s’ils ne pouvaient pas lire et comprendre la bonne science et le bon raisonnement, ou peut-être ne veulent-ils pas “comprendre”. Ils ne réalisent pas non plus que chacune de leurs tentatives enfantines de dénigrer les gens décrit leur insécurité et leur peur de gérer des débats intelligents et que de plus en plus de gens commencent à comprendre leur routine sale et abjecte, ce qui peut se refléter dans le nombre croissant de personnes qui ne font plus confiance à la presse du monde entier et qui ont récemment été vandalisées par le mouvement courageux et défiant “Gillet Jaune” qui donne un exemple à la foule mondiale et leur explique comment résister à la politique stupide, à l’injustice et aux idioties médiatiques.

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Image : Des journalistes au siège de l’agence Havas en 1930 à Paris (AFP Archives)

Personnellement, en ce qui concerne la presse corrompue, j’aimerais qu’ils comprennent qu’ils ne sont pas au niveau ou à la ligue pour me faire la leçon ou me conseiller parce que la plupart d’entre eux manquent d’intelligence, de culture et de langue, alors que je suis parmi et m’engage dans des discussions sérieuses avec l’esprit des gens qui leur accordent des diplômes universitaires. Oui, je suis au cœur des choses et j’extrais des documents de revues académiques renommées, tout en étant lié à des départements à Oxford, Londres, Paris, Grenoble et même aux Etats-Unis en termes de psychologie, santé mentale, philosophie et société, et je leur explique comment se construire, s’éduquer, se cultiver, s’améliorer, gérer leur vie, leur stress, leurs perceptions, leurs comportements, leurs relations, leurs carrières et comment élever leurs enfants. Ainsi, mon message à ces gens vils est que jeter de la terre partout n’aura absolument aucun impact sur la science et la psychologie, c’est une perte de temps et d’énergie de leur part qui pourrait être investie de façon appropriée dans une autre activité (par exemple, courir pour perdre du poids), car la vie d’un individu n’a jamais été et ne sera jamais définie par les désirs et inventions de leurs esprits pathétiques, obsolètes et mal informés. En effet, il semble que seul un organisme avec l’intelligence d’un âne pourrait créer des mensonges comme eux, puis croire en leurs propres mensonges et danser sur eux, c’est absolument insensé et je crois qu’ils devraient cesser d’agir comme des enfants de 10 ans.

Kiosque a journaux champs elysee paris 1951 - robert doisneau

Image : Homme remettant une chaise à une femme dans un kiosque à journaux sur les Champs-Elysées, 1951 (Photo de Robert Doisneau)

Je ne suis pas le premier et certainement pas le dernier à souligner que lorsque la médiocrité et les institutions qui ont construit une entreprise et une communauté superficielle autour d’elle gouvernent, les génies souffriront et seront considérés comme dangereux, Honoré de Balzac croyait aussi que la pensée, le génie et le talent étaient toujours ce qui comptait le plus. Balzac dans ses écrits a également indiqué comment ceux qui ont du génie en eux seront en avance sur leur temps et seront incompris et verront le présent comme un palais sans âme où le génie est inconnu, comme dans “le chef d’oeuvre inconnu” de Balzac, bien que bien connu reste inconnu. Honoré de Balzac rivalisa avec les peintres de son temps et voulait rassembler et réunir tous les genres littéraires pour donner une idée de tout ce qu’un écrivain pouvait faire de son temps, et deux thèmes importants de son œuvre sont la foi et le pouvoir de la littérature; la foi dans la possibilité de trouver des solutions aux impossibilités apparentes était le but de sa littérature, inventant des fictions qui se transformeraient finalement en réalité parce que les personnages existent grâce à un acte de foi et parlent de sujets qui avant n’occupaient pas la conscience de la société. En effet, nous semblons tous les deux être du côté de la croyance que les idées révolutionnaires sont le résultat du développement de la société. Plus fortuit encore, Balzac pensait aussi que la société de son temps avait déraillé et qu’il était de son devoir de résoudre les problèmes tout en expliquant à la presse combien il était génial. Balzac voyait la société contemporaine comme une femme sans cœur qui blesse ceux qui l’aiment, et l’a comparera à une femme de cœur et avec une âme. Pourtant, comme Balzac décrivait les maladies de la société, il a également fourni les solutions pour les guérir, et une des caractéristiques principale chez Balzac c’est sont les moeurs de la société qu’il compare à l’extérieure d’une cathédrale, et de l’autre côté la philosophie de la société qu’il compare à l’intérieure de la cathédrale, et c’est seulement après cette initiation que nous sommes capables de réfléchir et rêver avec Balzac. C’est l’une des grandes contradictions de toutes les œuvres monumentales et gigantesques : la majorité des gens ne la lisent qu’en partie. Il croyait donc que le génie rencontrera toujours des problèmes parce qu’il est impossible pour la majorité de la médiocrité de tout comprendre instantanément : il faut du temps pour que les idées se diffusent et soient pleinement comprises. Le fait de ne rien voir dans une œuvre d’art ne veut pas dire qu’elle n’est pas étonnante, car elle peut tout simplement passer de l’autre côté des limites d’une certaine période de l’histoire. Au XIXe siècle, nous avions beaucoup d’artistes qui n’étaient pas connus parce qu’ils étaient en avance sur leur temps. En tant que symbolisme chrétien, Balzac pensait que le grand artiste à cause du poids de son génie souffrirait pour son art et pour le reste du monde, le même artiste qui a le monde entier dans son atelier sans limites où l’homme est un microcosme. “Ayant les oreilles pour écouter le chant des anges…. croyant exprimer la musique du ciel a des auditeurs stupéfaits… ” et ” …en regrettant que vous ne saisissiez pas la plume à une époque ou les gentilhommes doivent s’en servir aussi bien que leurs épées afin de sauver leur pays… “, sous cette belle langue se cache un phénomène commun au XIXe siècle de Balzac, celui de l’écriture collaborative où l’auteur est le directeur d’une grande entreprise littéraire qui couvrira toute la France [et éventuellement le monde] tout en y ajoutant sa touche personnelle. L’un des thèmes principaux du mouvement intellectuel des romantiques est que la littérature est l’équivalent de la noblesse ; la plume est ce qui remplace l’épée antique et cela s’est exprimé dans la littérature confuse du XIXe siècle. L’épée de l’académicien est le symbole de ce thème essentiel du remplacement de l’ancienne noblesse par l’écrivain [être du courant de pensée romantique est considéré comme être un remplaçant de l’ancien noble]. Assez inchangé depuis l’époque de Balzac, le roi n’est encore qu’une représentation de la classe moyenne médiocre : il ne représente plus les plus intelligents, courageux, sensibles, aimants, etc. Le roi de la classe moyenne représente l’intelligence moyenne de la médiocrité et le courage moyen [mis entre les plus courageux et les plus lâches]. Ainsi, l’époque contemporaine est celle où l’artiste de génie est le plus malheureux, comme l’a également souligné Balzac. Nous avons vu ce thème exploré dans “Gambara”, où un artiste musical de génie était trop talentueux pour être compris en son temps : si ses œuvres avaient été présentées à la médiocrité de la majorité, elles auraient échoué, car seuls les auditeurs de génie auraient compris, et pour Balzac, le génie a dû baisser son talent suprême pour satisfaire la médiocrité de la majorité – Balzac y a vu celà comme une sorte de prostitution pour le génie. Balzac voulait faire comprendre aux âmes grossières ce qu’est la poésie. Balzac a présenté l’opéra de Meyerbeer “Robert le diable” comme l’opéra de Satan représentant toute cette médiocrité qui empêche les choses de progresser et d’avancer, le génie du mal, et dans les mots de Michel Butor, « le grand singe qui défigure les œuvres de Dieu ». En conclusion, Balzac pensait que la démocratie de son temps n’était pas adéquate pour le génie parce que c’était une société inégale qui ne pouvait que donner un jeu au génie qui ne lui laisserait d’autre solution que de se retourner contre la société dont il fait partie, et donc de transformer la société en une société qui ne peut fonctionner que si le génie est mort – ceci n’est ni logique ni acceptable car c’est le génie qui contribue le plus à construire la société. On le voit dans “L’enfant maudit” où l’enfant que l’on croyait maudit allait inventer une nouvelle science et développer son génie : (i) un génie naturaliste pour sa relation aux fleurs, (ii) un génie poétique pour sa relation à la mer, (iii) un génie de l’amour pour sa relation à la fille, et (iv) un génie scientifique pour sa relation au monde naturel et à la botanique. “L’enfant maudit” : Une créature entre Dieu et l’Homme, un génie qui serait masculin mais aussi avec une sensibilité féminine, que Balzac décrit comme un enfant pour sa sensibilité et comme un homme pour sa science, où l’océan est un réflecteur et un laboratoire d’affectivité intérieure, immense, infini. Pour Balzac, le génie est maudit, et plus il est étonnant, plus il sera incompris par la médiocrité de son temps. Malgré connu pour être un génie de la littérature réaliste, Balzac charge ses textes de rêves et de fantaisie [comme dans les contes de Perrault] puisque la littérature réaliste fait partie de la littérature fantastique, qui est toujours interprétée d’une façon symbolique. La littérature réaliste a comme résultat une transformation de l’histoire [et donc a un effet foudroyant] et la connaissance générale qui résulte de ce foudroiement motive la société et le monde à changer. Balzac croyait fermement que la littérature et la peinture étaient un moyen de construire une peau plus forte, que l’amour était un art, et que Dante était le génie de l’amour.

“La tragédie échauffe l’âme, élève le coeur, peut et doit créer des héros.”

-Napoléon

Ainsi, venant d’un milieu littéraire, philosophique, psychologique et de penseurs sensibles, je dois dire que depuis que j’ai commencé à m’engager auprès du public, de la presse et des politiciens médiocres de notre époque en 2012 jusqu’à maintenant, j’ai, tout comme Cécile Guilbert, été complètement dégoûtée par la « bassesse du courtisan », mais aussi choquée de découvrir la réalité du système atavique qui sert à gérer la société [et qui forme la perception, le comportement, et la réalité banale de la majorité] qui est conçu de telle manière qu’il se laisse devenir le théâtre de la médiocrité en sélectionnant les personnes sans connaissance adéquate et un grand nombre d’esprits grotesques, frustrés et vils avec la bassesse d’un paysan amer et les valeurs d’un reptile à sang froid pour être à la tête de ses différents départements quand ils comprennent à peine la vie intérieure et extérieure des individus et comment favoriser la créativité, l’innovation et le progrès tout en réalisant l’équilibre, l’harmonie et la stabilité de la civilisation humaine, ce que j’appellerais en trois mots, “joie de vivre”.

Ça doit aussi être démoralisant pour les esprits les plus sophistiqués de voir ce cycle répétitif et mondain à quelques années d’intervalle lorsqu’une autre bande de primates bureaucratiques s’empare du système pour ensuite imposer leurs valeurs et leurs goûts économiques même si aucun changement n’est nécessaire. Le système imparfait de la démocratie et des partis politiques implique que l’opposition doit toujours se tromper et que l’ancien groupe ne peut jamais faire un travail décent – c’est assez irrationnel ! Croire que ces parvenus médiocres de la classe moyenne, sans aucun fondement et éducation classiques, seront capables de conduire la civilisation humaine à l’harmonie avec leur éducation mécanique et leurs politiques économique, est semblable à croire aux super-héros en spandex. Ces personnes devraient être placés dans un département financier pas au centre de la civilisation. L’économie doit s’efforcer d’améliorer et de sophistiquer l’existence humaine et la civilisation, et non l’inverse. Je trouve choquant que ce système démocratique atavique que George Orwell a décrit dans son opus Magnum, “La Ferme des animaux (1945)” – un texte qui m’a marqué en tant qu’étudiant en littérature à l’adolescence – soit en fait quelque chose que nous, êtres humains, devons accepter comme le remplacement absolu de César, Alexandre le Grand, Napoléon ou Sénèque.

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Ce billet de 100 Francs Delacroix de la Banque de France a été imprimé de 1978 à 1989 / Source: Bourse du Collectionneur

Nous, les primates les plus intelligents de la planète, au sommet de la chaîne alimentaire, nous qui avons créé des hommes comme Napoléon, Balzac, Sartre, Camus, de Chazal, Darwin, Descartes, Delacroix, Bourdon le peintre, Vivaldi, Chopin, Verne, Lacan, Pasteur et inventé des satellites, des ordinateurs, des logiciels ingénieux qui créent presque tout, des pianos et des appareils mobiles sophistiqués, nous, gens extraordinaires, avons accepté et imposé à nous une organisation horrible et instable d’employés de bureau insuffisants et ignorants pour gérer notre civilisation et diriger nos vies ?

CITATION de Gaulle - sortir de l'ordinaire

Traduction [EN]: “The important thing is not to get out of Polytechnique, but to get out of the ordinary.” – Charles de Gaulle

J’ai encore du mal à croire ce cauchemar, car tous nos leaders mythiques avaient reçu une solide éducation classique, et donc une compréhension psychologique précoce de ce qui fait avancer la vie et de ce qui crée des esprits nobles avec des valeurs parmi les hommes et les femmes, et donc ce qui crée une civilisation harmonieuse et glorieuse. L’empire de Napoléon a été fondé et s’est principalement concentré sur des sentiments, des valeurs, des idéaux et des idées français solides, pas simplement des motifs financiers et des perspectives d’affaires, ce qui n’était qu’une fraction de l’ensemble. Alexandre le Grand a eu une éducation philosophique et a étudié les grandes tragédies avec Aristote lui-même et a été considéré comme un dieu ou un homme qui était aussi proche que possible de Dieu, un ami de l’humanité qui a changé le monde entier, a cru en l’humanité et l’a prouvé en adoptant des tribus misérables pour créer un empire où tout devient possible. Alexandre a montré que le monde pouvait être gouverné par un seul dirigeant pour le bien-être de tous ses sujets. Mais plus important encore, l’empire d’Alexandre n’a pas été fondé sur des envies de terres ou de richesses mais sur des idées comme celle de Napoléon : l’idée hellénistique d’une civilisation ouverte à tous. Alexandre portait un rêve immense avec la passion de la jeunesse éternelle, complètement convaincu que nos forces collectives et notre imagination pourraient nous mener à des niveaux qu’on croyait impossibles auparavant; là où le dépassement de soi devenait facile. Quant à Sénèque, c’était un homme d’État aux valeurs fortes et aux orientations philosophiques qui incarnait la noblesse d’esprit et la vision des grands empereurs, et qui n’avait rien à voir avec l’horreur politique actuelle de la médiocrité et de la bassesse avec des animaux parvenus simples d’esprit, diplômés dans un domaine mécanique et commercial, qui se trompent sur leurs capacités et leur espoir d’être considérés comme les empereurs du monde moderne. Tous les systèmes montrent leur âge et leurs faiblesses à travers le temps, et nous avons atteint les limites des politiciens cochons comme le décrit George Orwell pour gérer notre société.

Les gens devraient se poser la question très honnête tout en regardant dans les yeux de ces représentants régionaux pathétiques, peu créatifs et médiocre élus par une masse à l’intelligence et de culture douteuse : “Cette tronche ressemble-t-elle à un bâtisseur d’empire ?” [c.-à-d. ce cerveau commun moyen a-t-il la noblesse d’esprit, les valeurs, les goûts, la finesse, la philosophie, la créativité évolutive, la vision esthétique et architecturale, les sentiments, le cœur, l’honnêteté, le courage, la passion, la volonté d’acier, la sensibilité, l’intelligence poétique, les arguments d’un vainqueur, la confiance, l’ingéniosité, le dévouement, la compréhension psychologique et psychique des êtres humains, les faits scientifiques, la connaissance, les capacités d’analyse et de débat et la créativité économique pour créer un empire humain que la grande race humaine mérite ? Un empire qui durera une éternité, générera une atmosphère humaine et positive qui nous poussera à nous dépasser, à favoriser notre développement, à créer une existence agréable et à nous étendre dans l’espace ?] La vérité est que la plupart des politiciens en vie aujourd’hui n’ont pas la passion de nos grands dirigeants historiques, parce qu’ils sont le produit d’une génération de bureaucrates impuissants, de lâcheté, de médiocrité, d’arrogance, de bassesse, de brutalité, de ragots, de corruption, de vice, de luxe bon marché et de cupidité pour l’argent. Ce ne sont pas ceux qui se sont vus comme les remplaçants des nobles bâtisseurs de l’empire, des hommes de mots, de finesse, d’intelligence, de valeurs et de philosophie, qui ont passé leurs journées et leurs nuits à réfléchir indépendamment à la vision d’un empire humain massif et à trouver la stabilité et à optimiser la race humaine pour une existence harmonieuse, minutieusement calculée et conçue pour être éternelle avec un système qui aborde et résout nos problèmes même si elle ne correspond pas au modèle politique actuel ; mais sont simplement des employés de bureau pathétiques qui se considèrent comme des hommes qui veulent être vus comme importants simplement parce qu’ils font partie d’un parti politique et qu’ils montrent leurs drôles de visages dans la presse commune qui appartient principalement à des Juifs qui l’utilisent comme un théâtre bon marché où ils commandent leurs esclaves employés pour créer une atmosphère et provoquer les types de disputes et autre frictions qui conviennent à leurs agendas, et ceux de leurs maîtres politiques.

Macron-Le-Président-Bouffon-et-la-Presse

La confiance dans les médias au plus bas depuis 32 ans / Source: L’Express

 

La confiance dans les médias en chute libre en France

La confiance dans les médias en chute libre en France / Source: Lanceur d’Alerte [Cliquez pour aussi voir qui possède quoi]

 

La Presse

Crédits : Jack Guez – AFP

 

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Part des Français ayant confiance en l’information diffusée / Source: Statista

INFO NEWS Donkey Thoughts & Views.jpg

“Le sot a un grand avantage sur l’homme d’esprit : il est toujours content de lui-même.”

-Napoléon

Un théoricien de la psychologie d’élite qui s’occupe du comportement et de la sculpture cérébral au niveau granulaire n’écoutera pas les absurdités d’un esprit simple, même si les partenaires de cet esprit simple peuvent payer tous les annonceurs du monde pour publier leurs absurdités sur du papier toilette, des boîtes de céréales, la presse animale bon marché aux arrêts de bus. Nous sommes au-dessus de cela ! Chaque fois qu’un éditeur drogué d’un coin obscur d’Internet crée un titre avec une image qu’il considère dégradante, cela n’a aucun effet sur nous, aucun, zéro ; avec ses doigts moites et collants claquant sur un clavier crasseux au 10e étage d’un vieil immeuble dans un coin bondé d’une jungle urbaine polluée ? Nous sommes au-dessus de ces petites campagnes de diffamation organisées par les grands enfants de la politiques et les médias juifs qui leur sont si chers. Il ne peut être antisémite de simplement affirmer que la majorité de la presse appartient à des Juifs et est donc contrôlée par eux. Mon message à ces gens est : “Essayez de grandir ! Aucune personne intelligente au monde n’est définie par vos pulsions…. vous êtes pire que des enfants. Les gens se définissent eux-mêmes…. simple….. vos opinions, ce ne sont que de simples opinions aussi simples que votre esprit !” Je pense que puisque nous en parlons, il faut reconnaître que les Juifs et leur obsession à contrôler les médias et à corrompre les décideurs avec leur argent, et donc à causer des frictions et d’autres pressions sur les sociétés et les gouvernements pour qu’ils imposent leurs vues, dans la plupart des pays européens où ils se sont implantés, ne sont pas une pratique nouvelle pour eux, ils le font depuis des siècles, et il est peut-être aussi opportun pour des Juifs érudits et sensibles de tenter d’imaginer les raisons des décisions du Reich d’Hitler pour tous les retourner en Israël ; ce qui est vraiment surprenant même le rabbin juif Yosef Tzvi Ben Porat pensait qu’Hitler avait raison de haïr les juifs pour ce qu’ils font.

auschwitz detntion camp

Camp de concentration à Auschwitz

En autre, la grande majorité des politiciens médiocres et leurs partenaires en propagande ne se considèrent pas comme des bâtisseurs d’empire parce qu’ils n’ont pas l’ingéniosité pour le faire, ils ne sont même pas assez créatifs pour avoir des discussions nobles et sophistiquées, ou pour remettre en question le système vieillissant et oser considérer qu’il pourrait y avoir mieux, car ces hommes ne sont pas au niveau intellectuel pour penser comme un réformateur et un créateur d’avant-garde. Ils n’ont tout simplement pas le pouvoir mental et les prouesses intellectuelles nécessaires pour défier un vieux système créé par l’homme : ils ne peuvent pas concevoir la réalité parce qu’elle est au-delà de leur compréhension – ils n’ont jamais remis en question leur propre existence ou but, mais ils ont simplement suivi et copié les médiocrités passées dont ils essaient de reproduire sans aucun sens critique. Ces ignobles créatures se considèrent comme les membres d’un groupe politique ayant une perspective unilatérale et n’ont pas les compétences créatives et la sagesse nécessaires pour penser indépendamment et prendre la responsabilité de la construction d’un empire humain éternel ; elles ne pensent qu’à court terme, c’est-à-dire comment gagner une élection ? Comment faire plaisir au leader ? Comment gagner la prochaine élection ? Comment être choisi pour être responsable d’un ministère ? Comment parler au journaliste ? Comment faire en sorte que les gens votent pour eux ? Comment harceler leurs adversaires de la manière la plus enfantine qui soit ?

parvenu - le sauvage de luxe

Ces hommes sont des parvenus, ce que je qualifierais de sauvages du luxe qui portent un costume pour leur profession et leur environnement, mais à l’intérieur de leur esprit pourri, ils pourraient être comparés à des paysans amers pour leur esprit simple, leur comportement, leur vision, leur ignorance et leurs broutilles enfantines.

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65% Insatisfait de la Démocratie en France / Source: Statista

La démocratie et le système politique ne sont pas des créations divines, mais comme tout le reste, il nous faut des mises à jour, des révisions et des réorganisations pour atteindre un système plus sophistiqué et raisonnable qui peut nous offrir un empire humain harmonieux où chacun peut rêver et réaliser ; mais aussi “vivre” et non simplement exister en étant mort de l’intérieure. Certains dans la politique semblent aussi ressentir les douleurs d’un système désuet, par exemple Claire Nouvian qui vient de mettre un terme à sa vie politique en admettant les défauts de mise en oeuvre et les dysfonctionnements humains de la machine politique, et je pense qu’elle à bien fait de citer Mauroy, « quand les dégoûtés partent, il ne reste plus que les dégoûtants » et de partir en déclarant: « Mes attentes en matière d’honnêteté et de courage ne sont pas compatibles avec la tambouille politique », expliqua Claire Nouvian, « C’est moi qui suis inadaptée à ce milieu ».

C’est clair non pas seulement pour les meilleurs intellectuels et penseurs de notre ère mais aussi pour la section du publique consciente scientifiquement, cultivée et littéraire, que les médias aujourd’hui préfèrent la médiocrité de masse conformiste, plutôt que d’inviter les élites ou les meilleurs de notre temps; je pense que c’est dangereux pour la civilisation parce que comme l’a dit Yeats, “léducation n’est pas le remplissage du seau, mais l’allumage d’un feu”, et comme l’a aussi dit Einstein, “l’éducation n’est pas l’apprentissage des faits, mais la formation de l’esprit à penser”, et les médias de masse juives nous donne la pensée et la vision de la médiocrité conformiste. Ces médias mensongères, ataviques et corrompus semblent préférer ces médiocrités ennuyeux et mal informés qu’ils nous forcent à consommer en forme de débats et d’opinions de bureaucrates vides sans un sens crédible du raisonnement – de la camelote bon marché en soie, costume et cravate.

En ce moment, je me concentre sur l’écriture de mes livres, car je crois qu’ils contiennent un grand nombre de découvertes et d’innovations fondamentales et décisives pour la psychologie, la philosophie et les valeurs de notre civilisation fragmentée et confuse actuelle. Une fois qu’ils auront été publiés pour un large public, allant des jeunes aux plus âgés, je crois qu’ils auront présenté ma vision, ma pensée et mon orientation aux masses. Pour moi, il est fondamental que les gens comprennent mon esprit et mon cœur avant qu’ils puissent me voir comme un leader possible, parce que Je veux que les gens me fassent confiance en se basant sur le contenu de mon cerveau, et non pour ma popularité ou pour le fait que mon visage apparaisse sur des papiers insignifiants et dans leurs rues grâce au pouvoir des portefeuilles de donateurs immoraux avec la seule intention de saigner le peuple, d’asservir l’État en l’accordant à leur agenda pour leurs comptes bancaires. Cela ne veut pas dire que je suis contre les affaires ou que je suis pour une économie faible ! Bien sûr, je veux une économie forte, mais je crois aussi fermement que de bonnes affaires peuvent être totalement éthiques en respectant les sensibilités des gens et de l’environnement. Il y a des hommes d’affaires décents qui réussissent et qui ont réalisé leur rêve tout en étant éthiques, moraux et justes. Les affaires peuvent être nobles lorsqu’elles sont faites avec les bonnes valeurs, et n’ont pas besoin d’être faites aux dépens du sang du peuple, et beaucoup d’hommes d’affaires sauvages aujourd’hui ne semblent toujours pas comprendre cela et ils trouvent des moyens d’infiltrer et de détruire le système en corrompant des politiciens immoraux qui ne peuvent résister au goût de l’argent sale. Cela conduit à la souffrance et à un système sans humanité, et je m’oppose à ces scénarios parce que mon objectif est l’harmonie dans tout le système et je sais qu’il peut être atteint avec le bon leader, les bons esprits, les bons cœurs et les bonnes valeurs.

Je déteste donc le terme politique et, pour l’instant, je me concentre sur mon devoir d’éclairer et de guider la civilisation à travers mon travail intellectuel. Mon objectif est de changer le système et de le réorganiser en quelque chose de stable, efficace et honorable tout en rendant la vie des gens meilleure, plus heureuse et plus sophistiquée. Je ne peux pas dire si l’avenir me forcera à entrer dans le monde de la politique, mais je ne me présenterai jamais comme un politicien, et c’est quelque chose que je veux que les gens connaissent et ancrent dans leur esprit et dans leur cœur. Si je suis forcé de faire de la politique, ce serait pour la changer pour toujours, et même enterrer le terme politique et politiciens pour créer quelque chose de plus grand, de meilleur, de plus noble, de plus stable, de plus organisé, de plus sophistiqué et de plus civilisé.

Donc, votre réponse à cette question semble être une réponse que seul le temps peut répondre.

Alexandre le Grand - ARTE - 2016

Image: Alexandre le Grand (2011) . Arte

“On ne conduit le peuple qu’en lui montrant un avenir : un chef est un marchand d’espérance.”

-Napoléon

—-|—-

[EN] Answer to Question VIII. “Do you plan in getting into politics?”

After constantly criticising the political systems globally and the breed of mostly mediocre, corrupt and nasty politicians that have surfaced over the last 5-6 decades it would certainly seem controversial if I was to answer “Yes” to this question. It would come across as hypocritical to my audience. I have always thought of my duty in this lifetime to guide civilisation into the right path and firmly believe that the current model of political government is not appropriate in achieving such a goal.

Democracy is one concept that gives the people a voice, but politics is something quite different that is not safe from immoral and corrupt souls and their selfishness. Besides having constantly criticised politics as an outdated and badly applied concept that stems from the wrong application of democracy, along with politicians who throughout civilisation have played a significant part in the tragedies on human civilisation, it would certainly not be my pride to become a politician.

Organisations known as “Political parties” are at the root of a tremendous amount of problems that human civilisation faces, since it involves dividing the people into segments that fit their policies into left, centre and right. So, I would never want to be seen as a “politician”, but rather a leader of human beings without any party affiliation because they impose too much on the creative vision of a great leader and leads to far too many concessions to please donors and satisfy financial motives that are not truly for the benefit of the nation and country. I believe in science and philosophy and see people as organisms of a system that we must find a way to synchronise to achieve the dream of a noble and sophisticated civilisation. Even the logic of my Organic Theory leads to the same conclusion.

So, today in 2021, I have been able to reach minds and hearts among the people through the amazing technological tools that our modern civilisation has given us, and perhaps 200 years ago, building a public reputation and a name for oneself as a leader would be impossible without a party, donors and funds.

Yet, in order to change the life of people and the system that is used to manage them today, it is sadly not possible without taking the filthy route of politics. So, I cannot say for sure that I will never take this route, since it may be the only route until someone sophisticated and righteous changes the system and sets up a new one that can govern men and bring stability to the management of civilisation while also applying democracy in an optimal way.

Yet, if I ever get into politics, I want the people to know that I will never qualify myself as a politician, but a man who wants to lead his civilisation and his men and women to greatness. The term “politics” and “politician” are today symbols of inadequacy, corruption, nastiness, pettiness, division, selfishness, lies, deceit and so much more that are not for the benefit of mankind.

I will work towards making all this dead history and build a new system.

Today, we are living in a world where corruption is raging and even associations known as the “Free Press” have today been turned into political tools that have absolutely no values or respect for society and its citizens. Of course, I am not saying that all journalists are evil and vile beings because we do have a small section of truly hardworking, noble, genuine and professional writers and columnists out there who are masters in their specialised field, but for the majority they seem to be simply tools of mediocre writing in reporting events and puppets of defamation completely owned by the companies they work for – soulless Sunday scribblers without any literary artistry, love of the written word, depth of thought, vision, style or philosophy. This particular breed of scum tends to throw dirt on people by order and if they do it with me today, tomorrow they will do it with you, your children and the children of your children. Hence, we cannot remain docile as a society if we want to create a fair system and also pass down to our children the freedom that many died for and also the right to rise through their own efforts in a fair and noble society that believes in sophisticated debates and arguments and not mindless bullying and mockery that smothers incredible ideas and diverts attention to petty nonsense. Indeed, I have been at the receiving end of a lot of nastiness from the press who serve their political masters.

The only question that always strikes me when these imbeciles try to mock me is “What could I learn from you?”, meaning what “concrete and intelligent knowledge could they enlighten me with?” Probably nothing much! Most of the time, it is myself who feel like saying “If the limits of your intelligence and brain prevent the comprehension due to the level of the writings, a politely asked question while raising one’s hand seems like a productive move.”. So, it seems fairly obvious that a great metaphor to explain the way I perceive the corrupt, vile and cheap tools of the press, would be an “insect”, yes, in its own circus along with other insects, in a sort of comedy where mediocrity out of frustration is trying to drown noble academic, scientific, philosophical, psychological and logical debate with absolute pettiness. To quote Aymeric Caron: “An earthworm obviously does not have the same relationship to the world as a human being”, and to that I would add that it also does not have the cultural knowledge of the different milieux, the linguistic mastery, the understanding and the perception of the world of a human being. Luckily society has become smarter in 2021 and today smart people know that nothing will smother true intelligence, science, philosophy, psychology and reasoning. In fact, I cannot allow such pettiness to waste my time, indeed I know I am dealing with inferior insects because I have been a fairly known figure to the world for nearly a decade now and they still have not had the guts and the courage to face me in front of a public audience with their trembling voices and their peasant arguments to which I do not believe I would even have to prepare myself – for the majority at least.

So, my arguments are a way of saying that nobility of the mind, intelligence and class will never bow down to frustrated insects. I believe they should also stop dreaming because I owe absolutely nothing to them and their comedic circus. The only domain I owe things to are those of research, psychology, philosophy, literature, poetry and arts and there are books that I am currently working on. It seems that these people may suffer from some mild form of learning disability because they keep repeating debates that have already been sealed, as if constantly throwing their own insecurities at others to see how they react. I have already explained that the insecurities of one person do not affect the whole world, but that person only who may need psychological intervention to evolve into an enlightened being. It is as if they cannot read and understand good science and reasoning, or perhaps they “do not want to understand”. They also fail to realise that every one of their childish attempts to vilify people portrays their insecurity and fear to handle intelligent debates and more and more people are beginning to understand their filthy and abject routine and this may be reflected in the growing amount of people who do not trust the press anymore from all over the world with newspaper stands recently being vandalised by the courageous and defiant “Gillet Jaune” movement of France who gave an example and a tutorial to the sheep crowd of the world on how to stand up to political stupidity and press abuse and idiocy.

Personally, regarding the corrupt press business, I would like for them to understand that they are not at the level or league to lecture or advise me because most of them lack intelligence, culture and language, while I am among and engaging in serious discussions with the minds that award people like them academic qualifications. Yes, I am at the heart of things and I extract documents from renowned academic journals, while being linked to departments in Oxford, London, Paris, Grenoble and even the United States in terms of psychology, mental health, philosophy and society, and I explain to them how to build, educate, cultivate, improve themselves, manage their lives, stress, perceptions, behaviours, relationships, careers and how to raise their children. So, my message to these vile people is that throwing dirt all over the place will not have absolutely any impact of science and psychology, it is a waste of time and energy from them that could be invested appropriately in another activity [e.g. jogging to lose weight], because the life of an individual has never been, and will never be defined by the desires and inventions of pathetic, outdated and misinformed minds. Indeed, it seems that only an organism with the intelligence of a donkey could create lies like them, then believe in their own lies and dance to them, this is absolutely senseless and I believe that they should stop acting like 10 year old children.

Newspaper kiosk, 1955 - Saul Leiter

Image: A newspaper kiosk (1955) / Photography by Saul Leiter

I am not the first one and definitely not the last one to point out that when mediocrity and the institutions that have built a business and a superficial community around it governs, the geniuses will suffer and be considered as dangerous, Honoré de Balzac also believed that thoughts, genius and talent were always what mattered most. Balzac in his writings also indicated how those with genius in them will be in advance on their times and will be misunderstood and see the present as a soulless palace where genius is unknown such as in Balzac’s “le chef d’oeuvre inconnu” although well known remains unknown. Honoré de Balzac competed with the painters of his time, and wanted to collect and reunite all literary genres just to give an idea of all the things a writer could do with his time, and two important themes of his were faith and the power of literature; faith in the possibility to find solutions to the apparent impossibilities was the purpose of his literature, inventing fictions that would eventually turn into reality because the characters exist due to an act of faith and speak of topics that before did not occupy the consciousness of society. Indeed, we both seem to side with the belief that revolutionary ideas are a result of the development of society. Even more coincidental, Balzac also thought that the society of his time had gone off-track and it was his duty to solve the problems, explaining to the press how incredible he was.

Vladimír Takáč - Headline News d'purb dpurb site web

“Headline News” par Vladimír Takáč (2013)

Balzac likened contemporary society to a heartless woman who hurts those who love her, and contrasted it to a woman with heart and soul. Yet as Balzac described the illnesses of society, he also provided the solutions to cure them, and one of the main characteristics of Balzac is the custom of society that he compares to the exterior of a cathedral, and on the other hand the philosophy of society that he compares to the interior of the cathedral, and it is only after this initiation that we are able to reflect and dream with Balzac. This is one of the great contradictions of all works that are monumental and gigantic: the majority of people only read it in part. Hence, he believed that the genius will always encounter problems because it is impossible for the majority of the mediocrity to understand everything instantly: we need time for ideas to diffuse and be fully understood.

L'Âne blanc

Image: Donkeys

The fact that we do not see anything in a work of art does not mean it is not amazing, because it may simply shift to the other side of the limits of a certain period of history. In the 19th century we had many artists who were not known because they were ahead of their time. As a Christian symbolism, Balzac thought that the great artist because of the weight of his genius would suffer for his art and for the rest of the world, the same artist who has the whole world in his limitless workshop where man is a microcosme. « Ayant les oreilles pour écouter le chant des anges… croyant exprimer la musique du ciel a des auditeurs stupéfaits… » and « …en regrettant que vous ne saisissiez pas la plume à une époque ou les gentilhommes doivent s’en servir aussi bien que leurs épées afin de sauver leur pays… » [French for: “Having ears to listen to the song of angels… believing to express the music of heaven to amazed listeners…””…regretting that you did not grasp the pen at a time when gentlemen must use it as well as their swords to save their country…”]; under this beautiful language hid a common phenomena in the 19th century, that of collaborative writing where the author is the director of a great literary enterprise that would cover the whole of France [and eventually the world] while adding his personal touch. One of the main themes of the intellectual movement of the Romantics is that literature is the equivalent of nobility; the pen is what replaces the ancient sword and this found expression in the confused literature of the 19th century. The sword of the academician is the symbol of this essential theme of the replacement of the ancient nobility by the writer [being part of the romantic school of thought is considered to be a replacement for the ancient nobleman]. Fairly unchanged since the times of Balzac, the king is still only a representation of the mediocre middle class: he no longer represents the most intelligent, courageous, sensitive, loving, etc. The middle-class king represents the average intelligence of mediocrity and the average courage [put between the bravest and the most cowardly]. Hence, the contemporary era is the era when the genius artist is the most unfortunate, as Balzac also pointed out. We saw this theme being explored in “Gambara”, where a genius musical artist was too talented to be understood in his time: if his works had been presented to the mediocrity of the majority, they would have failed, since only the genius listeners would have understood, so for Balzac, the genius was forced to lower his supreme talent to please the mediocrity of the majority – Balzac saw this as a form of prostitution for the genius.

The_Garden_of_earthly_delights (Right Panel -HELL) - Jheronimus Bosch (1494 - 1505) d'purb dpurb site web

The Right Panel representing “Hell” from “The Garden of Earthly Delights” (1490 – 1510) by Hieronymus Bosch, oil on oak panels, 205.5 cm × 384.9 cm (81 in × 152 in), Museo del Prado, Madrid

Balzac wanted to make crude souls understand what poetry is and presented Meyerbeer’s opera “Robert le diable” as the opera of Satan representing all this mediocrity that prevented things from progressing and moving forward, the genius of evil, and in the words of Michel Butor, “the great ape who disfigures the works of God”. To conclude, Balzac thought that the democracy of his time was not adequate for the genius because it was an unequal society who could only give a game to the genius that would leave him with no other solution than to turn against the society that he is a part of and hence this transforms the society into one that can only function if the genius is dead – this is not logical or acceptable because it is the genius who contributes most to the construction of society. We see this in “L’enfant maudit” where the child who was believed to be cursed would go to invent a new science and develop his genius: (i) a naturalist genius because of his relation to the flowers, (ii) a poetic genius because of his relation to the sea, (iii) a genius of love because of his relation to the girl, and (iv) a scientific genius because of his relation to the natural world and botany. “L’enfant maudit”: A creature between God and Man, a genius who would be masculine but also with a feminine sensibility, that Balzac described as a child for his sensibility and as a man for his science, where the ocean was a reflector and the laboratory of inner affectivity, immense, infinite. To Balzac, the genius is cursed, and the more amazing he is, the more he will be misunderstood by the mediocrity of his time. Despite being known as a genius of realistic literature, Balzac loaded his texts with dreams and fantasy [as in Perrault’s tales] since realistic literature is part of fantastic literature, which is always interpreted in a symbolic way. Realistic literature results in a transformation of history [and therefore has the effect of a lightning strike] and the general knowledge that results from this strike motivates society and the world to change. Balzac firmly believed that literature and painting were a way to build stronger skin, that love was an art, and that Dante was the genius of love.

HonoredeBalzac dpurb site web 2019

Honoré de Balzac (1799 – 1850)

“Tragedy warms the soul, lifts the heart, can and must create heroes.”

-Napoleon

Thus, coming from a background of literature, philosophy, psychology and sensible thinkers, I must say that since I began engaging with the public, the press and mediocre politicians of our times in 2012 until now, I, like Cécile Guilbert, have been completely disgusted by the “bassesse du courtisan” [lowliness of the courtier], but also shocked to discover the reality of the atavistic system used to manage society [and which forms perception, behaviour, and the mundane reality of the majority] which is designed in such a way that it allows itself to become the theatre of mediocrity by selecting the people without adequate knowledge and a great amount of grotesque, frustrated & vile minds with the baseness of a bitter peasant along with the values of a cold-blooded reptile to be the heads of its various departments when they barely understand the inner and outer life of individuals and how to foster creativity, innovation and progress while achieving balance, harmony and stability for human civilization, what I would call in three words, “joie de vivre”.

It must also be demoralising to most sophisticated minds out there to see this repetitive and mundane cycle every couple of years when another bunch of bureaucratic primates take over the system to then impose their economic values and tastes even if no change is required. The imperfect system of democracy and political parties implies that the opposition must always be wrong and the former group can never do a decent job – this is quite irrational! To believe that these mediocre middle-class parvenus, without any classical foundation and education, will be able to lead human civilization to harmony with their mechanical education and economic policies, is similar to believing in superheroes in spandex. These people should be placed in a financial department not at the centre of civilization. The economy should work to improve and sophisticate human existence and civilisation not the other way round.

 

PublicTrustInGovernmentUK

A New Era for Management may be near: UK & France rank low for trust in government / Source: Statista

I find it shocking that this atavistic system of democracy that George Orwell depicted in his Magnum opus, “Animal Farm (1945)” – a text that marked me as a literature student in my teenage years – is actually something that us human beings must accept as being the absolute replacement of Caesar, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, or Seneca. We, the most intelligent primates on the planet, at the top of the food chain, we who have created men such as Napoléon, Balzac, Sartre, Darwin, Descartes, Delacroix, Bourdon le peintre, Vivaldi, Chopin, Verne, Lacan, Pasteur and have invented satellites, computers, ingenius softwares that create almost everything, pianos and sophisticated mobile devices, we amazing people, have come to accept and impose on ourselves a horrorific and unstable organisation of inadequate and ignorant office workers to run and manage our civilisation and lives? I still have trouble to believe this nightmare, because all of our mythical leaders had strong classical education, and hence had an early psychological understanding of what drove life forward and what creates noble minds with values among men and women, and hence what creates a harmonious and glorious civilisation. Napoleon’s empire was founded and mainly focussed on strong French sentiments, values, ideals and ideas, not simply financial motives and business perspectives, which was a mere fraction of the whole. Alexander the Great had a philosophical education and studied the great tragedies with Aristotle himself and was considered as a god or a man who was as close as possible to god, a friend of humanity who changed the whole world, believed in mankind and proved it by adopting miserable tribes to create an empire where everything became possible. Alexander showed that the world could be governed by one leader for the wellbeing of all his subjects. But more importantly, Alexander’s empire was not founded on land or riches but on ideas just like Napoleon’s: the Hellenistic idea of a civilisation open to everyone. Alexander carried an immense dream with the passion of eternal youth, completely convinced that our collective forces and imagination could take us to levels once thought impossible; where surpassing onself became easy. As for Seneca, he was a statesman with strong values and philosophical orientations who embodied the nobility of mind and vision of the great emperors, and was clearly not to be compared with today’s political horror show of mediocrity and lowliness with simple minded animalistic parvenus who graduated in some mechanical and business field and are deluded in their abilities and hopes of being seen as the emperor of the modern world. All systems show their age and weaknesses through time, and we have reached the limits of the pig-like politicians as depicted by George Orwell to manage our society.

People out there should ask themselves the very honest question while looking into the eyes of these pathetic, uncreative and average regional representatives elected by a mass of questionable intelligence and culture: “Does this head look like an empire builder?” [i.e. does this common average brain have the nobility of mind, the values, the tastes, the finesse, the philosophy, the evolutionary creativity, the aesthetic and architectural vision, the feelings, the heart, the honesty, the courage, the passion, the will of steel, the sensibility, the poetic wit, the arguments of a winner, the confidence, the resourcefulness, the dedication, the psychological and psychical understanding of human beings and their needs, the scientific facts, the knowledge, the analytical and debating skills, and the economic ingenuity to create a human empire that the great human race deserves? An empire that will last an eternity, generate a humane and positive atmosphere that pushes us to exceed ourselves, foster our development, create an enjoyable existence and expand into space?] The truth is most of the politicians alive today do not have the passion of our the great historical leaders, because they are the product of a generation of impotent bureaucracry, cowardice, mediocrity, arrogance, lowliness, bully, gossip, corruption, vice, cheap luxury and greed for money. They are not those who saw themselves as the replacement of noble empire builders, men of words, finesse, intellect, values and philosophy, who spent their days and nights thinking independently about the vision of a massive human empire and how to truly find stability and optimise the human race for a harmonious existence that is meticulously calculated and engineered to be timeless with a system that addresses and solves our problems even if it does not match the current model of politics; but are instead simply pathetic office workers who see themselves as men who want to be seen as important simply for being in a political party and showing their funny faces on the common press mainly owned and orchestrated by Jews who use it as a cheap theatre where they command their employed slaves to generate an atmosphere and trigger the types of disputes that suits them, their agendas, and that of their political masters.

“The fool has a great advantage over the man of thought: he is always happy with himself.”

-Napoleon

An elite psychology theorist who deals with behaviour and brain sculpture at the granular level will not listen to the absurdities of a simple mind, even if the partners of this simple mind can pay all the advertisers in the world to publish their nonsense on toilet paper, cereal boxes, the cheap animal press to bus stops. We are above that! Every time a drugged publisher from an obscure corner of the Internet creates a title with an image he considers degrading, it has no effect on us, none, zero; with his sweaty, sticky fingers slamming on a dirty keyboard on the 10th floor of an old building in a crowded corner of a polluted urban jungle? We are above these little defamation campaigns organized by childish politicians and the Jewish media they love so much.

Press Clowns and Comedy.jpg

According to a report by the Reuters Institute, only 24% of French people trust the information provided by the media. This is 11% less than in 2018 / Source: Liberation

It cannot be anti-semitic to simply state that the majority of the press in owned, and hence controlled by Jews. My message to these people is: “Try to grow up! Not a single intelligent person in the world is defined by your impulses… you are worse than children. People define themselves… simple….. your opinions, they’re just simple opinions as simple as your mind!” I think that since we are on the subject, it must be recognized that Jews and their obsession with controlling the media and corrupting decision-makers with their money, and hence causing frictions and other strains on societies and governments to impose their views, in most European countries where they have spread to, is not a new practice for them, they have been doing it for centuries, and it may also be a good time for the learned and sensible Jews out there to try to guess what may have motivated Hitler’s Reich’s decisions to return them all to Israel; surprisingly even the Jewish Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Ben Porat thought that Hitler was right to hate the jews for what they do. Moreover, the vast majority of mediocre politicians and their propaganda partners do not consider themselves as empire builders because they do not have the ingenuity to do so, they are not even creative enough to have noble and sophisticated discussions, or to question the ageing system and dare to consider that there might be something better, because these men are not at the intellectual level to think like a reformer and creative innovator. They simply do not have the mental power and intellectual prowess to challenge an old man-made system: they cannot engineer reality because it is beyond their understanding – they themselves have never even questioned their own existence or purpose but have simply followed and copied the past mediocrities whose life they are trying to replicate uncritically. These ignoble creatures see themselves as the members of a political group with a one-sided perspective and do not have the creative skills and wisdom to think independently and take the responsibility for the construction of an eternal human empire; they are only thinking for the short term, i.e. How to win an election? How to please the leader? How to win the next election? How to be selected to be in charge of a ministry? How to speak to the journalist? How to keep the people voting for them? How to harass their opponents in sometimes the most childish of ways? These men are parvenus, what I would describe as savages of luxury who wear a suit for their profession and environment, but inside their rotten minds they could be compared to bitter peasants for their simple minds, behaviour, vision, ignorance and petty childish arguments.

Solon défend ses lois contre les critiques des citoyens athéniens - 1699 - Noel Coypel.jpg

Solon defends his laws against criticism from Athenian citizens, painting by Noel Coypel, 1699

Democracy and the political system are not divine creations, but just like everything else requires updates, revisions and re-organisation to become a more sophisticated and reasonable system that can offer us a harmonious human empire where everyone can dream and achieve; but also “live” and not simply exist while being dead inside. Some in politics also seem to feel the pain of an outdated system, for example Claire Nouvian who has just put an end to her political life by admitting the shortcomings in implementation and the human dysfunctions of the political machine, and I think she did well to quote Mauroy, “when the disgusted leave, all that remains are the disgusting”, and to leave stating “My expectations of honesty and courage are not compatible with political shenanigans,” explained Claire Nouvian,”I am the one who is unsuited to this environment”.

It is clear not only to the best intellectuals and thinkers of our era but also to the scientifically, culturally and literarily conscious section of the public, that the media today prefer conformist mass mediocrity rather than to invite the elites or the best of our time; I think it is dangerous for civilization because, as Yeats said, “education is not the filling of the pail, but the lighting of a fire”, and as Einstein also said, “education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think”, and the Jewish mass media gives us the thoughts and vision of conformist mediocrity. These false, atavistic and corrupt media seem to prefer the boring and ill-informed mediocrity that they force us to consume in the form of debates and opinions of empty bureaucrats without a credible sense of reasoning – cheap junk in silk, suit and tie.

At the moment, I am focused on writing my books, since I believe they contain a great amount of fundamental, life-changing and pivotal discoveries and innovations to the psychology, philosophy and values of our current fragmented and confused civilisation. Once, they are published for a wide audience, ranging from the young to the old, I believe they will have introduced my vision, train of thought and direction to the masses. To me, it is fundamental that the people understand my mind and heart before they can see me as a possible leader, because I want people to trust me based on the contents of my brain, and not for my popularity or for my face being on petty papers and their streets through the power of the purse of immoral donors with the sole intention to bleed the people, enslave the state by tuning it to their agenda for their bank accounts. This does not mean that I am against business or stand for a weak economy! Of course, I want a strong economy, but I also firmly believe that good business can be completely ethical by respecting the sensibilities of the people and the environment. There are decent businessmen out there who are successful and have achieved their dream while also being ethical, moral and righteous. Business can be noble when done with the right values, and does not need to be done at the expense of the people’s blood, and many savage businessmen today still do not seem to understand this and they find ways to infiltrate and destroy the system by corrupting immoral politicians who cannot resist the taste of dirty money. This leads to suffering, and a system without any humanity, and I am against these scenarios because my aim is harmony across the system and I know that it can be achieved with the right leader, the right minds, the right hearts and the right values.

So, I hate the term politics, and for the time being I am focussed in my duty of enlightening and guiding civilisation through my intellectual work. My aim is to change the system and re-organise it into something stable, efficient and honourable while making the life of the people better, happier and more sophisticated. I cannot tell if the future will force me into the world of politics, but I will never portray myself as a politician, and this is something I want the people to know and embed in their minds and hearts. If I am forced into politics, it would be to change it forever, and even bury the term politics and politicians to create something bigger, better, nobler, more stable, grander, and truly sophisticated and civilised.

So, your answer to this question seems one that only time can tell.

“We lead the people only by showing them a future: a leader is a merchant of hope.”

-Napoleon

_________________________________

QUESTION IX.

[FR] – Si vous avez la possibilité de le faire à l’avenir, quels changements proposeriez-vous pour un meilleur système de gestion de l’État ?

[EN] – If you have the chance to do so in the future, what changes would you propose towards a better system of management for the state?

[FR] Réponse:

Le modèle actuel du système atavique utilisé pour gérer nos sociétés est à l’origine de toute l’instabilité parce qu’il impose une rotation injustifiée et obstinée à de nombreux départements qui serait stable si ils était entièrement gérés par l’Etat lui-même par l’intermédiaire d’un expert en la matière sans aucun apport politique sauf les suggestions du chef d’Etat ; notre système actuel change toutes les 5-6 années quand un département pourrait être totalement stable sans ce changement.

Exposition Victor Hugo - une exposition sur Victor-Hugo

“History has for sewers times like ours.” -Victor Hugo

Quand nous mettons en œuvre une nouvelle politique, cela ne commence jamais de manière stable, cela prend du temps, mais aujourd’hui nous avons une structure politique qui impose que chacun de ses départements soit repris par un nouveau cerveau tous les 5 ou 6 ans ; dans la plupart des cas, ce nouveau cerveau n’a aucune expérience ou passion pour le domaine spécifique du département mais sont surtout des diplômés en affaires et en gestion qui ont passé des années à amasser des fonds [ex. travailler pour des entreprises étrangères au Moyen-Orient], en bavardant en costume devant une machine à café [comme dans la série Caméra Café de Bruno Solo], et qui viennent ensuite passer leur temps libre dans un groupe politique avec une perspective unilatérale [de la vie sur Terre] qui leur remet un département après leur élection, et au lieu que le système s’appuie sur sa propre expérience et ne s’ajuste que par lui-même pour éliminer les erreurs et être synchronisé avec la philosophie principale de l’Etat, il permet plutôt à ce cerveau complètement nouveau, avec une perspective complètement nouvelle pour tout régler à son agenda toutes les quelques années  – ce qui plonge les départements des États dans l’instabilité dans un cycle sans fin et a un impact sur tous les aspects de la société et la vie de ses habitants – sans parler du fait que ces cerveaux ont aussi des programmes personnels et financiers et ne sont donc pas guidés par une philosophie qui se concentre uniquement sur l’expansion et les priorités de l’État et l’amélioration des conditions de vie de ses citoyens.

“Le mot de “vertu politique” est un non-sens.”

-Napoléon

La démocratie était un mouvement visant à éliminer ceux qui abusaient du pouvoir pour créer un système où le peuple a son mot à dire dans la gestion de sa société, mais aujourd’hui, ces serviteurs présumés loyaux du peuple ont divisé la société [en sections qu’ils appellent gauche, droite et centre] et ont pris le pouvoir des empereurs et l’ont divisé en de si petits morceaux qu’il est devenu une poussière.

Napoleon VS Les Députés sans pouvoir & panache d'purb dpurb site web.jpg

Image: Napoléon le génie impérial VS Une masse d’eunuques politiques

Cela a créé toute une congrégation d’eunuques politiques où personne n’a de pouvoir sérieux et ralentit plutôt notre évolution en raison du nombre excessif de procédures nécessaires pour déclencher le progrès, le changement systématique et l’avancement. Nous devons nous rappeler que le pouvoir lui-même ne cause aucune souffrance, c’est le pouvoir entre de mauvaises mains et appliqué par de mauvais cerveaux qui cause la souffrance. Il est peut-être juste de citer ici le regretté Christopher Hitchens : “Nous pouvons nous habituer à certains dangers et ne pas les reconnaître avant qu’il ne soit trop tard”.

Je crois fermement qu’il serait raisonnable pour nous de reconsidérer sérieusement l’importance et l’efficacité du pouvoir lorsqu’il peut être utilisé avec une liberté créative raisonnable par le cerveau convenable [un cerveau supérieur mène à une vision et une gestion supérieures], et comment choisir ce cerveau ingénieux pour diriger le navire de l’humanité sur la bonne voie vers un empire glorieux et harmonieux avec une démocratie révisée et appliquée correctement, afin qu’elle ne divise ni le peuple et n’accepte aucun groupe politique ayant des perspectives unilatérales de politique générale atavique où la corruption est présente puisque les groupes ont tendance à influencer des individus faibles et nous avons tiré les enseignements de l’expérience que dans les groupes politiques, habituellement, c’est pour le pire.

Le nouveau système ne devrait pas permettre aux partis politiques d’exister, mais devrait se concentrer uniquement sur les individus ayant des valeurs impériales ; l’État devrait jouer un rôle important en veillant à ce que ces individus aient les ressources et les voies d’accès nécessaires pour être considérés comme le chef d’un empire démocratique en réglementant strictement ses propres élections pour sa propre sécurité et stabilité.

CITATION Napoléon - gouvernement et l'argent

Traduction [EN]: “When a government is dependent on bankers for money, it is the bankers and not the government leaders who are in control, since the hand that gives is above the hand that receives. Money has no homeland; financiers have no patriotism and no decency; their only objective is profit.” – Napoléon

Ce processus électoral réglementé par l’État mettrait également un terme à cette épidémie continue de riches sauvages [et d’autres employés de banque et de riches marchands de pommes de terre, de lardons, d’huile et de carburant] sans finesse et sagesse; des primates commerciaux incultes qui sont les cibles des groupes politiques, pour prendre le pouvoir dans certains pays, détruire ceux-ci et générer l’instabilité toutes les quelques années, à cause de leur manque de créativité, de connaissance et de vision, de leurs équipes, de leur agenda grotesque, de leurs programmes et de leur manque d’ingéniosité.

« Il n’y a ni justice ni liberté possibles lorsque l’argent est toujours roi. » – Albert Camus [French for: “No justice or freedom is possible when money is always king.” – Albert Camus]

Albert Camus l’a magnifiquement formulé quand il a dit : “Il n’y a ni justice ni liberté possibles lorsque l’argent est toujours roi.”. Une déclaration qui pose à juste titre la question : Un homme jugé apte à devenir le chef d’un État ou d’un empire doit-il être évalué en fonction de son compte en banque et de sa capacité à se joindre à un groupe de politiciens ayant la même perspective, ou doit-il être évalué en fonction de sa vision, de sa créativité, de son honneur, de sa sagesse, de son intelligence, de son originalité, de son esprit, de son style individuel et de sa maîtrise des facultés de discussion, de débat et d’expression ?

La nouvelle structure créerait également un système dans lequel les chefs des différents départements seraient des individus indépendants sans aucun groupe ou affiliation politique et leur permettrait de se concentrer sur leur agenda professionnel et leur héritage sans être distraits par un environnement social corrompu ; ils apprendraient également à prendre la responsabilité de leur propre travail et ne se cacheraient pas derrière un groupe politique pour supposer que quelqu’un parmi eux trouvera une solution aux problèmes alors que chacun d’entre eux espère la même chose – c’est comme regarder un groupe de saumons se rassembler pour échapper à un prédateur marin. Ces représentants régionaux élus devraient être utilisés comme des ambassadeurs de leur région, rien de plus. Il est impératif que nous commencions à nous orienter et à orienter le système vers ce modèle de gouvernance dynamique et efficace, et plus vite ce sera fait, mieux ce sera pour l’humanité.

« Chaque fois que j’entends un discours politique ou que je lis ceux de nos dirigeants, je suis horrifié de n’avoir, pendant des années, rien entendu qui ait semblé humain. Ce sont toujours les mêmes mots qui racontent les mêmes mensonges. Et le fait que les hommes acceptent cela, que la colère du peuple n’ait pas détruit ces clowns creux, me paraît la preuve que les hommes n’accordent aucune importance à la manière dont ils sont gouvernés ; qu’ils jouent – ​​oui, jouent – ​​avec toute une partie de leur vie et leurs soi-disant « intérêts vitaux ». »

-Albert Camus

Je pense que nous vivons l’époque d’une révolte citoyenne progressive pour un nouveau système où la démocratie n’est pas appliqué d’une façon qui permet aux sauvages bureaucratiques des communes d’accéder au pouvoir et ensuite de détruire la civilisation moderne. Nous avons besoin d’un nouveau système [régime] avec une constitution écrite et des départements indépendants qui mettent l’accent sur ses propres organismes [ceux qui s’identifient complètement à la nation], sa stabilité, son expansion et sa longévité. La démocratie ne devrait être utilisée que pour choisir de manière indépendante [sans affiliation politique] le chef de l’Etat qui orchestrera tout le système; et ensuite de façon moins importante, pour sélectionner  des représentants régionaux [qui seraient les ambassadeurs de leur région] et ne seront pas transformés en chefs de département dont ils n’ont aucune connaissance dans les matières concernées. Les ministères seraient convertis en des départements indépendants pleinement fonctionnels gérés par des experts dans leurs domaines respectifs et maintenus par l’Etat lui-même sans aucune influence extérieure, à l’exception des suggestions du chef de l’Etat. Parce ce que aujourd’hui avec les grossiers des communes qu’on place dans des positions de pouvoir au delà de leurs comprehension pour prendre des départements qu’ils ne comprennent pas, on se retrouve en tant que citoyens honnêtes avec de l’instabilité dans nos sociétés sans harmonie et nos vies privées violées. La grande majorité de ces malfrats de bureau dans la politique n’ont pas de grandeur d’esprit, de morales, ou de philosophie pour leur rappeler que leur devoir c’est de prioriser la population et le pays.

“Il y a des gens qui se croient le talent de gouverner par la seule raison qu’ils gouvernent.”

-Napoléon

Le moment du grand changement et de la grande révolution approche, et j’ai l’intention de la guider pour une civilisation digne de coloniser l’univers. En effet, des mouvements comme les Gilets Jaunes en France rappellent au monde qu’il y a encore des gens qui sont prêts à donner leur vie pour combattre la corruption, l’arrogance, l’injustice, les médias enfantins et la politique du mal. Il n’est pas surprenant qu’ils aient dû être français et rappeler aux gens du monde entier le courage qui accompagne notre héritage et les limites que nous sommes prêts à repousser au nom du changement et d’un monde meilleur.

“On ne peut pas faire semblant d’être courageux.”

-Napoléon

Je vais devoir terminer cette réponse ici, car je dois aussi garder quelques idées pour plus tard m’adresser directement au public, car depuis 2012, j’ai lu, entendu et vu la plupart de mes idées être prises et reproduites dans tous les médias et le spectre politique mondial ; je me sens donc comme Jean-Paul Sartre à un moment de sa vie où il était devenu le professeur national de philosophie de toute la France, où ses pensées philosophiques et ses valeurs avaient été diffusées partout dans le paysage culturel, médiatique et politique, et que, même ceux qui ne l’avaient jamais connu, étaient inconsciemment influencés par son héritage intellectuel, car les différentes formes de médias qu’ils consommaient l’étaient.

Dans l’essai “Histoire de la philosophie occidentale, des cultures religieuses, des sciences, de la médecine et de la sécularisation“, je crois que j’ai fait comprendre clairement, par divers faits provenant de divers domaines, que le monde a changé grâce aux progrès et aux découvertes philosophiques, psychologiques et intellectuelles, et que les humains devraient continuer à changer avec lui. Il me semble que le changement est en train d’arriver progressivement.

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[EN] Answer to Question IX. “If you have the chance to do so in the future, what changes would you propose towards a better system of management for the state?”

The current model of the atavistic system used to manage our societies is at the root of all the instability because it imposes an unjustified and stubborn rotation on many departments that would be stable if it was completely run by the state itself through an expert in the field without any political input except suggestions from the head of state; our actual system forces change every couple of years when a department could be completely stable without it. When we implement a new policy it never starts in a stable manner, it takes time for this, but nowadays we have a political structure that imposes the requirement for each of its departments to be taken over by a new brain every 5 or 6 years; in most cases this new brain does not have any experience or passion for the specific field of the department but are mostly business and management graduates who spent years amassing money [e.g. working for foreign companies in the Middle-East], who then come to spend their free time in a political group with a one-sided perspective [of life on Earth] that hands over a department to them after being elected, and instead of the system building on its own experience and only fine tuning itself to cancel out errors and be synchronised with the main philosophy of the state, it instead allows this completely new brain, with a completely new outlook to shift everything to his agenda every couple of years – this shakes the departments of the states continuously into instability in a never ending cycle and has an impact on every aspect of the society and the lives of its people – not to mention that these brains also have personal and financial agendas and hence are not guided by a philosophy that focuses solely on the expansion and priorities of the state and the betterment of its people’s lives.

“The word “political virtue” is nonsense.”

-Napoleon

Democracy was a movement to remove those who abused power to create a system where the people have an input in the way their society is managed, but today these supposedly loyal servants of the people have divided society [into sections that they call left, right and centre] and have taken the power of emperors and fragmented it into such tiny pieces that it has turned into dust. This has created a whole congregation of political eunuchs where no one has any serious power and instead slows down our evolution because of the excessive amount of procedures required to trigger progress, systematic change and advancement. We should remind ourselves that power itself does not cause any suffering, it is power in the wrong hands and being applied by the wrong brains that causes suffering. It may be right to quote the late Christopher Hitchens here, “We may become habituated to certain dangers and fail to recognise them until it’s too late.”

Christopher Hitchens Failing to recognise danger.jpg

I firmly believe that it would be sensible for us to seriously reconsider the importance and effectiveness of power when allowed to be used with reasonable creative freedom by the right brain [a superior brain leads to a superior vision and management], and how to select this ingenious brain to steer the ship of humanity on the right path towards a glorious and harmonious empire with democracy revised and applied properly, so that it does not divide the people or accept any political groups with one-sided perspectives of atavistic mainstream politics where corruption lives, since groups tend to influence weak individuals and we have learned from history that in political groups it is usually for the worse.

The new system should not allow political parties to exist, but should solely focus on individuals with imperial values; the State should play a significant role in ensuring that those individuals have the resources and the routes to be considered as the head of a democratic empire by strictly regulating its own elections for its own security and stability.

“When a government is dependent on bankers for money, it is the bankers and not the government leaders who are in control, since the hand that gives is above the hand that receives. Money has no homeland; financiers have no patriotism and no decency; their only objective is profit.”

– Napoléon

This State regulated electoral process would also put a halt to this ongoing epidemic of wealthy savages [and other bank employees and rich merchants of potatoes, bacon, oil and fuel] without any finesse and wisdom who are the targets of political groups to take over countries, destroy them and generate instability every couple of years through their grotesque teams, agendas, lack of creativity, knowledge, vision and ingenuity.

“No justice or freedom is possible when money is always king.”

– Albert Camus

Albert Camus beautifully phrased it when he said: “No justice is possible when money is always king”. A statement that rightly asks the question: Should a person deemed fit to become the head of a state or empire be assessed on his bank account and ability to join of a group of politicians with the same perspective, or should he be assessed on his vision, creativity, honour, wisdom, intelligence, originality, wit, individual style, and mastery of discursive, debating and expressive skills?

The new structure would also create a system where the heads of the various departments are independent individuals without any political group or affiliation and allow them to focus on their professional agenda and legacy without distractions from a corrupt social environment; they would also learn to take responsibility for their own work and not hide behind a political group to assume that someone among them will find a solution to problems when every single one among them is hoping for the same thing – it is like watching a group of salmons flock together to escape a marine predator. These elected regional representatives should be used as ambassadors for their region, nothing more. It is imperative that we start start guiding ourselves and the system towards this dynamic and effective model of governance, and the faster it is done, the better for mankind.

“Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called ‘vital interests’.”

– Albert Camus

I think we are living in an era of a progressive citizen revolt for a new system where democracy is not applied in a way that allows the bureaucratic savages of the commons to come to power and then destroy modern civilization. We need a new system[regime] with a written constitution and independent departments that focus on its own organisms [those that fully identify with the nation], its stability, expansion and longevity. Democracy should only be used to independently choose [without political party affiliation] the head of state who will orchestrate the entire system; and then, less importantly, to select regional representatives [who would be ambassadors for their region] and will not be transformed into heads of departments in which they have no knowledge in the matters concerned. The departments would be converted into fully functional independent departments managed by experts in their respective fields and maintained by the State itself without any external influence, except for the suggestions of the Head of State. Because today, with the rude people of the commons who are placed in positions of power beyond their comprehension to take departments that they do not understand, we find ourselves as honest citizens with instability in our societies without harmony and our private lives violated. The vast majority of these office thugs in politics have no greatness of mind, morals, or philosophy to remind them that their duty is to put the people and the country first.

“There are people who believe they have the talent to govern for the only reason they govern.”

-Napoleon

Der Leser - Franz Von Defregger (1835 - 1921).jpg

“The Reader” by Franz Von Defregger (1835 – 1921)

The moment of great change and revolution is approaching, and I intend to guide it for a civilization worthy of colonizing the universe. Indeed, movements like the Gilets Jaunes in France remind the world that we still have people out there who are willing to lay down their lives to fight corruption, arrogance, injustice, the childish media and evil politics. Unsurprisingly, they had to be French and remind people globally of the courage that comes with our heritage and the limits we are willing to push in the name of change and a better world.

“We cannot pretend to be brave.”

-Napoleon

I will have to end this answer here as I also have to keep some ideas for a later time to address the public directly, because since 2012, I have read, heard and seen most of my ideas being taken and reproducted all over the mediatic and political spectrum globally; hence I feel a little like Jean-Paul Sartre at a moment of his life when he had become the national teacher of philosophy of the whole of France, where his philosophical thoughts and values had been impregnated all over the cultural, mediatic and political scene, so that, even those who had not known him, were unconsciously influenced by his intellectual heritage because the various forms of media they consumed were.

Code Gris et Orange d'purb dpurb site web

The Private dpurb.com Grey & Orange Code of Honour for the Sensible & Evolved Super Humans Out There

In the essay, “History on Western Philosophy, Religious cultures, Science, Medicine & Secularisation” I believe that we have made it clear, through various facts from various fields, that the world has changed through philosophical, psychological and intellectual progress and discoveries, and that humans should keep changing with it. It seems to me that change is happening gradually.

________________________________

QUESTION X.

[FR] – Vous êtes croyant ? Dans l’affirmative, quelle devrait être, selon vous, la position de la religion par rapport aux questions d’État ?

[EN] – Are you religious? If so where do you think religion should stand in regards to matters of the state?

[FR] CET ARTICLE EST EN COURS D’ÉDITION ET SERA ENTIÈREMENT MIS À JOUR DANS LES ANNÉES À VENIR

Veuillez également noter que nous accordons actuellement la priorité à l’achèvement d’environ 6 livres, ainsi qu’au travail créatif en cours, à la recherche intensive, à la mise à jour, à la synthèse et à l’édition qu’ils exigent [c’est-à-dire la transcription, le référencement, l’organisation, l’esquisse, la structuration et la mise à jour… sans oublier les centaines d’études dans des journaux scientifiques à filtrer].

Ecrivain du XXIe siècle dpurb

Ces livres seront publiés pour le public français puis pour les anglophones afin d’en maximiser l’impact. Ils nécessiteront donc également une traduction précise et méticuleuse afin de préserver le sens et la saillance initiale de la langue française vers l’anglais. Parallèlement en travaillant sur ces projets gigantesques, nous révisons et mettons à jour en permanence les ouvrages académiques sur le site web puisqu’ils sont les piliers fondateurs de nos projets.

Nous répondrons également à vos questions et compléterons cet essai lorsque nous aurons le temps d’y réfléchir et de les développer. Veuillez consulter périodiquement le site web pour les mises à jour.

Nous vous remercions sincèrement tous, nos lecteurs, disciples et sympathisants, pour votre loyauté, votre patience, votre compréhension, votre soutien moral passionné, votre confiance et votre gentillesse. N’hésitez pas à nous soutenir par un don [Cliquez Ici] afin que nous puissions maintenir dpurb.com gratuit et accessible à tous jusqu’à la fin des temps.

Ici, l’expression de nos sentiments les plus sincères,

L’équipe @ dpurb.com & Danny D’Purb

CITATION Voltaire - pour faire un bon livre

Traduction [EN]: “To make a good book, it takes a prodigious amount of time and the patience of a saint.” – Voltaire

—-|—-

[EN] THIS ARTICLE IS CURRENTLY BEING EDITED AND WILL BE FULLY UPDATED IN THE COMING YEARS

Please also note that we are currently prioritising the completion of about 6 books along with the ongoing creative work, intensive research, updating, sythesising and editing that they demand [i.e. transcribing, referencing, organising, sketching, structuring and updating… not to mention hundreds of studies in scientific journals to be filtered out]. These books will be released for the French audience and then for the Anglophones to maximise its impact, and hence will also requires precise and meticulous translation in order to preserve the initial meaning and salience from the French language to English. While working on these gigantic projects we are also constantly revising the academic works on the web site and updating them since they are the founding pillars for our projects.

We will also be answering your questions and complete this post when we have time to reflect and elaborate on them. Please check the website periodically for updates.

We sincerely thank you all, our readers, followers and supporters, for your loyalty, patience, understanding, passionate moral support, trust and kindness. Please feel free to support us with a donation [Click Here] so that we can keep dpurb.com free and accessible to all until the end of time.

Here, the expression of our most sincere feelings,

The Team @ dpurb.com & Danny D’Purb

Traduction [FR]: « Je n’ai écrit aucun livre avant mes 50 ans, et je suis ravi parce que je ne savais pas ce que je pensais avant » – Mary Midgley

*****

Bibliographie

  1. Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. (2022). La construction sociale de la réalité. 3e edn. Malakoff, France: Armand Colin.
  2. Benaïssa, S. (2023). Classe Bourgeoise : Les parasites de la société. BLAST. Available at: https://youtu.be/VRNTZflvaR4 (Accessed: March, 18, 2023).
  3. Dard, O. (2018) ‘« l’homme des machines » de Georges Bernanos’, L’Homme & la Société, n° 205(3), pp. 87–107.
  4. Dupuy, C. (2016). Journalistes, des salariés comme les autres?: Représenter, Participer, mobiliser. Rennes, France: Presses universitaires de Rennes.
  5. Gairin, V. (2019). Pourquoi les médiocres ont pris le pouvoir : Le philosophe québécois Alain Deneault fustige un monde où, avec la transformation des métiers en “travail”, le “moyen” est devenu la norme. Interview. Le Point. Available at: https://www.lepoint.fr/debats/pourquoi-les-mediocres-ont-pris-le-pouvoir-16-01-2016-2010535_2.php (Accessed: March, 18, 2023)
  6. Kelly, M. (2014) French: Precise, romantic, influential, close to English | British Council. Available at: https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/french-precise-romantic-influential-close-english (Accessed: January 25, 2023).
  7. Krumrei-Mancuso, E., Haggard, M., LaBouff, J. and Rowatt, W. (2019). Links between intellectual humility and acquiring knowledge. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 15(2), pp.155-170.
  8. Molénat, X. (2023) La construction sociale de la réalité. Peter L. Berger et Thomas Luckmann, 1966, trad. fr. 1986, rééd. Armand Colin, coll. « Références », 1997., Sciences Humaines. Available at: https://www.scienceshumaines.com/la-construction-sociale-de-la-realite_fr_13014.html (Accessed: February 14, 2023).
  9. Pak, S. (2020). La démocratie du dollar. ARTE France. Available at: https://archive.org/details/la-democratie-du-dollar-2023 (Accessed: April 23, 2023).
  10. Porter, T. and Schumann, K. (2017). Intellectual humility and openness to the opposing view. Self and Identity, 17(2), pp.139-162.
  11. Rothman, J. and Treffers-Daller, J. (2014). A Prolegomenon to the Construct of the Native Speaker: Heritage Speaker Bilinguals are Natives Too!. Applied Linguistics, 35(1), pp.93-98.
  12. Russell, B. (2008) Principes de Reconstruction Sociale. Translated by N. Baillargeon and E.de Clermont-Tonnerre. Québec, Canada: Presses de l’Université Laval.
  13. Sanchez-Palencia, E. (2017). Culture, progrès scientifique et convictionsMéthode Scientifique / Libres propos d’académiciens, Académie des Sciences.
  14. Savage, J.E., Jansen, P.R., Stringer, S., et al. (2018). Genome-wide association meta-analysis in 269,867 individuals identifies new genetic and functional links to intelligence. Nat Genet 50912–919.
  15. Weil, S. (2017). Note sur la suppression générale des partis politiques. Paris: Editions Allia.
  16. Woodruff, P. (2022). Majority rule is not democracy, Oxford University Press Blog. Available at: https://blog.oup.com/2022/01/majority-rule-is-not-democracy/ (Accessed: February 9, 2023).


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Essay // Psychoanalysis: History, Foundations, Legacy, Impact & Evolution

Mis-à-jour le Mercredi, 25 Janvier 2023

Hampstead dpurb.com d'purb site Psychoanalysis

Photographie: Danny J. D’Purb © 2008

History and Background

In contemporary psychology, the psychoanalytic movement’s place is both unique and paradoxical. Focussing on the study of the mind as a “software” running on the brain as the “hardware”, psychoanalysis remains the only discipline that truly focuses on the mechanism and processes behind our thoughts. Unlike empirical behavioural science and other “cogno-sciences” that can be fairly barbaric and obstinate in the forced application of the rigid mathematical and reductionist systematic procedures embedded in the classic scientific method when dealing with an entity as complex and organic as the human mind; psychoanalysis has remained focussed in understanding human psychology by capturing it in all its details, depths, dimensions and linguistic aspects.

The scientific method although a proven mathematical approach to inquiries in the hard sciences [e.g. biology, medecine, physics, chemistry, astrophysics, material science, astronomy, etc], shows its limitations when used as a tool for psychological inquiry in the measurement of variables that are incredibly hard to measure such as emotions, values, motives, desires, libidinous intensity or dreams. It is also fair noting that humans are different from simple organisms, molecules or robots, hence psychoanalysis remains the only discipline focused on the mind [the software] assuming that most human beings have a physiologically healthy brain [the hardware].

However, modern sciences have discovered how abnormalities in the brain’s physiology due to birth defects or injury may result in behavioural problems linked to a deficient mind due to the defective brain [hardware] at its disposal. Hence, nowadays most good intellectuals in the field of psychoanalysis would likely be a better psychologist with an in-depth knowledge of the physiology of the brain, i.e. the major areas affecting core functions such as speech [Wernicke and Broca’s], vision [the occipital lobe], and motor abilities [parietal lobe], etc.

Cerveau & Fontions dpurb-com

This is because some psychological problems may on rare occasion be caused by brain injuries or physiological abnormality due to virus, trauma, stroke or injury. In those cases where such a scenario materialises, the psychotherapist may refer the patient to a neurosurgeon who may be more appropriate to inspect the extent of the problems on the defective brain [hardware] which may lead to a clearer perspective of the limitations being imposed on the mind of the affected individual and how it impacts processes such as the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious [based on Sigmund Freud’s 1st ground breaking theory of mental life, the Topographic Model, which was also adopted by Jacques Lacan who argued convincingly that post-Freudian psychoanalysts had swayed too far from the fundamental concepts and turned psychoanalysis into a confusing genre].

However, as we are in the developmental stages of conception of the organic theory, a theory that takes the focus on the individual organism’s creative ability to another level, we are going to remain focussed on the mind. The organic theory was inspired by the brain’s magnificent ability to learn any age, and thus give the individual human organism the ability and freedom to define, create, redefine, recreate and shape itself based on its inherited and acquired abilities, desires and personal constructionist developments throughout its life – yes, the individual does have choices and these impact the person’s internal working model of mental life and the person as a whole along with his or her environment.

While psychoanalysis remains one of the most widely known schools of psychology it is perhaps not universally understood. The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud is perhaps one of the most famous psychologist of the last century even if his chosen discipline, psychoanalysis, has little in common with the other schools of thought and psychology.

Psychoanalysis views the mind as an active, dynamic and self-generating entity, and this is in the German tradition of mental life [it was also a founding assumption for Jean Piaget as he developed his Theory of Cognitive Development in Children]. Freud saw psychoanalysis as a revolution of the mind that had to disturb the consciousness of the world, and viewed the unconscious as a reservoir of impulsive force repressed in the biological depths of the soul.

Exploding Raphaelesque Head - Salvador Dali (1951) dpurb d'purb website

Tête Raphaélesque Éclatée” par Salvador Dali (1951)

It is also important to note that Freud was trained in hard sciences, yet his system shows little appreciation for systematic and reductionist empiricism. As a physician, Freud used his observational skills to build his system within a medical framework, basing his theory on individual case studies. He did not depart from his understanding of 19th-century science in the effort to organise his observations, neither did he attempt to test his hypotheses rigorously through independent verification. As he testified, he was psychoanalysis and did not tolerate dissension from his orthodox views. Nevertheless, Freud had a tremendous impact on 20th century psychology, perhaps more importantly, the influence of psychoanalysis on Western thought, as reflected in literature, philosophy and art, significantly exceeds the impact of any other system and school of psychology.

 

The Active Mind

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Photographie: Danny D’Purb © 2012

Going back to the philosophical foundations of modern psychology in Germany during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, we found that the tradition of Leibniz and Kant clearly emphasised mental activity. This is in contrast to British empiricism, which assumed the mind to be a passive entity [such as a sponge that simply soaks in what is thrown at it]. The German tradition held the most logical and creative assumption that the mind itself generates and structures human experience in characteristic ways [being “active”]. Whether through Leibniz’s monadology or Kant’s categories, the psychology of the individual could be understood only by examining the dynamic, inherent activity of the mind.

Throughout the years, as psychology evolved into an independent discipline in the latter part of the 19th century under Wundt’s tutelage, the British model of mental passivity served as a guiding philosophy. Clearly, Wundt’s empiricistic formulation was at odds with German philosophical precedents, recognised by both Stumpf and Brentano. Act psychology and the psychology of non-sensory consciousness represented by the Würzburg School were closer to the German philosophical assumptions of mental activity than to Wundt’s structural psychology. The Gestalt movement encompassed these alternatives to Wundt’s psychology in Germany. Eventually, as the rational outcome guided intellectuals, Wundt’s system was replaced by Gestalt psychology, turning into the dominant psychology in Germany prior to World War II – one based on a model of the mind that admitted inherent organisational activity.

The assumptions underlying mental activity in Gestalt psychology were highly qualified, where construct for mind involves the organisation of perception, based on the principle of isomorphism, which resulted in a predisposition toward patterns of personal-environmental interactions. The focus on organisation meant that the way of mental processes, not their content, was inherently structured. In other words, individuals were not born with specific ideas, energies, or other content in the mind; rather, the organisational structure was inherited to acquire mental contents in characteristic ways. Accordingly, the Gestalt movement, while rightly rejecting the rigidity of Wundt’s empiricistic assumptions and concepts, did not reject empiricism completely [as a technique to study some basic and easily defined variables (such as traits) and their relation(s) to others]. Instead, the Gestaltists advocated a compromise between the empiricist basis of British philosophy and the German model of activity. Consequently, this opened psychological investigation to the study of complex problem-solving and perceptual processes.

Consistent with the Gestalt foundations, psychoanalysis was firmly grounded in an active model of mental processes, however it shared little of the Gestalt commitment to empiricism. Freud’s views on personality were consistent not only with the activities of mental processing suggested by Leibniz and Kant, but also with the 19th century belief in conscious and unconscious levels of mental activity. In acknowledging the teachings of such philosophers as Von Hartman and Schopenhauer [Read the Essay on our Review of “Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung”(The World as Will and Idea), Freud developed motivational principles that depended on energy forces beyond the level of self-awareness.

Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860)

Moreover, for Freud, the development of personality was determined by individual, unconscious adaptation to these forces. The details of personality development as formulated by Freud are outlined below; however, is also important to recognise the fundamental basis of Freud’s thinking. Psychoanalysis is based on the implication of mental activity further than any other system of psychology. As a major representative of a reliance on mental activity to account for personality, psychoanalysis is set apart from other movements in contemporary psychology. In addition, psychoanalysis unlike the other branches of psychology, did not emerge from reductionist empirical research that stubbornly tries to apply mechanical scientific methodology to measure complex non-physical abilities; rather it was the product of the applied consequences of clinical practice [i.e. it was a force that was born on the field to treat mental problems as they surfaced throughout human history].

 

The Treatment of Mental Illness

Besides being the founder of the psychoanalytic movement in modern psychology, Freud is also remembered for his efforts in pioneering the upgrade in the treatment of mental and behavioural abnormalities, and was instrumental in psychiatry’s recognition as a branch of medicine that specifically deals with psychopathology. Before Freud’s works in attempting to devise effective methods of treating the mentally ill, individuals who deviated from socially acceptable norms were usually treated as if they were criminals or demonically possessed. Although shocking controversies in the contemporary treatment of mental deviancy appear occasionally, not too long ago such abuses were often the rule rather than the exception.

The treatment of mental illnesses was never a pleasant chapter in Western civilisation and it has been pointed out many times that abnormal behaviour is often mixed up with criminal behaviour as with heresy and treason. Even during the period of enlightenment during the European Renaissance, the cruelties and tortures of the inquisition were readily adapted to treat what we nowadays qualify as mental illness. Witchcraft continued to offer a reasonable explanation to such eccentric behaviour until recent times. Prisons were established to house criminals, paupers, and the insane without any differentiation. Mental illness was viewed as governed by evil or obscure forces, and the mentally ill were looked upon as crazed by such weird influences such as moon rays. Lunatics or “moonstruck” persons, were appropriately kept in lunatic asylums. As recently as the latter part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the institution of for the insane in Utica, New York, which was progressive by the standards of the time, was called the Utica Lunatic Asylum. The name reflected the prevailing attitude toward mental illness.

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“Dr. Philippe Pinel at the Salpêtrière”, 1795 by Tony Robert-Fleury. Pinel ordering the removal of chains from patients at the Paris Asylum for insane women

Reforms in the treatment of the institutionalised insane were slowly introduced during the 19th century. In 1794, Philippe Pinel (1745 – 1826) was appointed the chief of hospitals for the insane in Paris, and managed to improve both the attitude toward and the treatment of the institutionalised insane. In the United States, Dorothea Dix (1802 – 1887) accomplished the most noticeable reforms in the treatment of the mentally ill. Beginning in 1841, Dix led a campaign to improve the condition of indigent, mentally ill persons kept in jails and in poorhouses. However, these reforms succeeded in improving only the physical surroundings and maintenance conditions of the mentally ill; legitimate treatment was minimal. [Even today, in 2019, the US seems to have more people with eccentric behaviours and with questionable mental stability, for example, Donald Trump, who has been singled out as being mentally ill by more than one. See: (1) The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, (2) Trump Is ‘Mentally Ill’ Says Former Vermont Governor and Doctor Howard Dean, (3) American psycho? Donald Trump’s mental health is still a question, (4) Psychiatrist: Trump Mental Health Urgently Deteriorating & (5) Stanford’s Zimbardo asks: Is President Trump mentally ill?

Confidence in US

Around the world, favorability of the U.S. and confidence in its president decline / Source: Pew Research Center

 

The US has more women in prison than China, India & Russia combined

According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, nearly a third of all female prisoners worldwide are incarcerated in the United States of America. There are 201,200 women in US prisons, representing 8.8 percent of the total American prison population. / Source: Forbes

 

Most people in prison

Highest to Lowest – Prison Population Total / Source: World Prison Brief

Efforts to develop comprehensive treatments were plagued by various quacks, such as the pseudoscience developed by Mesmer that dealt with the “animal spirit” underlying mental illnesses [although it may be true today if expressed as a metaphorical description to some of the behavioural manifestations of some mental disorders in some individuals].

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White Dogs and Tootsie Pops” by Marie Hughes

Similarly, the phrenology of Gall and Spurzheim advocated a physical explanation based on skull contours and localisation of brain functions – which was of course also wrong.

Gradually however, attempts were made to develop legitimate and effective techniques to treat emotional and behavioural abnormalities. One of the more productive investigations involved hypnotism and was pioneered by a French physician, Jean Martin Charcot (1825 – 1893). Charcot gained widespread fame in Europe, and the young Freud amazed by his abilities, studied under him, as did many other talented physicians and physiologists. He treated hysterical patients with symptoms ranging from hyper-emotionality to physical conversions of underlying emotional problems that the patient could not confront when conscious.

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Une leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière (1887)” with Jean Martin Charcot in Front (A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière) par André Brouillet à l’Université Paris Descartes

Another French physician in Nancy, namely Hippolyte Bernheim (1837 – 1919), developed a sophisticated analysis of hypnosis as a form of treatment, using underlying suggestibility to alter the intentions of the patient. Finally, Pierre Janet (1859 – 1947), a student of Charcot, used hypnotism to resolve the forces of emotional conflict, which he believed were basic to hysterical symptoms. However, it was Sigmund Freud who went beyond the techniques of hypnotism to develop a comprehensive theory of psychopathology from which systematic treatments evolved. Later, Jacques Lacan (1901 – 1981) would pulverise the tradition inherited from hospital medecine which consisted of displaying  a patient before an audience of practitioners or students and asking questions whose deeper meaning was supposed to escape the patient. The actors in this ceremonial, the patients, trained by years of confinement, actually produced all the symptoms that the masters of the asylum expected of them. Lacan shattered this clinic with his gaze in order to give a voice to the mentally ill. Jean-Bertrand Pontalis said:Lacan était extraordinairement courtois avec ses malades, les traitant pas du tout comme des patients d’asile – c’est la moindre des choses, mais ce n’est pas toujours le cas – comme des êtres humains et les amenaient peu à peu, créant une atmosphère de confiance, à les laisser parler très très librement. Pour l’anecdote, c’est assez savoureux, je me souviens qu’une fois il y avait une femme qui était paranoïaque qui se plaignait qu’on l’a suivi partout, « On me suit, on me suit, on me suit, on me suit partout… », Lacan à la fin lui dit, « Ne vous inquiéter pas chère madame, je vais trouver quelqu’un pour vous suivre » entendant par la, un médecin qui pourra lui traiter. Comme si lui-même, dans ces années-là était en train d’inventer et de s’inventer. Nous participions en accord avec lui en résonance avec lui à un mouvement inventif.” [French for: “Lacan was extraordinarily courteous with his patients, treating them not at all like asylum patients – to say the least but this is not always the case – like human beings and gradually, creating an atmosphere of trust, he led them to let them speak very, very freely. For the anecdote, it’s quite tasty, I remember that once there was a woman who was paranoid complaining that she was followed everywhere, “They follow me, they follow me, they follow me, they follow me everywhere…”, Lacan at the end said to her, “Don’t worry dear lady, I’ll find someone to follow you” hearing by this, a doctor who will be able to treat her. As if he himself, in those years, was in the process of inventing and inventing himself. In agreement with him, we were participating in an inventive movement in resonance with him.”]

 

A Biography of Sigmund Freud

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Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) / Image: Freud Museum London

Since psychoanalysis as we know it today is hugely influenced by the foundations laid by Sigmund Freud, it is worthwhile to have an understanding about the major points in his life. Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) was born on the 6th of May 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia, at that time a norther province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today a part of the Czech Republic.

Freud was the eldest of 8 children, and his father was a relatively poor and not very successful wool merchant. When his business failed, Freud’s father moved with his wife and children [as many jews are accustomed to migrating to better places in the quest for a better life and income] first to Leipzig and then to Vienna when Freud was 4 years old. The young Freud remained in Vienna for most of the rest of his life, and his precocious genius was recognised by his family, and he was allowed many concessions and favours not permitted to his siblings. For example, young Freud was provided with better lighting to read in the evening, and when he was studying, noise in the house was kept to a minimum so he would not be disturbed.

Freud’s interest were varied and intense, and he showed an early inclination and aptitude for various intellectual pursuits. Unfortunately, Freud was a victim of the 19th century Jew-dislike which was obvious and severe in central and Eastern Europe after the numerous accounts of Jews being banished from places all over Europe due to their occult and violent religious practices on Christian infants [e.g. human sacrifices] along with their known habits in monopolising the majority of the press businesses to then distort news and heritage to their agendas and economic advantage.

However, although Freud was an atheist and more scientifically minded, his Jewish birth precluded certain career opportunities, most notably an academic career in university research. Indeed, medicine and law were the only professions open to Vienna Jews.

Freud’s early reading of Charles Darwin intrigued and impressed him to the point that a career in science was most appealing. The closest path that he could follow for training as a researcher was an education in medicine. Hence, Freud entered the university of Vienna in 1873 at the age of 17. However, because of his interests in a variety of fields and specific research projects, it took him 8 years to complete the medical coursework that normally required 6 years.

Eel

In 1881, he received his doctorate in medicine. While at university, Freud was part of an investigation of the precise structure of the testes of eels, which involved his dissecting over 400 eels. Later, he moved on to physiology and neuroanatomy and conducted experiments examining the spinal cord of fish. While at Vienna, Freud also took courses with Franz Brentano, which formed his only formal introduction to 19th century psychology.

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After waiting for Freud for about 4 years, his fiancée, Martha Bernays, a jewish girl from a business family and the grand-daughter of a famous Rabbi in Hamburg, married him. While she did not show great interest in Freud’s intellectual pursuits, her younger sister Minna became a very close intellectual partner of Freud. Carl Jung one of Freud’s intellectual ally who would become one of his firmest critic would even later say that he learned from Minna that Freud was in love with her and their relationship was very “intimate” – although we have no factual confirmation of such. She was so close to the young couple, that she moved in with them in the 1890s to set up was has been “jokingly” called a “ménage a trois”. As for Martha, she was also a charmer, intelligent, well-educated and fond of reading who as a married woman ran her household efficiently and was almost obsessive about punctuality and dirt. Firm but loving with her children, French analyst René Laforgue said that she spread an atmosphere of peaceful joie de vivre through the household. Shortly after Freud’s wedding, he recognised that a scientific career would not provide adequate income, since anti-Jewish sentiments were strong around Europe and this worked against Jewish advancement in academia even if Freud himself was not a practising Jew or had any religious sentiments. So Freud reluctantly decided to begin a private practice. Although the young couple were very poor in the early years of their marriage, Freud was able to support his wife and his growing family, which eventually included 6 children. The early years in private practice were very difficult, requiring long hours for a meagre financial reward that basically did not challenge him. Freud was also an atheist and did not want psychoanalysis to be seen as a purely Jewish endeavour, and his close network although were mainly Jewish later slowly grew to incorporate European intellectuals where some of the most significant would disagree with some of his assumptions and leave his circle after keeping only a few of his fundamental concepts about the theory of mental life.

During his hospital training, Freud had worked with patients with anatomical and organic problems of the nervous system. Shortly after starting private practice, he became friendly with Josef Breuer (1842 – 1925), a general practitioner who had acquired some local fame for his respiration studies. This friendship provided needed stimulation for Freud, and they began to collaborate on several patients with nervous disorders, most notably the famous case of Anna O., an intelligent young woman with severe, diffuse hysterical symptoms. In using hypnosis to treat Anna O., Breuer noticed that some specific experiences emerged under hypnosis that the patient could not recall while conscious. Her symptoms seemed to be relieved after talking about these experiences under hypnosis. Breuer treated Anna O. daily for over a year, and became convinced that the “talking cure”, or “catharsis”, involving discussion of unpleasant and repulsive memories revealed under hypnosis, was an effective method in alleviating her symptoms. Unfortunately, Breuer’s wife became jealous of the relationship; that would later be called positive transference of emotional feelings to the therapist”. This would later be explained as patients falling in love with the new object [in this case, the psychoanalyst] at which they redirect feelings and desires retained in childhood at characteristic stages of therapy. This looked suspicious to Breuer’s wife. As a result, Breuer terminated his treatment of Anna O. Freud was also very professional with his clients and never had any mistresses or took advantage of his female patients. In opposition to positive transference, the psychoanalyst may also face negative transference in treatment with patients, which refers to aggressive affects, definitions that would also be taken by Lacan who criticised Ego-psychology for defining transference simply in terms of a range of affects. Lacan explained that transference does not refer to any mysterious property of affect in patients, and even when it reveals itself under the appearance of emotion, it only acquires meaning by the virtue of that very precise dialectical moment in which it is produced; that is to say that transference with patients often manifests itself in the form of strong affects, such as love and hate, but it does not consist of such emotions, it is part of the structure of the intersubjective relationship of patients in praxis with the psychoanalyst at that very moment. Lacan saw the Symbolic aspect of transference, which is repetition, as a feature that helped the treatment of patients since it reveals the meaningful signifiers of the personal history of Subjects, while the Imaginary aspect (love and hate) during treatment acts as resistance to psychoanalytic praxis.

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Jean-Martin Charcot (1825 – 1893) / Charcot first began studying hysteria after creating a special ward for non-insane females with “hystero-epilepsy”. He discovered two distinct forms of hysteria among these women: minor hysteria and major hysteria. His interest in hysteria and hypnotism “developed at a time when the general public was fascinated in ‘animal magnetism’ and ‘mesmerization'”, which was later revealed to be a method of inducing hypnosis.
Charcot argued vehemently against the widespread medical and popular prejudice that hysteria was rarely found in men, presenting several cases of traumatic male hysteria. He taught that due to this prejudice these “cases often went unrecognised, even by distinguished doctors” and could occur in such models of masculinity as railway engineers or soldiers. Charcot’s analysis, in particular his view of hysteria as an organic condition which could be caused by trauma, paved the way for understanding neurological symptoms arising from industrial-accident or war-related traumas.

In 1885, Freud received a modest grant that allowed him to go to Paris to study with Jean-Martin Charcot for 4 and half months. During that time he not only observed Charcot’s method of hypnosis [which he never managed to master as Charcot did] but also attended his lectures, learning about the master’s views on the importance of unresolved sexual problems in the underlying causality of hysteria. When Freud returned to Vienna, he gave a report of his work with Charcot to the medical society, but its cold reception left him with resentment that affected his future interactions with the entrenched medical establishment and its rigid and reductionist methods at understanding and solving the problems of the mind.

Freud continued his work with Breuer on hypnosis and catharsis, but gradually abandoned the former in favour of the latter, being not very gifted with hypnotic techniques, but also for 3 major reasons regarding its effectiveness as a treatment with general applicability. First, not everyone can be hypnotised; hence its usefulness is limited to a select group. Second, some patients refuse to believe what they revealed under hypnosis, prompting Freud to conclude that the patient must be aware during the step-by-step process of discovering memories hidden from their accessible consciousness. Third, when one set of symptoms were alleviated under hypnotic suggestibility, new symptoms often emerged. Freud and Breuer were moving in separate directions, and Freud’s increasing emphasis on the primacy of sexuality as the key to psychoneurosis contributed to their break. Nevertheless, in 1895 they published Studies on Hysteria, often cited as the first work of the psychoanalytic movement, although it sold only 626 copies during the following 13 years – perhaps due to the lack of sophistication and interest in the workings of the mind at that particular point in history, or the level of the academic discussions that may not have been adequate for the intellect of the average mind at the time.

Freud’s preferred method of treatment, catharsis, involves engaging with patients and encouraging them to speak of anything that comes [occupies] their mind, regardless of how discomforting or embarrassing it might be. This “free association” took place in a relaxed atmosphere, usually on the classic psychologist couch in a reclined position to promote comfort. The main reason behind the logic of catharsis and free association is that – like hypnosis – it would allow hidden thoughts and memories to manifest in consciousness. However, in contrast, to the method of hypnosis, the patient would be aware of these emerging recollections. Another ongoing process during free association is “transference”, which involves emotionally laden experiences that allow the patient to relieve earlier, repressed episodes. Since the psychoanalyst is often part of the transference process [as mentioned earlier where the repressed emotions are often redirected onto] and is often the object of his patients’ emotions, Freud recognised transference as a powerful tool to assist patients in resolving sources of anxiety. Lacan proposed that it is important to also understand that although the existence of transference plays an important part for psychoanalytic treatment, it is not enough by itself, it is also necessary for the psychoanalyst to deal with the transference in a unique way, this is what differentiates true psychoanalysis from suggestion because the psychoanalyst refuses to use the power given to him by the transference. Lacan believed like any other interpretation, the analyst must use all his “art” in deciding if and when to interpret the transference and must above all avoid gearing his interpretations exclusively to interpreting the transference; the analyst must know exactly what he wants to achieve by such an interpretation and it should not rectify his patients’ relationship to the vague concept of “reality”, but instead maintain analytic dialogue. Transference is the displacement of affect from one idea to another and Freud viewed it as a positive factor that helps the progression of treatment since it provides a way for patients’ history to be faced in the immediacy of the present relationship with the analyst; the way patients relate to the analyst is revealing as they inevitably repeat earlier relationships with other meaningful others [especially those with the parents or parental figures] – this logic is underlined in the theory of attachment of John Bowlby. Jacques Lacan later remarked that if transference with most patients often manifests itself under the appearance of love, it is first and foremost the love of knowledge (savoir) that is concerned. Transference is the attribution of knowledge to the Other, the assumption that the Other is a Subject who “knows” [Le Sujet supposé savoir], and as soon as that “knowing” Subject appears, we have transference. Lacan used Plato’s symposium to illustrate the relationship between analysands (i.e. patients) and the analyst; Alcibiades compared Socrates to a plain box which enclosed a precious object, just as Alcibiades attributes a hidden treasure to Socrates so patients see the object of their desire in the analyst (i.e. “objet petit a” in Lacanian terms). The psychoanalyst must sometimes situate himself/herself as the substitute for objet petit a in the course of psychoanalytic praxis. Lacan also identifies the compulsion to repeat with the symbolic nature of transference, the symbolic determinants of all Subjects, and this helps the progression of treatment by revealing the meaningful signifiers of Subjects’ personal history; he also locates the essence of transference in the Symbolic and not in the Imaginary, although it clearly has powerful imaginary effects.

In 1897, Freud began a self-analysis of his dreams, which evolved into another technique important to the psychoanalytic movement. In the analysis of dreams, Freud distinguish between the manifest content [the actual depiction of the dreams] and the latent content, which represented the symbolic world of the patient. In 1900, he published his major work, The Interpretation of Dreams. Although it sold only 600 copies in eight years, it later went through eight editions in his lifetime. In 1901, he published The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, the book in which his theory began to take shape. Freud argued that the psychology of all people, not only those with neurotic symptoms, could be understood in terms of the unconscious forces in need of resolution.

When his reputation as a pioneer in psychiatry started to grow due to his prolific writings, Freud attracted admiring followers, among them was the notable Carl Jung. In 1909, G. Stanley Hall, president of Clark University, invited him to the United States to give a lecture series as part of that institution’s 20th anniversary. The lectures were published in the American Journal of Psychology and later in book form, serving as an appropriate introduction to psychoanalytic thought for American audiences.

As psychoanalysis was perceived as radical by the medical establishment, early believers form their own associations and found the journals to disseminate their competing views. However, Freud’s demand for strict loyalty to his interpretation of psychoanalysis led to some discord within the movement [perhaps for the betterment of the field itself as many branches kept the fundamental concept of unconscious (Id), pre-conscious (SuperEgo), and conscious (Ego) but fused other theoretical and scientific perspectives to explain and treat a range of mental illnesses]. Carl Jung broke away in 1914, so that by the following year, three rival groups existed within the psychoanalysic movement. Nevertheless, Freud’s views continued to evolve. Impressed by the devastation and tragedy of World War I, Freud came to view aggression, along with sexuality, as a primal instinctual motivation. During the 1920s Freud expanded psychoanalysis from a method of treatment for mentally ill or emotionally disturbed persons to a systematic framework for all human motivation and personality.

In 1923, Freud developed cancer of the jaw and experienced almost constant pain for the remaining 16 years of his life. He underwent 33 operations and had to wear a prosthetic device. Throughout this ordeal however, he continued to write and see patients, although he shunned public appearances. With the rise of Hitler and the anti-Jewish sentiments that arose with his campaigns with the National Socialists, Freud’s works were unfortunately singled out as they were not seen as a scientific endeavour but rather as a Jewish science, and his books were burned throughout Germany. However, Freud resisted fleeing from Vienna. When Germany and Austria were politically united in 1938, the Gestapo began harassing Freud and his family. President Roosevelt indirectly relayed to the German government that Freud is an intellectual who must be protected. Nevertheless, in March 1938 some thugs invaded Freud’s home. Finally, through the efforts of friends, Freud was granted special permission, but only after promising to send for his unsold books in Swiss storage so that they could be destroyed. After he signed a statement saying that he had received good treatment from the police, the German government allowed him to leave for England, where he died shortly after, on September 23, 1939.

 

An overview of the Psychoanalytic System based on Freud’s Research

Before our in-depth examination of psychoanalytic theory, it is important to recognise that the theory has an unusually broad focus. Psychoanalysis contains a theory of personality, but it also offers theoretical tools for understanding culture, society, art and literature. It is also a clinical theory that aspires to explain the nature and origins of mental disorders, and that is associated with an approach to their treatment. To give some more sense to Freud’s breadth, consider that he wrote on topics as diverse as the meaning of dreams and jokes, the origins of religion, Shakespeare’s plays, the psychology of groups, homosexuality, the causes of phobias and obsessions, and much more besides. Even as a theory of personality, psychoanalysis is primarily an account of the processes and mechanisms of the mind, rather than an account of individual differences.

In addition to its breadth of focus, the psychoanalytic theory has many distinct components that have also been modified and explored by a range of skilled psychoanalysts, making it hard to integrate into a single unitary model of the mind since they are inter-connected in complex ways.

Freud’s views evolved continually throughout his long career in the collective result of his extensive writings as an elaborate system of personality development. Personality was described in terms of an energy system that seeks an equilibrium of forces. This homeostatic model of human personality was determined by the constant attempt to identify appropriate ways to discharge instinctual energies, which originate in the depths of the unconscious. The structure of personality, according to the psychoanalytic model consists of a dynamic interchange of activities energised by forces that are present in the person at birth. This homeostatic model was consistent with the prevailing views of 19th-century science, which saw the mechanical relations of physical events studied by physics as the term of scientific inquiry. Freud’s model for psychoanalysis translated physical stimuli to psychic energies or forces and retained an essentially mechanical description of how such forces interact.

As the writings on the dpurb.com website are the foundations for the Organic Theory of Psychological Construction, we are going to be focused not on the later structural model which repositioned the Unconscious, Conscious and Pre-Conscious across the Id, Ego and SuperEgo, but with the first topographic model (1900 – 1905) adopted by both Carl Jung and Jacques Lacan. This model, has been more influential and is more flexible in accommodating competing view points about the structure of mental life across individuals.

The topographic model refers to the levels or layers of mental life. Freud proposed that mental content – ideas, wishes, emotions, impulses, memories, and so on – can be located at one of the three levels: the Conscious (later known as the Ego), the Preconscious (SuperEgo) and the Unconscious (Id), . It is important however, to understand that Freud use these terms to describe degrees of awareness and unawareness, but also to refer to distinct mental systems with their own distinct laws of operation. Unconscious cognition is categorically different from Conscious cognition, in addition to operating on mental content that exists beneath awareness. To convey this point, the three levels of the topographic model was referred to as the ‘systems’ Cs., Pcs., and Ucs.

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The Topographic Model


The Conscious (which would later be known as Ego with a partial unconscious side, and also “Le Moi” in Lacanian Theory)

Consciousness is merely the proverbial ‘tip of the iceberg’ of mental activity. The contents of the Conscious are simply the small fraction of things that the person is currently paying attention to: objects perceived, events recalled, the stream of thought that we engage in as a running commentary on everyday life. [This is the main focus of most other branches of Psychology such as Biological Psychology and Cognitive Psychology]

The Preconscious (which would later be known as the Super-Ego, le “Grand Autre” in Lacanian Theory)

Of course, not all of all mental life happens under the spotlight of awareness and attention. There are many things to which we could readily pay attention to but do not, such as ideas or plans we have set aside or memories of what we were doing last week or yesterday. Without any great effort these things or events, which in the present are out of consciousness, can be made conscious. Those form the domain of the Preconscious.

The boundary between the Conscious (Ego) and the Preconscious (Super-Ego) is a permeable one. Thoughts, memories and perceptions can cross without great difficulty according to the momentary needs and intentions of the individual. They also share a common mode of cognition, which in psychoanalysis is known as the ‘secondary process’. Secondary process cognition is the sort of everyday, more or less rational thinking than generally obeys the laws of logic.

The Unconscious (which would later be known as the Id, L’inconscient or the “Ça” in Lacanian Theory)

The Unconscious (Id) is perhaps one of the most celebrated theoretical concepts in psychoanalysis’ legacy. However, Freud did not invent or discover the unconscious as is sometimes claimed – versions of the unconscious had been floating around intellectual circles for some time – but Freud gave it a much deeper theoretical analysis than anyone before him. Freud distinguished between mental contents and processes that are descriptively unconscious and those that are dynamically unconscious. The descriptively unconscious simply exists outside consciousness as a matter of fact, and therefore include Preconscious material that can become conscious if it is attended to. Freud’s crucial contribution was to argue that some thoughts, memories, wishes and mental processes are not only descriptively unconscious, but also cannot be made conscious because of a countervailing force keeps them out of awareness. In short, mental life that is dynamically unconscious is a subset of what is descriptively unconscious, one whose entry to consciousness is actively thwarted. The Freudian unconscious corresponds to the dynamic unconscious in this sense.

Freud held that the Unconscious contains a large but unacknowledged proportion of mental life that operates according to its own psychological laws. The barrier between the Unconscious (Id) and the Preconscious (SuperEgo) is much more fortified and difficult to penetrate than the border between the Preconscious (Super-Ego) and Conscious (Ego). In addition, it is policed by a mental function that Freud likened to a “censor”. The censor’s role is to determine whether the contents of the Unconscious would be threatening / objectionable or socially unacceptable to the person if they became conscious. If the censor judges them to be dangerous in this type, the person will experience anxiety without knowing what caused it. In this case, these thoughts become wishes and so on, and will be normally be repelled back into the Unconscious, in a process referred to asRepression” [it is fundamental and very important to understand that Repression is something else than a conscious judgement which rejects and chooses]. Unconscious material, by Freud’s account, has an intrinsic force propelling it to become conscious. Consequently, repression required an active opposing force to resist it, just as effort is required to prevent a surf board made of white foam to rise to the surface when it is submerged in the ocean. Under the constant pressure of Unconscious material bubbling towards the Preconscious, the censor cannot possibly bar entry to everything. Instead, it allows some Unconscious material to cross over the barrier after it has been transformed or disguised in some way so as to be less objectionable and more socially acceptable. This crossing might take the form of a relatively harmless impulsive behaviour, or in the form of private fantasy, the telling of a joke, or in a slip of the tongue, where the person says something ‘unintentionally’ that reveals to the trained eye and mind the repressed concerns and wishes [such as that of a psychoanalyst – as Jacques Lacan proposed: repression can take the form of a metaphor and the skilled psychoanalyst must be able to decipher a chain of clues with a great deal of verbal dexterity where crossword puzzles may help in training. Lacan also viewed the Grand Autre (Preconscious/Superego) as the discourse of the Unconscious]. Psychoanalysis focuses on how phenomena such as these can be interpreted, the process that involves uncovering the unconscious material that is concealed within their “disguises” [i.e. forms].

To Freud, dreams represent a particularly good example of the disguised expression of the Unconscious wishes. They offered, he wrote, “the royal road to the Unconscious”. One reason for this is that during sleep, the sensor relaxes and allows more repressed Unconscious material to cross the barrier. This material, transformed into a less threatening form by a process referred to as the “dream-work, then takes the shape of a train of images in the peculiar form of consciousness that we call dreaming. It is believed, that each dream has a “latent content” of Unconscious wishes that is transformed into the “manifest content” (or dream narrative) of the experienced dream. In psychoanalytic praxis with patients, the interpretations of dreams takes the same road, but in reverse, in order to decode the transformations rendered by the dream work so as to bring out the latent content based on the manifest content. Freud described the “latent contents” as made up of “latent thoughts“, a term that was always used in the plural form and never precisely described, but the context of its usage seems to suggest that it connoted representations, affects, wishes and conflictual patterns that are all profoundly marked by infantilism and fantasy [e.g. having super powers and flying while dressed in a nylon costume]. Latent thoughts also contain whatever supplies the dream’s “raw material”: the days residues, somatic sensations, and excitations that directly impact instinctual impulses. The transformation carried out by the dream work has to allow the Unconscious wishes during the wake state to be fulfilled during the dream while concealing the elements of threat they contain. If the latent content is not concealed sufficiently through the “dream-work” process, the sleeper will register the threat and be awoken [sometimes in shock and sweat], and to avoid this shock the dream-work may alter the identities of the people represented in a wish, for example, if an individual has an Unconscious wish to harm a loved one, the dream work might produce a dream in which the individual instead harms someone else or in which the loved one is harmed by another person, neutralised in this way, the unconscious wishes find conscious expression in the dream. Freud explained that “latent thoughts” were generally preconscious; they are used by the dream work because they are a relay point and medium for unconscious cathexes [i.e. objects (or ideas) that have a quantity of psychical energy attached to them; to say that an object or idea is “libidinally” cathected means that it is charged with sexual energy deriving from sources internal to a patient’s psyche; the Id (Unconscious) or the instinctual pole of personality is said to be be the source all types of cathexes]. Dreams also showcase the distinct form of thinking that operates in the Unconscious: Primary processthinking, which unlike the secondary process than governs the Conscious (Ego) and Preconscious (Super-Ego), shows no respect for the laws of logic and rationality. In primary process thinking, something can stand for something else, including its opposite, and can even represent two distinct things at once. Contradictory thoughts can coexist and there is no orderly sense of the passage of time or of causation. Basically, primary process thinking captures the magical, chaotic qualities of many dreams, the mysterious images that seems somehow significant, the fractured storylines, the impossible and disconnected events. To Freud, dreams are not simply night-time curiosities, but reveal how the greater part of our mental life proceeds beneath the shallows of conscience.

Foundations of the later “Structural” model: concepts to consider and synthesise with the Topographic Model

We are now going to have a look at the later version of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory where the Unconscious [this time referred to as the Id] is still the fundamental concept, however decades later in 1923, another 3-way dissection of the mind was proposed. This time Freud called it the Psychic Apparatus and the 3-way dissection of the mind was defined in terms of distinct mental functions instead of levels of awareness and their associated processes.

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The Structural Model of the Psychic apparatus

In original German, the terms Es (Id), das Ich (Ego) and Über-ich (Super-Ego) were used. As we take a look at these structures, it is important to remember that they were not proposed as real underlying entities, but rather as a sort of conceptual shorthand for talking about different kinds of mental processes. Our aim here is to synthesise the logical concepts of the Structural Model with the earlier Topographic Model of the Unconscious (Id), the Preconscious (Super-Ego) and the Conscious (Ego), however although it is convenient to talk about the Id, Super-Ego and Ego “doing” such-and-such or being “in charge of” so-and so, it is important to remember that they were not intended to refer to distinct sub-personalities within the individual.

The Id (Unconscious, das Es / Inconscient / Le Ça)

The Id [completely/dynamically unconscious] represents the part of the personality that is closely linked to the instinctual drives that are the fundamental sources of motivation in Freudian theory. According to Freud, these drives are chiefly sexual and aggressive in nature. On one hand we have the “life instincts” concerned with preserving life and binding together new “vital unities”, the foremost expression of this concern being loving sexual union. Opposed to these life instincts, on the other side, we have the set of “death instincts”, whose corresponding concern is with breaking down life and destroying connections, its goal is a state of entropy or nirvana, where there is a complete absence of any form of tension [motivation] – the most obvious form of these instincts were aggressiveness expressed inward towards the self or outward towards others. Freud proposed that these instinctual biological drives were powered by a reservoir of instinctual “psychic energy” grounded in basic biological processes; the sexual form of this energy was referred to as libido. Although the unconscious Id is a biological underpinning, its contents are manifested in psychological phenomena such as wishes, ideas, intentions, and impulses. These phenomena are therefore sometimes described as “instinct- derivatives”. Some of these phenomena are innate, whereas others have been consigned to the Id by the process of repression. All of the Id’s contents, however are unconscious. Freud proposed that the Id operated according to what he called the “pleasure principle” which states that the Id’s urges strive to obtain pleasure and avoid “unpleasure” without delay. Unpleasure results from increased accumulated excitation and pleasure results from its reduction. Lacan used the term “Jouissance” to describe an excessive quantity of excitation that has the potential to take the Subject to that extreme point where the erotic borders upon death and where subjectivity risks extinction; the “pleasure principle” tries to prevent such savage scenarios [To Lacan, the pleasure principle is a commandment — which can be phrased — “Enjoy as little as possible.” The pleasure principle leads the subject from signifier to signifier, by generating as many signifiers as are required to maintain at as low a level as possible the tension that regulates the whole functioning of the psychic apparatus]. One of Lacan’s contribution to the debate on feminity advances the concept of a specifically feminine jouissance which goes beyond the phallus: a jouissance of the order of the infinite like mystical ecstacy where women may experience this without being conscious about it. Therefore the pleasure principle serves to reduce tension and to return the psyche to a state of equilibrium or constancy. Pleasure, in Freud’s understanding, represented a discharge of libido or instinctual energy which is accompanied by a release of tension. The Id is not in contact with the rules or structures of individuals’ environment [i.e. the Symbolic rules of civilised society], but rather relates to the other structures of personality, the Ego & the Superego [conscience] that in turn must mediate between the Id’s raw instincts and the external world; immune from reality and social convention, the Id which is guided by the pleasure principle, seeks to gratify instinctual libidinal needs [that are simply biological] either directly through a sexual experience, or indirectly by dreaming or fantasizing. The latter, indirect gratification was called the primary process [governed by the pleasure principle] and has its own “rules” [e.g. allowing contradictions in logic] that differ from Ego functions and conscious thought. The exact object of direct gratification in the pleasure principle is assumed to be determined by the psychosexual stage of the individual’s development [as explained in 3rd part of the essay on The 3 Major Theories of Development], however the legitimacy and precision of this theory has been questioned and revised over the years and it gave way to the more empirical Theory of Attachment of John Bowlby. In short, the Id strives to satisfy its drives enabling immediate, pleasurable release of instinctual energy. It is the most primitive and least accessible structure of personality. As originally described by Freud, the Id is psychic energy of an irrational nature, and in the form of libido, it can manifest itself and be of a sexual character that is incestuous, uninhibited, savage, irrational and boundless, which instinctually determines unconscious processes. In psychoanalysis, this natural, wild and irrational urge is assumed to be present in all human beings. Elisabeth Roudinesco pointed out that Freud had distinguished that in humans it is the desire for incest and not the horror of it, that eventually leads individuals to forbid themselves from expressing it while also rejecting it; that is to say that in healthy, civilised and psychologically stable individuals with a well developed conscience [i.e. Superego] there is a respect for the symbolic laws that govern human relationships ethically [Lacan proposed that these symbolic structures are primarily governed by language] and which involve abiding by a structure that respects shared social values that sustain a functional human civilisation, i.e. the passage from raw and savage nature [Id] to civilised culture [Super Ego]. Many modern psychoanalysts believe that repression, masturbation and sublimation are inescapable in order to manage the raw and wild instincts of the Id and to channel them in more productive endeavours that are in the best interests of individuals and civilised society.

The Ego (Conscious & partially unconscious, Ich / Le Moi)

The Ego, is a mental function and complicates the picture of immediate gratification that the Id strives for. The Ego, a “psychic agency”, arises over the course of development as the child learns that it is often necessary and desirable to delay gratification. The bottle or breast does not always appear the instant that hunger is first experienced, and sometimes it is better to resist the urge to urinate at the bladder’s first bidding if one is to avoid the unpleasure of wet pants, embarrassment, and a parent’s howls of dismay. The Ego, often called the “executive” of personality because of its role in channeling Id [unconscious] energies into socially acceptable outlets [ego is believed to start developing between the ages of 1 and 2 as the child confronts the environment]. The Ego crystallises out this emerging capacity for delay, and in time becomes a restraint on the Id’s impatient striving for discharge. However, it cannot be an inflexible restraint. Its task is not to delay the fulfilment of wishes and impulses endlessly, but to determine when and how it would be most sensible or prudent to do so given the demands of the external environment at a particular time. It operates, that is, on the “Reality principle”, which simply requires that the Ego regulate the person’s behaviour in accordance with external conditions [at a given time or place according to certain rules or laws or conventions, and of course this changes as society redefines “reality” in terms of what it acceptable and not]. Freud emphasized that the Ego is not the dominant force in the personality [unlike Ego psychologists in the US state], although he believed it should strive to be. A famous statement of Freud regarding the goal of Psychoanalytic treatment is “Where Id was, there Ego shall be”. By his account, the Ego not only emerges out of the Id in the course of development – beforehand, the infant is pure Id [instinctive and irrational] – but it also derives all of its energy from the Id. Freud had a gift for metaphor, and he likened the Ego’s relation to the Id as a rider’s relation to a wilful horse. The horse [Id] supplies all of the pair’s force, but the rider [Ego] may be able to channel it in a particular direction. Fortunately, this “rider” [Ego] has a repertoire of skills at its disposal. Freud proposed that the Ego could employ a variety of “defence mechanism” in the service of the reality principle. These mechanisms come in a diverse range, and all represent operations that the Ego performs to deal with the threats to the rational expression of the person’s desires, whether from the Super-Ego or the external environment. These Ego defence mechanisms are common processes in everyday mental life, and many of them are carried out by the Ego unconsciously, showing that there is an unconscious part in the Ego. The Ego being governed by the reality principle, is aware of environmental demands and adjusts behaviour so that the instinctual pressures of the id are satisfied in acceptable ways, and the attainment of specific objects to reduce libidinal energy in socially appropriate ways was called the “secondary process” [the “primary process” being the Unconscious (Id)]. Some of the most well known defence mechanisms are denial, isolation of affect, projection, reaction formation, repression and sublimation.

The Super-Ego (Conscious & partially unconscious, Über-ich / Le Surmoi / L’Autre / Le Grand-Autre)

The differentiation of the structures of personality, called the Super-Ego, is believed to start appearing by the age of 5. In contrast to the Id and Ego, which are internal developments of personality, the Super-Ego is an external imposition. That is the Super-Ego is the incorporation of moral standards perceived by the Ego from some agent of authority in the environment, usually an assimilation of the parents’ views as the child develops – both positive and negative aspects of these standards. The Super-Ego’s emergence complicates the task of the Ego in regulating the expression of the Id’s impulses in response to demands and opportunities of the external environment. The Super-Ego represents an early form of conscience, an internalised set of moral values, standards, and ideals. These moral precepts are not the sort of flexible, evolving, reasoned, and discussable rules of conduct that we tend to imagine when we think of adult morality, however, instead they tend to be relatively harsh, absolute and punishing; adult morality as refracted through the immature and fearful mind of a child. The Super-Ego therefore represents the shrill voice of societal rules and restrictions, a voice that condemns and forbids many of the sexual and destructive wishes, impulses and thoughts that emerge from the Id. The positive moral code is the Ego ideal, i.e. a representation of behaviour for the individual to emulate. The conscience embodies the negative aspect of the Super-Ego, and determines which activities are to be taboo. Conduct that violates the dictates of the conscience produces “guilt” in healthy individuals. Hence, the Super-Ego and the Id are in direct conflict, leaving the Ego to mediate. The Ego now becomes the servant of three masters: the Id, the Super-Ego and the External Environment [Societal Rules]. It is now not enough to reconcile what is desired with what is possible under the circumstances because now the Ego also needs to take into consideration what is socially prohibited and impermissible. Instinctual drives must still be satisfied; which is a constant, however the Ego now attempts to satisfy them in a way that is flexibly “realistic” – that is, in the person’s best interests under current conditions – but also “socially” permitted. These prohibitions are often very unreasonable and inflexible, rejecting any expression of the drive with an unconditional “NO”, either because the moral structures of a particular “culture” are intrinsically rigid, atavistic or unsophisticated, or because the individual’s internalisation of these structures is simply black-and-white, without any grey area to compromise for an adequate and acceptable form of expression of the drive. Thus, the Super-Ego imposes a pattern of conduct that results in some degree of self-control through an internalised system of rewards and punishments.

Given the demands that it faces, the Ego can either find a way to express the Id’s desires successfully, or its attempts to arbitrate can fail. In this case, psychological trouble is likely to follow. If the Id wins the struggle, and the desire finds expression in a more-or-less unaltered and primitive form, the person may experience guilt or shame: the Super-Ego’s sign that it has been violated, and may also have to pay the price of a short-sighted, impulsive action. If on the other hand, the Super-Ego wins the struggle and dominates a person excessively, that individual may become overly rigid, rule-bound, uncreative, unquestioning, anxious and joyless. The forbidden desires may well go “underground” and manifest themselves in symptoms such as anxieties, compulsions or in occasional “out-of-character” impulsive behaviour or emotion.

Intrapsychic Conflict: the Roots of Personality

The major motivational constructs of Freud’s theory of personality was derived from instincts, defined as biological forces that release mental energy. Hence, from the account of the Unconscious (Id), the Conscious [and partly unconscious, Ego) and the Preconscious (Super-Ego), it implies that conflict within the mind’s opposing forces is inevitable, because the demands of society – or “civilisation” – are generally opposed to the natural instincts and drives of human beings. Indeed, intrapsychic conflict is one of the fundamental and defining concepts of psychoanalysis. Conflict within the mind is at the root of personality structure, mental disorder, and most psychological phenomena [e.g. artistic expressions of various forms]. The goal of personality is to reduce the energy drive through some activity acceptable to the constraints of the Super-Ego [Preconscious].

Freud classed inborn instincts to life (eros) and death (thanatos) drives. Life instincts involve self-preservation and include hunger, sex and thirst. The libido is that specific form of energy through which life instincts arise in the Id. The death instinct (Thanatos) may be directed either inwards, as in suicide or masochism, or outwards, as in hate and aggression. The notion that personality equilibrium must be maintained by discharging energy in acceptable ways, leads to anxiety which plays a central role. Essentially the view is that anxiety is a diffuse fear in anticipation of unmet desires and future evils. Given the primitive character of Unconscious (Id) instincts, it is unlikely that primary goals are ever an acceptable means of drive reduction; rather they are apt to give rise to continual anxiety in personality. Freud described three general forms of anxiety.

(i) Reality (or Objective) Anxiety
(ii) Neurotic Anxiety
(iii) Moral Anxiety

Reality or objective anxiety, is a fear of the real environmental danger [e.g. heights, depth, fire, etc] with an obvious cause; such fear is appropriate as it has survival value for the organism. Neurotic anxiety comes about from the fear of potential punishment inherent in the goal of instinctual gratification. It is a fear of punishment for expressing impulsive desires. Finally, moral anxiety is the fear of the conscience through guilt or shame in healthy individuals. In order to cope with anxiety, the Ego develops defence mechanisms, which are elaborate, largely unconscious processes that allow a person to avoid unpleasantness and anxiety-provoking events. For example, an individual may avoid facing anxiety by self-denial, conversion [whereby the anxiety caused by repressed impulses and feelings are ‘converted’ into a physical complaint such as a cough or feelings of paralysis], or projection, or may repress thoughts that are a source of anxiety into the unconscious. Many defence mechanisms are described in the psychoanalytic literature, which generally agrees that although defence mechanisms are typical ways of handling anxiety and maintaining a sense of psychological stability, they must be recognised and controlled by the individual himself/herself for psychological health. Lacan sees “defence” as being on the side of the Subject [being stable symbolic structures of subjectivity].

Denial

Refusing to acknowledge that some unpleasant or threatening event has occurred; common in grief reactions

Isolation of Affect

Mentally severing an idea from its threatening emotional associations so that it can be held without experiencing its unpleasantness; common in obsessional people

Projection

Disavowing one’s impulses thoughts and attributing them to another person; common in paranoia

Reaction formation

Unconsciously developing wishes or thoughts that are opposite to those that one finds undesirable in oneself; common in people with a rigid moral code

Repression

Repression is one of the most basic concepts in psychoanalysis. It involves repelling threatening thoughts from consciousness, to confine them in the unconscious.

Freud distinguished between: (i) primal repression [a “mythical” forgetting of something that was never conscious, an ordinary “psychical act” by which the unconscious is first constituted. Lacan saw this as a structural feature of language, its necessary incompleteness, the impossibility of ever formulating the “truth about truth” (because human language is limited and can never capture and completely express the Unconscious), the symbolic signifying chain of the unconscious where linguistic discourse originates];

and (ii) secondary repression [concrete acts of repression whereby some idea or perception that was once conscious is expelled from the conscious (E.g. motivated forgetting; common in post-traumatic reactions). Lacan saw secondary repression as a specific psychical act by which a signifier is elided from the signifying chain, it is structured like a metaphor and involves the return of the repressed, since repression does not destroy the ideas or memories but merely confines them to the unconscious, the repressed material is liable to return in distorted form, in symptoms, dreams, slips of the tongue, etc. To Lacan, it is always the signifier that is repressed, never the signified, which corresponds to Freud’s view that what is repressed is not the “affect” (which can only be displaced or transformed) but the “ideational representative” of the drive. Lacan proposed that repression is what distinguishes neurosis from other clinical structures – psychotics foreclose, perverts disavow and only neurotics repress]

Lacan maintained that it is very important not to confuse repression with the conscious judgement of a Subject that rejects and chooses.

Sublimation

The concept of Sublimation was first introduced by Freud in 1905 in his essays on Sexual theory. Sublimation is the act of unconsciously deflecting raw, irrational and uninhibited sexual and aggressive impulses/drives towards different, socially acceptable expressions and human activity [e.g. artistic creations, sports and intellectual work] that has no connection to sexuality but gets its power from the psychic energy in the sexual drive [la pulsion sexuelle]. Sublimation thus works as a socially acceptable escape valve for excess libidinal (sexual) energy which would otherwise have to be discharged in socially unacceptable forms [e.g. perverse behaviour] or in neurotic symptoms. This means that complete sublimation would spell the end of all perversion and neurosis. While Freud believed complete sublimation might be possible for some particularly refined or cultured people, Lacan pointed out that absolute/complete sublimation is not possible for human beings, [since all healthy humans with a healthy brain, a functional hypothalamus and sexual organs will experience sexual urges and feelings] and that perverse sexuality to satisfy the drive is possible and accessible (e.g. prostitution, perverse behaviour, private fantasies, etc) but must be sublimated because it is prohibited or badly viewed by civilised society and is also not in the individual’s best interests. Lacan follows Freud in emphasising the fact that the element of social recognition is central to the concept of sublimation, since it is only when the drives are diverted towards this civilised dimension of shared social values that they can be said to be sublimated. This dimension of shared social values allows Lacan to tie in the concept of sublimation with Ethics. [Note: Perversion to Lacan is not simply a savage and grotesque natural means of discharging the libido, but a highly structured relation (reaction) to the manifestation of the sexual drives [instinct/need], which are in themselves in the form of language in civilised people rather than simple biological urges/drives. Lacan also revised Freud’s initial view that sublimation simply involves the redirection of the drive to a different (non-sexual object), but explains that the initial object that the drive was directed at does not change but only its position in the structure of fantasy [for the Subject] changes, i.e. only the nature of the object to which the drive was directed changes not the object itself; this is made possible because the drive is “already deeply marked by the articulation of the signifier”. In the average psyche, the sublime quality of an object is thus not due to any intrinsic property of the object itself, but simply an effect of the object’s position in the symbolic structure of fantasy for a particular Subject.]

Table 1: A List of The Most Common Defence Mechanisms

Freud placed great emphasis on the development of the child because he was convinced that neurotic disturbances manifested by his adult patients had origins in childhood experiences. And as the last model proposed by Freud, the Genetic Model, explains, the psychosexual stages are characterised by different sources of primary gratification determined by the pleasure principle. Freud basically wrote that the child is essentially autoerotic. The genetic model has been previously described in the 3rd section of the essay, The 3 Major Theories of Childhood Development. [Please refer for more details]

However, the genetic model in psychoanalysis has been extensively revised and many of the concepts have given way to other theories [such as the Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment] nowadays that consider other sides in the development of personality. Other theories of peronality have also shown how personality continues to evolve and only stabilises around the age of 30. However, the genetic model of Freud laid the groundwork for other theorist such as John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth who based their guiding principles to uncover the theory of attachment on pre-oedipal developments first mentioned by Sigmund Freud. These attachment types have been discussed in the Essay, The 3 Major Theories of Childhood Development, and although it may not be completely true for all people, the logic behind the psychosexual stages should always be considered to some extent when analysing clients along with attachment types – not to forget to assess the self-reflective abilities of the person, since this has been proven to have more impact on self-adjustment related to adult personality, emotional intelligence and attachment types.

 

The Relationship between the Topographic Model and the Structural Model

It is important to assimilate the knowledge from the structural model and synthesise them with the topographic model. It can be seen that although the later model is conceptually distinct from the first model, they do map onto one another to some degree. The content of the Id, of course, lies firmly within the Unconscious, and is forbidden from entry to the consciousness unless disguised in the form of dreams, slips of the tongue, symptoms, and so on. However the Ego is not completely conscious unlike many ego psychologist may claim along with cognitive psychologist, as it has a strong Unconscious component, given that a great deal of psychological defence mechanisms are conducted instantly out of awareness, and hence is sometimes inaccessible to introspection by the patient – hence requiring a skilled psychoanalyst to guide therapy and treatment. The Super-Ego also has an Unconscious fraction, reflecting as it does and often “primitive”, and irrationally punishing through rigid morality – at least as much as it reflects our reasoned beliefs and principles. Although many concepts have been revised and alternative treatments relating to mental illness have also been devised by other schools of thought in psychology, the sheer complexity and uniqueness of the psychoanalytic system has formed a remarkable achievement. Indeed, Freud even had to invent new terminology to express his thoughts, and these terms have become an accepted part of our vocabulary.

Psychisme: Les théories de Freud ont-elles évolué? (2013)

Psychoanalytic Evidence: From the perspective of Empirical Methodology (Mainstream Science)

Freud ardently believed along with all good psychoanalysts that psychoanalysis is a science, not an empirical science, but a science of the mind that slices not with blades or questionnaires, but with concepts through the linguistic and philosophical realm of a patients subjective reality. It is also fair to consider that Freud himself was an accomplished biological scientist before he developed psychoanalytic theories. Biological ideas are interwoven in his work, as is his concepts of drive, instinct, and psychic energy. Nevertheless, the methods that he used to obtain evidence for the psychoanalytic theory were very different from the reductionist and empirical methods used by the government institutions, laboratory scientists or the statistical psychologists with their quantified questionnaires exploring basic “traits”. As an anatomist and physiologist, Freud made systematic observations of living and dead organisms, and conducted controlled empirical experiments. Hence, he must have come to the same conclusion as ourselves, which is, mental life cannot be fully explained by the mechanical explanations, although a lot can be learnt from understanding the physiology of the brain, but the “software” itself, that generates the mind, is an entity that empirical science comes short in terms of its methodologies. Hence, as a psychoanalyst, Freud introspected and speculated about his own mental life, and listened closely to what his patients told him during sessions of psychoanalytic therapy. It is quite clear, that dissecting an eel is completely different from dissecting a personality with all its complexities, and that observing the stream of one’s consciousness or another’s speech [i.e. discourse] is very different from conducting a controlled experiment with observable variables. So, psychoanalytic evidence is clearly unlike the evidence on which most “hard physical sciences” are based.

However, it is important to understand that the critique of psychoanalysis from the methodology of empirical science may not be rational. Because psychoanalysis was never intended to be a mechanical “hard” science, although it learns from neuroscience and cognitive-psychology of certain very basic aspects of the physiology of the brain and its functions. These questions about Empirically Supported Treatment (EST) came to the forefront of psychotherapy literature in 1993, when Division 12 of the American Psychological Association worked to publish a list of criteria for what constitutes EST (Chambless, et al., 1996; Task Force on Promotion and Dissemination of Psychological Procedures, 1995; Taskforce on Psychological Intervention Guidelines, 1995). A list of treatments were published that we empirically supported and very few psychodynamic treatments were included, nor were interpersonal or humanistic therapy included. Not surprisingly, these guidelines and list became anything but unifying for psychotherapists and psychotherapy researchers.

Freud Dessin

Westen, Novotny and Thompson-Brenner (2004) made some important critiques of the literature on ESTs. They noted that ESTs are often designed for a single, Axis I disorder, and patients are screened to maximise their homogeneity and to minimise their diagnostic comorbidity. Treatments are manualised and brief, and outcomes are assessed often by reductions in the primary symptom reduction for that particular disorder. Westen et al. suggested that EST researchers always tend to assume the following:

  • Psychopathology is highly malleable
  • Most patients can be treated for a single problem or disorder
  • Psychiatric disorders can be treated without much attention to underlying personality factors
  • Experimental methodology used to develop ESTs has ecological validity in clinical practice

Westen et al. (2004) basically contended that these assumptions are not valid, not to say wrong. There is considerable diagnostic comorbidity, making most patients ineligible to participate in EST research trials. There also is considerable stability of psychopathology of psychiatric symptoms, even after “successful” completion of EST. And clinicians of all theoretical orientations see patients well beyong the time allotted in treatment manuals (see Morrison, Bradley, & Westen, 2003; Thompson-Brenner, Glass, & Westen, 2003; Westen & Morrison, 2001 for an excellent review of these issues).

Norcross (2002a) offered an additional perspective on why the EST literature has been so controversial. First, he explained that EST research rarely addresses the fact “that the therapist is a person, however much he may strive to make himself an instrument of the patient’s treatment” (Orlinsky & Howard, 1977, p.567 as cited by Norcross 2002a). This idea has been demonstrate very well in empirical literature. For example, Wampold (2001) concluded in a meta-analysis of psychotherapy studies that the qualities of the therapist play a much stronger role in the outcome of treatment that does the treatment itself. Second, Norcross stated that therapy research has savagely neglected the important question of studying the therapy relationship. Instead, the focus has been more on the application and mastery of a technique (not a relationship). Third, who the patient is affects treatment outcome. As attention has been directed towards the study and implementation of psychotherapy techniques to different categories of disorders, small attention has been given to the patient characteristics that affect outcome, such as comorbid conditions, capacity for insight, and a history of interpersonal relatedness.

Psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapies certainly are related to these issues. Analytic and Dynamic models of therapy are very focused on the behaviour and qualities of the therapist, with special attention to issues of the therapeutic alliance, neutrality, transference, and countertransference.

Freud's Couch at Freud Museum London

The couch that started everything: Freud’s psychoanalytic couch at the Freud Museum in London

It is important to also consider that one’s training in how to conduct psychoanalytic or psychodynamic psychotherapy is focused on how therapists present themselves and how patients respond to this. Such a focus automatically puts the therapeutic alliance at the centre of attention, something that has taken on more interest over the years (Fairbairn, 1952; Greenberg, 1986, 2001a; Pine, 1998; Stolorow, Atwood & Brandchaft, 1994; Wallerstein, 2002). Psychoanalysts have also recognised that the personality and qualities of the patient affect how therapy should be conducted (e.g., Gabbard, 2000, 2004); that is, one approach to working with patients does not fit all patients. Furthermore, many psychotherapists have been reluctant to allow their therapy relationships to be subject to empirical investigation (Bornstein, 2005), as a form of respect for the privacy of their clients, making it very hard to provide more objective data that the support the validity of psychoanalysis. In contrast, other schools of thoughts derived from the behavioural school and the medical fields have very willingly offered their data for empirical investigations.

Often accompanying this philosophical criticism regarding scientific testability is a factual criticism that psychoanalysts have seldom tried to test their theories scientifically. This criticism may have some truth to it, however many psychoanalysts have responded to the call for more scientific inquiry by asserting that it is unnecessary and that clinical evidence of the treatments curing mental illness of various types is quite sufficient.

FIGURE B - SUCESS RATES WITH ADULTS & CHILDREN

Success Rates of Psychotherapy with adults and children, and Therapy from other schools of thought [traditions] based on Effect Sizes from Meta-analyses / Source: dpurb.com

Other psychoanalysts have argued that scientific support for their theories is irrelevant. Psychoanalysis, they suggest, is not an empirical science, but a science of subjective experience and linguistic dissection, so it is inappropriate to judge it by the mainstream reductionist empirical scientific standards of modern day academia.

Many see psychoanalysis as a “hermeneutic” discipline, an approach to interpretation which is rather like a school of literary criticism or biblical scholarship. To them, psychoanalytic theory is a way to decipher mental life, an interpretative technique for uncovering meaning. Its goal, they say, is to understand psychological phenomena in terms of their underlying reasons rather than explaining them as objective science in terms of causes. Some have gone so far as to suggest that the goal of psychoanalytic understanding is not to ascertain literal or scientific truth – for example, what “truly happened in a person’s past to make them the way they are today” – but instead to formulate “narrative truth”, a story that gives coherent meaning to the person’s experiences [from their perspective in terms of what matters to them] (Spence, 1980).

LePromeneurSolitaire-dpurb-com-1200

Photographie: Danny D’Purb © 2018

What Jacques Lacan clearly meant by a complete reconstitution of a subject’s history as the aim of psychoanalysis, is that “history” is not a simple objective sequence of past events, but the present synthesis of the past as it is subjectively perceived and interpreted by the continously evolving Subject in his/her uniqueness. Lacan’s used the term après coup” [retroaction, i.e. how the present affects the past] and pointed out that linguistic discourse itself is structured by retroaction, since only when the last word of a sentence is uttered or read that the initial words gain meaning; with retroaction also comes “anticipation“, which refers to the way in which the future also affects the present, and like retroaction, anticipation also structures linguistic discourse, since the first words of a sentence are ordered in anticipation of the words to come. Jacques Lacan also pointed out how in the “psyche” [mind], present events affect past events [i.e. retroaction]; because the past is simply a set of stories in the mind of an individual that is edited and reinterpreted in the light of new experiences and information of the constantly evolving Subject in his/her uniqueness; most healthy individuals with desires, sculpt the stories of their past experiences to make it work towards their development; they take a particular perspective to extract meaning and significance from their past experiences [in terms of what matters to them and what does not] so that they contribute towards their development, progress and desires [See the Essay: The Concept of Self]. Lacan also pointed out that psychoanalysis is not concerned by what most empiricists would call the “real past” as an objective sequence of events devoid of subjective signification, but rather with the way these experiences exist in the psyche/mind of a particular individual and how he/she interprets (i.e. perceives) and reports them in order to find out what holds significance for a particular Subject and what does not.

We can thus conclude that there will always be something “uniquely special” about psychoanalytic evidence, for all its empirical flaws. A completed psychoanalytic treatment may sometimes [depending on the type of patient] occupy four or five sessions each week over a period of several years, amounting to perhaps 1000 hours in which the analyst listens closely to the patient’s innermost thoughts. These thoughts, often too intimate and raw to be shared even with loved ones, range widely over the patient’s personal history and lived experiences. They are recounted in a wide variety of mood-states and frames of mind. These millions of spoken words and feelings may not represent the kind of systematically and objectively collected data on which the scientific theory of personality [that the hardcore empiricist loves] can easily be built. However, it is hard to declare that the analyst does not understand the patient’s personality better than someone who might interpret the patient’s responses, dashed off in a matter of minutes, to a trait questionnaire. Indeed, there is something valuable about psychanalytic evidence, but it is very hard to build an empirical theory out of it since we are not dealing with matters of hard sciences [e.g. biology, medecine, physics, chemistry, astrophysics, material science, astronomy, etc], but the mind of human beings that embodies their whole existence and worlds.

 

Empirical Evidence for the Existence of Unconscious Processes

More and more psychoanalytic thinkers and sympathisers are starting to find creative ways to test psychoanalytic hypotheses in rigorous empirical ways to conform with academic science, despite all the difficulties that this involves. This research is now very extensive, and therefore difficult to summarise. However, a broad conclusion can be drawn from it: specific Freudian claims typically fail to receive experimental support but do work in treating mentally ill patients in clinical practice. What Freud learned from his clinical practice is that sexuality always involves a dimension of the impossibility of reaching “total” satisfaction for any Subject, and in order to achieve some satisfaction it is necessary to renounce total satisfaction, this renunciation is one of the references to the concept of “castration”, where castration is a condition for satisfaction. Castration refers to the separation installed by the Oedipal law in both sexes and thus is a requirement of civilised culture; it is the positive side of the prohibition of incest, this instinctual renunciation, is the structuring function in the resolution of the Oedipus complex and is necessary for all cultural achievement.

Freud elaborated three possible outcomes for the “castration complex/anxiety” in women: (i) a total repudiation of sexuality; (ii) the adopting of a masculine position and the repudiation of penis envy; and (iii) motherhood as a treatment of penis envy through the symbolic equation of penis equals child. As for males, Freud believed that the castration complex/anxiety serves to free the boy from the Oedipus complex; it is the prohibition of the primordial object [i.e. the mother(s) or mother figure(s)] and leads to a lack in individuals which will orient them to look elsewhere [i.e. go out into the world and seek a true partner], and in this way, desire is inaugurated; for a number of psychoanalysts however, the “castration complex” of Freud did not have the major structuring role in the construction of sexual difference and they instead turned to other explanations, such as biological and developmental theories.

The concepts of Penis envy [According to Freud, woman’s desire to have a child is rooted in the envy of the man’s penis. When a girl first realizes that she does not possess a penis, she feels deprived of something valuable (symbolically), and seeks to compensate for this by obtaining a child as a “symbolic substitute” for the penis she has been denied. Even though the girl may at first resent the mother for depriving her of a penis and turn to the father or father figure in the hope that he will provide her with a symbolic substitute (i.e. a child), she later turns her resentment against the father when he does not provide her with the child as substitute. Freud argues that penis envy persists into adulthood, manifesting itself both in the desire to enjoy the penis in sexual intercourse, and in the desire to have a child (since the father or father figure does not provide her with a child, the woman turns to another man instead). On this particular component of psychoanalysis, Lacan follows Freud, arguing that the child always represents for the mother a substitute for the symbolic phallus which she lacks (a type of lack known as “privation”). However, Lacan emphasized that the symbolic substitute for the phallus (i.e. the child) never really satisfies the mother; her desire for the symbolic phallus persists no matter how many children she has. The mother’s basic dissatisfaction and sense of privation is perceived by the child from very early on; the child realizes that she has a desire that aims at something beyond her dual relationship with him, the imaginary phallus. The child then seeks to fulfil the mother’s desire by identifying with the Imaginary phallus (or by identifying with the mother imagined as possessing a phallus, i.e. the phallic mother). In this way, the “privation” of the mother is responsible for introducing the dialectic of desire in the child’s life for the first time. Alfred Adler argued that the concept of “penis envy” should not be expressed literally but symbolically as women’s frustration at not being able to match male dominance in society, i.e. the phallus as representing male dominance in society. Karen Horney contested the claims of penis envy, which seems to suggest that some concepts may not apply to everyone, hence the wide scope of psychoanalytic theory to suit different developmental cases], Castration Anxiety and Repression, cannot be demonstrated easily through the simple methods used for mainstream science and empirical experiments in a laboratory, although some effort has been made. A study at the Harvard Medical School in Boston at the Massachusetts Mental Health Centre involving college aged women [ranging from 17 to 43 years old] and men [ranging from 18 to 23 years old] carried out by Rosalind Jones in 1994, tested the Freudian theory claim that the “natural” development of feminity involves the woman’s substitution of the wish for a baby in place of her original wish for a penis [i.e. penis envy]. In the study, the pregnancy message used was “Reproduction. The birth of a child. I should become pregnant. Entering my uterus. Entering my womb. I could become pregnant. To be fertilized. Becoming pregnant. The contraceptive field. To become pregnant. I could become pregnant, big with child”; the original penetration message was “I feel opened up. Things are getting through. It gets into me. I am opened up. Things are getting into me. I am sensitive. I feel things inside of me”; and the Revised Penetration message was “I feel opened up. He is getting through. He gets into me. I am sensitive sexy. I feel him moving into me. He is getting into me.” Consistent with Freud’s speculation about the phallic significance of pregnancy for women, Jones (1994) found that female subjects who were exposed to the subliminal pregnancy message produced significantly more phallic imagery responses to inkblots than did women in any other experimental conditions (p<.01).

Dreaming also does not seem to always preserve sleep by disguising latent wishes, and there is very little empirical evidence to back up the theory of Psychosexual stages, although it influenced the Theories of Attachment devised by John Bowlby. More “general” Freudian concepts however have often received a good deal of scientific support. There is today, plenty of evidence to suggest the existence of unconscious mental processes, for the existence of conflict between these processes and conscious cognition, and for the existence of processes resembling some of the defence mechanisms. Two illustrative studies can support his work. First, Fazio, Jackson, Dunton and Williams (1995) found that people who sincerely profess to having absolutely no racial prejudice can be shown to associate negative attributes with Black faces more than White faces in a laboratory task. This finding which has been replicated countless times by social cognition researchers, shows that the conscious attitudes of individuals may conflict with their “implicit” attitudes [unconscious]. Second, Adams, Wright and Lohr (1996) hooked male subjects up to a daunting instrument called the penis plethysmograph, which measures sexual arousal by gauging penile circumference. It was found that men who reported strong anti-gay (homophobic) attitudes demonstrated an increased arousal when shown videos of homosexual acts, whereas non-homophobic men did not. This finding seems to reveal some form of defence mechanism consistent with the psychoanalytic view that homophobia is a reaction formation against homoerotic desires. However, none of these illustrative studies can be considered as completely conclusive, and all have been controversial and subjected to various interpretations. For example, anxiety, shock, or anger rather than sexual arousal may have caused the increased penile blood flow of Adams et al.’s homophobic subjects.

These experiments prove that with enough creative ingenuity, some psychanalytic propositions can be scientifically tested. Doing so should contribute to the important task of sifting what is worth retaining in psychoanalytic theory for strict empiricists of the hard sciences.

Unconscious Processes: Integrating Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychodynamic Theory

In various ways, the evidence for the existence of mental processes that are outside of direct conscious awareness are apparent in every scenarios of life. Here are some examples:

  1. We sometimes cannot remember the name of a particular person of importance, only to be able to recall it hours or days later at a time and place when knowing the name is not required
  2. Despite one’s intention to offer some control over the process, dreaming appears to occur at its own timing and pace.
  3. On September 11, 2001, and the days following, many Americans watched hours of news report focussed on the same attacks on the United States. Although deeply upset by the contents, many individuals could not stop themselves from watching these videos, saying that it was as if something in them drew them to reports in spite of conscious awareness of disbelief and outrage
  4. Many patients who seek psychotherapy are unable to stop unwanted behaviours or interpersonal problems, despite conscious awareness of their harmfulness to them and their life. These problems range from relatively simple [e.g. drinking too much alcohol] to relatively complex [e.g. placing oneself in situations in which one is often taken advantage of or obsessing about one’s body image if certain kinds of fattening foods are consumed].

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Other examples are evident too, simple exercises that can be easily performed. For example, consider when 3 lines are drawn in the shape of a triangle with the ends of each line however, not touching one another, leaving a small gap between all their extremities. We can come to realise that, depending on the space between the lines, the image is instantly perceived as a triangle by the individual, a triangle with missing edges; 3 lines that are coming together like a triangle, or just 3 lines at different angles.

When taking into consideration perceptual phenomena such as this [i.e. an example of the Gestalt principle of closure], it is evident that the mind does the following very quickly, without conscious awareness of how the process occurs, yet meaning and understanding are formed.

  • Takes in sensory information
  • Determines what the information is
  • Assembles the information in such a way that a percept or concept is formed
  • The percept or concept is “perceived” and “understood”

The evidence for the existence of unconscious processes is widely known in cognitive psychology. In a seminal paper in the American Psychologist, Shevrin and Dickman (1980) demonstrated how conclusions from the studies of selective attention, cortical evoked potentials, and subliminal perception provide support for the concept of an unconscious mind and posit that “no psychological model that seeks to explain how human beings know, learn, or behave can ignore the concept of unconscious psychological processes” (p. 432). They also noted that the initial stage for processing all stimuli occurs outside of consciousness and that it affects what is known consciously. This early stage is different in how it operates from conscious cognition, and conscious cognition necessarily occurs after considerable preconscious processing. Years, later, their conclusions and ideas appear to be no less true.

 

Empirical and Cases Studies Demonstrating Unconscious Processes

In studies of subliminal perception, which began in 1950s, the processing of unperceivable stimuli and its effect on behaviour has provided interesting results about the unconscious mind. Shevrin and Fisher (1967) subliminally presented participants with a picture of a pen and knee just prior to falling asleep. When they awoke from rapid eye movement (REM; dream stage) sleep, participants’ associations to their dreams were of a pen or knee or included less rational kinds of associations (a finding that had been well demonstrated in past sleep studies). These included words that sound like pen or knee, such as pennant, hen, or neither. In contrast, those who awoke during non-REM sleep, which had been associated with few dreams or dreams that were more rational, had associations such as penny (pen + knee) or related words, such as nickel and dime.

Shevrin (2006) noted that this study demonstrated that 2 levels of unconscious processing – irrational and rational – were taking place. He deduced that once inhibitions [e.g. defences] weaken – in this case, being awakened from sleep – more rational processes are overtaken by irrational ones. Surprisingly, the more irrational process observed in this study produced content similar to what was found in severe types of psychopathology: repetition and clanging. In a follow-up study with the same methodology, Shevrin (1973) presented participants with the same stimuli, this time while they were fully awake and more proximal to entering the sleep state. Again, they found a similar pattern of results in which the type of associations produced varied depending on when participants were awakened.

Even more interesting results were described by Shevrin and colleagues (Shevrin, 1988; Shevrin, Bond, Brakel, Hertel & Williams, 1996; Shevrin et al., 1992), who set out to demonstrate that unconscious and conscious processes operate differently. In these studies, patients were selected who had either pathological phobic reactions or extended grief. They were then assessed via interview, and 4 psychoanalysts listened to the interviews carefully. By way of consensus, the psychoanalyst researchers derived a conceptualisation of the core conflicts for each patient; then went on to select the patients’ words that they believed captured the patients’ conscious experience of the symptoms and words that represented unconscious conflict. These words along with unrelated words were then presented both subliminally and supraliminally to the patients, who were then asked to classify them as belonging together. Using event-related potentials to detect patients’ ability to classify or respond to words in similar ways, the researchers found that words representing unconscious conflicts were correctly classified only when presented subliminally and that the reverse was true for supraliminally presented words; they were correctly classified only when presented supraliminally. Here, we find some sense to Lacan’s deductions regarding the unconscious being structured like language and the linguistic dexterity that psychoanalyst should be able to handle to decipher and understand the fullness of the patient’s mind [conscious and unconscious].

Shevrin (1996) concluded, “…When [these studies are] taken in combination, [they] show that unconscious psychological causes affect consciousness in a qualitatively different way… and that unconscious conflict has an existence independent of the psychoanalyst’s inferences from conscious manifestations, an independence supported by brain correlates” (p. 591, italics in original). Shevrin also published reviews of research showing an association between subliminal perception and dreaming (Shevrin, 1986) and subliminal perception and repression (Shevrin, 1990).

In a more recent meta-analysis from more than 100 studies of subliminal perception, Weinberger and Hardaway (1990) found that psychodynamic material presented subliminally had a noticeable and predictable effect on behaviour, suggesting very clearly that unconscious processes affect overt behaviour. For instance, studies by Silverman and colleagues (Silverman, 1983, 1986; Silverman, Bronstein & Mendelsohn, 1976; Silverman, Kwawer, Wolitzky & Coron, 1973; Silverman, Lachman & Milich, 1982; Silverman, Ross, Adler & Lustig, 1978) found that subliminally presented messages of Oedipal content (e.g., “Beating dad is okay”) to male participants yielded more competitiveness in a subsequent dart-throwing game than non-Oedipal messages. [Note: Freud proposed that at the Oedipal stage, a competition between father/son and daughter/mother takes place, before it is resolved in the child gradually adopting the same-sex parent’s values as his/her own in the development of an early form of Conscience (Super-Ego/Preconscious)]

Bradley and colleagues (Bradley, Mogg & Millar, 1996; Bradley, Mogg and Williams, 1994, 1995) performed a series of studies in which words related to depression (e.g. misery, grief, despair) are subliminally presented to individuals who fall into 3 groups: those meeting the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) criteria for major depression, those with subclinical levels of depression and those operating as controls. They consistently found that on implicit memory tests, depressed and subclinically depressed individuals correctly identity words related to depression more often than those who are not depressed. Although their findings have not been consistently replicated for patients suffering with anxiety, studies with depressive patients suggest that a level of processing occurs below conscious awareness that increases individuals’ awareness of and identification of depressive material. Clinically, it would suggest that to effectively treat and manage depression, addressing issues related to unconscious sensitivity to depressive material is very important. Given the relatively high relapse rates for depression and other disorders that are treated with methods focussing more on conscious awareness – via cognitive and behavioural therapies (Westen & Morrison, 2001) – it seems that attention to unconscious processes has the potential to effectively address some depressive disorders.

Eagle (1987) provided support for the notion of unconscious processing in studies of perceptual illusions and dichotic listening, a type of selective attention task. For instance, in the Ames room experiment (Ittleson & Kilpatrick, 1951), the ceiling and floor were not parallel, and the 2 subjects stood either towards the front or back of the room. This led perceivers to believe that the people very different in size , despite the fact that they were not. In the dichotic listening task (Lewis, 1970), individuals heard 2 different messages in each ear but were trained to attend to just one of those messages. When asked to repeat what was heard in the trained ear, individuals had less of a reaction time in producing the words when the words in the other ear were semantically similar [the meaning was synonymous / it meant the same thing]. This means that, there was a facilitative effect on performance when a semantically similar word was processed (unconsciously) in the “unattended” ear.

Further studies of patients who have experienced brain injuries provide interesting clinical observations that support the presence of unconscious processes. Milner, Corkin and Teuber (1968) reported the famous case of a patient known as H.M., who had undergone surgery on his medial temporal lobes to control very severe seizures. We nowadays know that just below the this part of the cortex lies the hippocampus, which is considered as an important anatomical locus for learning new information and storing it in working and long-term memory. Because of the damage done to the medial temporal lobes by the procedure, H.M. failed to remember anything that was new to him past surgery. H.M. however could remember information if he rehearsed it, although it was quickly lost if he was interrupted.

One interesting consequence of this procedure was that H.M. appeared not to have lost all “affective” components of certain experiences. For instance, H.M. had the occasion to visit his mother, who was hospitalised. After leaving the hospital, he had no recollection of visiting her, although he had the idea that something may be wrong with her. H.M. experienced other events like this, demonstrating well that implicit learning was still occurring for “affectively charged” situations and that the unconscious effects of this learning could be identified in everyday life.

Later studies of unconscious affective processing have suggested that there are at least 2 neural pathways that process affective information (LeDoux, 1989, 1995, as cited in Westen, 1999). One of these pathways originates in the thalamus and transmit sensory information to other brain regions, whereby emotional meaning is attached to the information. The other pathway, also originating in the thalamus, sends the sensory information to the cortex, where higher levels of emotional processing and emotional meaning are executed.

Mark Solms has reported some exciting work on the effects of unconscious processes on commonly observed clinical syndromes (e.g., Solms, 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2002, 2004). Solms has taken a very active role in recent times in integrating the findings of neuroscience and psychoanalysis, which has created a relatively new discipline of study known as neuro-psychoanalysis. An interesting set of case of studies has been provided (Solms, 2000a) on patients who have experienced a strike on the right temporal lobe in the region, where the middle cerebral artery lies. In these case studies, psychoanalytic theory and treatment is integrated into the neurological understanding of the deficits the patients are experiencing.

Right hemisphere syndrome is a neurological disorder consisting of 3 major symptoms: ansognosia, neglect and spatial perception and cognition deficits. Anosognosia is the indifference or outright denial of an illness, which in the present case was the loss of the use of the patient’s left arm and side. Neglect occurs when patients ignore their paralysed limb and side. Patients often feel disgust when they are compelled to attend to the left side of the body, sometimes experiencing a sense of revulsion.

The spatial and cognitive deficits observed consist of defective facial recognition, imperceptions of facial emotion, environmental disorientation, and various kinds of apraxia [the inability to complete an activity involving muscle movement]. There are various theories about the emotional deficit in patients with right hemisphere syndrome. One theory suggests that the stroke affects attentional arousal that is mediated through activity in the right perisylvian region of the temporal lobe, which consequently gives rise to anosognosia and neglect. Another theory has focused on the fact that the left hemisphere is more involved with positive emotional processing and the right with more negative emotional processing. Since, the right hemisphere is damaged in this case, anosognosia and neglect occur because there is little to no processing of negative effect in the right hemisphere. A final theory states that it is the right hemisphere that is dominant for the perceptual representation of bodily states, which include more somatic or visceral perceptions. When this part of the brain is damaged or compromised, the brain can only rely on past somatosensory representations of bodily states, which provide the patient that there is no deficit or problem.

Solms (2000a) described Mr.C., a 59-year-old engineer who experienced right hemisphere syndrome after complications from a mild stroke. Only part of the visual field of the patient was remaining and he would not attempt to compensate for it [i.e. neglect], and he also ignored sensory stimulation that occurred on the left side of his body [anosodiaphoria]. He ignored and minimised his paralysed left arm, referring to it as being “like a dead piece of meat, but not it’s just a little bit lame and lazy” (p.71). Other deficits existed due to right parietal damage.

Mr.C. was “aloof, imperious and egocentric” (Solms, 2000a, p.72). He seemed unconcerned about others and would sit blankly at times staring into space. However, on occasion he would burst into tears or look as if this were the case. These periods however, were brief yet stood in stark contrast to the emotional coldness that he often presented with. During one physical therapy session, Mr. C. was making very little progress in learning how to walk. The physiotherapist reported to the treating psychologist that Mr. C. seemed “indifferent to the errors he was making, and he simply ignored her when she pointed them out to him” (p.74). In a session next day, Mr. C. told the psychologist that the physiotherapist indicated that he had been making mistakes, sounding as if he was confession something. Then, he said that another therapist had asked him to do some activities with blocks but that he could not do it. At this point, the therapist replied to Mr. C.:

“…it was difficult for him to acknowledge the problems his stroke had left him with, but it seemed that he was now more able to see them. Mr.C., carried on… [saying] his physiotherapy was “okay” but that his arm had not progressed to the degree that he required. Then, at this point, he suddenly  withdrew from conversing… and began to exercise his left hand and arm with the right one. [The therapist] commented that is seemed as if he could not bear the wait, and wanted his arm to be completely better instantly… [He replied] “I just don’t want my left arm to get weak from non-use.” [The therapist then replied] perhaps it was too painful for him to acknowledge what he was on the verge of recognising a moment earlier – namely that his arm really was completely paralysed – and that the question of whether it would recover or not was largely beyond his control. This comment provoked an instantaneous crumpling of his face and a burst of painful emotion accompanied by pre-tearfulness. [Turning to the therapist] he said in desperation “but look at my arm [pointing to his left arm] – what am I going to do if it doesn’t recover? (pp. 74-75)

Solms (2000a) noted that this case demonstrates how unconscious material that was too painful to acknowledge was accessed through careful interpretations. Furthermore, the case example controverts the theory that these patients lack negative emotions or have no awareness of their bodies and their deficits. In Mr. C’s case, it is clear that implicit processes were at work and that the emotional response originated out of the complex, associative networks were formed by this patient’s unconscious processing of the painful loss of his bodily integrity.

Transference phenomena can also be better understood in the light of recent findings in cognitive psychology. To understand transference phenomena, Westen and Gabbard (2002b, pp. 103-104) highlighted important ideas in recent studies of cognitive processing.

  1. More representations consist of memory traces that are multimodal, which include semantic, sensory and emotional components.
  2. Representations of self and other exist as potentials for activation. Because there are potentials, they are subject to modification, which will interact with new knowledge, further developing the self and other representations.
  3. Memory networks consist of semantic, episodic and procedural knowledge, along with differing affects and motives.
  4. Unconscious procedures to manage emotions are defences and may be triggered outside of awareness. Co-occurring motives and affects may also be activated, such that the person may not be aware of either one or the defence being used.
  5. Conscious representation are some of many representations that get activated. Consciousness is a serial processing system, whereas multiple parallel processes get activated that are not available to consciousness.

As may be observed in these principles, Westen and Gabbard (2002b) suggested that transference phenomena represent a dynamic, ongoing process that occurs at the conscious and unconscious level. Because multiple cognitive events occur at one time, transference phenomena can be highly complex phenomena and can represent one of many possible reactions to the therapist, as well as other meaningful individuals in the patient’s life. In fact, multiple transferences can occur. For instance, a patient may feel particularly challenged by his work and may experience some feedback from his female supervisor about his recent difficulties with his job. Suppose the patient’s mother took great strides to help him whenever he felt frustrated in his school activities or work, such that he came to unconsciously expect her to provide assistance during challenging times. At work the patient may have experienced the supervisor’s comments as an invitation for help and assistance. Should no help be forthcoming, the patient would become irritated and disappointed with such a difficult supervisor. Likewise, suppose that this patient’s father was unavailable to help him. He may have to come to view male authorities as uncaring and disinterested in his plight. Thus, in his present treatment, the patient may find himself feeling scared and anxious towards his male therapist when talking about his recent disappointment with the supervisor. An exploration of his interaction with his supervisor may elicit anxiety in the patient towards his therapist whom he experiences as a disinterested and uncaring male. Likewise, he may feel very frustrated towards the therapist who is not willing to tell him how to manage his interactions with his supervisor, reflecting a maternal transference to the therapist who unconsciously should be offering help and assistance quickly and without much effort on the patient’s part.

 

The Psychoanalytic Account of Motivation

The account of human motivation, resting on sexual and death instincts, has been a big talking point for critics of psychoanalysis from the very beginning. Jung’s departure from the psychoanalytic movement was largely caused over disagreements over the motivational concepts. Jung questioned the centrality of sexuality and argued for the importance of spiritual motives. Alfred Adler on the other hand proposed a basic desire for social superiority and a “will to power”. Later writers within the psychoanalytic tradition also sought to expand the theory of motivation to include drives for mastery and competence, and for interpersonal relatedness.

In general, there has always been 2 major issues, the first is whether the sexual and death instinct are plausible sources of human motivation. Second, whether they are sufficient explanations of motivation, or whether additional motives that are not reducible to these drives are needed.

With respect to the first issue, it may be hard to deny [from a universal and organic standpoint] that sexual wishes and drives are powerful sources of motivation, especially if we include “sexual” desires as a part of loving relationships and for bodily pleasure. From a biological and evolutionary perspective it could not be otherwise, since reproductive success is the basic currency of individual genetic fitness, not to mention species survival [in all species including primates and mammals].

From this perspective, the psychoanalytic emphasis on sexual drives – an emphasis shared by no other personality theory – is a very strong point of the psychoanalytic theory, even if we are allowed to disagree and investigate some particular claims that may not apply to some individuals regarding the effects of the Psychosexual stages in childhood as proposed by Freud [which inspired John Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment], or discuss the other drives that are non-sexual [e.g. Romantic love and its expressions].

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From the same evolution standpoint, a death instinct directed inwards towards self-destruction is questionable. However, this negative judgement on the death instinct, which is shared by many contemporary psychoanalysts, does not mean that we need to dispense with the idea of aggressive drives. Aggressiveness could be theorised not as a form of self-destructiveness, but rather as a way to strive for social dominance [among a particular frame, circle or group], i.e. to fend off “attackers” in defence of one’s own “territorial grounds” or to assert one’s personal choice or interest.

The second issue is whether sexual and perhaps aggressive drives are broad enough to capture the full range of human motivations. The answer, is clearly not. Since, we also have drives for achievement, approval, non-sexual relatedness, creativity, self-esteem, and so on? The other question is biologically-based motives that “push” us towards certain kinds of behaviour enough? Do future-oriented motivational concepts, like goals and personal ideals not “pull” us towards desirable endpoints? When these questions are raised, basic Freudian account of motivation may seem limited in their scope, leaving out motives that are socially shaped or personally determined. However, the issue is not so easily resolved, since psychoanalysts may agree that motivations beyond the instinctual drives are required to describe how our behaviour is guided, however it may still be argued that all these motivations are simply multiple layers of the very same instinctual drives. For example, achievement striving could be described psychoanalytically as a socially shaped motive that is underpinned and powered by aggressive urges [that are applied in different forms to achieve our goals, i.e. not in a physically violent manner, but competitively in multiple sophisticated social ways]. On the same note, creativity might be understood as a sublimated expression of individuals’ sexual drives [e.g. artistic creations], based on some unconscious desire for unifying and making connections that Freud saw as the hallmark of life instincts.

Victor Hugo La Musique

Traduction(EN): “What we could not say and what we could not silence, music expresses.” -Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885)

However, even if the claim that human motivation is ultimately based on a few instinctual drives that govern all living organism, it would still be more enlightening and accurate to patients to describe their motivation in a more complex way, i.e. expressed to meet the sophisticated and multi-layered human societies we live in. So, in the end there is no objective or empirical way to establish the question of motivation with a clear “true or false” – we will have to use logical reasoning and theories about what drives “life” forward.

Documentaire: L’invention de la Psychanalyse (1997)

The 2 Major Disciples of Psychoanalysis: Carl Jung and Jacques Lacan

The psychoanalytic movement was largely the invention of Sigmund Freud, and his influence far exceeds that of his early followers who subsequently tried to modify psychoanalysis. The major principles of psychoanalysis were redefined and reinterpreted until by 1930 the movement was fragmented into competing views. Nevertheless, those writers who departed from Freud’s speculation retain the basic model of psychoanalysis that conceived of personality in terms of an energy reduction system with three levels of awareness that is the conscious [that contains the Ego], preconscious [that holds the Super-Ego] and the unconscious [the wild Id]. The psychoanalytic movement has been very active since Freud’s death in 1939, and has led to many new theoretical developments influencing all schools of psychology rather than standing still as we have just covered regarding the reconciliation of some fundamental concepts with Cognitive psychology and Neurosciences.

Carl Jung (1875 – 1961)

Carl Jung

One of the most fascinating and complicated scholars of this century, Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) was born to a poor family in a northern Swiss village. He managed to gain entrance to the University of Basel and received a doctorate in medicine in 1900. Jung spent most of the rest of his life in Zürich, teaching, writing and working with patients. After reading The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, Jung began corresponding with Freud and finally met him in 1907. Eventually he accompanied Freud to America in 1909, where he also lectured and introduced his own work to American audiences. However, Jung began to apply psychoanalytic insights to ancient myths and legends in search for the key to the nature of human psyche. Such independent thinking did not meet with Freud’s approval, and there is also some speculation that the Jung made a critical analysis of Freud’s personal life that may have contributed to tensions between them. Freud secured the post of the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association for Jung in 1911, but by this time their rift was beyond healing. Finally, in 1914, Jung withdrew from the Association and severed all interactions with Freud due to the over-emphasis of the defining stages of infant sexuality among other aspects of pure Freudian theory. Jung continued his own interpretations of psychoanalysis and made several expeditions to study primitive societies in Western United States, Africa, Australia and Central America. His prolific writings on subjects ranging from anthropology to religion provided novel insights to age-old problems of human existence from the psychoanalytic perspective.

Jung’s “Analytical psychology” refined many Freudian concepts and emerged as the first major alternative to Freudian theory (1900); however, Jung retained Freud’s terminology [Unconscious, Conscious and Preconscious], and as a result the same terms often carry different meanings. Jung (1912) renamed the Id as the Personal Unconscious, the Ego as the Personal Conscious [although the term Ego also appears in some of Jung’s writings], and the Super-Ego as the Collective Conscious [although the term Persona also appears in some of his writings]. After that Jung’s (1912) analytical psychology also added the Collective Unconscious to Freud’s (1900) structure of personality which is part of the Id.

Jung, like Freud, believed that the central purpose of personality is to achieve a balance between conscious and unconscious forces within the personality. However, Jung described two sources of unconscious forces. What is the personal unconscious, consisting of repressed or forgotten experiences similar to Freud’s preconscious level. The contents of the Personal Unconscious [Id] are accessible to full consciousness. Jung’s Personal Unconscious held complexes, which were groups of feelings with a defined theme than give rise to distorted behavioural responses. According to Hall and Lindzey (1970), “… a [complex] is an organised group or constellation of feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and memories which exists in the Personal Unconscious” (p.82). Unlike archetypes [which reflect the cumulative experiences of the entire human race, Homo Sapiens], Complexes reflect each individual’s unique experience. For example, a boy who repressed negative emotions about his mother could become an adult with the complex, experiencing intense feelings and anxieties when images or stimuli associated with motherhood are encountered [because they are dominated by their mothers], for e.g. some mothers might offer nourishment only after – not before – their babies stop crying, thus communicating the unconscious message that the mother is all-powerful.

The second source of unconscious forces in to Jung’s theory, is the Collective Unconscious, more powerful source of energy that contains inherited contents shared with other members of a particular group, i.e. it consists of aspects of personality, common to all humans, that we have inherited from our ancestors. Jung here was talking about individual similarities and not differences in personality. As the personal unconscious has complexes, the collective unconscious has archetypes, defined as primordial images evolved from human beings primitive ancestry of specific experiences and attitudes passed on over centuries [after all humans did evolve from basic primates to the sophisticated beings were now are]. Hall and Lindzey (1970) define archetype as “…a universal thought form (idea) which contains a large element of emotion” (p.84). Although modern science has shown that direct environmental influences has more power in shaping the individual mind, some aspects may be retained from evolutionary psychology although it is important to consider the fact that human societies are constantly evolving in more ways than one. At the time that Jung devised his theory however, he listed such archetypes as birth, death, unity, power, God, the devil, magic, the old sage and the earth mother. As Weitz (1976) noted, according to Jung’s Analytical Psychology, archetypes equip humans to interact with particular aspects of their physical and social worlds in a particular manner, thus archetypes are adaptive from an evolutionary standpoint. For example, Jung (1912) contended that all humans possess a “mother figure” archetype that not only gives them readily accessible image of a generic mother at birth but also predisposes them to interact with their actual mothers in a particular manner [e.g. crying, sucking]. Solomon (2003) noted that in Jung’s Theory, collectively experienced archetypes provide basic themes around which personally experienced complexes are organised. For example, all individuals are born with a readiness to seek nourishment from their mothers (the mother archetype), some individuals may find that their mothers use this readiness against them (mother complex).

The notion of a collective unconscious in personality that provides the individual with patterns of behaviour fits well with Jung’s preoccupation with myths and symbols. Jung believed that the adequacies of a society’s symbols to express archetypal images are an index of the progress of civilisation. [e,g, the Ancient Greeks who after sophisticating their society through the evolution of their values, philosophy & educational system, saw peasants turn into conquerors, sculptors, poets and artists who even went on to colonise countries that later changed the history of those who colonised them in timeless ways / See: L’épopée de la Grèce antique (2016)].

Jung focussed on the middle years of life, when the pressures of sexual drives supposedly give way to anxiety about the more profound philosophical and religious issues of the meaning of life and death. By reinstating the notion of the spiritual soul, Jung argued that the healthy personality has realised the fullness of human potential to achieve self-unity and complete integration. According to Jung, this realisation occurs only after the person has mastered obstacles during the development of personality from infancy to middle age. Failure to grow in this sense results in the disintegration of personality. Accordingly, the person must individualise experiences to achieve a “transcendent function” by which differentiated personality structures are unified to form a fully aware self.

Both Jung (1921) and Freud (1905) wrote about libido, or psychic energy, that presumably fuels individuals’ behaviour, however Jung viewed libido in a less sexualised form. Jung redefined libidinal energy as the opposition of introversion – extraversion in personality, bypassing Freud’s extreme sexual emphasis. Extraversion forces are directed externally to the people and the environment, and then nurture self-confidence. Introversion leads the person to an inner direction of contemplation, introspection and stability. Jung (1921) believed that all individuals are capable of experiencing introversion as well as extraversion over time, however, individuals at any particular point in time may be characterised as experiencing either introversion or extraversion. The opposing energies must be balanced for proper psychological functioning, sensation, thinking, feeling and intuition. An imbalance between extraversion introversion is partly compensated for in dreams. Indeed, for Jung dreams have important adaptive value in helping the person maintain equilibrium. Jung has been praised for developing a dichotomy of flow of psychic energy [i.e. introversion vs extraversion] that has been recast as one of the major personality traits in various trait theories [for empiricists who believe the main focus should be the “conflict-free” conscious part of the ego, to which many basic concepts of Cognitive Psychology can be applied].

In addition to introversion versus extraversion as a pair of opposing directions of flow of psychic energy [i.e. inwards versus outwards], Jung (1921) postulated that thinking vs feeling and sensing vs intuition represent 2 pairs of opposing modes of adaptation and functioning.

As Jung grew older, his writings increasingly came to emphasise mysticism and religious experiences, domains usually ignored by mainstream empirical psychology. Out of all the early founders of psychoanalysis, Jung held views in sharpest contrast to those of empiricism. However, he offered a unique treatment of critical human issues that had not been systematically studied by psychologists and still remain in the realm of speculative philosophy. Perhaps Jung was more of a philosopher than a psychologist, nonetheless he provoked and confronted issues not readily accommodated in other systems of psychology.

Jacques Lacan (1901 – 1981)

Jacques Lacan

One of the most famous post-Freudian development, especially popular in Europe and South America, was initiated by the colourful French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Lacan was the son of a successful oil and soap salesman from Paris. His mother was a firm Catholic and his younger brother entered a monastery in 1929.

The two early philosophical influences of Jacques Lacan were Spinoza & Nietzsche:

(i) Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677)

Baruch Spinoza dpurb site web

Traduction(EN): “Joy is man’s passage from less to greater perfection.” -Baruch Spinoza

Spinoza is known as the philosopher of nature and human passions who identified the concept of “God” and Nature. Spinoza proposes that wisdom is the intellectual love of the true God, immanent to reality [that is, scientific studies of Nature are to understand the forces that govern the creations of “God”, e.g., medicine, etc.]. Spinoza is considered a Cartesian, i.e. a disciple of Descartes. Spinoza believed in Ethics as a geometrical method that manifests the philosopher’s will to proceed in a rigorous manner, as mathematicians do; he strives to express in Ethics, in an objective manner, the fundamental essence of all things, in other words, the basis of understanding. In Spinoza’s philosophy, Ethics does not designate a moral code, but the true knowledge of the true concept of “God”, immanent to the world [which is said to be contained in the nature of a being and does not come from an external principle], the practical science of what is: a single substance, absolutely infinite, of which we are only modes. Spinoza’s concept of “God”, the object of Ethics, has nothing to do with that of the Judeo-Christian religion, a principle transcendent to the world – Spinoza does not believe in transcendence. So, we see oppositions to Nietzsche which Jacques Lacan also synthesized with his more modern theories of the psyche. Spinoza did not believe in transcendence and expelled any anthropomorphic representation of the divine [Note: Anthropomorphism is the attribution of characteristics of human behaviour or morphology to other entities such as gods, animals, objects, phenomena, even ideas]. God is nothing else but an absolutely infinite Being, composed of an infinity of attributes, a unique Substance [the Substance designating what is in itself and conceived by itself]. Therefore, God identifies Himself with this substance and designates the whole of reality or Nature, understood as the unity of things and the only Being to which realities relate: Deus sive Natura – God or Nature [a united and infinite nature]. Of this unique substance, of this Nature being one with God [although not interchangeable], human intelligence grasps only two Attributes, Extension and Thought (L’Étendue et la Pensée), the Attribute being defined by Spinoza as what the understanding perceives as constituting its essence. In this perspective, the particular objects of the world represent modifications of the infinite Substance that is Nature [i.e. God’s transcendence], in other words “modes“, that is, affections of this substance. Thus, each particular creature appears as a mode of God, as being in something else, by means of which it is conceived. This tripartition of Substance-Attribute-Mode allows us to grasp the meaning of the concepts of Nature-naturing (natura naturans or Nature-naturante) and Nature-natured (natura naturata or Nature naturée). Nature naturing for Spinoza is God himself, as he is in himself and conceived by himself, as the producer of all reality, i.e. as doing what nature creates/does. Nature natured is considered as everything that follows in the nature of God and his attributes, that is to say, everything that is produced by the Substance of God as he is in it through it. The problem with Spinoza’s system is that it was absolutely deterministic; the infinite attributes of God necessarily produce certain effects, and Spinoza assumes that nothing is given by chance in nature. In Spinoza’s magnum opus, The Ethics (L’Éthique), he speaks of absolute necessity, which has the meaning that everything is already determined by divine Nature to produce an effect [in modernity we know from empirical research that natural and environmental determinants combine to define humans]. Spinoza sees contingency [in other words, what cannot be] simply as a defect in our understanding, a lack of real knowledge. The essence of human nature lies in an active element in all of us that Spinoza calls “conatus”, the effort by which everything strives to persevere in its being, i.e. a natural inclination to strive toward preserving an essential being, where virtue/human power is defined by success in this preservation of being by the guidance of reason as one’s central ethical doctrine, with the highest virtue being the intellectual love or knowledge of God/Nature/Universe. When the “conatus” becomes self-conscious, it is called “desire”, which is therefore identified with “appetite” accompanied by consciousness itself. Thus, conatus and desire correspond to the dynamic affirmation of our being. We find here some link to Schopenhauer’s philosophical meditations about the “Will” and also Lacan’s focus on “Desire” being at the heart of psychoanalytic praxis. However in Spinoza’s reflections, human desires are modified by the intervention of external environmental causes, since we are subject to the action of forces to which we are bound, being all a part of Nature, and it is from this effect that passions are born, passive modifications of our being; this is linked to Lacan’s concept of “chaine signifiante” [signifying chain] which is the structural basis of the unconscious and the roots of linguistic discourse and speech. The two fundamental passions are sadness and joy from which the other passions derive: sadness is the passage to a lesser perfection, while joy is the passage to a greater perfection. Spinoza believed that man’s life is marked by the sad procession of sad passions [hatred, envy, jealousy, la mauvaise foi, etc.] which reduce man to a state of servitude, of passivity; this is where the philosopher comes in, whose responsibility it is to heal man from his sad passions: to make him maître (master) of himself.

Auguste Dumont - Génie de la Liberté (1836) Or dpurb site web

« Génie de la Liberté » par Auguste Dumont, 1836

In Spinoza’s philosophy, virtue is acquiring true knowledge of our passions through the right ideas and notions. Therefore, the virtuous discovers the dynamism that animates him, which allows him to regain the power of the conatus: to know reality and to reach the fullness of existence [Virtue and life are thus inseparable]. The wise man is therefore the one who reaches true knowledge and, in this way, achieves the fullness of existence. The wise man lives under the regime of reason, in this way the Spinozist citizen also finds the agreement and unity of his semblables (fellow men). Therefore, the state must be rationally created, because only the rational state opens the way to freedom, according to the laws of human nature, that is to say, aware of the infinite nature of humanity. Spinoza seems to be situated in the democratic thought where all have equal rights with total freedom of opinion, thus the destiny of free men, living under the regime of reason, in a free city, is outlined. By gaining access to la connaissance vraie (true knowledge), man again becomes a God for man. So, we can see that Spinoza is a rigid penseur de système (system thinker), allowing man to free himself from his illusions and find and accept his place in Nature. Spinoza’s philosophy is not only intellectual but also practical and truly powerful: wisdom is acquired through knowledge; joy is maintained through the search for good passions. Thus, man can persevere in his being.

(ii) Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

Friedrich Nietzsche dpurb site web

Traduction(EN): “The greatness of man is that he is a bridge and not an end.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche is the philosopher of the “will to power”, conceived as creation and vital fullness, as the overwhelming affirmation of life. What is essential is our world as it is joy and will-power. As for the illusion of the afterworlds, Nietzsche hunts it down in all its forms. Nietzsche can be considered a moralist above all. It is clear that Nietzsche’s philosophy is one of the most complex thoughts, a complexity linked as much to his poetic and aphoric writing as to his refusal to situate himself clearly in the philosophical tradition, and we find this in Lacan who was also a literary and profound writer with a singular thought, a synthesis of several schools of thought, where the mediocre reader finds himself in the middle of a nightmare when trying to read it and may even start to question the level of his own intellectual abilities, his place and purpose in the universe. Unseizable, Nietzsche’s writings must be approached like a mountain, a slow progression. Nietzsche diagnosed the essence of the mortal crisis of our time: he described it, in its main characteristics, and in a quasi-clinical manner. He studied it at various levels and, in so doing, often announced with the greatest precision what was only beginning to emerge at the end of the nineteenth century; this fatal disease of modern times, ours, is nihilism, the reign of the absurd, of Nothing (“nihil”, as the etymology tells us). Nihilism or the absence of sense, makes becoming a purposeless process and all traditional ideals lose their value. Nihilism, this “Nothing” symbolizes the death of the Divine and the Suprasensible in man [Nietzsche’s death of God can be interpreted symbolically as the death of sensitivity and goodness in man]: we have killed him [the Divine], Nietzsche sometimes tells us, and darkness is now the lot of our world. This death of the Divine as seen by Nietzsche also announces a new dawn in our time: the coming of the “Last Man” which signifies the completion of nihilism. The “Last Man” designates the most despicable thing in this world: the one who is powerless to create and love, the individual totally enslaved and enjoying a programmed and petty “happiness” – he thus hops on the surface of the earth. Lacan, like myself, did not completely follow Nietzsche, but used some of the concepts of the German of the time and then refined them in the field of psychology for the twentieth century. Concepts of metaphysics are sometimes exaggerated in a negative way by Nietzsche, and the advances of our era make some of his views obsolete. One of Nietzsche’s exaggerations seems to be the origin of metaphysics, which he believed to be the by-product of the suffering and resentment of those unable to create positively, and which also engendered moral values [good and evil]. We see that Lacan did not take up everything from Nietzsche, but showed originality by relying on what was worth keeping in our modern world and which could be synchronized with his psychology based on the creative force of language in the Cartesian Subject [i.e. based on Descartes’ model: “Je pense, donc je suis”]. However, we still have concepts of Nietzsche that are in the name of positive creation, and the perfection of the individual and society, and they still have a place in modern philosophical thinking such as those of Jacques Lacan, which assimilate reason, logic, empiricism, metaphysics, genetics, and human and societal evolution.

La matière de leur création, de leur pensée ou de leur écriture dpurb site web

Credits: D.R / Centre Pompidou  “Le festival Hors Pistes dédié chaque année à explorer les images en mouvement et rencontrer celles et ceux  qui en font la matière de leur création, de leur pensée ou de leur écriture…” Source: FranceCulture, 2020

Lacan synthesized Nietzsche’s influence with the strong constructionist and linguistic logic of his pychoanalytic theory, which directs us towards a system of thought where sophisticated and civilised individuals orient, identify and group themselves by “psychical” understanding, connection and similarity, with language [i.e. the communicative discourse and/or speech] as a founding pillar, and not by the atavistic logic of the simple physical/biological illusions of the imaginary since this brings us, human beings, closer to animal psychology; the reasoning behind Lacan’s theory suggests that civilised individuals should see others as semblables [fellow men] not based on the physical but on the “psychical”, with a founding pillar being language; the individual should rise above the illusions of solidarity of the physical to embrace the psychical. This is avant-garde and synchronised with the reasoning of science and discoveries of the 19th century with the contributions of Darwin, Freud and Kant. Nietzsche’s inspiring concept is that of “The Will to Power” (Volonté de Puissance) which should not be interpreted by the simple mind as the appetite for power or the spirit of domination or competition, because this would be to conceive or understand it in a very restrictive or destructive way. To Nietzsche, “The Will to Power” is a set of essentially competitive impulses [in the “mediocre”], but also the very movement of creative transcendence [in the noble soul of the “aristocrat” – the term was used by Nietzsche in its essentially spiritual meaning to design the best, that in his times, were individuals from the aristocracy, being those who had a privileged access to the best teachers, institutions and collections of books, which has since changed into mostly vast, yet simple, inheritances of wealth and land; hence in our present society the “aristocrat” term could define the gifted and valiant mind with a wealth of knowledge, profoundly educated, cultivated, creative and consciously connected with the positive values of humanity and nature, i.e. with the ability to shape and have a lasting impact on generations]. This “Will to power” can also mean the struggle for life and also spiritual fullness and existential superabundance. “The Will to Power” is an ambivalent notion that cannot be reduced to its most superficial or trivial forms or manifestations; in its noblest dimension, it is a vital, plastic, destructive but also creative force [which seems to be connected to Shiva, the Hindu god, and Dionysus, his Greek equivalent in the phallic cult according to Alain Daniélou (See the Essay: History on Western Philosophy, Religious cultures, Science, Medicine & Secularisation)]. To understand the essence, it is the body of man [of the human being] that we must take as a reference point, for the body is wisdom and reason, which can be defined as intelligent dynamism, the organic faculty of understanding and thinking: every organism thinks and it is permissible to speak of an unconscious bodily thought [for after all, it is through the senses available from the different organs acquired through the multiple facets of the evolution of the human body that man sees, hears, discovers, smells, touches, tastes, reads, feels, expresses a wide range of emotions, learns, thinks, writes, creates and gains an understanding of human existence and the wider environment (i.e. the natural world), and adjusts to optimise his “psychical” experience].

Friederich_Nietzsche par Edvard Munch,1906

« Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche » par Edvard Munch (1906)

Nietzsche seems to rehabilitate the unconscious as a psychic reality beyond the clear and transparent grasp of oneself. The authentic “Will to Power” as affirmation and fullness reveals, within its creative superabundance, the true field of life and transcendence.

« Puisse chacun avoir la chance de trouver justement la conception de la vie qui lui permet de réaliser son maximum de bonheur. »

French for: « May everyone have the chance to find just the right conception of life that allows them to achieve their maximum happiness. »

– Friedrich Nietzsche

For Nietzsche, among the creations of life is, first and foremost, Art, which Nietzsche conceived in a much more global and dynamic form, where it becomes an invention of harmonious forms, a production destined to embellish the whole of human existence. Nietzsche conceals ugliness, he humanises or hides everything ugly. This set of materials and signs created by the artist who manifests an ideal of beauty is only an appendix of this production of forms that is art in general, this “ivresse de la vie”: a will to exist through harmonious forms. The field of creative life includes artistic activity, authentic work, and generally everything that concerns the positive edification of values: work, the shaping of all things, linked to joy, but does it differ profoundly from the miserable labour for gain? To the powers of life are also attached the authentic moral values, those created by the best,  “les maîtres(the masters) who are in the vital current of the “Volonté de Puissance” (Will to Power). Thus, Nietzsche’s thought is elitist: the beautiful creative individuality is opposed to the vile herd [the mass]. This “elitist” morality, i.e. this creative act, this triumphant affirmation of values, an affirmation that takes place in joy, is a thousand leagues away from the morality of the “slaves” [metaphor], which is linked to the resentment that gives birth to negative values and “la mauvaise foi” (nastiness, hatred, evil, etc.). What should the man in a world devoid of the divine values believe in? Believe in yourself, in your own power, free yourself from all dominant morality and ideology and follow your own path: become who you truly are and desire – this is what Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche would have said. Nietzsche calls for exceptional people to no longer be ashamed in the face of a supposed morality-for-all, which he deems to be harmful to the flourishing of exceptional people. He cautions, however, that morality, per se, is not bad; it is good for the masses, and should be left to them. Exceptional people, on the other hand, should follow their own “inner law”; a favorite motto of Nietzsche, taken from Pindar, reads:

« Become what you are. »

Le Voyageur contemplant une mer de nuages (Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer) Caspar David Friedrich d'purb dpurb site web

“Le Voyageur contemplant une mer de nuages” (Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer) par Caspar David Friedrich, 1818

In what he considered to be the zenith of his philosophical creation, “Also sprach Zarathustra” [Thus Spoke Zarathustra], Nietzsche portrays the path of a wise man who only addresses himself, a nomad who accepted the disappearance of the divine among men as a personal liberation, a being who freed his mind completely of the burden of ultimate truths, a hermit who did not need anyone anymore and who had overcome hatred and resentment, living in harmony with himself and the cosmic forces of nature: an Übermensch (un Surhomme/an Overman).

It is to be noted that “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, Nietzsche’s magnum opus, completely opposes and rejects the unscientific notion of a superior or pure group or organic composition (i.e. “race”), but instead focuses on the superior individual [organism] who can appear from anywhere as an agent and expression of the cosmic forces of nature.

Les Forces Cosmiques de la Nature: l’Océan (2020)

Yet, while there are no superior groups but only superior individuals, we may still reasonably argue that there are languages that are superior since they offer the ability to interact with a wider audience, but also because these languages offer an entry point and the gift of belonging by creating a social bond to the specific social environments they originate from; environments that may also be considered as superior if the way they are organised [i.e. philosophy, educational system, values, culture and government] lead to more chances of individual human development and life satisfaction, mainly due to the progressive outlook and heritage of their sophisticated and evolving institutions and the way they are managed. However, it is important to understand that any individual speaking in a superior language does not automatically lead to everything being said in that language to be worthy of consideration because while the communicative patterns (i.e. language) of human primates vary from regions, the IQ and creativity of the individuals do not, as the Organic Theory clearly states. Jacques Lacan also reached a fairly similar conclusion since he also distinguished the speaking Subject of the enunciation [i.e. how words are pronounced] from the Subject of the statement [i.e. the genuine message of the discourse], which suggests that in order to evaluate the true worth of any linguistic discourse, it is the genuine message that should be extracted; in other words, it should be translated in the appropriate language of the reader/listener so that its true value and meaning can be assessed.

Thus, individuals who intend to share their wisdom and contribute to the world’s development would have an advantage in adopting and mastering a communicative pattern (i.e. language) deemed superior by the fact that it comes with modern human values and is weaved in the fabric of a more refined and sophisticated intellectual, psychosocial, philosophical and artistic heritage [e.g. French, which is the most desired and most spoken second language in the UK and in Germany] since it would be understood by the wider audience of the civilised world, where the major intellectual and cultural evolution/revolution takes place. It was the French revolution, which had been heavily influenced by the movement of the Enlightenment [i.e. the 18th century intellectual movement of reason], that would secularise a number of Christian humanitarian values into the constitution, most notably the famous « Liberté, égalité, fraternité » [French for: “Liberty, equality, fraternity”], which is inspired from the free will of Christians, as the French philosopher Michel Onfray reminded. Equality [Égalité] is derived from the concept of equality before God, and brotherhood [Fraternité] is derived from the concept of the community of the ecclesia. Liberté [Freedom], of course, most people know what this means, which is the freedom to explore, to choose, to discover, to learn, to express ourself, to speak, to have open debates, to question, to propose, to love, to create, to live life fully within the limits of reason and respect for the mother psychosocial sphere. Hence, as French philosopher, Michel Onfray noted, we have a concept that was passed on from St. Paul to Robespierre and that went through the French revolution, where the new generation of French people secularised and embedded those values with the firm belief that “we have a universal world view; we want everyone to share our values of ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité!'”.

In 2021, Michel Onfray reminded that this led to a generation of French minds who think that we have to go out into the wider world, where the vast majority of people are, in order to share our good news with them, which is our universal human values of « Liberté, égalité, fraternité ». At the Assemblée Nationale, Jules Ferry stood for the idea of free, secular and compulsory school, and so, that school, we people of French heritage thought that we would give it to the whole planet. This created the wave “We are going to colonise”. Onfray pointed to the example of the colonisation of Algeria as one that shows the intention of the French to pass on their good ideas and values. Hence, when we look back at the historical wars of the French revolution, we come to realise that they were wars of ideological and intellectual colonisation. When we consider the German philosopher, Hegel’s passionate words about Napoléon, Hegel now comes across like a great collaborator for the French colonisation concept, as himself as an iconic German historical figure, described Napoléon’s conquering arrival in Germany as: “I saw the Emperor – this world-soul – riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it. Those words from Hegel were written in a letter to his friend Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer on the 13 October 1806, the day before the battle of Jena, which would be fought on the plateau west of the river Saale in today’s Germany between the forces of Napoleon and Frederick William III of Prussia, with the historic defeat suffered by the Prussian army subjugating the Kingdom of Prussia to the French Empire; the victory is celebrated as one of Napoleon’s greatest. It is quite ironic, because the great German, Hegel’s words admitted that the French heritage is superior to his own; and in 2021, the post-modern French philosopher Michel Onfray ironically suggested « on a juste envie de lui dire ‘mais enfin, et ton Allemagne ? » [French for: You just want to say to him, “But what about your Germany?”].

It may also be useful for the majority of anglophones and fellow English people out there who hardly know their own cultural evolution, to point out that there is French on the emblem of the British monarchy. The words, « Dieu et mon droit » have been the motto since the time of Henry V (1413 – 1422), and since those times old English is not the language of the English elite anymore which resulted to the use of words and expressions of French and Norman origin that are now widely used in the English language.

Anglais VS Français Habsburg d'purb dpurb site web

Traduction(EN): “The English language is a shotgun: the shot is scattered. The French language is a rifle that shoots bullets, precisely. » -Otto von Habsburg

Nietzsche rightly concluded that there are no superior groups, but only superior individuals that come from the wider human population and together these individuals constitute the force that shapes civilisation; this conclusion had unconsciously acknowledged what science would certify about a century later in 2018, as a genome-wide association meta-analysis in 267, 867 individuals identified 1,016 genes linked to intelligence, which is a highly heritable trait and a major determinant of human health and well-being (Savage, Jansen, Stringer et al., 2018). Before Nietzsche, no philosopher had placed so much emphasis on the individual perspective; he restored the existential mission of philosophy by detaching himself from all the irrational conventions of his time, abandoning lengthy theoretical papers to redact concise reflections on the way of living one’s own life. Nietzsche’s philosophy is centred around the personal sphere of the individual.

In modern times, with the advances of psychology, we can conclude that a superior psyche will include a superior understanding, judgement and vision as the French psychologist, Monique de Kermadec also pointed out regarding “l’adulte surdoué” [i.e. the gifted adult]. The criterion of authenticity always appears to be linked, in Nietzsche’s view, to the affirmation and creative power of life. Nietzsche uses the god Dionysus [whom the French orientalist Alain Daniélou connects to Shiva for his cycle of destruction and creation as an equivalent] as a symbol of life, the most overflowing being of life, who in Nietzsche’s thought embodies the process of “becoming” as destruction and creation; Dionysus is sensuality, the enjoyment of a force that destroys but also generates/creates. The term dyonysism refers to the identification with the principle of ecstasy and life. Thus arises the Übermensch (Overman/Surhomme) for Nietzsche, who faced with the death of the divine, nihilism and the “Last Man” [which designates what is most despicable in this world, the one who is powerless to create and love, i.e. the individual totally enslaved and enjoying a programmed and petty “happiness”, those who think that this symbolic death of the divine means nihilism and pure destruction], will have to face these despicable “Last Men”; one could therefore see the Übermenschen (Overmen/Surhommes) as agents of the divine rising to counter evil and the decline of the positive values of civilization; the concept of the Übermensch also seems to share some similarities to what Monique de Kermadec qualifies as l’« Adulte Surdoué » [The gifted adult].

Video: Monique de Kermadec : L’adulte surdoué : bien vivre sa douance (2012)

Freud Entouré par des Idiots dpurb site web

Traduction(EN): “Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure you are not surrounded by idiots.” – Sigmund Freud

For Nietzsche, the earth is no longer in the hands of the divine, but in the hands of those despicable “Last Men,” and the outrage against the earth is now what is the most dreadful. Nietzsche fights against immorality in the name of immoralism, and shows us that the death of the divine is not enough to animate the world with a new morality, and that without the will to power [if it is animated by a weak will], “morality” can turn into nihilism [a nothing, or the absence of sense that makes “becoming” a purposeless process where all traditional ideals lose their value]. The construction of a new morality will be so superior to the old one that it calls, according to Nietzsche, new men, Übermenschen (Overmen/Surhommes), and this new morality will be precisely the “Will to Power”. In order to clarify the concept of Übermensch (Overman/Surhomme) let us clear up misunderstandings by explaining what the Übermensch (Overman/Surhomme) is not, here is a negative definition:

« All beings up to now have created something beyond themselves that is superior to them. What is the ape for man? That is precisely what man must be for the Übermensch (Surhomme/Overman) »

Nietzsche in his time was not an evolutionist, which has changed in our time, and therefore not in possession of the data on the genetics of Übermenschen (Supermen/Surhommes), he conceived of the emergence of the Übermensch (Overman/Surhomme) by the man who surpasses himself: a transcendental man who surpasses himself to become what he really is deep down.

Ubermensch Surhomme Superman dpurb site web

The notion of the Übermensch (Overman/Surhomme) is the backdrop of Nietzsche’s philosophy, it is from the Übermensch (Overman/Surhomme) that Nietzschean thought makes its entrance and all his other themes must be understood from this notion. Thus, to Nietzsche, by pushing back the forces of reaction, of simple negation, those linked to the “NO”, by surpassing himself towards those of life and positive creation, man transcends himself towards the Übermensch (Overman/Surhomme), towards a superior human type, free of mind and heart. The Übermensch (Overman/Surhomme) is for Nietzsche the meaning of the earth, the next term of evolution. It is also very important to avoid any misinterpretation of Nietzsche’s “Übermensch” (Overman/Surhomme) which has been wrongly caricatured over the years, it is not specifically or solely about the “blonde beast” of Germanic myths as it is often portrayed by ignorant and mediocre journalists and the masses. After Friedrich Nietzsche’s death, his sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of Nietzsche’s manuscripts, reworking his unpublished writings to fit her own German nationalist ideology while often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche’s true philosophical orientation which were instead explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism but promoted a more universal ideology. Through her published editions, Nietzsche’s work wrongly became associated with fascism and Nazism; 20th century scholars contested this interpretation of his work and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. Nietzsche’s thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th and early-21st century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, psychology, politics and popular culture. Nietzsche’s philosophy is thus organized around a few major concepts: that of the Übermensch (Overman/Surhomme), the Dionysian and, of course, the Will to Power.

Documentaire: Schmutte, H. (2016). Nietzsche : entre génie et démence. ARTE. [Notice: If the video cannot be viewed from your region, we recommend using HOLA VPN (Click Here, it is FREE!)]

Let us add, finally, the concept of the Eternal Return (any state of the universe returns periodically and this seems to be an intelligent metaphor that explains the state of matter in the universe, constantly being recycled and reshaped). Nietzsche thus (like Lucretia or Spinoza) drew a philosophy of joy, creation and vital fullness. Nietzsche celebrated life and stressed that the secret of the greatest enjoyment is to live intensely and dangerously. Today, Nietzsche’s work and intellectual contribution are considered as revolutionary for its time, however in the very beginning they were not appreciated and recognised for their true worth by his contemporaries; the philosopher struggled to live with his publications and found himself on the fringes of society without any income or fixed accommodation at 35 years old, which had turned out to be a point of no return for him after he put an end to his teaching activities, adopting a nomadic life and living in modest accommodations. An amazing achievement for Nietzsche was the fact that he was named professor even though he had not completed his thesis.

During Jacques Lacan’s studies at the Collège Stanislas he was introduced to the work of Baruch Spinoza & Friedrich Nietzsche, and draws from his years in uniform, the intimate conviction that the most violent psychological wounds and sufferings always arise within communities apparently subjected to the greatest normality. Lacan had felt misunderstood by his father, who had destined him to a business life. He thus enters the modernity of the twentieth century by way of an intellectual rebellion, eager to explore the essence of “madness” whose shadows he had perceived in his own family, Lacan turned to psychiatry. In 2001, Elisabeth Roudinesco said: “Il faut voir l’apport de Lacan comme un tableau moderne. Lacan n’est plus dans l’univers classique des représentations mais dans l’univers de la peinture moderne. C’est la peinture de Picasso par rapport à la peinture classique (…)  toute la modernité est passée.” [French for: “Lacan’s contribution should be seen as a modern painting. Lacan is no longer in the classical universe of representations but in the universe of modern painting. It is Picasso’s painting in relation to classical painting… all modernity has passed.”]

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During the early 1920s, Lacan actively engaged with the Parisian literary and artistic avant-garde movements. Having met James Joyce, he was present at the bookshop where the first readings of passages from Ulysses in French and English took place, shortly before it was published in 1922. Lacan also had meetings with Charles Maurras, whom he admired as a literary stylist, and he occasionally attended meetings of Action Française (of which Maurras was a leading ideologue), of which he would later be critical on some aspects that he firmly disagreed and considered as outdated, such as the positivist sociology of Maurras which presents the subject as a simple product of his “milieu” [circle], derived from his culture which was even pushed to absurd extremes by Édouard Pichon to theorise about a “national unconscious”. Lacan was more avant-garde and perhaps unknowingly embraced future psychological advances of neuroscience by founding his logic on the thesis of German biologist and philosopher Von Uexküll who convincingly argued about the multitude of determining factors of the environment and not simply the basic evolution of species, but on the sophisticated elaboration of language [discourse / langage] which identifies the development of the individual psyche to a social structure.

In his famous “Rome Discourse,” Lacan stated: « Le symbolique, l’imaginaire et le réel, les trois registres par lesquels j’ai introduit un enseignement qui ne prétend pas innover, mais rétablir quelques rigeurs dans l’expérience de la psychanalyse, les voilà, jouant à l’état pur dans leurs rapports les plus simples. » [French for: “The symbolic, the imaginary and the real, the three registers through which I have introduced a teaching that does not claim to innovate, but to re-establish some rigour in the experience of psychoanalysis, here they are, playing in a pure state in their simplest relationships.] In that same discourse in Rome in 1953 addressed to the Société Française de Psychanalyse, Lacan denounced the way that the role of speech in psychoanalysis had come to be neglected by contemporary psychoanalytic theory, and argues for a renewed focus on speech and language. This remains one of the fundamental modification from Freudian conception: the human being is linked to language. The founding statement of Lacan’s theory defines psychoanalysis as a practice of speech and a theory of the speaking subject. Lacan asserted that psychoanalysis is distinguished from other disciplines in that the analyst works on the Subject’s speech [i.e. linguistic discourse], pointing out that Freud often referred to language when he was focusing on the Unconscious; after all language is the “talking cure” and is constitutive of the psychoanalytic experience. It would be impossible to understand the concept of “madness” without analysing the true reasoning behind it through language and to know if it is “madness” or subjective construction and interpretation that is stable in a particular Subject’s psychical realm. It is the emphasis on language [linguistic discourse] that is regarded as the most distinctive feature in Lacan’s theory which also criticises the way other forms of psychoanalysis tend to play down the importance of linguistic discourse and instead emphasise “non-verbal communication” of the analysand (e.g. body language, etc) at the expense of speech. To Lacan this is a fundamental error for the following main reasons. Firstly, all human discourse is inscribed in a linguistic structure [whatever the language]; even body language is a form of language with the same structural features. Secondly, the aim of psychoanalytic praxis is to articulate the truth of one’s desire in speech [i.e. linguistic discourse] rather than in other forms – the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis is based on the principle that linguistic discourse is the only way to the Subject’s “truth”. Thirdly, linguistic discourse through speech is the only tool and means of access that the psychoanalyst has, since no one can read minds. Any analyst who does not understand and master the way speech and linguistic discourse work does not understand psychoanalysis itself.

Lacan proposed that like the words uttered by God in Genesis, speech is a “symbolic invocation” which creates ex nihilo, “a new order of being in the relations between men.” Lacan distinguished “la parole pleine[full speech] from “la parole vide[empty speech] in 1953. La « parole pleine » [full speech] articulates the symbolic dimension of language; it is a speech that performs [qui fait acte]. La « parole pleine » [full speech] is defined by its identity with that which it speaks about, it is one full of meaning. “La parole vide[empty speech] is one that simply has signification. The aim of psychoanalytic praxis is to articulate “la parole pleine[full speech], which can be hard work; “la parole pleine[full speech] can be quite laborious (pénible) to articulate. The speech act also contains the essence of efficacious transference, which involves an exchange of signs that transforms both the speaker and the listener. Each time a man speaks to another in an authentic and full manner, we find in a true sense, “symbolic transference” – a process that takes place and changes the nature of the two beings present. The Symbolic dimension of language is that of the signifier and full speech, the true discourse of the Other [Big Other / Grand Autre / Superego], the Unconscious. The Imaginary dimension of language is that of the signified, signification and empty speech, the wall of language which interrupts, distorts and inverts the discourse of the Other [Big Other / Grand Autre / Superego]; Lacan proposed that language is as much there to be found in the Other [Grand Autre / Superego] as to drastically prevent us from understanding him. It is important to note that language has both a Symbolic and an Imaginary dimension; there is something in the symbolic function of human discourse that cannot be eliminated, and that is the role played in it by the imaginary [which is shaped by the Symbolic]. Psychoanalytic theory claims that speech is the only means of access to the truth about desire; a particular type of speech without conscious control termed “free association”. The ethics of psychonalysis enjoin analysands [patients] to recognise their own part in their sufferings, so that the psychoanalyst can then help them work through their problems and psychical barriers.

Lacan developed psychoanalytic theory in radically new directions that relied heavily on linguistic theory and other intellectual trends in the late 20th-century France, such as the structuralist movement. It was proposed that the Unconscious is structured like a language, so that its operations can be likened to linguistic phenomena [e.g. repression was likened to a metaphor]. Hence, to uncover unconscious material the psychoanalyst must decipher a chain of clues with a great deal of verbal dexterity. Lacan also held that the ego [le Moi], although conscious and able to orchestrate a wide range of operations, is not a complete organ of self-control as Ego psychologists from the US claim, but largely also an unstable and ultimately illusory sense of personal unity. To Lacan, our sense of wholeness is a fiction and our selves are profoundly “de-centred” around a tissue of identifications with people [and characters] we have known [directly or indirectly exposed to – this extends to the arts, fictional characters, mentors, etc].

Lacan’s (1973/1977) version of Psychoanalytic Theory pointed out that Ego Psychologists [e.g. Anna Freud, Heinz Hartmann, Erik Erikson] and Object Relations Theorists [e.g. Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott and Ronald Fairbairn] had strayed too far from Freud’s original (1900, 1923) original version of psychoanalytic theory. This is even in direct contrast to Jacques Lacan’s own mentor, Ego Psychologist Rudolph Loewenstein who was also a close associate and collaborator of Ego Psychologist Heinz Hartmann.

« Pendant un certain temps, on a pu croire que les psychanalystes savaient quelque chose, mais ça n’est plus très répandu (rires). Le comble du comble, c’est qu’ils n’y croient plus eux-mêmes (rires), en quoi ils ont tort, car justement ils en savent un bout, seulement, exactement comme pour l’inconscient dont c’est la véritable définition, ils ne savent pas qu’ils le savent. »

French for: “For a while, you might have thought that psychoanalysts knew something, but it’s not very common anymore (laughs). The worst thing is that they no longer believe it themselves (laughs), in which they are wrong, because they know a bit of it, only, exactly as for the unconscious, of which this is the true definition, they don’t know that they know it. »

-Jacques Lacan, Conférence de Louvain, 1972

Lacan, however, seems to have set the record straight in accentuating the fundamental and widely accepted foundations of psychoanalysis by advocating a “return to Freud” [not Anna Freud’s (1923) version of Ego Psychology], but rather to Sigmund Freud’s Topographic Model of the 1900 that defined the mind into 3 levels of awareness, i.e. the Unconscious [Le Ça], the Preconscious [Le grand Autre] and the Conscious [Le Moi].

Rocha (2012) noted that Lacan (1973/1977) was especially concerned with the Unconscious [l’inconscient, le “Ça”, the “It”, the ID] as the “ideal worker” within individuals’ personality structures. In a 1973 television interview, Lacan famously argued that the Unconscious does notthink, nor calculate, nor judge; the unconscious simply works!” Lacan contended that like the ideal worker in a capitalist society, the Unconscious generates a product in compliance with rigid, hierarchical rules and regulationsin particular, the product of unthinking and unquestioning in the fulfillment of individuals’ desire – which seems like something psychoanalysis should address and change for a humane, intelligent and creative civilisation.

As for dreams, Lacan stressed that dreams are important products of the Unconscious [l’inconscient, le “Ça”, the “It”, the ID] that allow individuals tofeel” [at least during the sleeping state] that they have fulfilled their desire, however, dreams may also contain anxiety-provoking contents that individuals do not desire. As Meyer (2001) interestingly pointed out, in Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, the problem of the Unconscious [l’inconscient, le “Ça”, the “It”, the ID] in finding expression is the problem of discourse with the “Other” [Le grand “Autre”, the big “Other”, Preconscious Superego in the domain of the symbolic]. Indeed, infants enter the world without knowing how to communicate their desire to caregivers via language, with its own rules and structure. It is also to be noted that in Lacanian Theory of Psychoanalysis, infants’ desire arises from the “loss and longing” that they experience when they are separated from their caregivers [especially their mothers or mother-figure in most cases] – precisely the person from whom the infants first learn early forms of basic communication [language] since the helpless infant’s needs are met after his/her various demands are expressed in sounds and specific actions. Waintrater (2012) also pointed out that in Lacan’s Theory, individuals’ desire are not solely tied to infantile sexuality. If anything, Lacan’s concept of unconscious desire complements John Bowlby’s (1969) concept of infants’ need for attachment. Lacan uses the term “Manque“, French for “Lack” which is always related to desire. It is a lack which causes desire to arise [desire is the metonymy of the lack of being (manque-à-être)], however the precise nature of what is lacking [i.e. symbolic lack] varies from one individual to another. In 1955, when the term “Manque (Lack)” first appears, it designates first and foremost “manque-à-être” [want-to-be] which is the “lack of being“, hence what is desired is “being”, i.e. not the lack of this or that, but the lack of “being” whereby the being exists, this lack of being [manque-à-être] is the heart of analytic experience and the very field in which the neurotic patient’s passion is deployed. An important distinction to be noted is between the lack of being [Manque-à-être / want to be] which relates to desire, and the lack of having [Manque-à-avoir] which relates to demand.

 

Distinction between Need, Demand & Desire

Need

In the context of this distinction, “need” comes close to what Freud referred to as “instinct” (Instinkt); that is, a purely biological concept opposed to the realm of the drive (Trieb), it is an appetite which emerges according to the requirements of the organism and which abates completely (even if only temporarily) when satisfied. The human subject, being born in a state of helplessness, is unable to satisfy its own needs, and hence depends on the Other [usually a role occupied by the mother in most cases] to help it satisfy them. In order to get the Other’s help, the infant must express its needs vocally; need must be articulated in demand. The primitive demands of the infant may only be inarticulate screams, but they serve to bring the Other to minister to the infant’s needs. However, the presence of the Other soon acquires an importance in itself, an importance that goes beyond the satisfaction of need, since this presence symbolizes the Other’s love. Hence demand soon takes on a double function, serving both as an articulation of need and as a demand for love. However, whereas the Other can provide the objects which the subject requires to satisfy his needs, the Other [usually mother at this stage] cannot provide that unconditional love which the subject craves. Hence even after the needs which were articulated in demand have been satisfied, the other aspect of demand, the craving for love, remains unsatisfied, and this leftover is desire.

The concept of a pre-linguistic need is thus merely a hypothesis, and the subject of this pure need is a mythical subject; even the paradigmatic need of hunger never exists as a pure biological given, but is marked by the structure of desire. Nevertheless, this hypothesis is useful to Lacan for maintaining his theses about the radical divergence between human desire [which is inscribed in the Symbolic order] and all biological categories; need is thus an intermittent tension which arises for purely organic reasons and which is discharged entirely by the specific action corresponding to the particular need in question.

Demand

Lacan argues that since the infant is incapable of performing the specific actions that would satisfy its biological needs, and hence Lacan bases the distinction on the fact that in order to satisfy his needs the infant must articulate them in language; in other words, the infant must articulate his needs in a “demand” [for them to be met by the mother who will perform the specific actions]. However, in doing so, something else is introduced which causes a split between need and demand; this is the fact that every demand is not only an articulation of need but also an (unconditional) demand for love. Now, although the Other to whom the demand is addressed (in the first instance, the mother) can and may supply the object which satisfies the infant’s need [e.g. the breast to satisfy the child’s hunger], she is never in a position to answer the demand for love unconditionally, because she too is divided. The result of this split between need and demand is an insatiable leftover, which is desire itself. It is this double function which gives birth to desire, since while the needs which demand articulates may be satisfied, the craving for love is unconditional and insatiable, and hence persists as a leftover even after the needs have been satisfied; this leftover constitutes desire. In the seminar of 1956-7, Lacan argues that the cry of the human infant — its call (l’appel) to the mother — is not merely an instinctual signal but is “inserted in a synchronic world of cries organized in a symbolic system.” In other words, the infant’s screams become organized in a linguistic structure long before the child is capable of articulating recognisable words.

Demand is thus intimately linked to the human subject’s initial helplessness. By forcing the patient to express himself entirely in speech, the psychoanalytic situation puts him back in the position of the helpless infant, thus encouraging regression.

“Through the mediation of the demand, the whole past opens up right to early infancy. The subject has never done anything other than demand, he could not have survived otherwise, an we just follow on from there.” However, while the speech of the patient is itself already a demand (for a reply), this demand is underpinned by deeper demands (to be cured, to be revealed to himself). The question of how the psychoanalyst engages with these demands is crucial. Certainly the psychoanalyst does not attempt to gratify all of the patient’s demands, but nor is it simply a question of frustrating them.

Desire 

Lacan follows Spinoza in arguing that “desire is the essence of man.” Desire is simultaneously the heart of human existence and the central concern of psychoanalysis. However, when Lacan talks about desire, it is not any kind of desire he is referring to, but always “unconscious” desire. This is not because Lacan sees conscious desire as unimportant, but simply because it is unconscious desire that forms the central concern of psychoanalysis. The aim of psychoanalytic praxis is to lead the patient to recognise the truth about his/her desire. It is only possible to recognize one’s desire when it is articulated in speech. Hence in psychoanalysis, “what’s important is to teach the subject to name, to articulate, to bring this desire into existence.” However, it is not a question of seeking a new means of expression for a given desire, for this would imply a expressionist theory of language. On the contrary, by articulating desire in speech, the patient brings it into existence.

“That the subject should come to recognise and to name his desire; that is the efficacious action of analysis. But it isn’t a question of recognising something which would be entirely given. … In naming it, the subject creates, brings forth, a new presence in the world.” [adds to reality what was previously not there through language]. This seems to have a link to Schopenhauer’s concept of the “Will” which he proposed can be understood through the potential of the human brain so that as it is kindled by a spark it brings the whole world as idea into existence [Freud was inspired by Schopenhauer and so was Lacan indirectly]; knowledge proceeds from the “Will” which here is “Desire” – knowledge that is either from the senses or is rational as it is destined to serve the will in its aim of expressing itself.

However, there is a limit to how far desire can be articulated in speech because of a fundamental “incompatibility between desire and speech; “it is this incompatibility which explains the irreducibility of the unconscious (i.e. the fact the the unconscious is not that which is not known, but that which cannot be known). “Although the truth about desire is present to some degree in all speech, speech can never articulate the whole truth about desire; whenever speech attempts to articulate desire, there is always a leftover, a surplus, which exceeds speech.”

It is important to distinguish between desire and the drives. Although they both belong to the field of the Big Other, hence are within the Symbolic field/order (as opposed to love which lies in the imaginary field/order but still has effects in the symbolic order, love requires reciprocity, whereas the drives only pure activity), desire is one whereas the drives are many. In other words, the drives are the particular (partial) manifestations of a single force called desire (although there may also be desires which are not manifested in the drives). There is only one object of desire, object (petit) a, which is represented in any object which sets desire in motion, especially the partial objects which define the drives [The “objet petit a” is the leftover behind the introduction of the Symbolic dimension in the Real, it denotes a surplus meaning and enjoyment which has no “use value” but persists for the mere sake of enjoyment; it is linked to the illusory/imaginary concept of semblance]. The drives do not seek to attain the objet petit a, but rather circle round it. The object (petit) a is not the object towards which desire tends, but that which sets desire in motion. It plays an increasingly important part in Lacan’s concept of psychoanalytic praxis, in which the psychoanalyst must situate himself/herself as the substitute for objet petit a, i.e. the cause of the analysand’s [patient’s] desire. The universal feature of desire is commonly evident in hysterics [hysteria has changed in appearance nowadays but has not disappeared], being people who unconsciously sustain another person’s desire and convert another’s desire into their own. So, in the psychoanalytic praxis/treatment of hysterics, the most important part for the psychoanalyst is to discover the place [i.e. not the physical or anatomical locality, but the psychical locality / The “Other” scene in Lacanian terms] from which the patient desires [i.e. the Subject with whom he/she identifies] and not simply the object of the patient’s desire. Desire is not a relation to an object, but a relation to a lack (Manque-à-être / Lack of being). A major point from Lacan’s discourse on desire is that desire is a social product constituted in a dialectical relationship [i.e. which is embedded in linguistic discourse] with the perceived desires of other subjects.

Alexandre Kojève, whose seminars were followed by Lacan and also other intellectuals de “premier plan” of the time such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Georges Bataille, Jean Hyppolite and  Raymond Queneau gave the example of the Oedipus complex to point out that desire is essentially desire to be the object of another’s desire; Kojève argued that this is illustrated for the first “time” during the Oedipus complex, when the young developing subject desires to be the object of the desire of the first “Other” in his life [which is usually the mother or a mother figure in most cases], when the subject desires to be the object of desire [symbolic phallus] of the mother. Lacan argues that the child must detach himself from the imaginary relation with the mother in order to enter the social world; failure to do so can result in any one of various peculiarities ranging from phobia to perversion.

One of Lacan’s most often repeated formulas is: “man’s desire is the desire of the Other [i.e. the Big Other/Superego].” This can be understood in many complementary ways, of which the following are the most important. Desire is for the thing that we suppose the Other desires, which is to say, the thing that the Other lacks. Hence, the subject desires from the point of view of “another”; the object of man’s desire is simply an object desired by someone else, which in most cases is the main reason why the object becomes desirable, and unfortunately not because of the natural quality of the thing in itself [Note: this is of course applicable to the common majority, since the consciousness of individuals with superior reflective abilities and philosophical values will likely lead them to perceive, think and behave differently].

Desire is essentially the “desire of the Other‘s [i.e. Grand Autre’s / Superego’s] desire”, which implies both the desire to be the object of another’s desire, and the desire for recognition by another. Desire is essentially a desire for recognition.

Lacan takes this idea from Hegel, to state:

Desire is human only if the one desires, not the body, but the Desire of the other. . . that is to say, if he/she wants to be ‘desired’ or ‘loved’, or, rather, ‘recognised’ in his/her human value. . . . In other words, all human, anthropogenetic Desire . . . is, finally, a function of the desire for ‘recognition‘.

On love and desire, the former is a metaphor, while the latter is metonymy; love is located in the imaginary order but generates effects in the symbolic order where desire is located. We do find some similarities between love and desire in Lacan’s work since it is assumed that both can never be fully satisfied [i.e. insatiable]. The structure of love as “the wish to be loved” is also identical to the structure of desire in which the subject desires to become the object of the Other’s desire. Love involves an imaginary reciprocity, since to love is also to wish to be loved.

Desire is metonymy, and hence a constant force which can never be fully satisfied [because humans tend to have other desires once one is achieved and also because Desire may not only arise from Lack but may also be a productive force in itself]. Desire is the constant ‘pressure’ which underlies the drives and keeps individuals moving forward towards progress [with the right choice(s) and/or the right guidance]. As Elisabeth Roudinesco said: “Lacan est un penseur sceptique et en même temps passionné, c’est-à-dire l’engagement, la possibilité de croire encore en quelque chose, c’est-à-dire au désir, existe, donc il ne faut pas désespérer le Sujet mais la seule chose qui peut compter c’est l’éthique du désir, puisqu’il ne nous reste plus que ça : ne pas céder sur son désir ; ça c’est l’héroïsme Lacanien.” [French for:Lacan is a sceptical and at the same time passionate thinker, that is to say commitment, the possibility of still believing in something, that is to say, in desire, exists, so one should not abandon the Subject, but the only thing that can count is the ethics of desire, since that is all we have left: not to give up on one’s desire; that is Lacanian heroism.”]

In order to achieve the desire for recognition all Subjects must impose the idea that they have of themselves on others (i.e. the rest of the humanity); this leads all individuals in a form of personal fight [which not necessarily violent, but rather a dialectical discourse] with the rest of humanity for recognition and pure prestige; Lacan argues that it is only by risking one’s life for recognition that one can prove that he is truly human. Lacan introduced « la dialectique du maître et de l’esclave », to use the metaphors “Master” and “Slave” to point out that human civilisation is only possible because we have those who direct (Masters/Maîtres) and those who receive directions (Slaves/Esclaves); civilisation would not be possible if it was composed of only masters or of only slaves, both are required and play a fundamental role in the advancement of civilisation. A Subject can both be a master and a slave, i.e. a master to one, but at the same time a slave for another in a different domain. To Lacan, the master signifier is that which represents a particular Subject for all other signifiers but can never represent the Subject completely since there is always some surplus which escapes representation.

 

The 3 Registers: Real, Imaginary and Symbolic

Firstly, the “Real” is not “reality”, and there is no “objective reality” because there is only a subjective “reality” that holds significance for any individual Subject, and this subjective reality takes shape by its knots with the Imaginary and the Symbolic register [both conceived from the Real, which also then ties itself to the 2 other registers] that the Subject identifies with linguistically. It is in this sense that Lacan is a formidable realist and ties himself to all the great Realist Schools of Philosophy. The Real is a domain outside the symbolic Subject, the Real is the domain of the inexpressible since it does not belong to language. The Lacanian “Real” contains the “Lack” which generally manifests itself in real nothingness. To indicate that something is lacking, requires the assumption that it is possible for it to be present, which introduces the Symbolic domain into the Real. The “Real” simply stands for what is neither symbolic nor imaginary and is never truly known; it is mediated by the 2 orders of the Imaginary and the Symbolic; thus while the Real is present, these uncanny objects are treated as alien, meaningless and reminders of the symbolic lack in the subject’s identity formation; and “lack” is what causes desire to arise, which leads to the Subject’s unique development and growth.

Lacan said:

« L’inconscient reste le cœur de l’être pour les uns, et d’autres croiront me suivre à en faire l’Autre (symbolique) de la réalité. La seule façon de s’en sortir, c’est de poser qu’il est le réel, ce qui ne veut dire aucune réalité, le réel en tant qu’impossible à dire, c’est-à-dire en tant que le réel c’est l’impossible, tout simplement . »

French for: “The unconscious remains the heart of the being for some, and others will believe they follow me to make it the Other (symbolic) of reality. The only way to get out of it is to pose that it is the real, which does not mean any reality, the real as impossible to say, that is to say as the real is the impossible, quite simply.”

Jean-Bertrand Pontalis who was psychoanalysed by Lacan, assisted to his presentations while also participating in the famous seminars that he transcribed the résumés. Pontalis said: “On est un peu perdu et on se dit c’est peut-être génial, c’est peut-être moi qui comprend rien, ça me rappelle que d’ailleurs Lacan disant – alors qu’il y avait au début de ses séminaire des gens comme Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Hyppolite venait, Paul Ricœur et bien d’autres – je l’entends encore dire – peut-être pas s’adressant à eux mais l’auditoire en général : « Mais enfin, vous allez commencer à l’ouvrir votre comprenoire ? » Voilà, donc je ne peux pas dire que ça m’émeuve, parce qu’il a quand même un côté comédien même très comédien, il en remet un peu comme il en remettait dans sa vêture, avec ses vestes, ses cols Mao à l’époque et puis ensuite les fameux cigares torsadés.” [French for: We’re a bit lost and we say to ourselves that maybe it’s great, maybe it’s me who doesn’t understand anything, it reminds me of Lacan saying – while at the beginning of his seminars there were people like Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Hyppolite came, Paul Ricoeur and many others – I still hear him say, perhaps not addressing them but the audience in general: “But finally, you will begin to open your understanding?” So I can’t say I’m moved, because he still has a comedian side, even very comical, like he used to portray with his clothes, with his jackets, his Mao collars at the time, and then the famous twisted cigars.”].

Jacques Lacan jeune.jpg

Jacques Lacan (1901 – 1981)

Christian Jambet explained how the real is “nothing”, but gets its subjective significance from knots with the imaginary and the symbolic register of the individual Subject: “Le nœud était là pour essayer de transmettre, pas simplement le réel comme vérité ou le réel comme indicible, mais le réel comme ce qui est là dans sa plus grande nudité et sa plus grande insignifiance. La chute d’une ficelle et en même temps son enroulement. Qu’est-ce qui reste quand ça se défait ? Un rien. Et en même temps que ce rien forme la chose la plus complexe, c’est-à-dire tous ces nœuds du langage ont quoi nous sommes pris et qui tissent notre vie.” [French for: The knot (Borromean) was there to try to transmit, not simply the Real as truth or the Real as unspeakable, but the real as what is there in its greatest nakedness and insignificance. The fall of a string and at the same time its knots. What remains when it unravels? A nothing, and at the same time this nothing forms the most complex thing, that is to say, all those knots of language that we are caught in and that weave our lives.”].

Lacan psychanalyse noeud-borromeen danny d'purb dpurb site web.jpg

Le Noeud Borroméen (The Borromean Knot or Chain) / We could refer to this figure as a chain since it involves the interconnection of several different threads. Although a minimum of three threads or rings [Real, Imaginary & Symbolic] are required to form a Borromean chain, there is no maximum number; the chain may be extended indefinitely by adding further rings, while still preserving its Borromean quality

Secondly, we have the Imaginary register/order which is the domain of the formation of the Ego in the mirror stage by identification with the counterpart [or specular image, i.e. the little other (petit autre)] and this dual illusory relationship between the Ego and the counterpart is characterised by narcissism and alienation. Lacan also accused the major psychoanalytic schools of reducing psychoanalysis to the imaginary domain of the Ego. Although the imaginary is structured by the symbolic, the Imaginary register is the dimension of the human subject which is most closely linked to animal psychology; this means that in man’s imaginary, the relation has deviated from the realm of human nature and shifted to the realm of image and imagination, deception and lure [sexual behaviour is especially prone to the lure in animals, which is straightforward]. The principal illusions of the imaginary register are those of wholeness, synthesis, autonomy, duality and similarity, which is in fact untrue and deceptive. Jean Baudrillard, born in the peasantry, who eventually became one of the great names of post-modern philosophy, known for his analysis of modes of mediation and communication, proposed the concept of « simulacre » [simulacrum] and hyperreality. Although those are not connected to Lacan, they are great examples to show how the mainsteam masses are constantly living in an imaginary reality that Baudrillard called “hyperreality”; he argued that to the masses, the reality of our world at some point becomes indistinguishable from just a simple representation of it; that representation, or “simulacrum”, becomes completely detached from reality and ends up being an illusion that is perceived as truth by the average minds of the masses. The inability of the average minds to distinguish reality from the simulacrum is what Baudrillard referred to as hyperreality” – a state of illusion he argued that the masses are constantly living in psychologically. The latter maintained that in the state the masses are made to live, there is no truth, only a simulacrum of it, and most fail to tell the difference. Like Chomsky, Baudrillard believed that a large amount of social ills can be attributed to the mainstream media, specially in the post-modern world with the constant 24-hour news cycle.

Vladimír Takáč - Headline News d'purb dpurb site web

Headline News” par Vladimír Takáč (2013)

The philosopher noted that the mainstream media is the chief perpetrator in the creation of hyperreality – the press, to Baudrillard, distorts the truth to fit its motive – and the average minds [lacking in self-reflective abilities] who are ignorant of the misrepresentation, accept the hyperreality generated by the simulacrum as the truth; this leads to an illusion far from reality that the average minds perceive as reality. Even the enigmatic Émile Zola concluded with an observation in the same line as Baudrillard, when in 1888, writing for Le Figaro littéraire he declared:

« Mon inquiétude unique, devant le journalisme actuel, c’est l’état de surexcitation nerveuse dans lequel in tient la nation
[…]
Aujourd’hui, remarquez quelle importance démesurée prend le moindre fait.
[…]
Quand une affaire est finie, une autre commence. Les journaux ne peuvent pas vivre sans cette existence de casse-cou. Si des sujets d’émotion manquent, ils en inventent. »

French for:

“My only concern with journalism today is the state of nervous overexcitement in which it holds the nation […] Today, notice the disproportionate importance of the smallest fact. […] When one case is over, another begins. Newspapers cannot live without this nerve-wracking existence. If there are no emotional topics, they have to invent them.”

– Émile Zola,
dans Le Figaro littéraire, 1888.

Being a figure of postmodern philosophy, in a state of hyperreality, truth to Baudrillard is hence a fluid concept that is more dependent on narrative, so any person can distort it – which clearly reveals its insignificance to individuals with self-reflective abilities.

For those who lack self-reflective abilities or have not developed them yet, it may be worth quoting Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst, who meticulously declared: “I am not what happened to me, I am what I chose to become.”

Carl Jung ce que je choisi de devenir d'purb dpurb site web

Traduction[EN]: “I am not what happens to me. I am what I choose to become.” – Carl Jung

The Imaginary register/order is where the Ego operates and also generates its own illusions. In a well adjusted psyche of the individual with self-reflective abilities, those illusions are synchronised with the Subject, the Symbolic and his/her desires.

Thirdly, we have the Symbolic register/order [which is constructed largely via language and discourse] and which is one of the aspects of the Subject that is revealed via the individual’s dreams. The Symbolic register is the fundamental cornerstone for Lacan; the Subject’s relationship with the Symbolic is at the heart of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysts are essentially practitioners of the symbolic order [i.e. civilised culture and the symbolic are thus imposed on raw nature]. Lacan criticised the psychoanalysis of his day for ignoring the symbolic register and reducing everything to the imaginary order of the Ego, and this for Lacan is a betrayal of Freud’s most basic insights; “Freud’s discovery is that of the field of effects, in the nature of man, produced by his relationship to the symbolic order“. Lacan accurately pointed out that it is only by working in the Symbolic field that the psychoanalyst can produce changes in the subjective position of the patient and foster progress and growth.

« Si l’amour aspire au développement de l’être de l’autre, la haine veut le contraire, soit son abaissement, son déroutement, sa déviation, son délire, sa négation détaillée, sa subversion. C’est en cela que la haine, comme l’amour, est une carrière sans limite. » [French for: “If love aspires to the development of the other’s being, hatred wants the opposite, that is to say its abasement, its disruption, its deviation, its delirium, its detailed negation, its subversion. It is in this that hate, like love, is a career without limits.” – Jacques Lacan

We can feel the genuine ethics and sense of concern of Lacan towards positive change in the following declaration he made : « Si l’amour aspire au développement de l’être de l’autre, la haine veut le contraire, soit son abaissement, son déroutement, sa déviation, son délire, sa négation détaillée, sa subversion. C’est en cela que la haine, comme l’amour, est une carrière sans limite. » [French for: “If love aspires to the development of the other’s being, hatred wants the opposite, that is to say its abasement, its disruption, its deviation, its delirium, its detailed negation, its subversion. It is in this that hate, like love, is a career without limits.”].

The symbolic changes orchestrated by the psychoanalyst will also structure the illusions produced by the Ego [le “Moi”] in the Imaginary order, since the Imaginary is influenced by the Symbolic. As Elisabeth Roudinesco pointed out: “ces illusions existent, elles forment notre psychisme ; nous vivons dans un monde d’illusions, de représentations et qui nous marque à vie et qui resterons d’ailleurs” [French for: “these illusions exist, they form our psyche; we live in a world of illusions, of representations and which marks us for life and will remain so for the future…“].

Un monde d'illusions Elisabeth Roudinesco Jacques Lacan danny d'purb dpurb site web.jpg

We live in a world of illusions…” -Elisabeth Roudinesco, 2001

Hence, a well adjusted psyche will allow the Subject to generate the appropriate illusions in the imaginary register of the Ego [Le Moi] that are synchronized with the true Subject [i.e. true product of the Symbolic register tied by language(s)] and his/her desires which has its roots in and is structured by the “scene” [i.e. NOT physical or anatomical locality, but PSYCHICAL locality] of the Other [i.e. Big Other/Grand Autre/Superego] where language(s) and discourse originate. The well adjusted Imaginary of the Ego [le Moi] reflects the individual’s desires and unique personality, and contributes to growth since it allows the Subject to imagine creatively while regulating the wild desires of the Unconscious [ID / It / Ça / Inconscient] according to the symbolic laws of the Big Other [i.e. Grand Autre / Superego under the ID]. The balance between these 3 domains [ID – Superego – Ego] differs from one individual to the other leading to differences in personality.

Structural components [or registers/orders] of the Subject that are revealed via dreams are the Imaginary and the Real. Lacan argued that the psychanalyst’s interpretation of dreams can be viewed as analogous to a linguist’s translation of a language, unearthing the meaning that particular symbols hold for an individual [e.g. a client in psychotherapy or an individual seeking psychoanalytic guidance to enhance themselves]. Lacan noted that a specific difficulty that arises when psychoanalysts interpret the content of clients’ dreams is that, by the time the clients have awakened a large portion [if not most or all] of the dream has vanished, and this can be problematic if clients are reflecting on dreams that they experienced several year (decades?) ago. According to Lacanian Theory, Marder (2013) noted that dreams are oriented towards future interpretation, by dreamers themselves or by someone else (e.g. Psychoanalysts). Hence, truly important content are likely to survive clients’ transition from sleeping to waking states.

Lacan also pointed out as Stockholder (1998) noted, that Freud’s (1923) Structural model, i.e. the later version of his Psychoanalytic Theory with its dictinctions among Id, Super-Ego and Ego had distorded the true meaning of the first Topographic Model. And perhaps rightly observed, since the Ego which was meant to be conscious, revealed an unconscious element in its ability to instantly generate defence mechanisms outside the awareness of the patient, when before the function of the Ego was just one component present in the Conscious, i.e. the Ego [le Moi], was a part of the “Conscious”, as a level of consciousness and not assumed to be a distinct mental functions as part of the new 3 part dissection [ID, SuperEgo and Ego]. However, they can be synthesised and enhanced, as we are doing with Freud, Jung and Lacan along with other discoveries in the realms of Neuroscience and Cognitive-Psychology to explore the psychology of the singular organism and its powers of definition to a level that no other psychologist has attempted to before our endeavour.

Lacan’s theory relocates the ID [Ça / L’Inconscient / Symbolic], Super-Ego [Surmoi, Le grand Autre: the big Other / Symbolic] and the Ego [Moi / Imaginary order] across the Unconscious, Preconscious and Conscious.

The Subject: Uniqueness in the speaking being, le parlêtre

Although psychoanalytic praxis has powerful effects on the ego, it is the Subject, and not the ego, on which psychoanalysis primarily operates. Different from the ego, the Subject is a product of the symbolic Grand Autre, i.e. the “Big Other” [Superego under the influence of the ID]. The Subject means no more than “human being” and in 1953 Lacan establishes a clear distinction between the Subject and the Ego which remained a one of the most fundamental distinctions in his work.  Whereas the Ego is part of the imaginary order, the Subject is part of the symbolic.

Lacan distinguished between 3 kinds of subject. Firstly, we have the impersonal subject, independent of the other, the pure grammatical subject, the noetic subject, the “it” of “it is known that”. Secondly, we have the anonymous reciprocal subject who recognises himself in equivalence with the other (ego reflection / petit autre / little other). Thirdly and finally, we have the personal subject in his uniqueness completely constituted by the act of self-affirmation. It is the third sense of the term subject, i.e. the personal subject in his uniqueness that constitutes the focus of Lacan’s work, and this also seems to be in line with our philosophy of construction and singularity in the creation of the individual. Lacan’s subject is the “subject of the unconscious”, i.e. it is a product of the expression of the unconscious through the symbolic “Grand Autre” [Superego]. Lacan argues that this distinction can be traced back to Freud: “[Freud] wrote Das Ich und das Es in order to maintain this fundamental distinction between the true Subject of the unconscious and the Ego as constituted in its nucleus by a series of alienating identifications. A complex and unique domain such as the subject should not be objectified or reduced to a thing; “What do we call a subject? Quite precisely, what in the development of objectivation, is outside of the object.” References to language come to dominate Lacan’s concept of the subject from the mid-1950s on; as he famously declared: « Pour libérer sa parole, le sujet est introduit, par la psychanalyse, au langage de son désir. » [French for: “To free his speech, the subject is introduced, through psychoanalysis, to the language of his desire”]

Au langage de son désir - Jacques Lacan

Traduction(EN): “To free his speech, the subject is introduced, through psychoanalysis, to the language of his desire.” – Jacques Lacan

It is very important however to distinguish the term “language” when reading the translations of Lacan’s work in English since the inexistence of some words in English make the translation from French inaccurate. Most importantly, in the French language we have two terms that both translate to “language” in English, those are the French terms “langue” [which refers a specific language, e.g. French or English] and “langage” [which refers to the prosody, expressive, grammatical and communicative structure of the language being used, the discourse of a particular Subject from any “langue” (specific language) since all “langues” (specific languages) come with different levels of structure, being a universal feature], it is the latter term “langage” referring to the general structure of the communicative pattern and linguistic discourse and not “langue” that is of interest to Lacanian psychoanalysis, i.e. the content of the discourse. So, it is important to note that in English, the term “language” in Lacan’s writings most often refers to  the French term “langage” [i.e. the structure and content of the communicative pattern or discourse] and not “langue”. Linguistic discourse (le langage) is a single paradigm of all structures and the basic units are the signifier; the unconscious is a treasury of signifiers in the Symbolic structured like language that finds expression to define the Subject where discourse becomes a social bond. Lacan distinguishes the Subject of the enunciation [i.e. how words are pronounced] from the Subject of the statement [i.e. the genuine message of the discourse] to show that because the Subject is essentially a speaking being (parlêtre), he/she is inescapably divided [i.e. by different forms of communicative patterns]. Language is a constantly evolving domain and not a nomenclature [i.e. not complete, sealed, strictly and methodically organised], beyond its use for conveying information, language is foremost an appeal to an interlocutor. In the early 1960s Lacan defines the subject as that which is represented by a signifier for another signifier; in other words, the subject is an effect of language and in philosophical “discourse” it denotes an individual self-consciousness; linguistic discourse is a mediating element that allows the Subject to attain his desired recognition from others [i.e. the rest of humanity] while creating a social bond; this perfectly illustrates Lacan’s thesis about the determination of consciousness by the Symbolic register. “The subject is a subject only by virtue of his subjection to the field of the Other [Grand Autre / Big Other / Superego / from the Symbolic register].”The philosophical connotations of the term “Subject” are particularly emphasised by Lacan, who links it with Descartes’s philosophy of the cogito: « Je pense donc que je suis » [I think therefore, I am] – “in the term subject . . . I am not designating the living substratum needed by this phenomenon of the subject, nor any sort of substance, nor any being possessing knowledge in his pathos . . . nor even some incarnated logos, but the Cartesian subject, who appears at the moment when doubt is recognised as certainty.” The fact that the symbol of the subject, S, is a homophone of the Freud’s term Es (‘Id’) illustrates that for Lacan, the true subject is the subject of the unconscious [i.e. the impact of the expression of the instincts and language of the unconscious through the SuperEgo/Big Other/Grand Autre on the subject and ego – which differs in individuals. Lacan forced us to admit that we all have mental automatism. We all have, deep inside us, this inner voice that will inhabit the language [or languages] with which we will speak. Perhaps a good example of the expression of the unconscious inner voice is through music, which Lacan saw as a fundamental language of our unconscious thoughts, and therefore the bearer of an enigmatic knowledge, i.e. a form of language that would therefore have a meaning, corresponding for example to that of the different emotions that satisfy the various states of mind and that possibly supports an imaginary form of communication]. In 1957 Lacan strikes through this symbol to produce the symbol $, the “barred subject,” thus illustrating the fact that the subject is essentially divided; the division of the subject by different forms of communicative patterns.

Niklos Koda Tome 7 Magie Blanche et Le spiborg - Mort et Déterré

Déssins: “Niklos Koda” par Olivier Grenson & “Mort et Déterré” par Jocelyn Boisvert et Pascal Colpron

 

L’Autre [Grand Autre / Big Other / Superego] as an early form of conscience from the Symbolic order/register & the mysterious origins and social bond of language [Speech / Linguistic discourse]

Lacan distinguishes between the Superego and the ego-ideal and argues that in most cases the primary function of the Superego is to repress sexual desire for the mother or mother figure in the resolution of the child’s early Oedipus complex and following Freud he also argues that the Superego is an early form of conscience that develops from the Oedipal identification with the father but also incorporates the maternal origins of an archaic form of the superego [conscience] derived from Melanie Klein’s thesis. Hence, Lacan proposed that in most people, the Oedipus complex is a process which imposes Symbolic structures on sexuality and allows the Subject to emerge – the imposition of culture on nature. When Lacan returned to the subject of the Superego [Grand Autre / Big Other] in his 1953-4 seminar, he located it in the symbolic order, as opposed to the imaginary order of the ego: the superego [i.e. Grand Autre] is essentially located within the symbolic plane of speech and has a close relationship with the “law” [law here does not refer to a particular piece of legislation, but to the fundamental principles which underlie social relations, i.e. a set of universal principles which makes social existence possible, the structures that govern social exchange, for e.g. gift giving or the formaton of pacts. Since the most basic form of exchange is communication [e.g. the exchange of words, the gift of speech], the symbolic “law” is fundamentally a linguistic entity/dimension, it is the law of the signifier. This law then is revealed with an order of language – the symbolic order itself. Lacan argues that the “law” is human because it separates man from other animals by regulating sexual relations that are among animals, unregulated. It is the law of the pleasure principle which commands the subject to “Enjoy as little as possible” and maintains the subject at a safe distance from the “Thing” (the forbidden object of desire), making the subject circle round it without ever attaining it because if the subject transgresses, it is experienced as suffering/evil – it is fortunate then that the thing is usually inaccessible and/or out of direct reach; the thing is impossible to imagine, it is unknowable and beyond symbolisation]. The “law” as such is a symbolic structure which regulates subjectivity and in this sense prevents disintegration of the wholeness of the individual’s psycheThe law of the superego however is believed to have a senseless and blind character of pure imperativeness and simple tyranny, so it is at one and the same time the law and its destruction, the Superego [only partially conscious] is thus the “big Other” which imposes a purely oppressive morality on the neurotic subject but also the will-to-enjoy and is related to the voiceThe big “Other” must be considered a locus in which speech is constituted, it is thus only possible to speak of the “big Other” as a subject in a secondary sense where a psychoanalyst may occupy this position and thereby “embody” the “Big Other” for a patient / analysand.

In arguing that speech originates not in the Ego or even in the Subject, but in the partially unconscious “Other” [i.e. Big Other / Grand Autre / Superego], Lacan is stressing that speech and language are beyond conscious control, they come from an other place/scene [i.e. psychical localities], outside consciousness, and hence “the unconscious is the discourse of the big Other” [i.e. the effect on the subject of speech that is addressed to that subject from elsewhere, by another subject (forgotten or unknown) from another “scene”, i.e. psychical locality] and belongs wholly to the symbolic order. As Christian Jambet pointed out, this means that the fragments of discourse that the individual will articulate has its roots in the big Other’s scene(s) [i.e. NOT physical or anatomical locality, BUT PSYCHICAL localities], which is precisely the treasure of signifiers where language – which is very real – is structured, along with the individual’s desires. In 1969, Lacan begins to use the term discourse to denote a “social bond” founded in language; an incredibly rational observation because there is nothing more social than languagethe vital ingredient in any form of social activity. [Note: This leads to individuals not sharing anything in common with others in their direct geographical environment, because different individuals will be connected to different psychical localities.]

Parlez-vous Lacan

Gillett (2001) noted that, in Lacan’s view, language does not perfectly convey individuals’ desire to other persons, partly because individuals do not fully understand their own desire, and partly because language is an inherently social medium that can lead to misunderstanding as well as understanding between individuals and other persons. Language however is a very powerful social medium [as can be seen also from the essay, The Concept of Self]

Le Langage et la Réalité danny d'purb dpurb site web 1600.jpg

Traduction(EN): « There will always be something special about language because language creates reality. Language reveals the truth of the subject and adds to reality what was not there before. Hence, the difference between truth and reality is that truth adds to reality what was not there before. Empiricists who study traits should never forget that constructs would not exist if they had not first been created through language. Hence language, creates reality! » -D.J. d’Purb

Jacques Lacan saw the unconscious [ID / Le Ça] as a structure of language whose formal logic unfolds in the manner of a Bach flute or a poem by Mallarmé and argued that the unconscious is structured like language. In the unconscious [i.e. the place where the treasure of signifiers is] as well as in the acquisition of language, individuals may follow rules regarding the use of symbols without having deliberately learned [and without having overtly been taught] those rules [something “special” and even “mystical” about language]. In addition the unconscious [like language] is regarded as a “network of signifiers”, a history of signifiers that shape the subject; the term signifier (le significant) referring to any symbol that is used [on its own, or in combination with other symbols] to stand in for, or to represent, something else [the signified – le signifié]. In conceiving the “big Other” as a place/scene, Lacan alludes to Freud’s concept of not physical or anatomical locality, but “psychical locality, in which the unconscious is described as “the other scene”. In Lacanian terms the “other scene” is the big Other. The term “scene” was used by Lacan to denote the imaginary but also symbolic theatre in which the Subject plays out his fantasy; a fantasy which is however firmly built on the edifice of the Real [i.e. the world] and shaped by the symbolic order. The scene of fantasy is a virtual space which is framed, similarly to the scene of a play which is framed by the proscenium arch in a theatre, whereas beyond the frame lies the “real” space where the world is. Lacan uses the notion of “scene” to distinguish between 2 processes: (i) Acting out, and (ii) Passing to the Act. Since, the scene is symbolic and built on the real, the process of “Acting Out” takes place within the frame, i.e. inside the scene and is inscribed in the symbolic order; whereas the process of “Passing to the Act” is an exit from the scene, a crossing over from the symbolic into the real. It is highly likely that the impact of the arts, education, exposure and personal development has an important role to play in the development of the partially unconscious “big Others” and “the other scene”. The greatest child psychologist of all time, Jean Piaget argued that all forms of social interaction [which also includes artistic exposure] in the process of learning play an important role in « cognitive growth ».

La Génération de la Culture Digitale dpurb

[FR] Au XXIe siècle, les industries des arts, de la culture et de l’éducation s’appuient principalement sur les médias numériques pour toucher des clients dans le monde entier / [EN] The industries of the arts, culture and education in the 21st century, mainly rely on digital outlets to reach customers across the planet

This also leads to the important question of the “use” of art. Art is a very lucrative business in the 21st century with the wide range of outlets available digitally to deliver the works to the consumer/audience; but what are we consuming? What is the effect that we look for when we fully process the artworks that we choose? What happens after complete psychical digestion by the different psyches among us? Art is used to mark history, to leave a trace, not of the events, but of the line of thought of those living at the time it is focusing on. Back to the fundamentals of philosophy, the famous quote “je pense donc je suis” [French for: “I think therefore I am”] from Descartes explains to us that man is gifted with a conscience unlike animals. It is because we are organisms with the ability to think that we are human beings. Spinoza argued that we all have a conatus, an identity that is unique to each of us; the horse runs, the human being thinks. It is hence essential to question oneself, to meditate on a particular topic or another in order to blossom and thrive as human beings. Art is praxis, like philosophy it is an activity that produces no added value and has no other purpose other than the “perfecting of the agent” as Aristotle put it – it is an activity that allows for this work of reflective meditation. In this sense, a painting cannot be considered as a mere decoration as it is not a question of finding it “beautiful” or “ugly”, but it implies a work of reflection and a particular mental visualisation. Of course, art does not speak to everyone. Serge Gainsbourg pointed out that we have 2 types of art: major and minor ones. Major art forms are those that only the trained mind can understand: architecture, painting, the classics and poetry; For example, this piece by the French philosopher and winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize in literature, Henri Bergson ( – ):

« L’état suprême de la beauté, c’est la grâce. Or, dans le mot grâce, on entend aussi la bonté. Car la bonté, c’est la générosité d’un principe de Vie qui se donne indéfiniment. »

– Henri Bergson

Then we have the Minor art forms, which are those that speak to everyone. It is obviously difficult to perceive, interpret and explore the knowledge, layers of meaning and wisdom in artistic literary compositions if we do not have a good vocabulary and a deep understanding of literary voice [i.e. tone and mood], linguistic style [i.e. Imagery, Simile, Metaphor, Personification] and aural imagery [i.e. Alliteration, Assonance and Onomatopoeia] ; similarly it would be hard to understand all the hard work behind the construction of a cathedral if we do not have any understanding of architecture, although nothing prevents us from appreciating its grandeur and contemplating it at length; this is also applicable to painting which is linked to a profound understanding of scales, light, reflections, shadows, colours, paints, textures and brush strokes. Going by Metry Sephora’s straightforward way to understand a work of art, we can firstly ask ourselves what it is about; what is the painter presenting to us? What do we see in the distance? Secondly, how is it all represented? [Techniques, colours, materials, movements] What do we see from up close and what feelings are elicited? Thirdly, it is about the moment the art work mirrors us. Sometimes we are already touched and are able to evade by imagining the setting presented to us, we reminisce about moments experienced and we reflect on a particular topic. In some other cases, the art work does not touch us and we have to question ourselves deeper, through the life of the artist; why did the artist represent this? What was going on in his/her life at that particular time? In what context did he/she realise it? What was the train of thought of the time?

Les Fenêtres [Windows] par Robert_Delaunay (1912)

“La Fenêtre” par Robert Delaunay. 1912 [de la série “Les Fenêtres”] / Musée de Grenoble

The above painting is “La Fenêtre” [The Window]” by the French painter Robert Delaunay (1885 – 1941) completed between 1911 and 1912 which is part of the series, “Les Fenêtres [Windows]“, which include 13 paintings inspired by the reading of “La loi du contraste simultané des couleurs” written in 1839 by Gustave Chevreuil; we know that the Delaunays created a cultural movement on their own and Blaise Cendrars (1887 – 1961) and Guillaume Appolinaire (1880 – 1918) were great admirers of their work which is part of the Cubist movement. This painting also inspired Apollinaire for his poem also entitled “Les Fenêtres” [Windows] where the writer tried to create a simultaneity between words as Delaunay does with colours. The painter seeks the original essence of colour, while the poet seeks the original essence of words. If we were to analyse this work, we could first observe the mixture and contrast of colours, it is not linear as a Mondrian art work, but still keeps a sense of organisation since the shapes do not spread in every direction, with different shades of blue and orange dominating the work. Secondly, we can conclude that it is rectangular and is a work of oil on canvas measuring 45.8 x 37.5 cm kept at the Musée de Grenoble and that the paint is smooth with movements executed naturally making it pleasant and relaxing to the eyes. Thirdly, based on the life of the painter we know that Robert Delaunay was part of a generation of avant-garde artists who were particularly prolific on the artistic scene between 1912 and 1914, representing the cubist and neo-impressionist movement, and that he was inspired by the scientific works of Chevreul on colours, by the work of Seurat and also that of Cézanne. At that time in the early 20th century, modern painting had tended towards abstraction, and in 1912 Apollinaire diagnosed the birth of a new pictoral art: “The new painters paint paintings where there is no longer a real subject”. By 1912, Delaunay had turned to orphism which led to the series of painting containing “La Fenêtre” [The Window]. More specifically orphic cubism had been distinguished from scientific cubism in 1912 by Apollinaire during the exposition of the Section d’Or, with the term orphism clearly linked to his poem “Orphée” (1908) which deals with pure poetry – a sort of “luminous language”. Another interpretation of this term is proposed: the name makes the analogy of the painting with music.

Peindre avec la musique DnP danny d'purb dpurb site web

Indeed, at the start of the 20th century, music represented modern art par excellence, perfectly abstract, therefore pure as a universal art form, with a totalising function. Music could unite all the arts, as in Wagner’s operas with the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk [i.e. A total work of art characterized by the simultaneous use of many media and artistic disciplines, and by the symbolic, philosophical or/and metaphysical significance it holds. This use stems from the desire to reflect the unity of life]. Robert Delaunay and his wife indeed created a cultural movement around them, through works concentrated on the arrangement of colours on the canvas seeking pictorial harmony. We all have a conatus, for some it is art, for others it is literature, drama and poetry, readers out there should perhaps try to find theirs?

So, getting back to the big Other [SuperEgo / Grand Autre], it is is always “lacking” something for the subject and the mythical complete and perfect Other does not seem to exist. In 1957, when Lacan introduces the algebraic symbol for the barred Other (A), lack comes to designate the lack of a signifier in the Other [It is Lack that causes Desire to arise]. Lacan introduces the symbol S(A) to designate “the signifier of a lack in the Other. [Note that Lacan uses the term “Grand Autre” with capital A which here is referred to as the “Other” with capital O, i.e. the “big Other” and not the “petit autre” which is the reflection or projection of the Ego [counterpart and specular image] in the imaginary order referred to as the “other” or “little other”, “o” “petit autre” “a”.]

 

Lacanian Terms: L’Inconscient [Id], L’Autre [Grand Autre/Big Other/Superego] & Le Moi [Ego: its birth and the Mirror Stage]

To clarify Lacanian terms, firstly, we have the “inconscient“; being the unconscious ID in the domain of the symbolic which is the unconscious origin of the individual’s discourse, the symbolic “it” or “Ça” beyond the imaginary ego: man is lived and spoken by the unconscious “it” or “Ça”. Hence the phrase which Lacan frequently uses when discussing the unconscious ID, “it speaks” (le “Ça” parle). Hence, Lacan argued that the concept of the unconscious was badly misunderstood by most of Freud’s followers who reduced it to being “merely the seat of instincts“, and against this simplistic biological mode of thought Lacan argued that the unconscious is not simply the seat of instincts but is also and primarily linguistic because we can only grasp the unconscious when it is explained and transformed into words. One should see in the unconscious the effects of speech on the subject, as it is the determination of the subject by the symbolic order. The unconscious is a kind of memory in the sense of a symbolic history of signifiers [i.e. a treasure chest full of signifiers where discourse originates] that have determined the subject in the course of his/her life. Psychoanalysis involves unearthing the meaning that particular symbols hold for an individual. What this seems to suggest is that the unconscious absorbs a wide range of signifiers (signifiants) [that symbolise something else, “le signifié” or “signified” in a deeper exploratory sense] throughout the subject’s life and these later find expression and guide desires through the Superego [Grand Autre / Big Other / the symbolic discourse of the unconscious] and in turn symbolically shapes the imaginary creations of the Ego [Moi] and define the Subject according to his abilities to achieve his desires – the outcome differs depending on the subject’s individual creativity and intelligence.

Le Penseur par Auguste Rodin (1882) dpurb site

«Le Penseur» par Auguste Rodin (1882) représente un homme dans une réflexion profonde, semblant utiliser toute son intelligence pour résoudre un problème.

Since it is an articulation of signifiers in a signifying chain, the unconscious is a kind of knowledge (symbolic knowledge, or savoir) – an “unknown knowledge.” For the Cognitive-Behavioural mind, these signifiers may be considered as “stimuli” [received in different forms, e.g. visual, auditory, mental] however their reception and their responses are completely unconscious and generate effects in the depth of the mind [unconscious] that cannot be measured or seen [the nightmare of the empiricist]. Hence, the unconscious is the location of a chain of signifiers [that stand for something else in a signifying chain] that define the subject through the course of his/her life and where linguistic discourse originates.

We then have the “Moi”, which is the equivalent of the Ego, a formation in the imaginary order as opposed to the Subject [le parlêtre as explained above, which is the true product of the symbolic order]. The Ego is a méconnaissance [a failure to understand/recognise, which is also the structure of paranoiac delusions] of the Symbolic, the Ego is the seat of resistance and is structured like a symptom at the heart of the Subject, the human symptom par excellence, the mental illness of man. Méconnaissance is to be distinguished from ignorance: whereas ignorance is a passion for the absence of knowledge, méconnaissance is an imaginary misrecognition/misconstruction of a symbolic knowledge (savoir) that the Subject does possess somewhere. The structural homology between the ordinary constitution of the Ego and paranoiac delusions is what leads Lacan to describe all knowledge (connaissance), in both neurosis and psychosis, as “paranoiac knowledge.” Lacan also argued that the proponents of Ego-psychology betrayed Freud’s radical discovery by relocating the ego as the center of the subject. In opposition to this school of thought, Lacan maintains that the ego is not at the center, that the ego is in fact an object. ‘ The ego is a construction which is formed by identification with the specular image in the Mirror stage and is thus the place where the subject becomes alienated from himself, transforming himself into the counterpart. Malin (2011) pointed out that in Lacanian Theory, a major event in infants’ personality and social development is the mirror stage, when infants enter into language as a uniquely human form of interaction with all caregivers in the child’s environment [although infants are not likely to consciously experience language prior to age 2]. As Luepnitz (2009) noted, Lacan believed that infants often enter into language at a crucial point when they literally recognise themselves in a mirror, with caregivers [i.e. can include others such as teachers rather than direct parents] pointing to the reflection and approvingly saying to the infants, “Look, that’s you!” – even if infants are unlikely to remember the event in itself.

Rene Magritte - Not To Be Reproduced (1937)

“Not to be reproduced” by René Magritte, 1937

And as Hivernel (2013) noted, the 2 major outcomes of the mirror stage are the emergence of the Subject, a product of the symbolic order (i.e., individuals’ gradual awareness regarding their uniqueness) and the others (i.e. individuals’ gradual awareness regarding the rest of humanity, to whom they are connected to varying degrees). The other major outcome of the mirror stage is the birth of the Ego [Le Moi, the imaginary formation], and infants may experience joy at this moment, which occurs (and, in fact, is necessary) before infants can truly understand the power of symbols in language. However, one of the unfortunate outcomes of the mirror stage was that infants gradually begin to look outward, and not inward in search for identity; and such external orientation toward individuals’ own identity is doomed to fail.

Miyamoto Musashi danny d'purb dpurb site web

French for: “There is nothing besides yourself that can make you better, stronger, richer, faster or smarter. Everything is within you, everything exists. Do not look for anything outside yourself.” -Miyamoto Musashi

This seems to make perfect sense, even from the objective perspective that the Organic Theory of Psychical Construction, i.e., any organism whose reality or sense of it is based on the geographical mental conditioning of a group of organisms [about 4 or 5] will have a limited perspective of reality and lack a wider outlook of the world as it truly is. Unlike US Ego psychologists who considered the Ego as the dominant component that should be worked on and strengthened, Lacan argued against such irrational therapy because the ego is the “seat of illusions” and to increase its strength would only increase the subject’s alienation, the ego is the source of resistance to psychoanalytic treatment and strengthening it would increase those resistances [i.e. all obstacles that arise during psychoanalytic praxis and interrupt its progress, when the subject breaks the fundamental rule of saying everything that comes into his mind]. Lacan argued that the true goal of psychotherapy should be therapists’ unearthing the clients’ unconscious desire via the “talking cure” of psychoanalysis – not strengthening the Ego mindlessly, as this may leave individuals in a state of delusion without an Ego adjusted to their abilities – and may even lead to individuals allowing their Ego [imaginary moi] to dominate the Super-Ego [Grand Autre, Big Other] and favour irrational release of the ID’s [Inconscient / Ça] psychic energy without any remorse or rational control. Because of the imaginary fixity of the Ego, it is resistant to all subjective growth and change and to the dialectical movement of desire, hence, by undermining the fixity of the ego, psychoanalytic treatment aims to restore the dialectic of desire and reinitiate the “coming into being” of the Subject, a product of the Symbolic. This is in direct contrast to the Ego Psychologists’ perspective. Lacan criticised ego-psychology as practised in the US for confusing the concept of “Resistance” with that of “Defence”, and his distinction differs from Anglo-American psychoanalysis. Lacan explained that Defence is on the side of the subject whereas Resistance is on the side of the object. Defences are relatively stable symbolic structures of subjectivity while resistances are rather transitory [periodic / like a phase] forces which prevent the object from being absorbed in the signifying chain [of signifiers]. Resistance belongs to the “imaginary” order of the Ego and not to the symbolic level of the true Subject, because in the symbolic order of the Unconscious, there is no resistance, but only a tendency for repetition. Hence, resistances are “imaginary lures” of the Ego which the analyst must be wary of being deceived by. This is why Lacan maintained that the aim of analysis can never be to strengthen the Ego because this would increase imaginary resistances. Ego psychology shifted emphasis on overcoming the resistances of patients and this was heavily criticised by Lacan who thought that this lead to an “inquisitorial style” of psychoanalysis that sees resistances as based on the “fundamental ill will” of the patients, which is not always the case; this to Lacan overlooked the structural nature of resistance and reduces analysis to an imaginary dual relation. Lacan encourages the “analysis of resistances” but only on the condition that this phrase is properly understood, in the sense of “knowing at what level the answer should be pitched; what Lacan means is that the crucial thing is that the psychoanalyst should be able to distinguish between interventions that are primarily oriented towards the Imaginary and those that are oriented towards the Symbolic and know which are appropriate at each moment during psychoanalytic praxis with patients. Lacan argued for “Structural Resistance”, which is not a question of ill will on the part of the patient but is a resistance that structures, and it is inherent in the analytic process. Resistance is due to a structural incompatibility between desire and human speech [i.e. discourse] and hence Lacan points out to a certain irreducible level of resistance which can never be overcome, that is, even after the reduction of resistances, there is a residue – which may be what is truly essential for a particular Subject. This irreducible “residue” is essential since it is respect for this residue by psychoanalysts that distinguishes true psychoanalysis from mere suggestion. Psychoanalysis to Lacan, respects the right of the patients to resist suggestion and indeed values that resistance. When the Subject’s resistance opposes suggestion, it is only a desire to maintain the Subject’s true desire, and as such it would have to be placed in the realm of “positive transference”. Lacan points out that while psychoanalysts cannot and should not try to overcome “all resistances”, they can minimise them or at least avoid exacerbating them. To do this, psychoanalysts could recognise their own part in the resistances of their patients since to Lacan, there is no other resistance to analysis than that of the analyst himself. The patient’s resistance is always that of the analyst, and when a resistance succeeds it is because the analyst is in it completely, i.e. because the analyst understands. Hence, the analyst should always follow the rule of neutrality; psychoanalytic treatment works on the principle that by not forcing the patient, resistance is reduced to the irreducible minimum, thus, analysts should avoid all forms of suggestion.

Finally, as already explained above, we have the “Grand Autre” or simply “Autre” [Capital A] or “Big Other” which is the preconscious Superego also in the domain of the symbolic register; being the discourse of the unconscious. The big “Other” designates an otherness that transcends the illusory otherness of the imaginary because it cannot be assimilated into the psyche through identification, Lacan equates the big “Other” with language and the “law” [i.e. the structures that govern social exchange] and hence the big “Other” is inscribed in the symbolic register, and indeed the big “Other” is symbolic because it differs for each subject and is the symbolic order which mediates the relationship with a particular subject. The little “other is a reflection or projection of the ego [le Moi], it is the counterpart and the specular image, unlike the “big Other” which is in the symbolic order, the little “other” is inscribed in the imaginary order of the Ego.

 

The concept of Adaptation and Psychoanalysts as the Grand Autre [Big Other / Superego]

Lacan also questioned whether the ego of the psychoanalyst gives the measure of reality to the patient in trying to adapt the latter. Because if so, this would turn the analyst [who are also different in terms of talent, creativity and vision from one person to another] into the arbitrer of the patient’s adaptation to reality, hence the analyst’s own understanding [or lack of understanding] of reality would be assumed to be absolute and perfect where he would be considered as the perfection of adaptation compared to the patient [as is the case in Ego-psychology practiced in the USA]. This to Lacan turns psychoanalysis as an exercise of power and social control where the analyst forces his own particular view of reality onto the patient and this is not psychoanalysis but suggestion. This Lacanian refusal to force an adaptation of the ego to reality is in direct opposition to the “Ego-psychology” of the US psychoanalytic movement that Lacan accused of wrongly reading the works of Freud. Lacan regards it as simple to understand why the adaptation theme was developed by European and Jewish psychoanalysts who had emigrated to the USA in the late 1930s, and this is simply because these analysts felt not only that they had to adapt to life in the USA, but also that they had to adapt psychoanalysis to American tastes [i.e. to fit the average american psyche]. One of Lacan’s fiercest criticism is based on the following argument: the notion of “adaptation to reality” is founded on the creatively irrational and naive empiricist epistemology that wrongly assumes an unproblematic notion of “reality” for all Subjects, as an objective and self-evident given, this discards what psychoanalysis has discovered about the construction of reality by the Ego on the basis of its own “méconnaissance” [i.e. subjective understanding of reality]. So when the analyst assumes that he is better adapted to the vague notion of “reality” than the patient, he has no other option but to fall back on his own Ego’s interpretation of reality, since it is the only “reality” he knows, this leads to the distorted and simplistic definition of “the part that thinks as we do” as being the healthy part of a Subject’s Ego. This practice of Ego-psychology turns psychoanalysis as an exercise of prepackaged suggestion to mould the psyche of individuals to these analysts’ own “idea” of reality in order to fit a simplistic mainstream model in line with the requirements of the mechanical philosophies of empiricist epistemology and industrialisation. The inability of the analyst to sustain a praxis authentically, as is usually the case, results in an exercise of power.

The simplistic biological concept of adaptation [as often assumed in simple deterministic animal psychology] can be problematic when applied to psychoanalysis since in evolutionary biology it is assumed that organisms/animals are driven to “adapt” themselves to fit their environment and hence implies a harmonious relation between the Innenwelt (inner world) and Umwelt (surrounding world). The observation of animals in nature or in laboratories tends to guide the reasoning of many empirical scientists who are simplistic and biologically oriented, it is important to ask a few questions. For example, which animals to focus on as models to be inspired by? In nature, we have many animals who mate for life and are monogamous [e.g. albatrosses, bald eagles, barn owls, penguins, beavers, shingleback skinks, gibbons (primates), wolves, swans & french angelfish]. On the other hand, we also have other animals such as common pheasants, lions, gorillas, tigers, red deers, elks, and hamadryas baboons (primates) who have a different mating system, where the fittest male mates with multiple females to ensure the constant enhancement and fitness of future generations; and hence are polygamous.

Maladies Génétiques.jpg

Image: Degenerates / Some controversial doctors under the Third Reich proposed that the curse of diseased genes destroy entire families, and that degenerates can only give birth to their similars. It lead to sterilisation that was supposed to prevent them from spreading their misery to innocent children [as the aim was a strong and genetically healthy people], and also the “Aktion T4” program which was mass involuntary euthanasia. Certain German physicians were authorised to select patients “deemed incurably sick, after most critical medical examination” and then administer to them a “mercy death” (Gnadentod). From September 1939 until the end of the war in 1945; from 275,000 to 300,000 people were euthanised in psychiatric hospitals in Germany and Austria, occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic). The Holy See announced on 2 December 1940 that the policy was contrary to the natural and positive Divine law and that “the direct killing of an innocent person because of mental or physical defects is not allowed” but the declaration was not upheld by some Catholic authorities in Germany. In the summer of 1941, protests were led in Germany by the Bishop of Münster, Clemens von Galen, whose intervention led to “the strongest, most explicit and most widespread protest movement against any policy since the beginning of the Third Reich”, according to historian Richard J. Evans.

Hence, this poses questions to the simplistic biological perspective of adaptation: should humans follow the latter polygamous animal model and select the fittest and smartest males through physical and intelligence tests and use their sperm to inseminate all women on earth desiring to have children [or vice-versa or in combination with the eggs of the fittest and smartest females to help couples conceive]; could this reduce malformations and other ugly diseases?

Population en bonne santé d'purb dpurb site web.jpg

Image: Physically healthy females exercising

Or should we follow the monogamous model of the bald eagle, penguin, barn owl, swan, wolf and French angelfish? Based on our evolutionary history, it seems that we humans are monogamous by design due to the size of our brains that allow us to build sophisticated relationships and also experience complex emotions [that animals cannot due to the limited biological architecture of their brain that is optimised for survival and hunting], and hence, humans should not follow animals blindly but use some aspects that we may learn from the study of animals in nature with great precautions to help humans live a better life [for example: giving a choice of healthy sperm and egg donors to couples who cannot conceive or fear passing down incurable and other debilitating diseases] and gradually create a genetically healthy civilisation.

Bébé Gorille Albinos avec son ami d'purb dpurb site web

Image: Baby Albino Gorilla with his friend

François Rabelais, the french doctor, writer, monk & priest seems to have phrased it well in his magnum opus, Pantagruel (1694): “Science sans conscience n’est que ruine de l’âme.” [French for: « Science without conscience is nothing but the ruin of the soul »]

So, the idea of harmony between the inner world (Innenwelt) of the organism and its environment (Umwelt) which is implicit in the concept of adaptation from the simplistic biological perspective [e.g. in animal psychology] is innaplicable to human beings since man’s inscription in the symbolic order re-shapes and restrains his natural behaviours and instincts [i.e. because of civilised society and the sophisticated and multi-layered aspects of human life, man cannot allow himself to follow his wild instincts blindly as animals do in nature], and this means that “in man, the imaginary relation [to nature] has deviated” [the nurture VS nature debate]. This is different for all animal machines who tend to be strictly riveted to the conditions of the external environment, whereas in the human being we have a “certain biological gap”. So, compared to the simplistic biological perspective of animal adaptation where the organism follows its wild instincts and not human reasoning, we can suggest that humans are essentially “maladaptive animals” and this may well be for the betterment of our lives since we live in a sophisticated society and not in the wild nature (la nature sauvage) like animals, where meeting basic needs is a constant struggle in a matter of life and death.

Yet, adapting to the Umwelt (surrounding world) in human psychology is not the ultimate path of perfection because it is not designed to meet all of the true desires of human beings [as Freud suggested, intrapsychic conflict is inescapable because of the demands of society] and hence does not guarantee the complete satisfaction and enhancement of the individual [being highly complex beings with huge brains and different personalities that seek different goals], especially when the Umwelt (surrounding world) itself which is assumed to be “reality” is not a simple objective thing [such as for animals in nature] but is itself a product of the Ego’s fictional misrepresentations and projections. Therefore to Lacan it is not a question of adapting the Ego to reality, but of showing the imaginary “Ego” that it is only too well adapted since it assists in the construction of that very reality and hence the task of the psychoanalyst is rather to subvert the patient’s illusory sense of adaptation since it blocks access to the unconscious, and hence gain access to it. In 1955 Lacan states that “the dimension discovered by analysis is the opposite of anything which progresses through adaptation” and hence refused to explain human phenomena and mental life in terms of adaptation. To Lacan, and many inspired by his views, it is more about “adjusting” than adapting, i.e. adjusting to be functional in our chosen path/field based on our individual characteristics and abilitiesLacan maintained that psychoanalytic intervention should not aim to adapt the Ego to reality, and this seems reasonable since “reality” is a social construct under constant change as we primates are evolving and adapting to the discoveries of our constantly changing civilisation, but also because the Ego is an imaginary formation as opposed to the Subject which is the true product of the symbolic. To Lacan, psychoanalysts should adopt the role of the “big Other” [Grand Autre / Super-Ego] in therapeutic interventions as a counterpart to the client’s “Subject”, thus making it possible for clients to peer beneath their own conscious (typically not completely true narratives), into their unconscious (and “true”) desire(s) [and perhaps guide or help the patient to realise their dreams within the realms of reality in civilised society].

Lacan’s suggestion seems to give the individual the creative freedom to create himself through language and discourse, exist and be unique within the reasonable limits of a mentally adequate and healthy person, while only adjusting his behaviour to be able to function and exist in his chosen individual world without losing his individuality. Since reality and culture are social constructs that are always changing through collaboration, the individual can both be shaped by them and also shape them [for e.g. human culture teaches a child how to use a fork and a knife to eat, but it can also be shaped by an individual if he invents/discovers something or adopts a philosophy that affects/inspires human cultures. In the past smoking was allowed everywhere and it was common culture to see people and even doctors smoking in public buildings, but since we found about the harmful effects of cigarette smoke, today culture has been reshaped and smoking is banned indoor in most public places. The invention of the mobile phone has also affected human culture and behaviour when before people used public phone boxes]; this concept of being shaped by and also shaping human cultures is known as mutual constitution and is reflected in the artefacts of all societies through the arts, literature and languages [as we explained in the Essay: The Concept of Self].

 

Challenging the established procedures of Psychoanalytic Practice

Lacan was also innovative and challenged the established procedures of Psychoanalytic practice [which promoted multiple sessions lasting an hour or more apiece, across several years] to advocate brief, impromptu [i.e. unscheduled] therapy that could be completed in a matter of minutes.

As early as 1950, Lacan had questioned the ritual of the 55-minute timed sessions imposed by the IPA as intended to preserve patients and students in training from the all-powerful transference of the masters; Lacan pulverized this rule. He invented the rule of the session of variable duration that leads the analyst to intervene in the cure by caesuras or by interpretations so that the analysand explores his unconscious fantasies more rapidly and wastes less time in uttering empty words.

« La psychanalyse est une pratique délirante, mais c’est ce qu’on a de mieux actuellement pour faire rendre patience à cette situation incommode d’être homme. C’est en tout cas ce que Freud a trouvé de mieux. Et il a maintenu que le psychanalyste ne doit jamais hésiter à délirer »

French for: “Psychoanalysis is a delirious practice, but it is the best we have at the moment to make this uncomfortable situation of being a man bear with patience. It is in any case the best Freud found. And he maintained that the psychoanalyst should never hesitate to be delirious”

Ornicar. (1977). Ouverture de la section clinique. Bulletin périodique du champ freudien. 9, 13.

The decision of Lacan to adapt sessions according to the Subject’s abilities and individuality seems logical and is based on Lacan’s concept of “the time for understanding“. Lacan’s approach to the questions of time remains one of his distinctive features. In Lacan’s paper “Logical Time” (1945), he distinguished between logical time and chronological time. Logical time has a tripartite structure, the 3 moments of which in every subject are:

(i) the moment of seeing [i.e. perceiving]
(ii) the time for understanding
(iii) the moment of concluding

Lacan explains that these 3 moments are not constructed in terms of objective chronometric units, but in terms of an intersubjective logic based on a tension between hesitation and urgency. Logical time is the intersubjective time that structures human action and varies from one individual to another based on their abilities. This seems logical since the main factors that influence successful therapy are the relationship between the therapist and the client, but also the aptitudes of the client [which varies from one individual to another depending on their intelligence, reflective abilities, understanding and will power].

Nous En France - Sarkozy - d'purb

Traduction(EN): « Us in France, we are different from others. To live, we have to drink, eat, but also to cultivate ourselves. » -Nicolas Sarkozy

Since Lacan’s theory is mainly based on French society – one with a history of challenging the limits of the individual in the name of excellence – it seems fair to acknowledge his opinions [in a sense that not all patients require multiple sessions depending on their individual characteristics, response to the relationship with the psychoanalyst, understanding of their own mental condition and desires and reflective abilities] as rational, economical, time-saving and flexible in accommodating individual differences.

In 1971, Maria Belo, a Portuguese psychoanalyst, had decided to do an analysis with Lacan after her sister’s suicide, which turned her life upside down. She would say:

“La qualité de sa présence faisait que ça déclenchait un travail, chaque séance déclenchait un énorme travail analytique en moi et quand j’arrivais chez moi, j’écrivais des lettres de plusieurs pages que chaque fois j’allais mettre dans sa boîte à lettres (…) Je pense aussi que ce que Lacan faisait avec les séances très courtes était très lié à ce qu’il était. Si on pense à cette époque, la grande époque de l’école Freudienne où il était mythifié par beaucoup de gens que, il avait vraiment besoin, par rapport au transfert, de secouer les gens et de faire des trucs que personnes d’autres n’a eu raison de faire après.”

French for: “The quality of his presence meant that it triggered work, each session triggered an enormous analytical work in me and when I arrived home, I wrote letters of several pages that each time I would go to put in his mailbox (…) I also think that what Lacan did with the very short sessions was very much linked to what he was. If we think back to that time, that great era of l’École Freudienne where he was mythified by many people that, in relation to transference, he really needed to shake people up and do things that no one else did afterwards.”

« Le transfert c’est l’amour. On se demande simplement : pourquoi est-ce qu’on aime un être pareil ? Pour l’instant je laisse la question en suspens…”

French for: “Transference is love. We simply ask ourselves: why do we love such a being? For the moment I leave that question open…”

-Jacques Lacan

However, partly as a reaction to Jacques Lacan’s criticism of Ego Psychoogy [as practiced in the United States], and partly as his advocacy of brief, impromptu therapy, the US-oriented International Psychoanalytic Association, majorly Anglophone and not very open to the virtuosity of Lacanian speculation, barred Lacan from training future psychoanalysts. For the IPA, brief therapy is unacceptable, they wanted to consider accepting Lacan’s teaching as long as he remained in the IPA as a philosopher and/or a theorist but definitely not as a trainer of students.

LesFrancaisNapproventPasLaPolitiquedesUSA

A majority of 80% of French citizens are wary of the US and do not approve its politics / Source: Le Figaro

Lacan found himself in a situation that had never been that of Freud: he found himself in a situation where he would become the director of his school, that is to say that by later founding l’École Freudienne de Paris in 1964 he would exercise functions that Freud never exercised. Lacan was at the same time the master of thought, the analyst, the political leader of his school, and was responsible for all the functions, whereas Freud had delegated political power to his disciples.

« Je fonde – aussi seul que je l’ai toujours été dans ma relation à la cause psychanalytique – l’École Française de Psychanalyse (…) dont rien dans le présent ne m’interdit de répondre personnellement la direction…»

French for: “I am founding – as alone as I have always been in my relationship to the psychoanalytic cause – the École Française de la Psychanalyse (…) whose direction I am personally responsible for as nothing in the present prevents me to do so….”

– Jacques Lacan

Hence, criticized by the IPA, proponents of a rigid legislation, Lacan left the Société Psychanalytique de Paris which was frequented by Marie Bonaparte who thought she was the only heiress of Freud whose memory she piously celebrated with the support of the IPA.

Lacan then participated in 1953 with Daniel Lagache, François Perrier, Serge Leclerc and Wladimir Granoff in the creation of the Société Française de Psychanalyse ; his friend Françoise Dolto, founder of a new psychoanalytical approach to childhood, gave him her support. La Société Française de Psychanalyse would become a sophisticated cultural melting pot for all the youth of that generation and Lacan would train them by being, in the words of Elisabeth Roudinesco, “l’analyste, le contrôleur, le maître, l’initiateur, l’éveilleur” [French for: “the analyst, the controller, the master, the initiator and the awakener”] through his seminars which took place at the Sainte Anne Hospital followed by the presentation of the mentally sick. Lacan became the great renovator and the great re-inventor of psychoanalysis in France. That generation felt like the pioneers of something new around Lacan, but they would have also liked to remain in the IPA, in its Freudian legitimacy, of which they were no longer a part of since their masters had resigned. The characteristic of Lacan was that he contested the whole practice of the IPA that was trying to be Freud. Lacan is the only one to suggest a return to the origins of Freudian theory, i.e. not post-Freudism. Thus at that point, Lacan posed himself as the re-founder, and an intellectual who was transgressive since Lacan would not respect any irrational IPA rule, which of course humiliated the IPA who could not digest Lacan and his perspectives, and perhaps also unable to grasp the sophisticated subtleties of Lacan’s theory which had its origins in the French heritage. Unique in its kind, the École Freudienne de Paris would allow Lacan to place the desire to be an analyst at the heart of the training of didacticians. Jean-Bertrand Pontalis declared: “Comme si lui-même (Lacan), dans ces années-là était en train d’inventer et de s’inventer. Nous participions en accord avec lui en résonance avec lui à un mouvement inventif.” [French for: “As if he himself (Lacan), in those years was inventing and inventing himself. In agreement with him, we were participating in an inventive movement in resonance with him.]

Furthermore, despite [or perhaps because of?] the IPA’s decision to bar Lacan from training future psychoanalysts, the proportion of Psychoanalysts adopting a Lacanian perspective has only grown since Lacan’s death in 1981with half or more of the world’s psychoanalysts adopting Lacanian concepts. Jardim, Costa Pereira and de Souza Palma (2011) applied Lacanian Theory to understanding the personality disorder of Schizophrenia [formerly known as “madness”], interpreting a case study [along with fictional examples from literary works] in terms of failure to achieve an integrated Ego from infancy onwards. McSherry (2013) argued that Lacan’s Theory of Psychoanalysis could benefit mental health nursing practice since various forms of personality disorders [including but not limited to Schizophrenia] can be understood readily in terms of Lacan’s theory.

Lacan described woman as a “symptom of man” that enters the psychic economy of men as the cause of their desire. This has led to debates among feminists: some saw his theories as a way of challenging fixed concepts of sexual identity while others believe that the concept of symbolic order reinstates the inequality of the sexes, and the privileging of the phallus simply repeats alleged misogynies of Freud.

The British psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell who was one of the first to introduce Lacan’s system of thought to the Anglophone crowd thought that his work was misinterpreted and misused for a political purpose for the left and for feminism; Mitchell suggested that a possible reason for this could have been due to the “stupidity” of the English crowd, unable to grasp the subtleties of Lacan. Malone (2012) noted that Lacan was ambivalent towards the growing tendency for empirical clinical psychologists to align their discipline with the hard sciences [e.g. Biology, Medecine, Physics, Chemistry, Astrophysics, Material Science, etc] and not with the humanities [e.g. Literature, Poetry, Music, Art (Sculpture, Painting and others), Drama (Theatre), etc], and viewed psychoanalysis as ideally informed by both the humanities and by the sciences.

Documentaire: Jacques Lacan, La Psychanalyse Réinventée (2001)

Lacan has been hailed as the “French Freud” who has established a tradition of French psychoanalysis that rivals American and British psychoanalysis in terms of international influence. Although Lacan’s theory has been cast as a uniquely French theory [culturally and linguistically speaking], it has nonetheless struck a chord with many [and, perhaps, most] of the world’s most influential modern day psychoanalysts, shattering perceptions across languages and cultures worldwide. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a decade later, much psychoanalytic research in the US itself will seem to confirm Lacan’s perspectives as discussed above.

After the publication of his writings in 1966, Lacan became a recognized thinker, admired by his students and hated by his opponents. At L’École Normale, the salle Dussane, a large crowd flocked to listen to him.

« Quand je comprenais je trouvais ça génial… »

French for: “When I figured it out, I thought it was great…”

-Françoise Dolto

The writer Philippe Sollers lyrically describes the harmonies and dissonances of the main stage of Jacques Lacan’s seminar:

Philippe Sollers sur Lacan - danny d'purb dpurb site web.jpg

Lacan monte à la tribune comme une gravure de Dürer (Albrecht), drôle de Saint, drôle de moine chevalier prêcheur d’un autre âge. Lacan c’est de la lenteur ponctuée, du soupir, de la passion tortueuse, de l’envolée, de l’anecdote, de largo, de la moquerie, de l’insulte, du tonnerre intermittent, du pinaillage à n’en plus finir, de l’ennuis massif, du mot d’esprit, du sublime. Il y a Lacan mystique, Lacan chancelier, Lacan l’ancêtre, Lacan Don Juan, Lacan Satan, Lacan charlatan, Lacan malicieux, Lacan généreux, Lacan vaniteux, Lacan persifleur, ronchonneur, hurleur, murmureur, souffleur, séducteur ; il y a Lacan cigare et Lacan mouchoir, Lacan accablé, Lacan vraie, l’étonnant et que ça donne comme la nervure exacte d’un gai savoir.” -Philippe Sollers

French for: “Lacan rises to the platform like an engraving by Dürer (Albrecht), a strange Saint, a strange knightly monk preacher from another age. Lacan is punctuated slowness, sighing, tortuous passion, flight, anecdote, largo, mockery, insult, intermittent thunder, endless nitpicking, massive trouble, witty words, the sublime. There is mystical Lacan, Chancellor Lacan, Lacan the ancestor, Lacan Don Juan, Lacan Satan, Lacan charlatan, malicious Lacan, generous Lacan, vain Lacan, Lacan persifleur, grumbler, howler, whisperer, blower, seducer; there is Lacan cigar and Lacan handkerchief, overwhelmed Lacan, true Lacan, the astonishing and that which gives like the exact vein of a cheerful knowledge.” -Philippe Sollers

Jacques Derrida would say:

« Je n’imagine pas que quelqu’un qui était engagé comme il l’a été avec une telle passion de la vérité là où le sens même du mot vérité était si difficile à faire entendre, je n’imagine pas qu’une telle personne ait pu vivre autrement que tragiquement (…) ce qui m’a aidé à résister à toute réponse agressive à Lacan, je pensais que cet homme avait une responsabilité tragique à assumer et quel que soit sa parade, son paraître, son apparat, etc… les scènes qu’il faisait, il devait y avoir de la blessure secrète là et je l’ai ressenti et je l’ai respecté. »

French for: “I cannot imagine that someone who was engaged as he was with such a passion for the truth where the very meaning of the word truth was so difficult to convey, I cannot imagine that such a person could have lived any other way but tragically (…) which helped me to resist any aggressive response to Lacan, I thought that this man had a tragic responsibility to assume and whatever his parade, his appearance, his pomp, etc., the scenes he made, there must have been some secret wound there and I felt it and I respected it.”

Jacques Lacan dpurb site web.jpg

Jacques Lacan (1901 – 1981)

Jacques Lacan addressing the audience of the Grande Rotonde of the University of Louvain, the 13th of October 1972:

« La mort est du domaine de la foi, vous avez bien raison de croire que vous allez mourir bien sûr ; ça vous soutient ; si vous n’y croyez pas, est-ce que vous pourriez supporter la vie que vous avez ? Si on n’était pas solidement appuyés sur cette certitude que ça finira ? Est-ce que vous pourriez supporter cette histoire ? »

French for: “Death is a matter of faith, you have good reason to believe that you are going to die of course; it sustains you; if you don’t believe in it, could you bear the life that you have? If you weren’t firmly supported by the certainty that it will end? Would you be able to bear it?”

Lacan’s work is incredibly versatile and renowned for its complexity, and it remains alive and open to continuity since it is founded on a logic of infinite creativity associated with the human psyche. Jacques Lacan’s work is relatively fresh in the field of psychoanalysis and can easily synthesize a range of concepts from the simplified models of other schools of psychology that are mostly focused on the conscious aspects of human cognition. Lacanian heritage remains alive also because in our times, it has still not been completely studied, understood and absorbed by the body of mainstream academic knowledge, and remains mostly articulated within the psychoanalytic community and among scholars who make the effort to understand its logic, and who are not intimidated by the scope and complexity of his psychoanalytic heritage and influences.

Conclusion: Legacy, Impact & Evolution of Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a unique movement in psychology that grew out of the same German model of mental activity that produced act psychology and the Gestalt movement. However, psychoanalysis received its immediate expression through the needs of the mentally ill. Psychoanalysis was born as a clinical discipline, not an academic development based on empirical methodology to fit a particular field’s reductionist requirements for acknowledgement. For this reason, psychoanalysis, especially as proposed by writers after Freud, gives the impression of an ad hoc movement that develops as particular problems arise – it could be seen as adaptive and constantly evolving. Psychoanalysis did not adhere to the commitment to the reductionist empirical methodology expressed in those mechanical systems of behavioral studies generated by academic research. Psychoanalysis set out not to simply study basic observable behaviour [e.g. in animals studies], but to study the psychic apparatus that constitutes the human mind which obviously guides and impacts behaviour. Hence, there was and still is little interaction between psychoanalysis and those systems grounded on empiricism and reductionist methodologies that are stubborn in trying to capture an entity as the mind when most of the constructs cannot be seen or touched, or accurately measured. Stated quite simply, psychoanalysis and the other schools of psychological models do not speak the same language.

Although different and hardly understood by common mainstream empirical and academic psychology, psychoanalysis did assume a dominant role in psychiatry. This is completely understandable in light of the origins of psychoanalysis as a response to clinical problems as they manifested themselves. Indeed, psychoanalytic writings enjoyed an almost exclusive position in psychiatry and clinical psychology until the 1960s, when behaviour modification and mechanical and reductionist Pavlovian derivatives based on Behaviourism [such as Cognitive Psychology] began to compete as an alternate model of therapy for behavioural adjustment [Read: the Essay on the Origins of the Cognitive Behavioural Model: Biological Constraints in Learning, which also suggests an unconscious drift in other animals].

Pavlov Dog Labs

Psychoanalysis continues to exert a marked influence on art, literature, and philosophy. This influence reflects major contributions of Freud: his comprehensive analysis of the unconscious. On the same line, literary and artistic expressions are interpreted in light of the unconscious activities of the artist as well as the unconscious impressions of the perceiver. Psychologists today may choose unconscious motivations or simply to refer to subliminal or subthreshold activities. However, any truly comprehensive theory of psychological activity can no longer be limited to conscious aspects of behaviour. Although some psychologists may disagree with some Freudian concepts and interpretations, Freud did identity some dynamic processes that influence the activity of the individual: processes that psychology cannot ignore anymore.

As mentioned earlier, psychoanalysis has a unique position in the history of psychology. Freud did not develop a theory that generated testable hypotheses or other empirical implications. Yet, on another level, Freud accomplished what few other theorists have: He revolutionised attitudes and created a new set for thinking about personality. The findings of other more empiricist theories of personality disturbance have often confirmed many of Freud’s observations. If his views do not meet the criteria of empiricistic study, they nevertheless mark a man of genius and insight, whose influence pervades people’s thinking about themselves in ways that few others have achieved.

The psychoanalytic theory is an enormously complex and ambitious one, and it aims to make sense of a much broader array of psychological and social phenomena than other theories, and does so with a collection of explanatory concepts. Hence, the sheer range and scope of psychoanalytic theory, and its aspiration to be a total account of mental life, should be recognised and applauded. In comparison, all other schools of psychology to study personality look decidedly timid and limited in focus. Even if other approaches tend to have more empirical foundations and hence more credential in academic psychology, they tend to leave out much of what we might want to include in a comprehensive theory of human behaviour. To many intellectuals and lay people alike, any account of personality that does not acknowledge that humans are like psychoanalytic theory portrays us, i.e., driven by deeply rooted motives, inhabiting bodies that bring us pleasure and shame, shaped by our early development, troubled by personal conflicts, and often a mystery to ourselves – is fundamentally limited.

While the empirical limitations are a fact, some of these problems are due in part to the intrinsic difficulty of what psychoanalytic theory tries to explain. Others could be partially overcome if researchers made a more concerted effort to determine which psychodynamic ideas stand up to closer, “scientific enquiry”. However, psychoanalysis cannot be judged only by empirical perspectives, and it would be a mistake to abandon it impatiently, given how much a suitably revised and empirically updated theory of psychodynamics in the future might deepen the studies of personality.

Even for all its failings to the empirical scientist, on some aspects, psychoanalysis is at least partly responsible for several important and scientifically respectable ideas that has always had a kernel of truth and was later developed by other researchers. While Freud’s idea of the dynamic unconscious remains controversial, it can no longer be disputed today that unconscious cognition is now a fact and an uncontroversial idea in cognitive and social psychology, where huge volumes of research now explore non-conscious or “implicit” attitudes. We now know from neuroscientific research that the brain has networks for both explicit and implicit [unconscious] learning as Yang and Li (2012) found after examining the neural correlates for these 2 types of learning on artificial grammar sequences. We have brain networks of different connectivity that underlie explicit and implicit learning. While both processes involve activation in a set of cortical and subcortical structures, the study found that explicit learning engages a network that uses the insula as a key mediator whereas implicit learning evokes a direct frontal-striatal network. Individual differences in working memory also differentially impact the two types of sequence learning.

*****

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D.J. d’Purb | dpurb.com

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Essay // Clinical Psychology: Learning Disabilities, Anxiety, Depression & Schizophrenia and the Effectiveness of Psychotherapy

Mis à jour le Jeudi, 13 Février 2020

Part 1 of 5 | Children and Adolescents’ Mental Health Services (CAMHS) & Learning and Intellectual Disabilities

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CAMHS deal with the psychological issues of people under the age of 18. They are a non-specialist service and often refer to other more specialised departments following the initial assessment of patients. The most common cases tend to be adolescents with depression and anxiety whose manifestations are not different to those of adults and so are treated fairly similarly.

Inclusivism in Learning Disabilities

In 1969, Bengt Nirje adopted and developed the concept of normalisation in Sweden and beautifully described it as…

“making available to all mentally retarded people patterns of life and conditions of everyday living which are as close as possible to the regular circumstances and ways of life of society.”

– Nirje, 1980

Learning Disability is not just an impairment in Cognition

The social impairment of Learning Disabilities – US Statute 111 – 256: Rosa’s Law defines the factual impairment, the imposed or acquired disability and the awareness of being different.

The Normalisation Theory

This theory focuses on the mainstream trends of social devaluation or deviancy making. Some categories of people tend to be valued negatively due to their behaviours, appearances and characteristics, and this places them at the risk of being devalued [according to the Normalisation Theory of Nirje on the societal processes he assumed] – people fulfil various social roles and stereotypes.

learning disabilities co ltd ii

As part of the deviancy making or social devaluation, the unsophisticated minds of the masses generally do not mean to stereotype, however they seem to do it unconsciously [the unconscious is a concept Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan acknowledged in their psychoanalytic theories of mental/psychological activity and mental health problems linked to psychopathic tendencies in people towards others], i.e. deviant groups with social symbols or images that are at a higher risk of being devalued are the focus of the normalisation theory, which is believed to be done with the aim of providing them with the skills they need and eventually change the status of these deviant groups to functional members of society.

Lutte contre l’illettrisme En 6ème, je ne savais pas écrire mon nom ! (2016)

Society tends to distance itself from deviant groups without any purpose or belonging, however psychologists provide support for the social integration and valued social participation of people with learning disabilities through exercises that involve learning through imitation. This challenges stereotypes within wider society through direct experiences of spending time with people who are affected by learning disabilities.

While psychology evolves and sophisticated and modern theories about intelligence and communication such as our “Organic Theory” take shape, we hope that observations such as this one may be digested and understood by the masses, that is:

“While the communicative patterns [language] in human primates vary with socio-behavioural and geographical patterns; creativity and IQ remain constant and do not change. Intelligence and creativity cannot be stopped because of linguistic differences, since talented and gifted humans do not choose the location of their birth nor their linguistic heritage but still contribute to the enhancement of our civilisation.”

Which concludes that that the intelligence of an invidual when assessed on a range of variables [e.g. perception, fluid intelligence, artistic creativity, reasoning, emotional intelligence, courage, values, etc] cannot be deduced by simply assessing their academic abilities, since human life has various sides to itself. Hence, the true worth and value of an individual may always remain a problem and a mystery to fully assess [since most only assess people on the variables they are interested in, for e.g. a company looking for a secretary will assess the applicant on her ability to handle office politics, and not other abilities essential to exist as a human within civilisation], and this seems to go in line with Jean Piaget’s deduction about the uniqueness of the human organism and mind.

Michel-Ange-Toujours-A-Apprendre-Always-Learning

“I am still learning” – Michael-Angelo at the age of 87 / Image: La Création d’Adam (1508 – 1512)

Neurodevelopmental Disorders & Intellectual Disabilities

Neurodevelopmental disorders are disorders occurring due to the biological dysfunction of the brain that in turn lead to developmental deficits that come in a range that can be very specific to global impairment. These groups however often co-occur together, i.e. one could be affected with Intellectual Disability (ID) and also Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Psychologists are expected to show great care when assessing this group of disorder as they vary in severity. Severity has 4 Specifiers and 3 Domains [Intellectual].

Specifiers: [1] Mild – [2] Moderate – [3] Severe – [4] Profound

Domains [Intellectual]: [1] Conceptual – [2] Social – [3] Practical


Intellectual Domains

The first domain, which is the Conceptual Domain refers to all things learnt at school and required for employment and adequate independent functioning within the community. Secondly, the Social Domain refers to social, developmental and emotional factors associated to age. This manifests in them as being victims of manipulation and abuse by others. Finally, the Practical Domain refers to all skills required to live healthily [also this is subject to interpretation depending on contexts, socio-linguistic and cultural settings].

Intellectual Disability

For one to be qualified as intellectually disabled, we would have to meet all the 3 criteria below:

  • Deficits in intellectual functions, such as reasoning, problem-solving, planning, abstract thinking, judgement, learning [also from experience].
  • Deficits in adaptive functioning that means failure to meet developmental milestones within the socio-cultural standards. Limited function in daily life, participation, communication, independence in multiple environments (i.e. Global).
  • Onset is during developmental period [childhood – another link to the Psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud & Jacques Lacan]


Assessment and Judgement

Careful distinction must be made when assessing patients suspected of suffering from Intellectual Disabilities (ID) between the low end of normal function and ID itself. The most widely used method clinically are IQ assessments and typically suggest any score that is 2 Standard Deviations below the mean [IQ scores of 75 +/-5] and whether the patient has had any clinical experience. Assessment based on the patient’s reasoning in real-life situations are also made. Global Developmental Delay is a term reserved for children under 5 who cannot adequately be assessed, but have missed all their developmental milestones.


Associated Features with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) to look for when diagnosing patients are:

  • Social judgment
  • Assessment of risk
  • Self-management of behaviour – interpersonal relationships and emotions
  • Motivation in school, university or work
  • Lack of communication skills and functional problem behaviours
  • Gullibility [Diagnosis is based on how people and society mistreat them – quite shocking or controversial?]
  • People with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) are also at high risk of suicide


Prevalence of Intellectual Disabilities

In the UK, 1% of people suffer from intellectual disabilities and 0.006% of the population have severe disabilities requiring supported living [that is about 360, 000 people in the UK] – a slight bias with a ratio of 1.6:1 towards males; this is due to the vulnerability of the male brain.


Autism Spectrum Disorders

As psychology evolves more consideration are being given to a dimensional aspect of abnormal behaviour rather than the usual dimensional [i.e. inflexible and sometimes exaggerated in terms of descriptive precisions disregarding individual fluctuations in symptomatic manifestations] constructs of mental disorders. Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) was the first mental disorder to initiate such a shift from categories to dimensions.

  • Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) with Intellectual Disability (ID) = Autism
  • Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) without Intellectual Disability (ID) = Asperger’s Syndrome


Characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorders

ASD is characterised mainly by deficits in social communication and restricted patterns of behaviour. For a diagnosis of ASD the deficits must appear early in the developmental period [however they cannot be diagnosed until the demands of a particular task exceeds the child’s capabilities] – so more severe it is the earlier it is diagnosed [e.g. Rett syndrome].


[A] Communication in ASD

In ASD, it is common to find persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts illustrated by:

  • Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, ranging from abnormal social approach. Failure to initiate or respond to social communications. Reduction in sharing interests, affect and emotions.
  • Deficits in non-verbal communicative behaviours used in normal social interactions. Abnormal or no eye contact, body language or deficits in reading [understanding] gestures. A total lack of facial expression and non-verbal communication.
  • Deficits in developing, maintaining and understanding relationships [e.g. from difficulties in adjusting behaviour to suit context]. Difficulties in sharing imaginative play or in making positive social acquaintances or friends. Hardly any interest in any form or peers.


[B] Behaviour in ASD

It is also fairly normal to notice restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests, or activities manifested by at least two of the following:

  • Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech
  • Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualised patterns of behaviour. Shows extreme distress at small changes, difficulty in transition, rigidity, insistence on same route taken or foods
  • Hyper or hypo-reactive to sensory inputs or unusual interest in sensory aspects of the environment (indifference or hyper-responsive to pain, temperature, sound, textures, excessive smelling to touching of objects, visual fascination with movements or lights.

ASD may also manifest itself with or without intellectual disability, with a similar scenario for language impairment, and can be associated with medical or genetic conditions or environmental factors [exposure]. ASD can also be associated with another neurodevelopmental, mental or behavioural disorder and can also comprise catatonia.
Features to look out for

  • People with ASD often have uneven profiles or abilities – even the high functioning variants, and this can lead to substantive stress for them
  • They also often have odd motor idiosyncrasies – such as an odd gait, clumsiness and abnormal ambulatory movements.
  • Disruptive, challenging behaviour and injuries are also very common
  • As sufferers of ASD age, they are also more prone to developing anxiety and depression and are likely to end up in a catatonic state


Prevalence

Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) seem to be a genetic disorder, however it involves a variety of genes. 15% of ASD is due to a known mutation in over 90% of concordance studies with twins. Most researchers nowadays suggest that it is inherited and polygenic [lots of genes from genetic ancestry with each adding their weight to the likelihood of the disorder manifesting]. Males are 4 times more likely to suffer from ASD than females, and even high functioning adults with ASD have poor functioning, such as low rates of independent living and employment – older adults tend to become isolated and do not engage in help-seeking behaviours [note that this is different to individuals who may have a solitary personality by conscious choice or a highly selective social circle in personal relationships based on values, in ASD the patients are generally not conscious of the causes of their debilitating condition]

Specific Learning Disorders

Specific Learning Disorders are characterised by the following:

[A] Difficulties learning and using academic skills, as indicated by the presence of at least one of the following symptoms that has persisted for longer than 6 months:

(1) Inaccurate or slow reading
(2) Difficulty understanding meaning in what was read
(3) Difficulties with spelling
(4) Difficulties with written expression
(5) Difficulties mastering number sense, number facts and calculation
(6) Difficulties in mathematical reasoning

[B] The affected academic skills are substantially and quantifiably below the expected level for the chronological age causing interference with academic, occupational or daily living

[C] Learning difficulties begin during school-age years, but will only manifest itself and be diagnosed when the affected person’s capabilities are stretched by demands

[D] It is also independent and not caused by another health or psychological disorder


Specifications of Specific Learning Disorder

SLD generally involves impairment in reading, writing and mathematics. If it is mild in intensity, the person can generally compensate. Moderately affected people however cannot compensate, but will respond to specialist teaching. Finally, severe conditions require specialist teaching in a specialist school as learning will not occur without such arrangements.


Features to look out for in confirming SLD

  • SLD can occur in any individual, even those classed as gifted (IQ 130+)
  • It is usually diagnosed in the early years, but in higher ability individuals it may manifest in odd ways especially when their compensatory methods are undermined
  • Patient generally have difficulties with motor co-ordination
  • It is a life-long condition and does not improve with therapy, but has to be compensated for
  • Patients also tend to have working memory deficits and keep messy environments
  • Early signs include mispronouncing words, struggling to break down words into syllables


Prevalence of Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

SLD tend to occur in premature children or among societies with a very low birth rate. It is also more common in children with parents that smoke cigarettes [nicotine?] and is 8 to 10 times higher in families with a heritability index of 0.6 and 3 times higher in males [the vulnerability of the male brain once again]. The problems it causes with attention are likely to predict problems with the mathematical and reading components of the brain. SLD usually ends with unemployment, under-employment depression, poorer mental health and suicidal behaviour – support of any kind alters all of these outcomes.

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Part 2 of 5 | Anxiety Disorders

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Anxiety disorders are linked to the development of irrational fears of situations that are not life-threatening (Antony & Stein, 2009a). The avoidance of feared situations or experiences also lead to non-adaptive behavioural patterns. People suffering from anxiety disorders generally have fears accompanied by intense physiological arousal displayed by some or all of the following features: accelerated heartbeat, sweating, trembling, sensations of shortness of breath or smothering feelings of choking, chest pain, nausea, numbness or tingling, and chills or hot flushes. Other experiences of dizziness, derealisation (feelings of unreality) or depersonalization (feelings of being detached from the self) are also present in some cases.

In contemporary psychology there are a number of distinctions made between a variety of anxiety disorders based on the developmental timing of their emergence, the classes of stimuli that elicit the anxiety, the pervasiveness and topography of the anxiety response, and the role of clearly identifiable factors in the aetiology [the cause, set of causes, or manner of causation] of the anxiety.

The six main anxiety disorders are described below.


[1] Separation Anxiety

This condition most occurs in children and is generally manifested by a recurrent and persistent fear that is aroused when separation from the parents or caregivers is anticipated or imminent (American Psychiatric Association, 2000; Furr et al., 2009; Pine & Klein, 2008; World Health Organization, 1992). The persistent, excessive worry about losing, or about possible harm befalling a parent is the main characteristic of Separation Anxiety Disorder with nightmares on the similar themes also present in some cases along with recurrent head-aches, stomach-aches, nausea and vomiting. Separation anxiety is also one of the most common causes of school refusal, and sufferers may also display a refusal to sleep without being in close proximity with the parents.


[2] Phobias

Phobic anxiety is the irrational and intense fear aroused when one is faced with an object, event or situation from a clearly defined class of stimuli which is exaggerated in terms of danger posed (American Psychiatric Association, 2000; Blackmore et al., 2009; Hofmann et al., 2009; World Health Organization, 1992). When the person affected is exposed to the phobic stimulus, or anticipates its exposure, panic attacks may arise in adults whereas is children this may lead to excessive crying, tantrums, freezing or clinging. The persistent avoidance of phobic stimuli in phobias is endured with intense distress and this affects an individual’s personal functioning.

In the DSM, specific phobias are subdivided into those associated with animals, injury (including injections), features of the natural environment (such as heights or thunder), in particular situations (such as elevators or flying). These specific phobias are different from social phobias and agoraphobia.

In those affected with social phobias, anxiety is generally mainly aroused by social situations [e.g. public speaking, eating in public where there is the possibility of scrutiny by others and humiliation or embarrassment as a result of acting inappropriately]. In those with agoraphobia, the condition is known to manifest itself with panic attacks in public places, such as being in a queue, or on public transport – hence, these situations tend to be compulsively avoided to prevent the reoccurrence of the panic attacks.


[3] Generalized Anxiety Disorder

One of the main characteristics in general anxiety disorder is the constant feeling that misfortunes of various sorts will occur (American Psychiatric Association, 2000; Bitran et al., 2009; Hazlett-Stevens et al., 2009; World Health Organization, 1992) and the anxiety is not focused on one particular object or situation along with difficulties controlling the worrying process and a belief that worrying is uncontrollable.

General anxiety disorder is mainly composed of nervousness, restlessness, difficulty relaxing, feeling on edge, being easily fatigued, difficulties in concentration, irritability, tearfulness, sleep disturbance and signs of autonomic over-reactivity such as trembling, sweating, dehydrated mouth, light-headedness, palpitations, dizziness and stomach discomfort. [DSM requires some or more of those symptoms to be present]

Case Example of Generalised Anxiety Disorder

Margie, a 10 year old girl was referred to the psychologist after displaying excessive tearfulness in school, the condition which had been gradually amplifying over a number of months and the bouts were unpredictable. Margie would often end up in tears while playing with her friends during break time or when spoken to by the teacher. In the family doctor’s referral letter she was described as a worrier like her mother.

Presentation

in the assessment interview Margie explained that her worries were mainly about a routine daily activities and responsibilities, she would also worry about doing poorly at school and that she had made mistakes which would later be discovered, that her school friend would not like her, that she would disappoint her parents with the way she did her household chores, that she would either be too late or too early for the school bus, that there would not be any space for on the bus and that she would forget her school books. Her worries also extended to health with frequent stomach aches.

The safety of a family also troubled her, she would worry that her house would be struck by lightning, that the river would break its banks and flood the low-lying fens where she lived, washing away her whole house. The future was also a major concern of hers as she worried about failing her exams and being unable to find a satisfactory job, and being unable to find a marital partner or marrying an inadequate person. A continuous feeling of restlessness with the inability to relax was also reported by her.

Family History

The family was very close and Margie was the eldest of four children and the only girl. It was observed during the intake interview that the mother and the father displayed symptoms of anxiety, while the former had been treated with benzodiazepines for anxiety over a number of years. The family also admitted to regularly discuss their problems about their own health and safety and their own worries about the uncertainty of the future.

The father, Oliver was employed by the insurance company and regularly have conversations at the dinner table about the accidents and the burglaries that had befallen his client, and Margie regularly participated in these conversation, being the eldest among her siblings. However the main concern of the parents was about Margie’s tearfulness which they believed was unusual along with her worries and fears which they thought as legitimate. Margie spent a lot of time with her parents’ company but also had a couple of close friends with whom she played at the weekends.

Formulation

Margie was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder. The precipitating factor for the condition was not apparent as it had gradually evolved over the course of Margie’s development. The referral however, was precipitated by episodes of tearfulness at school. The predisposing factors in her case comprised of a highly likely possibility of genetic vulnerability to anxiety and exposure to family culture characterised by an excessive concern with safety and oversensitivity to dangerous situations. The ongoing parental conversations about potential threats to the family’s well-being likely maintained the condition along with inadvertent reinforcement of Margie’s tearfulness at school, where her tears were responded to with considerable concern.

The protective factors in the case included good premorbid adjustment, the parents’ and the school’s commitment to solving the problem and the availability of peer group support. [This formulation is diagrammed below]

General Anxiety Disorder Formulation

Treatment

In this particular case, treatment involved family work focused on helping Margie parents reduce the amount of time they spent discussing themes related to danger and threats to their health and safety, and increase the amount engaged in activities and discussions focused on Margie’s strengths and capabilities. The parents were also assisted in coaching Margie into learning relaxation skills and mastery oriented coping self- statements. Eventually Margie showed improvement in her adjustment in school with some reduction in anxiety and tearfulness.

[4] Panic Disorder

In panic disorders, there are recurrent unexpected panic attacks; an ongoing primary fear of further attacks; secondary fear of losing control, going insane, having a heart attack or dying (American Psychiatric Association, 2000; Ballenger, 2009; Hofmann et al., 2009; World Health Organization, 1992). Acute episodes of intense anxiety our experienced in panic attacks, and these reach a peak within 10 minutes. They are characterised by autonomy hyper arousal shown by some of the following symptoms:

– Palpitations

– Sweating

– Trembling or shaking

– Shortness of breath

– Feelings of choking or smothering

– Chest pain or discomfort

– Nausea or abdominal distress

– Dizziness

– Chills or hot flushes

– Parasthesias (Numbness or tingling sensations)

– Derealisation (Feelings of unreality)

– Depersonalisation (Feelings of being detached from oneself)

In panic disorder, patients tend perceive normal fluctuations in autonomic arousal as a stimulus that provokes anxiety, with the belief that these may signal the onset of a panic attack. During a panic attack, patients typically tend to report an irresistible urge to escape the location where the attack occurred and to avoid such situations in the future. Public settings are usually the most common location where panic attacks take place [e.g. queues, public transport, shopping mall, etc] and acute autonomic arousal is only alleviated upon escape from these places or situations – hence secondary agoraphobia often develops when the patient fears leaving the safety of their homes in case of panic attacks occurring in public settings.

[5] Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) tends to occur after a catastrophic trauma such as a terrorist attack, an armed combat/robbery, a natural or man-made disaster, a serious accident that was perceived to be potentially life-threatening for oneself or others, torture, child abuse or rape.

PTSD is mainly composed of:

– Recurrent intrusive traumatic memories

– Intense anxiety in response to these memories and ongoing hyper arousal in anticipation of their recurrence

– attempts to regulate anxiety and hyper arousal by avoiding cues that trigger traumatic memories and attempts to suppress these memories when they intrude into consciousness (American Psychiatric Association, 2000; Ehlers, 2009; Friedman, 2009; World Health Organization, 1992).

Recurrent, traumatic memories include flashbacks, nightmares, or repetitive trauma themed play in the case of children, and these occur in response to internal (psychological) or external (environmental) cues that symbolise the traumatic event or aspects of it. Since patients with PTSD tend to anticipate the recurrence of traumatic memories, they experience chronic hyper-arousal which may in turn lead to difficulties in concentration, sleep difficulties, hyper-vigilance and irritability. In PTSD, the attempts to suppress traumatic memories and the avoidance of trauma-related situations may turn out to be unsuccessful, when such a scenario occurs, the PTSD person generally experiences an increase in the frequency and intensity of past traumatic memories. Emotional numbing is also quite common in chronic cases due to the frequent attempts to keep the trauma-related memory out of consciousness – this eventually leads to the inability to recall the traumatic memories. To some this may seem like a solution but the cost is excessive since emotional numbing does not only result in the exclusion of trauma-related emotions such as anxiety and anger out of consciousness, but also tender feelings such as love and joy – which cease to be experienced by the patient.

PTSD may also lead to a subjective sense of foreshortened future to the patient and this may also be accompanied by limited involvement in his/her usual activities.

[6] Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is generally characterised by distressing obsessions and compulsive rituals that reduce the anxiety associated with those obsessions [like 2 opposing forces] (American Psychiatric Association, 2000; Matthews, 2009; World Health Organization, 1992; Zohar et al., 2009). Obsessions are stereotyped thoughts, impulses or images that are recurrent and persistent. These cause serious anxiety to the patient since they are experience as senseless, uncontrollable and involuntary, and are linked to issues such as obscenity [this does not mean that healthy people with normal sexual feelings in healthy relationships have OCD], violence and danger [for e.g. some people suffer from irrational fears of the possibility of a catastrophe occurring unless symmetry or order is maintained, or there may be fears of losing control and violently raping or assaulting others, or fears of contamination [hygienic].

These compulsions are ritualistic and repetitive accompanied by stereotyped behaviours such as hand washing, ordering and checking or mental acts such as repeating words silently [which some patients feel compelled to do to regulate the anxiety caused by the obsessions], counting or praying [this should not lead to the belief that all people with faith in God suffer from OCD]. Compulsions are generally excessive attempts or unrealistic ways to avert imagined dangers entailed by these recurrent obsessions that are debilitating and are usually recognized as pointless while repeated attempts are made to resist them [once again this seems to be linked to the unconscious yet active component of mental activity and yet again leads us to Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan].


Clinical Features of Anxiety Disorders

The 6 anxiety disorders listed above are classified into the domains of Perception, Cognition, Affect, Arousal, Behaviour and Interpersonal Adjustment. In regards to perception, the disorders vary in the classes of stimuli that elicit the anxiety in the patient.

i)Perception

In cases of Separation Anxiety, the separation itself is the stimulus. Where phobias are the condition present, it is specific creatures [e.g. animals], events [e.g. injury], or situations [e.g. meeting new people] that trigger the anxiety. With Generalized Anxiety Disorder [GAD], the interpretation of multiple aspects of the environment end up being interpreted as potentially threatening. Panic disorder is characterised by somatic sensations of arousal such as tachycardia being perceived as threatening since they are treated as the signals that lead to full-blown panic attacks. In people with PTSD external and internal cues that bring back memories of the trauma that led to the condition elicit anxiety. In Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCD) stimuli that evoke obsessional thoughts elicit anxiety [e.g. potentially dirty environments or situations may give rise to obsessional ideas about hygiene and cleanliness, and anxiety about contamination.

ii)Cognition

It is important to note that in all 6 of those listed anxiety disorders, that the central organizing theme around cognition is “detection and/or avoidance of danger”. In children with Separation Anxiety there is the irrational belief that the caregivers or parents will be harmed if the separation occurs. In people affected by Phobias there is a constant fear of being harmed by either the feared object or creature, or being in the feared situation [e.g. being bitten by a god – in the case of Dog Phobia OR being negatively judged by meaningless strangers that have no connection or impact on the life of the patient in the case of Social Phobia]. As for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), patients tend to catastrophize about any features of their environment [e.g. fears of their house being burnt down, or that they will be the victim of a car crash, or punishment for some wrongdoing, they will be forsaken by those they consider as friends, and so forth – they also believe that their worries are uncontrollable. In Panic Disorder, there is the belief that more panic attacks are imminent and that they might be fatal to the patient. In many cases secondary agoraphobia also develops as they individual develops the belief that remaining in the safety of their homes might lower the probabilities of suffering from a panic attack. As for PTSD, there is the belief that as long as the intrusive memories of the trauma are forced out of consciousness, the danger of re-experiencing the intense fear, distress and horror associated with the traumatic event that led to the condition of PTSD can be avoided. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) generally leads to obsessions mainly concerned with dirt and contamination; catastrophes such as fires, illness or death; symmetry, exactness and order; religious scrupulosity; disgust with secretions and bodily wastes [e.g. urine, saliva or stools]; lucky or unlucky numbers and extreme, wild, violent and even dangerous sexual thoughts [risk-taking] – the neutralisation of the threat posed by specific obsession-related stimuli is believed to be achieved through being engaged in specific rituals.

iii)Affect

In all 6 of the mentioned anxiety disorders affective states generally follow the beliefs about threat and danger, and these are characterized by feelings of uneasiness, restlessness and tension. In the case of OCD, outbursts of anger may occur if the patient is restricted from executing his/her compulsive rituals or if compelled to approach the feared stimuli; and in children with Separation Anxiety Disorder (SAD) may display aggressive tantrums if compelled to stay in school without their caregivers or parents. In Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), on top of the affective experiences of tension and uneasiness, emotional numbing arises from repeated attempts to exclude all affective material from consciousness.

iv)Arousal

The pattern of physiological arousal varies depending on the frequency of contact with the feared stimuli. In Separation Anxiety Disorders (SAD), hyper-arousal only occurs when separation is anticipated or imminent. In the case of Specific Phobias hyper-arousal only manifests in the present of the feared object or animal. In General Anxiety Disorder (GAD), a pattern of ongoing hyper-arousal can be observed, while in Panic Disorder and PTSD it is moderate followed by brief episodes of extreme hyper-arousal – these occur during attacks in Panic Disorder and when memories of the traumatic event intrude into consciousness in PTSD. In the case of OCD, specific cues related to the obsessions evoke acute and intense episodes of arousal.

In somatic symptoms the extent to which physiological arousal finds expression varies, for e.g. recurrent abdominal pain and headaches are quite common in Separation Anxiety. Sleep problems also occur in most Anxiety Disorders. In Panic Attacks it is also common to notice full blown attacks with sweating, feelings of choking or smothering, shortness of breath, trembling, nausea, dizziness, chest pains, hot flushes or chills, parasthesias, depersonalization or derealisation.

v)Behaviour

All Anxiety Disorders are characterized by avoidance behaviours, and in Specific Phobia, avoidance may even lead to a constriction in lifestyle [using an Injury Phobia as example, the patient may refuse to take part in any form of physical activity [e.g. sports] or ride a bicycle]. In other cases, the patient sometimes become house bound due to his compulsive avoidance, and this generally occurs in Separation Anxiety Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder and PTSD. In those with PTSD, the use of alcohol or drugs to alleviate negative affect and suppress traumatic memories is quite common; and in OCD the patients generally engage in compulsive rituals in a desperate effort to regulate their anxiety associated with obsessional thoughts [it may be fair to note the relation between the Anxiety [as the Signifier] and the Obsessional Thoughts [as the Signified] in a Lacanian perspective here to point out the logic behind the flamboyant Frenchman’s model of Mental Activity based on Freud’s initial Topological Model – the Unconscious, the Preconscious and the Conscious]. These compulsions in OCD genereally include washing, repeating a particular action, checking, removing contaminants, touching, ordering and collecting.

vi)Interpersonal Adjustment

All 6 Anxiety Disorders affect interpersonal adjustment in a precise manner. In cases of Simple Phobia, interpersonal difficulties arise only in those situations where the individual does not conform or co-operate with normal activities [deemed social] so as to avoid the feared stimuli [e.g. a brief episode of marital conflict may occur if a husband refuses to enter an elevator at a shopping mall because of his claustrophobia]. Separation Anxiety Disorder (SAD), Panic Disorder (PD), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) sometimes prevent young people from attending school or adults from attending work, and in all those situations friends or family relationships may be seriously compromised. In the case of OCD peers or relatives may sometimes attempt to reduce the sufferer’s anxiety in participative actions in the compulsive rituals or in other cases, they may also exacerbate the anxiety by punishing the patient for his or her compulsive behaviour. In extreme cases, these compulsions can become so extreme that the affected person becomes constricted.


Epidemiology, Risk Factors and Course of Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety Disorders are the most common types of psychological disorders, and the lifetime prevalence rate in adults in the US National Comorbidity Survey Replication was 28.8% (Kessler et al., 2005). There is a consensus that Phobias are the most prevalent anxiety disorders and OCD is the least prevalent across a wide range of epidemiological studies (Kessler et al., 2009; Furr et al., 2009). For Phobias, lifetime prevalence estimates range from 6% to 12%, whereas those with OCD fall below 3%. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) has a lifetime prevalence of 1% to 6 %, whereas Panic Disorder in adults and Separation Anxiety in children range from 2% to 5%. In National representative samples, the prevalence of PTSD ranges from less than 1% or 2% in Western Europe to almost 8% in the US. The great variability is believed to be due to the fact that PTSD rates depend on the prevalence and traumatic exposure within specific locations geographically and the vulnerability of the populations within these countries to developing PTSD – in populations exposed to terrorism the prevalence is 12% – 16% (DiMaggio & Galea, 2006).

In people suffering from Anxiety Disorders, there is also a high risk of comorbidity [i.e. other anxiety disorders may also be present], and up to 1/3 of those suffering from Anxiety Disorders also suffer from another (Kessler et al., 2009) – they may also occur comorbidly with mood disorders in adults as well as children, substance use disorder in adults and adolescents and disruptive behaviour in young people/children (Furr et al., 2009; Huppert, 2009; Zahradnik & Stewart, 2009).  In cases where substance misuse is also present, the use of drugs or alcohol is quite common in managing anxiety.

OCD is also present in a significant proportion of people with eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa. (Halmi, 2010).

We can observe a clear age and gender difference in the prevalence of Anxiety Disorders (Antony & Stein, 2009a; Furr et al., 2009; Kessler et al., 2009) and across most studies that are available, the modal age of the onset in Separation Anxiety Disorder and Specific Phobias is during the developmental phase in childhood [a stage pointed out by both great Western psychotherapists, Freud and Lacan, and also John Bowlby in his observational research on the development of attachment types in children at this critical stage of development], whereas that of anxiety disorders generally happens during adolescence or adulthood. In both adults and children, there is a tendency for more females to suffer from Anxiety Disorders than males, with the exception to this balance being for OCD which has a similar number men and women suffering from the condition although it is the rarest of anxiety disorders.

Anxiety Disorders tend to show a recurring episodic course with a gradual reduction in prevalence over the course of the life cycle (Kessler et al., 2009). It is also worthy to note that most children with anxiety disorders do not grow up to be adults with anxiety disorders or depression, however most anxious adults do have a history of childhood anxiety disorders. There are a number of risk factors associated with Anxiety Disorders and these include anxiety disorders or psychological disorders in the direct genetic network, an inhibited temperament of behaviour, neuroticism as a trait of personality, a personal experience of psychological problems, a history of over-controlling or critical parents, a history of conflict and violence and a history of stressful life events (Antony & Stein, 2009b; Pine & Klein, 2008). In the scenario of Anxiety Disorders, a behaviourally inhibited temperament is generally the tendency from birth – to become nervous and withdrawn from unfamiliar situations and stimuli. Neuroticism is a trait of personality that gradually develops over the life-span, and it is characterized by the tendency to escape negative affect and includes hostility, anxiety and depression in its manifestations.

In those suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) the additional factors that increases the risk for development include the severity of the trauma, high-life stress following the trauma, low socio-economic status, low support [from friends or those considered as friends], low intelligence and low educational level (Ehlers, 2009; Ozer et al., 2003). In PTSD, dissociative experiences tends to refer to abnormalities of perception, memory or identity such as derealisation [seeing the world as dream-like], depersonalization [seeing oneself from an external perspective or inability to recall important information]. In the case of parents with PTSD, their children are also at a higher risk of developing the disorder (Pine & Klein, 2008).

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Part 3 of 5 | Depression

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The states of being happy or sad are adaptive feelings, and many behaviours that lead to happiness among human beings, such as socializing [with the people that matter to the subject], becoming completely absorbed in productive work and developing longstanding friendships that are meaningful around values and loyalty, are important not only for the emancipation of the individual but also for a harmonious and functional society that embraces the “humane” qualities of mankind in all its creative aspects.

Sadness on the other hand is a psychological state commonly preceded by loss [of various kinds, which may range from material objects to valued relationships or abilities/skills and status related to them through accident or disease or other situations], and it is a negative feeling which may also be adaptive, in a sense that it is a reminder to most people [at least for those who are NOT philosophically oriented / cultured or have an understanding of values and loyalty in interpersonal relationships], that valued things or people need to be taken care of if they do not want to lose them in the future, especially the common volatile brain [i.e. the basic Darwinian instinct-guided average brain that lacks reflective abilities, reasoning skills, intuition and insight, while also failing to realises or understand the motivation behind its behaviour until matters have taken a disastrous course]. Sadness is also a way of signalling to others that we as human beings also need care and elicits [to most psychologically healthy human beings with a theory of mind] support that soothes our emotional pain – this is what makes us a superior breed of primates, i.e. our ability to reason and evolve with emotions as a propulsive form of energy for both individual and group, like Alexandre Dumas put it, “Un pour tous et tous pour un!” [French for “One for all and all for one!”].

Some extreme states of mood such as depression and mania are less adaptive than happiness and sadness; and it is now commonly known that during periods of hypomania or mania some patients suffering from Bipolar Disorder [which is characterized by episodes of mania and depression] produce highly creative artistic work (Silvia & Kaufman, 2010). This should not lead us to the conclusion that ALL creative people with extreme ways of exploring and expression their emotions through art suffer from Bipolar Disorder. But for those who do suffer from Bipolar Disorder and produce creative work, this highly valued asset comes at a price, since these individuals generally involve themselves in high-risk behaviours that come with the possibility of severe dehydration and exhaustion during manic episodes.

Seasonal Affective Disorder [or Winter Depression, its colloquial name] is a condition that is believed to be linked genetically to our cave-dwelling ancestors from the prehistoric era, who may have hibernated – an adaptive behaviour for the ancestors. However, in the world of today, depression does not seem to serve any adaptive function, and despite this, it remains a highly prevalent condition that affects up to 25% of the population (Kessler & Wang, 2009); because of this prevalence the main focus of this section will be on Major Depressive Disorder.

Share of population with chronic depression

Share of the population reporting that they had chronic depression / Source: EuroStat

It is quite fundamental to grasp that depression is not simply “feeling sad”, as Major Depressive Disorder is an ongoing condition characterized by episodes of low mood and loss of interest in pleasurable activities along with other symptoms such as poor concentration, fatigue, pessimism, suicidal thoughts, and sleep and appetite disturbance. Depression is a serious public health concern because it radically decreases the quality of life of those affected, is a huge economic burden in terms of reduced productivity [and lack of creativity] among the national work force, and it also has adverse effects on the mental health and adjustment of the children of the depressed people (Garber, 2010; Kessler & Wang, 2009). This section will focus on the clinical features, epidemiology, risk factors and course of depression [suicidal risks will also be discussed].


Clinical Features of Depression

Severity

Depression can be classified as mild, moderate to severe, depending on the degree of impairment

Melancholia

In regards to somatic or melancholic features, in severe depression where there is a loss of pleasure in all activities [known as anhedonia] and a lack of reactivity to pleasant stimuli along with diurnal variation in mood and sleep and appetite disturbance, we tend to qualify such episodes as having melancholic features. Historically [please take note that this is not the case anymore], there was an ongoing view that these symptoms reflected “endogenous”, a genetically determined and biologically based form of depression, as different to a “reactive” depression arising from exposure to stressful life events and environmental adversity (Monroe et al., 2009).

However, the difference between these 2 forms of depression was not supported by empirical research, which instead shows that ALL episodes of depression are preceded by stressful life events, and that in any given scenario, we tend to have a combination of genetic vulnerability and environmental adversity that contribute to the development of depression (Parker, 2009).

Psychotic Depression

When mood disrupting delusions and hallucinations are present, depressive episodes are described as having psychotic features. Mood-congruent delusions are generally firmly held beliefs that are extremely pessimistic in nature and that have no basis in reality [illogical and cannot be explained and justified; for e.g. that a completely innocent individual is guilty of many wrongdoings and deserve to die. Mood-disrupting hallucinations in depression are generally auditory and sometimes involve the hearing of voices in a complete absence of any form of external stimuli [uncontrolled and unimagined and ongoing for months], which has negative advices to the sufferer [e.g. You are a failure, you are guilty of wrongdoing, or evil].

Among children, adolescents and adults, there has been a range of clinical features identified through both clinical observation and empirical research (e.g. Bech, 2009; Brent & Weersing, 2008; Gotlib & Hammen, 2009; Nolen-Hoeksema & Hilt, 2009a). Common clinical features of depression tend to affect the domains of cognition, perception, mood, somatic state, behaviour and relationships. Loss is once again a main thematic feature in depression as pointed out by Psychoanalytic Theories [loss of any kind, e.g. material, emotional, relationship, valued attribute due to sickness/accident, health, etc], and clinical features may be linked to those different domains of mental life.

Perception

In regards to perception, depressed individuals who have suffered some form of loss [internal or external] tend to perceive reality and the world as one where further losses are possible, and individuals who suffer from depression also selectively attend to negative stimuli and features in the environment. This leads them to engage in further depressive cognitive patterns in their thoughts processes and unrewarding behavioural patterns which amplify their depression’s severity – in cases of severe depression, mood-congruent auditory hallucinations are often reported. Hence, depressed people or people with depressive personality traits tend to come across as repulsive and despicable because of their obsessive disposition to only perceive the negative side of everything and every situation that life has to offer [note: this is different to constructive criticism which is normally for a purpose and comes with systematic reasons for enhancement]. Psychologists tend to go with the assumption that such severe perceptual abnormality is present only when patients report hearing harsh critical voices or containing depressive contents [as mentioned above]. These auditory hallucinations are also present in schizophrenia, however they are not always mood-congruent like in depression.

Cognition

Depressed patients tend to describe the world and the fabric of reality of their subjective experience in negative terms, this also include descriptions of themselves and their abilities [e.g. occupational and social accomplishments] – this negative evaluation is often portrayed as guilt for not living up to the standards [they set themselves based on their ‘perceived’ abilities] or for letting others down. They sometimes perceive their direct environments [peers, network, family, work colleagues or school/university] as hostile, apathetic, critical and unrewarding. The future is also described in very bleak terms by those suffering from depression, and they also report little if any hope that matters will improve. When extreme hopelessness is reported is it usually accompanied with excessive guilt for which the patients believe they should be punished – suicidal ideas and intentions may also be declared. In depressive delusional systems, extremely negative thoughts about the self are generally reported with the world and their future entangled in them.

Besides the content and thoughts being incredibly negative and bleak, depressed patients also tend to display concentration problems and logical errors in their thinking. These mistakes in reasoning are also characterized by a tendency to maximise the significance of negative events and minimize the significance of positive ones. Depressed patients also suffer from memory problems and struggle to remember happy events but instead have global over-general autobiographical memories about both positive and negative events. In addition to these, this category of patients also suffer from concentration, attention and decision-making problems that in turn give rise to difficulties managing leisure activities requiring sustained attention and academic or occupational responsibilities.

Affect

The impact on the patient’s affect tends to lead to low mood, and diurnal variations in mood and anhedonia. The depressed mood is usually reported as a feeling of sadness, loneliness, emptiness and despair. Diurnal variations in mood is usually quite common in severe cases of depression, with the patient’s mood generally being worse in the morning or after waking up. In cases of major depression, as a person moves from mild to moderate to severe depression, the increasing number of symptoms along with the intensity can also lead to intense anxiety. Generally, fears are experienced in the form of “Will this get worse? Am I stuck in this living hell forever? Will I ever be myself again? Will I be able to prevent myself from committing suicide to escape? Irritability is also a characteristics of depression, with the patient sometimes expressing their anger at the source of their loss [e.g. anger at a deceased one for abandoning the grieving person or sometimes at the health professional for not being able to alleviate their depressive symptoms].

Somatic State

The changes in the patient’s somatic state associated with depression include the disturbances of sleep and appetite, the loss of energy, failure to make age-appropriate physiological growth, weight loss, pain symptoms and a loss of interest in sexual activities. Commonly, depressed people struggle to find sleep and eat insufficiently due to their poor appetite; these symptoms are known as vegetative features. The sleep disturbances in depressed people generally involve problems trying to sleep, wakefulness at night or early-morning sleep disruption. Other symptoms such as racing thoughts and engaging in depressive rumination while unable to sleep is also quite common. In atypical cases of depression, patients may sometimes oversleep due to a constant feeling of exhaustion and consume excessive food due to an increased appetite or due to the feeling that eating may temporarily reduce their distress.

Medically unexplained chest, abdominal and back pain along with headaches are some of the additional features of depression. In some cases the pain symptoms are some of the first signs that would be reported to the doctor and it is only when the medical investigations of these symptoms turn out to be negative that depression is suspected to be the cause. All the somatic symptoms mentioned are consistent with research: dysregulation of neurobiological, endocrine and immune functions is associated with depression and the sleep is also affected.

Behaviour

Depressed patients are characterized behaviourally by the reduced and slow activity levels [psychomotor retardation] that they display, and are often helpless [without any control over their abilities] about their inability in getting involved in activities that could have helped their condition by bringing a sense of achievement or connectedness to meaningful [those chosen by the individual as a person with significance to him/her – note that it is a choice] people in their life. In rare cases some individual become house bound and immobile; such a condition is known as depressive stupor.

One of the major risks of depression is self-harm [a clear distinction is made between non-suicidal deliberate self-harm and suicidal behaviour]. In non-suicidal tendencies, patients may cut or burn themselves to distract themselves from the depressive feelings. In some cases, some have taken non-lethal overdoses to elicit attention and care from their close ones or to simply gain admission to hospital and remove them from the stressful situations that may have been amplifying their depressive symptoms.

Relationships

Depressed patients generally report a deterioration in their relationships with a range of significant figures in their lives from a wide range of environments [from professional to personal], and describe themselves as lonely, unable or unworthy to take steps to try and engage in some form of contact with others. Surprisingly, when the depressed attempt to overcome their loneliness by talking to others, they tend to come across as repulsive, unpleasant and draining through their depressive behaviour, pessimistic belief and sometimes arrogant narcissistic talks, this drives away those they interact with.

Video: Comment faire avec les gens frustrés ? – Benoit Zwick (2019)


Epidemiology, Risk Factors and Course of Depression

The most common mood disorder is Major Depression, and it has a lifetime prevalence rate of 6 – 25% in international community studies (Kessler & Wang, 2009). In the US National Co-morbidity Survey Replication the lifetime prevalence of DSM-IV Major Depression was 16.6% (Kessler et al., 2005). It is good to note that Depression is less common among pre-pubertal children than adolescents and adults (Brent & Weersing, 2008). Among children the number of boys to girl with depression is equal, however this changes in adolescence and by adulthood; compared with men, about twice as many women have depression (Nolen-Hoeksema & Hilt, 2009b).

In most cases of depression, there are many comorbid disorders also present. In the US, National Comorbidity Replication Survey, 59% of depressed patients suffered from comorbid anxiety disorders and 24% had comorbid substance use disorders (Kessler & Wang, 2009). Depression also tends to follow a chronic relapsing course, with up to 80% of people suffering from recurrent episodes, and it has been found that the median duration of episodes in community samples typically lasts for about 5-6 weeks. In clinical samples depressive episodes tend to last for about 5 to 6 months; the majority of cases however recover within 1 year and about half of patients continue to suffer from fluctuating residual symptoms between those depressive episodes; and for less than 10% of patients, recovery does not occur and chronic depressive symptoms persist and most cases relapse within 5 years (Angst, 2009; Boland & Keller, 2009).

During treatment, as more depressive episodes occur, we tend to notice a decrease in inter-episode intervals and a reduction in the amount of stress required to trigger the onset of further depressive episodes, an issue related to Stress Theories (Boland & Keller, 2009).

NOTE: Stress theories propose that individuals develop depression following exposure to stress. The diathesis- stress theories propose that depression only follows after exposure to stress in people who have specific biological or psychological attributes that render them more vulnerable to stressful life events, and the most vulnerable require the least stress to trigger depression (e,g., Joiner & Timmons, 2009: Joormann, 2009; Levinson, 2009). On the other hand, Stress-generation theory proposes that people with certain personal attributes inadvertently generate excessive stress, which in turn leads to depression (Liu & Alloy, 2010)

The risk factors for depression include a family history of mood disorders, female gender, low socio-economic status involving educational and economic disadvantage, and adverse early family or institutional environment, the depressive temperament, a negative cognitive style, deficits and self-regulation, high levels of life stress, and low levels of support from meaningful others (Garber, 2010; Hammen et al., 2010).

Risk factors for recurrent major depressive episodes identified in the US collaborative depression study of 500 patients, include a history of three or more prior episodes, comorbid dysthymia (often known as Double Depression), comorbid anxiety and substance use disorders, long duration of individual episodes, poor control of symptoms by antidepressant medication, onset after 60 years of age, the family history of mood disorder, and being a single female (Boland & Keller, 2009).

Four small category of people who suffer from depression, deficits the visual processing of light and the season of the year are risk factors for depression (Rosenthal, 2009). These people, who experience regularly recurring depressive episodes in the autumn and winter, with remission in the spring and summer, are generally considered as suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder. These patients develop symptoms in the absence of adequate light and respond positively to enhanced environmental lighting, often referred to as “Light Therapy or Treatment” (Golden et al., 2005).

In community samples about 3.4% of people with major depressive disorder commit suicide; the rate in clinical samples about 15%; about 60% of completed suicides (studied by psychological autopsy) had suffered from depression (Berman, 2009).

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Part 4 of 5 | Schizophrenia

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Before covering the topic of schizophrenia, it is important to take note that the condition is commonly confused to refer to another condition that involves split-personalities, and this is mostly a trend that lives in the world of pop culture and Hollywood. About 40% in the UK equated split or multiple-personality with schizophrenia in a National Survey (Luty et al., 2006). However, after covering this section, we hope that the confusion will be cleared since schizophrenia does not refer to conditions that involve split-personalities [the closest scientific equivalent to this state of being, is a condition known as Multiple Personality Disorder or Dissociative Identity Disorder and are both not as debilitating as schizophrenia with treatment being much more effective].

Schizophrenia refers to a collection of seriously debilitating conditions characterised by positive and negative symptoms in this organisation (Mueser & Jeste, 2008).

Delusions and hallucinations are the principal positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Delusions are strongly held, unfounded, culturally alien beliefs. For example with persecutory delusions, individuals may believe that a group of people conspiring to harm them [this should not lead us to believe that a healthy person with a suspicion caused by the critical analysis of a person or group of people is deluded and is schizophrenic – remember that human beings have individual personalities too]. Hallucinations on the other hand involve experiencing sensations in the absence of external stimuli [e.g. with auditory hallucinations – which are the most common type in schizophrenia – people reported hearing voices that others cannot hear].

The negative symptoms of schizophrenia include flattened affect, alogia and avolition. In the case of flattened affect, the emotional expression of the patient is limited, and with alogia there is an impoverished thought that is inferred from the patient’s speech. Short brief and concrete replies are given to question [this is referred to as poverty of speech], or in some cases speech production is normal but it conveys little meaning and information due to repetition, or being overly abstract [referred to as poverty of content], or being too concrete. When patients suffer from avolition, a lack of goal directed behaviour can be observed. The negative symptoms generally give rise to a restricted lifestyle involving little activity, little social interaction with others and little emotional expression – disorganisation may also affect both speech and behaviour [disorganised, illogical, incoherent, speak are the signs of an underlying formal thought disorder]. Disorganised catatonic behaviour is usually characterised by the complete absence of spontaneous activity or excessive purposeless activity.

Schizophrenia is a debilitating and re-occurring condition that comprises the capacity to carry out normal activities, and also consists of incomplete remission between episodes.  (Hafner & der Heiden, 2008). Symptoms of schizophrenia typically appear in late adolescence or early adulthood, wax and wane over the life course, and have a profound long-term effect on patients and sometimes their families.

Schizophrenia is considered to be the most debilitating of all psychological disorders, since it affects the patient’s capacity to live independently, make and maintain satisfying and enduring relationships, engage in family life, parent children effectively, work productively and enjoy leisure activities. Rates of unemployment, homelessness and imprisonment are very high among people with schizophrenia, although just under 1% of people suffer from schizophrenia, the World Health Organization has rented as second only to cardiovascular disease in terms of overall disease burden internationally (Murray & Lopez, 1996).

Despite these unattractive facts, the scientific advances in our understanding of schizophrenia, along with advances in both psychological and pharmacological approaches to treatment, making it increasingly realistic for people who suffer from schizophrenia to live far more productive lives than were previously possible (Mueser & Jeste, 2008).


Case Example of Schizophrenia

A young man, named Julian was referred for assessment and advice by his doctor. Since returning to his rural home after studying in London for one year, his parents started to worry about his state because of his strange behaviour. After failing as exams, the patient said that he had to ”sort his head out”. Since his return, the parents had noticed a lack of concentration along with incoherent speech during his conversations which happen most of the time – his behaviour was also erratic and unpredictable.

The parents concern grew when Julian suddenly went missing a few weeks prior to the referral. After hours of searching, he was found about 55 Km from their home, dehydrated, exhausted and dressed only in sport shorts, singlet and running shoe. After enquiry, the latter developed the belief that a secret mission in the East had to be undertaken by him; and as he started jogging in the morning, he headed eastwards towards the rising Sun. He even planned to jump onto the car ferry when he reached the coast, across the sea over to Holland, and continue east towards India in his secret mission [reminiscent of a James Bond episode].

Since the episode, Julian has spent much of the time in his room muttering to himself, often becoming quite distressed, and when his parents spoke to him they found it hard to make any sense out of his words.


Family History

Julian was the 19-year-old son of a prominent farmer in a rural English village where the whole family lived in a large amount on an extensive estate. The farm was managed by the patient’s father; who had a traditional authoritarian manner and a positive, if distant, relationship with Julian. While he was incredibly worried about Julian and to the search for him, once the latter was found, the father returned to work unless the care of his son to his wife.

The mother was an artist who dressed flamboyantly, behaved in a theatrical manner and held century, unconventional beliefs [e.g. Conspiracy theories about many issues, was interested in eastern mysticism and believe that faith healing and alternative medicine were preferable to traditional Western medicine]. These characteristics of a personality along with her beliefs affected her treatment of Julian after the ”Running East” episode, where she engaged the latter in intense conversations about mystical meaning of the psychotic experiences that led to him trying to make his way to India on foot. Rather than taking Julian to the accident and emergency department of the local hospital for assessment, she brought him to a feeler and then than homeopathist. It was only of these interventions failed to our view the distress that she took Julian to the doctor, who made the referral to the community mental health team. In the preliminary assessment that was conducted with Julian and both of his parents, the mother responded to the son with intense emotional over involvement (an index of high expressed emotion associated with a relapse in schizophrenia; Hooley, 2007).

With regard to the extended family, according to parents there has never been a family history of psychological disorder. However some members of the mother’s well-to-do family were fairly eccentric and odd, especially her brother, Sedric, and her uncle, William Jr. Williams eccentricities led him into serious conflict with his father, and Sedrick’s odd behaviour underpin his highly conflictual, childless marriage.


Developmental history

Julian on a family farm and went to the local school, his development was what most people would call normal. His Academy former school was above average and he had many friends in his local village, and was a popular child and adolescent who also excelled at cricket. At 18 years old before going to university London, he had no psychological problems.

His first term at college was successful academically and socially, however, the occasional experimental cannabis use that had begun the summer before going to college turn to a regular use once Julian moved to London. During his time at university, the patient also experimented with LSD on a few occasions. In the final term of his first year at college, Julian developed intense fear of exam failure. Other symptoms quickly followed such as difficulty studying effectively and sleeping problems. Julian stopped attending classes regularly and spend more time alone, and was relieved to return home after sitting as exams. Once home he was described as quiet and thought during most of the time prior to the “running East” episode.


Presentation

Julian presented with symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech and anxiety. At the very start the patient was very reluctant to be interviewed because he believed he had urgent business to attend to in Holland and further afield in India. He also showed signs of being anxiously distressed throughout the interview, explaining that his path was to the east and believed he was being called there by an unknown source. He firmly believes this because of a sign he had seen while out jogging on the morning of the enigmatic “running East” episode. The way in our God will record the sunlight and cast a shadow on the red barn against which it was leaned made a distinctive pattern, which to him meant a special sign indicating that he should go East, first to Holland and then all the way to India. Upon questioning this idea, a clear authoritative voice said that he should leave at once.

At this point in his narrative, stopped mid-sentence and displayed thought blocking, and will strive the topic he was talking about. Upon being asked to continue his story, he began to giggle, and when questioned about the reason behind his amusement, Julian declared to have heard someone say something funny. Julian then spoke about a number of unrelated topics in an incoherent way before experiencing thought blocking again.

Later he expressed the desire to leave soon because people will try to prevent him, as he had heard them plotting about this the day before, and also declare that they had tried to put bad ideas into his head [which he described as frightening]. He was also frightened by periodic sensations that everything was too loud or too bright and coming at him, declaring “it was like doing acid [LSD] all the time… a really bad trip.”


Formulation

In Julian’s case he presented with auditory hallucinations, delusions, thought disorder, anxiety and a significant deterioration in social and occupational functioning which had been present for more than 1 month [symptoms consistent at the time of this essay with a diagnosis of Schizophrenia]. The patient also showed a complete lack of insight and was unable to understand that the voices being heard were hallucinations and that the delusional beliefs were unfounded. Among the major precipitating factors were the experience of recent exam pressure and his transition from living at home to living in London at attending college. The principal predisposing factors were possible genetic vulnerability to psychosis and a history of hallucinogenic drug use.

His psychological condition was maintained by what was likely to be an excessive level of maternal expressed emotion characterised mainly by emotional over-involvement. His delusions were also reinforced by the mother since the latter engaged Julian in long and draining conversations about them. The protective factors in this case were godo premorbid adjustment and a strong family support for the boy.


Treatment

The treatment plan included antipsychotic medication and family will to reduce parental expressed emotion, with an initial brief period of hospitalisation. Julian did recover from his first psychotic episode, and his hallucinations and delusions decrease considerably with medication. Through family Psycho-education, parents develop understanding of this condition and of the requirement of a “low-key” approach to interacting with the boy as he recovered.

However some obstacles were encountered in Julian’s recovery, since he disliked the side effects of the medication, especially the weight gain and reduced sexual drive/function, and so had poor medication adherence – depression also manifested during the remission, when Julian came to realise about the many losses that followed his condition. He was unable to pursue his university studies and thus, could not continue the law career he had dreamed of. He also experienced difficulties in maintaining friendships or to commit to engaging on a regular basis in physical exercises or sports. When his mood was low, Julian would smoke some cannabis to lift his spirits.

The mother found it very difficult to accept the diagnosis of Schizophrenia and continued to hold the belief that his psychotic symptoms were linked to some spiritual or mystical explanation. She even sometimes declared that she thought of her son not as an ill young man, but a gifted seer or a “chosen one” [based on no rational explanation or series of events], and often engaged Julian in intense, distressing conversations about these issues. In the years that followed his initial assessment, poor medication adherence, ongoing cannabis use [which the patient could not tolerate unlike some other users] and exposure to high levels of intrusive parental emotions led Julian to relapse more often than might otherwise have been the case.


Clinical Features of Schizophrenia

A range of clinical features have been identified and associated with Schizophrenia though research and clinical observations (Mueser & Jeste, 2008). The generally concern the domains of perception, cognition, emotion, behaviour, social adjustment and somatic state.


Perception

At the perceptual level, patients suffering with schizophrenia generally describe a breakdown in perceptual selectivity, with difficulties focusing on essential information or stimuli to the exclusion of accidental details or background noise. Most aspects of the environment seem to be salient, however, the inability to distinguish between figure and ground is a serious problem to the sufferer. During an acute psychotic state, internal stimuli such as verbal thoughts are experienced as auditory hallucinations that have the same sensory quality of the spoken word.

Auditory hallucinations can sometimes be experience as extremely loud thoughts, or as thoughts being repeated by another person aloud (thought echo), as voices speaking inside the head or as voices coming from somewhere in the outer environment. The auditory hallucination may occur as third person making comments on the patient’s action, as a voice speaking in the second person directly to the person, or as two or more people talking or arguing – the effect did may also perceive voices to vary along the number of dementia [may be construed as benign or malevolent, controlling or impotent, or knowing or knowing little about the patient, who may sometimes feel compelled to the demands of the voice or not.

When hallucinations are perceived to be malevolent, controlling, all-knowing, where the individual affected feels compelled to obey the demands of the voice, the situation is deemed to be far more distressing than those who do not have these attributes. While auditory hallucinations are the most common features in schizophrenia, hallucinations may okay other sensory modalities too. Somatic hallucinations also often occur in schizophrenia, with many cases including reports of electricity in the body or the feeling of something crawling underneath the skin [these may be qualified as delusional interpretations. For example, a patient reported that the television was activating a transmitter in her pelvis and she could feel the electricity from this closing insects to grow and move around under the skin. Visual hallucinations [seeing visions] are relatively rare in schizophrenia very common in temporal lobe epilepsy.


Cognition

At the cognitive level, delusions are the most common cognitive clinical feature of schizophrenia, and are false, idiosyncratic, illogical and stubbornly maintained erroneous inferences drawn to explain unusual experiences, such as hallucination. [e.g. patient with auditory hallucinations where an authoritative voice commanding the latter to gather the children, was interpreted by the patient that she had been chosen by God to prepare all the children for the second coming of Christ]

Delusions may also arise from unusual feelings associated with psychosis. Persecutory delusions may develop from feelings of being watched. Delusions of thought insertion or thought withdrawal may develop as explanations for feelings that thoughts are not one’s own, or that one’s thoughts have suddenly disappeared. Factor analyses show that delusions fall into 3 broad categories:

Delusions of influence [including thought withdrawal or insertion, and beliefs about being controlled]; delusions of self-significance [including delusions of grandeur or guilt]; and delusions of persecution (Vahia & Cohen, 2008). Delusions may vary in the degree of conviction with which they are held [great certainty to little servant, the degree to which the person is preoccupied with them [the amount of time spent thinking about the belief], the amount of distress they cause.

Particular sets of the may comprise of a confused sense of self, particularly paranoid delusions with the patient holds the belief that they are being persecuted or punished for misdeeds, or delusions of control where there is a belief that their actions controlled by others [e.g. an unknown source or entity].

A lack of insight along with an impaired judgement is quite common during a psychotic episode. This happens when the patient believes that the contents of their hallucinations and delusions are real, and are incapable of coming to terms with the fact that their experiences and beliefs arise from a clinical condition. However in between psychotic episodes, the patient’s insight may improve and in some cases they may acknowledge that their hallucinations and delusions are symptoms of schizophrenia.

Speech in schizophrenic patients is also fairly hard to understand due to the abnormalities in the underlying thought pattern. This formal thought disorder is characterised by

  1. Tangentiality [answers given to questions are off the point]
  2. Derailment [sentences makes sense but hardly any meaning is conveyed by the sequences of sentences because there is a constant jumping from one topic to another, with very loose association between topics and little logic to what is said]
  3. Incoherence [sentences are incorrectly formed so little sense can be made out of them]
  4. Thought blocking [the patient abruptly stop’s in mid-sentence and is unable to complete the train of thought]
  5. Loss of goal [the difficulty in following a logical train of thought from A to B]
  6. Neologisms [inexistent new words are made up that only have idiosyncratic meaning for the patient]

Cognitive impairment or deterioration occurs in schizophrenia and this may either be general or specific. In cases with general cognitive deterioration, we can observe a reduction in overall IQ with many cognitive function also negatively affected. With specific cognitive impairment one or more of the following functions may be impaired: attention, memory, cognitive flexibility, social cognition and executive function, and most commonly the ability and dedication to follow through on a planned course of action. Cognitive impairment remains a better predictor of disability and vocational functioning than positive symptoms.


Emotions

At the emotional level, especially during the prodromal phase, before an acute psychotic episode, anxiety or depression may occur in response to changes in perceptual selectivity and cognitive inefficiency. One of the main functions of relapse prevention is for patients to learn [and eventually master] the ability to identify and manage prodromal changes in affect.

During psychotic episodes that are intense, anxiety or depression may occur in response to hallucinations, delusions, formal thought disorder and other debilitating symptoms. Inappropriate affect may also be present in hebephrenic schizophrenia, where the patient responds to the internal stimuli such as auditory hallucinations [e.g. laughing wildly] and not the external social context. In chronic cases, blunted or flattened affect can also be observed, and in remission [following an episode of psychosis], the sense of loss [e.g. of valued personal relationships, material, career, etc] that comes with increased insight into the reality of the condition may give rise to post-psychotic depression in some cases.

Behaviour

In terms of behaviour, prodromal excitation may occur prior to an acute psychotic episode, characterised by sleep disturbance, impulsive behaviour, and over-reactivity [may include compulsive behaviour]. Avolition also occurs during psychotic episodes with an observable impairment in goal-directed behaviour.

In some chronic cases, it is common to also find catatonic behaviour along with an impairment in the ability to initiate and organise voluntary movement and posture. Catatonia may be either retarded or excited. Excessive purposeless motor activity is the hallmark of excited catatonia and may include stereotypies [repetitive actions], echolalia [repeating the words said by others] or echopraxia [imitating the actions of others] – these tend to occur without the patient being consciously aware of it [not a conscious choice]. In cases where retarded catatonic behaviour is present there is an observable reduction in purposeful activity; patients may display signs of immobility, mutism, adopt odd postures for extended amounts of time, and display waxy flexibility or negativism.

Social Adjustment

A marked deterioration in social adjustment is also common in schizophrenia, and the ability for self-care, appropriate dressing, grooming and personal hygiene deteriorates – patients with schizophrenia often look dishevelled and unkempt. A decline in also commonly present in the domains of education and work with a withdrawal from regular patterns of socialisation and difficulty making and maintaining significant relationships. A deterioration with others also occurs and schizophrenia tends to have a negative impact on parent-child, marital and sibling relationships.

Somatic State

Approximately 50% of people with Schizophrenia also have comorbid substance use disorders and almost 75% have significant health problems, with the most common one being Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) [usually due to heavy smoking]; heart disease and diabetes due to obesity; HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B and C caused by unsafe sex and intravenous drug use [e.g. heroin]. These drug and medical problems in schizophrenia are lifestyle problems. However, one the positive side, schizophrenia is associated with reduced rates of cancer and rheumatoid arthritis (Tandon et al., 2008a).

Epidemiology, Course, Outcome and Risk Factors of Schizophrenia

International epidemiological studies that have been reviewed have allowed for a number of conclusions to be deduced regarding schizophrenia. We know that [luckily] under 1% of the population suffer from schizophrenia, and the lifetime risk of the condition is about 0.7% (Saha et al., 2005). More men than women suffer from schizophrenia: the male-female ratio is about 1.4:1 (McGrath et al., 2004). Schizophrenia has an earlier onset in males (20-28 years) than in females (28-32 years) (Murray & Van Os, 1998). The rates for schizophrenia have also been found to be similar across countries and cultures when diagnostic criteria are used (Mueser & Duva, 2011).

Schizophrenia tends to follow a distinctive course although a considerable variability exists across cases (Jablensky, 2009; Jobe & Harrow, 2010; Mueser & Duva, 2011, Tandon et al., 2009). The onset of schizophrenia generally occurs in late adolescence or early adulthood and may be acute or insidious [onset generally takes place over 5 years, starting with negative and depressive symptoms, followed by cognitive and social impairment and finally positive symptoms]. Longitudinal studies suggest that there is an early deterioration phase that extends over 5-10 years, a stabilisation phase and a final gradual improvement phase. In over 50 – 70% of cases, the condition follows a chronic relapsing course, typically with incomplete remission between episodes. However, up to 40% of patients show one or more periods of complete recovery with good adjustment for at least 1 year, and  4 – 20% of cases show complete remission.

Psychotic episodes may last from 1 – 6 months, although some cases extend up to 1 year. They are usually preceded by a prodromal period of a number of weeks. Psychotic episodes may be lessened and the severity of the symptoms ameliorated through early detection and the use of pharmacological and psychological treatment. Inter-episode functioning may differ greatly and better inter-episode functioning is associated with a better prognosis. The duration of remission between episodes may be lengthened through the use of maintenance medication and psychosocial interventions to reduce stress and improve coping and illness management.

With treatment, usually positive symptoms (hallucinations and delusions) abate between episodes but negative symptoms (blunted affect, alogia and avolition) can be enduring and are more likely to persist during remission. In the stabilisation phase of schizophrenia, positive symptoms become less prominent, while negative symptoms and cognitive deficits become more prominent. The lifespan of people with schizophrenia is also 9 years less than that of the general population, and this is partly accounted for by the high rate of suicide during the first 10 years of the disorder and the high rate of comorbid medical disorders that also tend to occur along with schizophrenia. About 50% of schizophrenics attempt suicide or self-harm, and about 10% commit suicide (Heisel, 2008; Schennach-Wolff et al., 2011).

One of the greatest risk factors for schizophrenia is a family history of psychosis. Other risk factors make a small contribution to the overall risk within the context of associated with genetic vulnerability. However until now, it is important to note that we still do not have any clear consensus or evidence on how these risk factors operate and whether environmental factors remain a stronger prediction of the onset of schizophrenia than genetic factors that only set a predisposition [risk] of possibly developing the condition. Prenatal and perinatal risk factors, such as maternal flu infection and obstetric complications, are likely to have a negative effect or indirect effect on the development of the nervous system in line with the neurodevelopmental hypothesis that states how those affected by such issues while also being genetically predisposed to schizophrenia are even more neurologically vulnerable to psychosis (Murray & Lewis, 1987). Trauma exposure and most demographic risk factors (being unmarried, low-SES urban migrant) are associated with higher levels of stress and lower levels of social support [which increases the risk of psychosis in the genetically vulnerable] according to the Diathesis-Stress Conceptualisation of Schizophrenia (Zubin & Spring, 1977).

In the short term, relapse is more likely in cases where these is heavy cannabis use [along with poor personal/subjective tolerance of the effects on consciousness], poor treatment adherence, frequent contact with insignificant extended family members who may display excessive negative emotional expressions towards the patient [e.g. criticism, hostility and emotional over-involvement] and exposure to acute stress life events (Jablensky, 2009).

A poor outcome is associated with substance use and a longer period of untreated psychosis in people who have poor premorbid adjustment and an early insidious onset with no clear stressful life event preceding their first treated episode. One of the main traits associated with a poor outcome is “Anxiety”, and people with this stress profile are generally more sensitive to and reactive to life’s stressful events, along with populations living in a developing economy, and family-based stress associated with excessive negative expressions of emotion. The symptom profile predictive of a poor outcome is also marked by severe negative symptoms, cognitive impairment and lack of depressive symptoms.

A favourable outcome in schizophrenia is associated with a range of factors (Bota et al., 2011). These include good premorbid adjustment, and a brief duration of untreated psychosis characterised by an acute onset in response to precipitating stressful life events. A family history of affective problems/disorders [rather than schizophrenia] or little psychopathology and a personal symptom profile in which there are affective as well as psychotic features are also predictive of a good prognosis. A better outcome tends to follow those who have a favourable life situation to return to following discharge from hospital.

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Part 5 of 5 | The Effectiveness of Psychotherapy

ClinP_Descr_Header_05

The main help that a psychotherapist provides is psychotherapy, a contractual process where professionals with expert knowledge interact with clients to guide and help them in the resolution of their psychological conflicts, emotional imbalance, psychological problems and address mental health and behavioural difficulties [if any]. Psychotherapy can be offered to both adults and children on an individual, couple, family or group basis.

Often psychotherapists offer therapy as one element of a multimodal programme provided by a multidisciplinary team [e.g. a multidisciplinary adult mental health team may routinely offer a multimodal programme of psychotherapy combined with some mild anti-depressant for depression]. This final section will focus on the evidence base for the overall effectiveness of psychotherapy.


Evidence-based Practice

In today’s trend of mainstream clinical psychology where the mechanical model of early behaviourists has been combined with cognitive psychology to become Cognitive-Behavioural Psychology, there has been a gradual shift from practice guided by descriptions of clinical cases [qualitative, detailed and individual] to “evidence-based” practice guided by the results of empirical studies using the statistical methods of science to make inferences about behaviour [that can be measured at least] on the effectiveness of psychological interventions. This movement has started in part due to the influence of policies derived from the medical field which bases itself on evidence-based medicine [i.e. tested with laboratory-rigour and statistical methodology] (Sackett et al., 1996, 2000).

Evidence practice in medicine as it has been applied to psychology [or should we say behavioural science] involves the judicious and compassionate use of the best available evidence to make decisions about patient or client care. In clinical psychology, this involves considering available scientific evidence about “what works” on one side, and the client’s unique problems, needs, rights and preferences on the other; while also making balanced, compassionate judgements (APA Presidential Task Force on Evidence Based Practice, 2006; Norcross et al., 2006).


Meta-analyses

The most persuasive form of evidence as far as the effectiveness of psychotherapy and other psychological interventions are concerned in regards to empirical measurements and statistical methodology, comes from meta-analyses on controlled trials.

Meta-analysis is a systematic, quantitative approach to reviewing evidence from multiple trials while also reducing the impact of reviewer bias since the data from many trials are synthesised using statistical methods.

In a meta-analysis, effect sizes are calculated for each trial and then averaged across all trials to provide a quantitative index of the effectiveness of a particular form of treatment with a specified population. The effect sizes calculated in meta-analyses express quantitatively the degree to which treated groups improve over untreated control groups [A graphic explanation of the calculation of an effect size in given in FIGURE A.

FIGURE A - EFFECT SIZES

FIGURE A. A Graphic Representation of an Effect Size of 1

Table A shows a system for interpreting effect sizes, and using it, it may be seen that .9 is a large effect size, and if such an effect size was obtained in a meta-analysis it would mean that the average treated case fared better than 82% of the cases in the control group. It would also indicate that 71% of cases in the treatment group had a successful outcome compared with 29% of control group cases. Finally, a large effect of .9 would indicate that 17% of the variance in outcome would validly be attributed to the effects of the treatment rather than other factors.

Table A - Interpretation of Effect Size

TABLE A / Note: Adapted from Wampold (2001, p. 53). 1. From Cohen (1988), 2. From Glass (1976). 3. From Rosenthal and Rubin (1982). Binomial effect size display, assuming overall success rate of .5, success rate for treated cases is .5+ correlation with outcome/2, and success rate for untreated cases is .5-correlation with outcome/2. 4. From Rosenthal (1994, p. 239), percentage of variance = d²/(d² +4).

Is Psychotherapy effective? If so, how effective?

Mary Smith and Gene Glass published the first major meta-analysis of psychotherapy result studies in American Psychologist in 1977. They included 375 controlled trials of psychotherapy in their analysis and found an average effect size of .68. They concluded that a typical therapy client was better off that 75% of untreated individuals.

Since that seminal study many meta-analyses have been conducted, and in a synthesis of 68 separate meta-analyses of psychotherapy with children, adolescents and adults with a wide range of different psychological problems, Grissom (1996) found an aggregate effect of .75, indicating that the average treated case fared better than 77% of untreated controls.


Effects of Psychotherapy with Adults

The mentioned meta-analysis conducted by Smith and Glass (1977) also included many studies of therapy with children and young people. In the quest to determining the effects of psychotherapy for adults with psychological problems, Shapiro and Shapiro (1982) conducted a meta-analysis of 143 studies of psychotherapy exclusively involving adult populations. This revealed an effect size of 1.03, meaning that after treatment the average adult who participated in psychotherapy fared better than 84% of untreated control group cases.


Effectiveness of Psychotherapy with Children and Adolescents

The results of 4 broad meta-analyses of studies involving children and adolescents under 18 years with a diverse range of psychological problems receiving a variety of forms of psychotherapy provide evidence for the overall effectiveness of psychotherapy with children (Casey & Berman, 1985; Kazdin et al., 1990; Weisz et al., 1987, 1995). These meta-analyses included more than 350 treatment outcome studies. Effect sizes ranged from .71 to .88, with a mean effect size of .77. This indicates that the average treated case fared better than 78% of control group cases.


Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Within the psychodynamic tradition, a distinction is made between short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy and intensive long-term psychoanalysis. Short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy involve weekly sessions for periods of 6 – 12 months, while Long-term psychoanalysis involves two or more sessions per week, usually lasting for periods longer than 1 year [Jacques Lacan, one of the main psychoanalytic figures in France, broke from other associations to create his own school where he advocated short psychoanalytic sessions that varied ranging from 10 minutes to more, as he argued that the point of therapy is to shape the patient’s consciousness and depending on the person, this can be achieved by a range of ways, e.g. metaphors or word plays that allows the patient to peer into his own psyche and understand himself]

Two important broad meta-analyses have been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapy with adult mental health problems (Leichsenring et al., 2004; Leichsenring & Rabung, 2011). In a meta-analysis of 17 studies, Leichsenring et al. (2004) found that short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy yielded an effect size of .7 for psychiatric symptoms in patients mainly diagnosed with anxiety and mood disorders when therapy was compared with waiting list or minimal intervention control groups. This indicates that after treatment the average treated case fared better than 76% of controls. In this meta-analysis, the outcome for psychodynamic psychotherapy did not differ from that of other forms of psychotherapy in the 14 studies where such comparisons were made.

In a further meta-analysis of 10 studies, Leichsenring and Rabung (2011) found that Long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy involving more than 50 sessions over periods longer than a year yielded an effect size of .54 for overall effectiveness for complex cases with severe symptomatology, comorbid diagnoses, or personality disorders, when long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy was compared with a range of other therapies including Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT), dialectical behaviour therapy, family therapy and short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy. This indicates that after treatment the average case fared better than 70% of cases treated with other therapies. The gains made during treatment were sustained at 1 to 8 years after follow up.

The results of these two meta-analyses show that short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy is an effective as other widely used forms of psychotherapy, including Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT), for common psychological problems such as anxiety and depression in adults; and that long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy is more effective that some other forms of therapy for adults with complex mental health difficulties.


Client-centred Humanistic Psychotherapy

Elliot et al., (2004) conducted a meta-analysis of trials of psychotherapy that fall broadly within the client-centred humanistic psychotherapy tradition [over 90 trials of client-centred, experiential, gestalt and emotionally-focussed therapy were included in the analysis]. Clients in these studies had a wide variety of psychological problems including anxiety, mood, eating and relationship distress. The average duration of treatment was 22 sessions, reflecting about 6 months of therapy. An effect size of .78 was obtained, indicating that the average treated case fared better than 78% of cases in control groups. These results indicate that client-centred humanistic psychotherapy is an effective form of treatment for a range of common psychological problems in adulthood.


Overall Effects of Psychotherapy

FIGURE B summarises the results of meta-analyses, described above, of the effectiveness of psychotherapy from a range of different traditions with adults and children. In this figure, where appropriate, effect sizes from multiple meta-analyses have been averaged, and graphed as success rates based on the system given in TABLE A.

From FIGURE B it can be deduced that meta-analyses of psychotherapy trials yield moderate to large effect sizes that range from .65 to 1.02. When expressed as success rates, the results of meta-analyses indicate that 65 – 72% of people with psychological problems benefit from psychotherapy. Thus approximately two-thirds to three-quarters of people who engage in psychotherapy find that it leads to improvements in their mental health.

FIGURE B - SUCCESS RATES W ADULTS &amp; CHILDREN

FIGURE B. Success Rates of Psychotherapy with adults and children, and Therapy from other schools of thought [traditions] based on Effect Sizes from Meta-analyses

Comparison of the effects of Psychotherapy and Medical Procedures

In order to make sense of the overall effectiveness of psychotherapy, it may be useful to ask ourselves: Are the moderate to large effect sizes associated with psychotherapy very different from those associated with the medical and surgical treatment of physical illnesses, diseases and medical symptoms?

In a synthesis of 91 meta-analyses of various medical and surgical treatments for a range of medical conditions, Caspi (2004) found an average effect size of .5. This falls in the moderate range of effect sizes (.5 – .8) and not very dissimilar to the effect size of .75 from Grissom’s (1996) synthesis of 68 meta-analyses of psychotherapy trials mentioned at the beginning of this section. Hence, it may be concluded with some certainty that the moderate effect sizes associated with psychotherapy are similar to those associated with the treatment of medical conditions.


Deterioration and Drop-Out

A consistent finding within psychotherapy research literature is that up to 10% of clients deteriorate following treatment (Lambert and Ogles, 2004; Lilienfeld, 2007). In a review of 46 studies on negative outcome in adult psychotherapy, Mohr (1995) found that deterioration was associated with particular client and therapist characteristics and particular features of psychotherapy. Deterioration was much more common among clients with obsessive compulsive disorder or severe interpersonal difficulties. Lack of motivation and the expectation of benefiting from psychotherapy without personal effort were also associated with deterioration. Deterioration was more common when unskilled therapists lacked the empathy and did not collaborate with clients in pursuing their agreed goals. Failure to manage counter transference appropriately and frequent transference interpretations were also associated with deterioration.

Dropping out of psychotherapy is a relatively common event. In a meta-analysis of 125 studies, Wierzbicki and Pekarik (1993) found a mean dropout rate of 47%. Dropout rates were higher for minority ethnic groups, less educated clients, and those with lower incomes. Thus, we can conclude that about 1 in 10 clients deteriorate following therapy and that marginalised clients with particularly troublesome disorders and negative attitudes to psychotherapy are vulnerable to dropping out of psychotherapy and deterioration.


Medical Cost Offset

So, all the evidence that has been reviewed shows that psychotherapy is effective for a range of problems and populations. However, an important factor regarding the delivery of psychological treatment is the financial implication of it [i.e. the cost to the economy and health services]: How much does it cost to provide such a psychotherapy service? From this financial perspective, two questions would be of interest:

First: Do clients who received psychotherapy use fewer medical services and so incur reduced medical costs? This saving would be referred to as the Medical Cost Offset.

Second: Is the Medical Cost Offset associated with psychotherapy greater than the cost of providing psychotherapy? If so, we would be able to conclude that psychotherapy has a total cost offset.

Findings from meta-analyses and narrative reviews of the cost-offset literature provide explanations on these questions. In a meta-analysis of 91 studies conducted between 1967 and 1997, Chiles et al. (1999) found that psychotherapy and psychological interventions led to significant medical cost offsets. Participants in reviewed studies included surgery inpatients, high health-service users, and people with psychological and substance use disorders who received psychotherapy or psychological interventions alone or as part of a multimodal programme. Chiles and his team found that medical cost offsets occurred in 90% of studies and ranged from 20% to 30%. In 93% of studies where data were provided, cost offsets exceeded the cost of providing psychotherapy. Greater costs offsets occurred for older inpatient who required surgery, oncology, and cardiac rehabilitation than for outpatients who required care for minor injuries and illnesses. Structured psychological interventions, tailored to patient needs associated with their medical conditions, led to greater medical cost offsets than traditional psychotherapy.

In a set of meta-analyses from earlier studies involving Blue Cross and Blue Shield US Federal Employees Plan claim files and 58 controlled studies, Mumford et al. (1984) found that 85% of studies medical cost offset for psychotherapy occurred, and this was due to shorter periods of hospitalisation for surgery, cancer, heart disease and diabetes – particularly in patients over the age of 55. In a review of psychological interventions for people with a variety of health-related difficulties, Groth-Marnat and Edkins (1996) found that medical cost offsets occurred when such interventions targeted patients preparing for surgery and patients with difficulty adhering to medical regimens. Medical offset also occurred for smoking cessation programmes, rehabilitation programmes, and programmes for patients with chronic pain disorders, cardiovascular disorders and psychosomatic complaints.

Three other important reviews of medical cost-offset literature, which focussed largely on mental health problems in adults rather than adjustment to physical illness, deserve mention. In a review of 30 studies of psychotherapy for psychological disorders and drug and alcohol abuse, Jones and Vischi (1979) found that medical cost offsets occurred in most cases. In a review of eight cost-effective studies for substance abuse, Morgan and Crane (2010) concluded that family-based treatments can be cost-effective. In a review of 18 studies of psychotherapy for psychological disorders, Gabbard et al. (1997) found that in more than in 80% of studies, medical cost offsets exceeded the cost of providing psychological therapies. Significant cost-offsets occurred for complex problems and in studies of psychoeducational family therapy for schizophrenia and dialectical behaviour therapy for personality disorders this was achieved by reducing the need for inpatient care and improving occupational adjustment.

Estimated direct and indirect costs related to mental health problems across Europe

Besides the impact on people’s well-being, the report estimates the total costs of mental ill-health at over EUR 600 billion – or more than 4% of GDP – across Europe / Source: OECD Library

Prevalence by mental and substance use disorder 2017 - our world in data

Prevalence by Mental and Substance use disorder / Source: OurWorldinData

The table below provides a brief summary of the data which follows on mental health and substance use disorders

The table provides a brief summary of the data which follows on mental health and substance use disorders / Source: OurWorldinData

Therefore, to conclude with all the evidence reviewed here, it is widely accepted today that psychotherapeutic interventions have a significant medical cost offset. Those who participate in psychotherapy use fewer extra medical services at primary, secondary and tertiary levels and are hospitalised less than those who do not receive psychotherapy.

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*****

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Essay // Psychology: The Concept of Self

Mis à jour le Jeudi, 2 Mars 2023

SelfRope

The concept of the self will be explored in this essay – where it comes from, what it looks like and how it influences thought and behaviour. Since self and identity are cognitive constructs that influence social interaction and perception, and are themselves partially influenced by society, the material of this essay connects to virtually all aspects of psychological science. The self is an enormously popular focus of research (e.g. Leary and Tangney, 2003; Sedikides and Brewer, 2001; Swann and Bosson, 2010). A 1997 review by Ashmore and Jussim reported 31,000 social psychological publications on the self over a two-decade period to the mid-1990s, and there is now even an International Society for Self and Identity and a scholarly journal imaginatively entitled Self and Identity.

Nikon Portrait DSC_0169 Res600

The concept of the “self” is a relatively new idea in psychological science. While Roy Baumeister’s (1987) painted a picture of a medievally organised society where most human organism’s reality were fixed and predefined by rigid social relations and legitimised with religious affiliations [family membership, social rank, birth order & place of birth, etc], the modern perspectives adopted by scholars and innovative psychologists has been contradicting such outdated concepts. The idea of a complex & sophisticated individual self, lurking underneath would have been difficult, if not impossible, to entertain under such atavistic assumptions of social structures affecting an individual human organism.

However, all this changed in the 16th century, where momentum gathered ever since from forces such as:

Secularisation – where the idea that fulfilment occurs in afterlife was replaced by the idea that one should actively pursue personal fulfilment in this life

Industrialisation – where the human being was increasingly being seen as individual units of production who moved from place to place with their own “portable” personal identity which was not locked into static social structures such as extended family

Enlightenment – where people felt they were solely responsible for choosing, organising and creating better identities for themselves by overthrowing orthodox value systems and oppressive regimes [e.g. the French revolution and the American revolution of the late 18th century]

and

Psychoanalysis – the psychoanalytic theory of the human mind unleashed the creative individual with the notion that the self was unfathomable because it lived in the depth of the unconscious [e.g. Theory of social representations – theory invoking psychoanalysis as an example of how a novel idea or analysis can entirely change how people think about their world (e.g. Moscovici, 1961; see Lorenzi-Cioldi and Clémence, 2001). [See: Psychoanalysis: History, Foundations, Legacy, Impact & Evolution]

Jacques Lacan d'purb dpurb site web

Jacques Lacan (1901 – 1981)

Together, these and other socio-political and cultural influences lead to society thinking about the self and identity as complex subjects, where theories of self and identity propagated and flourished in this fertile soil.

As far as self and identity are concerned, we have noticed one pervasive finding in cultural differences. The so called “Western” world involving continents such as Western Europe, North America and Australasia, tend to be individualistic, whereas most other cultures, such as in Asia, South America and Africa are collectivist (Triandis, 1989; also see Chiu and Hong, 2007, Heine, 2010, 2012; Oyserman, Coon and Kemmelmeier, 2002). Anthropologist Geertz puts it beautifully:

“The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated, motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic centre of awareness, emotion, judgement, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against a social and natural background is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures.”

Geertz (1975, p.48)

conceptofself d'purb dpurb site web

Markus and Kityama (1991) describe how those from individualistic cultures tend to have an independent self, whereas people from collectivist cultures have an interdependent self. Although in both cases, people seek a clear sense of who they are, the [Western] independent self is grounded in a view of the self that is autonomous, separate from other people and revealed through one’s inner thoughts and feelings. The [Eastern] interdependent self on the other hand, unlike in the West, tends to be grounded in one’s connection to and relationships with other people [expressed through one’s roles and relationships]. As Gao explained: ‘Self… is defined by a person’s surrounding relations, which often are derived from kinship networks and supported by cultural values based on subjective definitions of filial piety, loyalty, dignity, and integrity’ (Gao, 1996, p. 83).

From a conceptual review of the cultural context of self-conception, Vignoles, Chryssochoou and Breakwell (2000) conclude that the need to have a distinctive and integrated sense of self is “likely” universal. However from individualist and collectivist cultures, the term “self-distinctiveness” holds a set of very different assumptions. In the individualist West, separateness adds meaning and definition to the isolated and bounded self. In the collectivist & Eastern others, the “self” is relational and gains meaning from its relations with others.

universal

A logic proposed by analysing historical conceptions of self with an account of the origins of individualist and collectivist cultures along with the associated independent and interdependent self-conceptions may be related to economic policies. The labour market is an example where mobility helped the industry by viewing humans as “units” of production who are expected to shift their geographical locations from places of low labour demand to those of higher demand, along with their ability to organise their lives, relationships, self-concepts around mobility and transient relationships.

New York Construction Workers Lunching on a Crossbeam

Construction workers eat their lunches atop a steel beam 800 feet above ground, at the building site of the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center.

Independence, separateness and uniqueness have become more important than connectedness and long-term maintenance of enduring relationships [values that seem to have become pillars of modern Western Labour Culture – self-conceptions reflect cultural norms that codify economic activity].

However, this logic applied to any modern human organism seems to clearly offer more routes to development [personal and professional], more options to continuously nurture the evolving concepts of self-conception through expansive social experience and cultural exploration, while being a set of philosophy that places more powers of self-defined identity in the hands of the individual [more modern and sophisticated].

TheMan

Now that some basic concepts and origins of the “self” along with its importance and significance to psychological science has been covered, we are going to explore two creative ways of learning about ourselves.

Firstly, the concept of self-knowledge which involves us storing information about ourselves in a complex and varied way in the form of a schema means that information about the self is assumed to be stored cognitively as separate context specific nodes such that different nodes activate different ones and thus, different aspects of self (Breckler, Pratkanis and McCann, 1991; Higgins, van Hook and Dorfman, 1988). The concept of self emerges from widely distributed brain activity across the medial prefrontal and medial precuneus cortex of the brain (e.g. Saxe, Moran, Scholz, and Gabrieli, 2006). According the Hazel Markus, self-concept is neither “a singular, static, lump-like entity” nor a simple averaged view of the self – it is a complex and multi-faceted, with a relatively large number of discrete self-schemas (Markus, 1977; Markus and Wurf, 1987).

masks

Most individuals tend to have clear conceptions of themselves on some dimensions but not others – generally more self-schematic on dimensions that hold more meaning to them, for e.g. if one thinks of oneself as sophisticated and being sophisticated is of importance to oneself, then we would be self-schematic on that dimension [part of our self-concept], if not then we would not [would not be part of our self-concept – unsophisticated]. It is widely believed that most people have a complex self-concept with a large number of discrete self-schemas. Patrice Linville (1985, 1987; see below) has suggested that this variety helps to buffer people from life’s negative impacts by ensuring enough self-schemas are available for the individual to maintain a sense of satisfaction. We can be strategic in the use of our self-schemas – Linville described such judgement colourfully by saying: “don’t put all your eggs in one cognitive basket.” Self-schemas influence information processing and behaviour similarly to how schemas about others do (Markus and Sentis, 1982): self-schematic information is more readily noticed, is overrepresented in cognition and is associated with longer processing time.

S€lection de Vos Oeufs d'purb

Self-schemas do not only describe how we are, but they are also believed to differ as we have an array of possible selves (Markus and Nurius, 1986) – future-oriented schemas of what we would like to become, or what we fear we might become. For example, a scholar completing a postgraduate may think of a career as an artist, lecturer, writer, philosopher, politician, actor, singer, producer, entrepreneur, etc. Higgins (1987) proposed the self-discrepancy theory, suggesting that we have 3 major types of self-schema:

  • The actual self – how we are
  • The ideal self – how we would like to be
  • The ‘ought’ self – how we think we should be

Discrepancies between the actual, ideal and/or ought, can motivate change to reduce the discrepancy – in this way we engage in self-regulation. Furthermore, the self-discrepancy and the general notion of self-regulation have been elaborated into the regulatory focus-theory (Higgins, 1997, 1998).This theory proposes that most individuals have two separate self-regulatory systems, termed Promotion and Prevention. The “Promotion” system is concerned with the attainment of one’s hopes and aspirations – one’s ideals. For example, those in a promotion focus adopt approach strategic means to attain their goals [e.g. promotion-focused students would seek ways to improve their grades, find new challenges and treat problems as interesting obstacles to overcome. The “Prevention” system is concerned with the fulfilment of one’s duties and obligations. Those in a prevention focus use avoidance strategy means to attain their goals. For example, prevention-focussed students would avoid new situations or new people and concentrate on avoiding failure rather than achieving highest possible grade.

aimhigh

Whether an individual is more approach or prevention focussed is believed to stem during childhood (Higgins and Silberman, 1998). Promotion-focus may arise if children are habitually hugged and kissed for behaving in a desired manner and love is withdrawn as a form of discipline. Prevention-focus may arise if children are encouraged to be alert to potential dangers and punished when they display undesirable behaviours. Against this background of individual differences however, regulatory focus has also been observed to be influenced by immediate context, for example by structuring the situation so that subjects focus on prevention or on promotion (Higgins, Roney, Crowe and Hymes, 1994). Research also revealed that those who are promotion-focussed are more likely to recall information relating to the pursuit of success by others (Higgins and Tykocinski, 1992). Lockwood and her associates found that those who are promotion-focussed look for inspiration to positive role models who emphasise strategies for achieving success (Lockwood, Jordan and Kunda, 2002). Such individuals also show elevated motivation and persistence on tasks framed in terms of gains and non-gains (Shah, Higgins and Friedman, 1998). On the other side of the spectrum, individuals who are prevention-focussed tend to recall information relating to the avoidance of failure by others, are most inspired by negative role models who highlight strategies for avoiding failure and exhibit motivation and persistence on tasks that framed in terms of losses and non-losses. After being studied in intergroup relations (Shah, Higgins and Friedman, 1998), the regulatory focus theory was found to strengthen positive emotion related bias and behavioural tendencies towards the ingroup when in the context of a measured or manipulated promotion focus. Prevention-focus strengthens more negative emotion-related bias [haters] and behavioural tendencies against the outgroup (Shah, Brazy and Higgins, 2004).

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The second way of learning about the concept of self is through the understanding of our “many selves” and multiple identities. In the book, The Concepf of Self, Kenneth Gergen (1971) depicts the self-concept as containing a repertoire of relatively discrete and often quite varied identities, each with a distinct body of knowledge. These identities have their origins in a vast array of different types of social relationships that form, or have formed, the anchoring points for our lives, ranging from close personal relationships with other professionals, mentors, trusted friends, etc and roles defined by skills, fields, divisions and categories, to relationships fully or partially defined by languages, geography, cultures [sub-cultures], groups values, philosophy, religion, gender and/or ethnicity. Linville (1985) also noted that individuals differ in terms of self-complexity, in the sense that some individuals have more diverse and extensive set of selves than othersthose with many independent aspects of selves have higher self-complexity than those with a few, relatively similar, aspects of self. The notion of self-complexity is given a rather different emphasis by Marilynn Brewer and her colleagues (Brewer and Pierce, 2005; Roccas and Bewer, 2002) who focussed on the self that is defined in group terms (social identity) and the relationship among identities rather than number of identities individuals have.

TheMask

They argued that individuals have a complex social identity if they have discrete social identities that do not share many attributes but a simple social identity if they have overlapping social identities that share many attributes [simple]. For example, when Cognitive Psychologists [cognitive psychology explores mental processes] study high-level functions such as problem solving and decision making, they often ask participants to think aloud. The verbal protocols that are obtained [heard] are then analysed at different levels of granularity: e.g. to look at the speed with which participants carry out mental processes, or, at a higher level of analysis, to identify the strategies being used. Grant and Hogg (2012) have recently suggested and empirically shown that the effect, particularly on group identification and group behaviours of the number of identities one has and their overlap may be better explained in terms of the general property of social identity prominencehow subjectively prominent, overall and in a specific situation, a particular identity is one’s self-concept. Social identity theorists (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) argued 2 broad classes of identity that define different types of self:

(i) Social Identity [which defines self in terms of a “particular” group membership (if any meaningful ones exist for the individual), and

(ii) Personal Identity [which defines self in terms of idiosyncratic traits & close personal relationships with specific individuals/groups (if any) which may be more than physical/social, e.g. mental [strength of association with specific others on specific tasks/degrees]

The first main focus question here is asked by Brewer and Gardner (1996), ‘Who is this “we”?’ and distinguished three forms of self:

  • Individual self – based on personal traits that differentiate the self from all others
  • Relational self – based on connections and role relationships with significant/meaningful others
  • Collective self – based on group membership [can depend of many criteria] that differentiates ‘us’ from ‘them’

More recently it has been proposed that there are four types of identity (Brewer, 2001; Chen, Boucher and Tapias, 2006):

  • Personal-based social identities – emphasising the way that group properties are internalised by individual group members as part of their self-concept
  • Relational social identities – defining the self in relation to specific other people with whom one interacts [may not be physical or social only] in a group context – corresponding to Brewer and Gardner’s (1996) relational identity and to Markus and Kitayama’s (1991) ‘interdependent self’.
  • Group-based social identities – equivalent to social identity as defined above [sense of belonging and emotional salience for a group is subjective]
  • Collective identities – referring to a process whereby  those who consider themselves as “group members” not only share self-defining attributes, but also engage in social action to forge an image of what the group stands for and how it is represented and viewed by others.

China Collective

The relational self  [for those who choose to be defined by others at least] is a concept that can be considered a particular type of collective self. As Masaki Yuki (2003) observed, some groups and cultures (notable East-Asian cultures) define groups in terms of networks of relationships. Research also revealed that women tend to place a greater importance than men on their relationships with others in a group (Seeley, Gardner, Pennington and Gabriel, 2003; see also Baumeister and Sommer, 1997; Cross and Madson, 1997).

In search for the evidence for the existence of multiple selves which came from research where contextual factors were varied to discover that most individuals describe themselves and behave differently in different contexts. In one experiment, participants were made to describe themselves on very different ways by being asked loaded questions which prompted them to search from their stock of self-knowledge for information that presented the self in a different light (Fazio, Effrein and Falender, 1981). Other researchers also found, time and time again, that experimental procedures that focus on group membership lead people to act very differently from procedures that focus on individuality and interpersonal relationships. Even “minimal group” studies in which participants are either: (a) identified as individuals; or (b) explicitly categorised, randomly or by some minimal or trivial criterion as ‘group’ members (Tajfel, 1970; see Diehl, 1990), a consistent finding is that being categorised tends to lead people to being discriminatory towards an outgroup, conform to ingroup norms, express attitudes and feelings that favour ingroup, and indicate a sense of belonging and loyalty to the ingroup.

ManVsGorilla

Furthermore, these effects of minimal group categorisation are generally very fast and automatic (Otten and Wentura, 1999). The idea that we may have many selves and that contextual factors can bring different selves into play, has a number of ramifications. Social constructionists have suggested that the self is entirely situation-dependent. An extreme form of this position argues that we do not carry self-knowledge around in our heads as cognitive representations at all, but rather that we construct disposable selves through talk (e.g. Potter and Wetherell, 1987). A less extreme version was proposed by Penny Oakes (e.g. Oakes, Haslam and Reynolds, 1999), who does not emphasise the role of talk but still maintains that self-conception is highly context-dependent. It is argued that most people have cognitive representations of the self that they carry in their heads as organising principles for perception, categorisation and action, but that these representations are temporarily or more enduringly modified by situational factors (e.g. Abrams and Hogg, 2001; Turner, Reynolds, Haslam and Veenstra, 2006).

evolution

Although we have a diversity of relatively discrete selves, we also have a quest: to find and maintain a reasonably integrated picture of who we are. Self-conceptual coherence provides us with a continuing theme for our lives – an ‘autobiography’ that weaves our various identities and selves together into a whole person. Individuals who have highly fragmented selves (e.g. some patients suffering from schizophrenia, amnesia or Alzheimer’s disease) find it very difficult to function effectively. People use many strategies to construct a coherent sense of self (Baumeister, 1998). Here is a list of some that we have used ourselves:

Sometimes we restrict our life to a limited set of contexts. Because different selves come into play as contexts keep changing, protections from self-conceptual clashes seem like a valid motive.

Other times, we continuously keep revising and integrating our ‘biographies’ to accommodate new identities. Along the way, we dispose of any meaningless inconsistencies. In effect, we are rewriting our own history to make it work to our advantage (Greenwald, 1980).

We also tend to attribute some change in the self externally to changing circumstances [e.g. educational achievements, professional circle, industry, etc] rather than only internally, to construct who we are. This is an application of the actor-observer effect (Jones and Nisbett, 1972).

In other cases, we can also develop self-schemas that embody a core set of attributes that we feel distinguishes us from all other peoplethat makes us unique (Markus, 1977). We then tend to recognise these attributes disproportionately in all our selves, providing thematic consistency that delivers a sense of a stable and unitary self (Cantor and Kihlstrom, 1987). To sum up, individuals tend to construct their lives such that their self-conceptions are both steady and coherent. A major element in the conception of self, is the ability to master language and its varying degrees of granularity that hold a major role in social identity [linguistic discourse].

[The remaining part of this essay will focus on the power and importance of language as the essence of the human being]

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The Essence of the Modern Human Being: Language, Psycholinguistics & Self-Definition

Human communication is completely different from that of other species as it allows virtually limitless amounts of ideas to be expressed by combining finite sets of elements (Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch, 2005; Wargo, 2008). Other species [e.g. apes] do have communicative methods but none of them compare with human language. For example, monkeys use unique warning calls for different threats, but never combine these calls on new ideas. Similarly, birds and whales sing complex songs, but creative recombination of these sounds in the expression of new ideas has not occurred to these animals either.

As a system of symbols, language lies at the heart of social life and all its multitude of aspects in social identity. Language may be at the essence of existence if explored from the philosopher Descartes most famous quote, “Cogito Ergo Sum” which is Latin for “I think, therefore I am.”, as thought is believed to be experienced and entertained in language. In expressing his discourse, Descartes based the science system on the knowing subject in front of the world that it constructs and represents to itself – a system that would later also be the basis for many of the concepts of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis.

cogito ergo sum

The act of thinking often involves an inner personal conversation with oneself, as we tend to perceived and think about the world in terms of linguistic categories. Lev Vygotsky (1962) believed that inner speech was the medium of thought and that it was interdependent with external speech [the medium of social communication]. This interdependence would lead to the logical conclusion that cultural differences in language and speech are reflected in cultural differences in thought.

In the theory of linguistic relativity devised by linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, a more extreme version of that logic was proposed. Brown writes:

Linguistic relativity is the reverse of the view that human cognition constrains the form of language. Relativity is the view that the cognitive processes of a human being – perception, memory, inference, deduction – vary with structural characteristics – lexicon, morphology, syntax – of the language [one speaks].

rene-descartes

Rene Descartes was not only one of the most prominent philosophers of the 17th century but in the history of Western philosophy. Often referred to as the “father of modern philosophy”, Descartes profoundly influenced intellectuals across Europe with his writings. Best known for his statement “Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am), the philosopher started the school of rationalism which broke with the scholastic Aristotelianism. Firstly, Descartes rejected the mind-body dualism, arguing that matter (the body) and intelligence (the mind) are 2 independent substances (metaphysical dualism) and secondly rejected the causal model of explaining natural phenomena and replaced it with science-based observation and experiment. The philosopher spent a great part of his life in conflict with scholastic approach (historically part of the religious order and its adherents) which still dominated thoughts in the early 17th century.

Les bons plans de René

Rene Descartes (1596-1659) / Image: Université Paris-Descartes

Communication & Language

The study of communication is therefore an enormous undertaking that draws on a wide range of disciplines, such as psychology, social psychology, sociology, linguistics, socio-linguistics, philosophy and literary criticism. Social psychologists have tended to distinguish between the study of language and the study of non-verbal communication [where scholars agree both are vital to study communication (Ambady and Weisbuch, 2010; Holtgraves, 2010; Semin, 2007)]; with also a focus on conversation and the nature of discourse. However the scientific revolution has quickly turned our era into one hugely influenced by computer-mediated communication which is quickly turning into a dominant channel of communication for many (Birchmeier, Dietz-Uhler and Stasser, 2011; Hollingshead, 2001).

Communication in all its varieties is the essence of social interaction: when we interact we communicate. Information is constantly being transmitted about what we sense, think and feel – even about “who we are” – and some of our “messages” are unintentional [instinctive]. Communication among educated humans comprises of words, facial expressions, signs, gestures and touch; and this is done face-to-face or by phone, writing, texting, emails or video. The social factors of communication are inescapable:

  • It involves our relationship with others
  • It is built upon a shared understanding of meaning
  • It is how people influence each other

Spoken languages are based on rule-governed structuring of meaningless sounds (phonemes) into basic units of meaning (morphemes), which are further structured by morphological rules into words and by syntactic rules into sentences. The meanings of words, sentences and entire utterances are determined by semantic rules; which together represent “grammar”. Language has remained an incredibly and endlessly powerful medium of communication due to the limitless amount of meaningful utterances it can generate through the shared knowledge of morphological, syntactic and semantic rules. Meaning can be communicated by language at a number of levels, ranging from a simple utterance [a sound made by one person to another] to a locution [words placed in sequence, e.g. ‘It’s cold in this room’], to an illocution [the locution and context in which it is made: ‘It’s cold in this room’ may be a statement, or a criticism of the institution for not providing adequate heating, or a request to close the window, or a plea to move to another room (Austin, 1962; Hall, 2000)].

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Linguistic mastery therefore involves dexterity at many levels of cultural understanding and therefore should likely differ from one individual to another depending on their personality, IQ, education and cultural proficiency in self adjustment. This would lead to being able to navigate properly in the appropriate cultural context through language whilst knowing the appropriateness of the choice of words in term of “when, where, how and to whom say it.” Being able to master these, opens the doors to sociolinguistics (Fishman, 1972; also see Forgas, 1985), and the study of discourse as the basic unit of analysis (Edwards and Potter, 1992; McKinlay and McVittie, 2008; Potter and Wetherell, 1987). The philosopher John Searle (1979) has identified five sorts of meanings that humans can intentionally use language to communicate; we can use language:

  • To say how something is signified
  • To get someone to do something.
  • To express feelings and attitudes
  • To make a commitment
  • To accomplish something directly

Language is a uniquely human form of communication, as observed in the natural world, no other mammal has the elaborate form of communication in its repertoire of survival skills. Young apes have been taught to combine basic signs in order to communicate meaningfully (Gardner and Gardner, 1971; Patterson, 1978), however not even the most precocious ape can match the complexity of hierarchical language structure used by a normal 3-year-old child (Limber, 1977).

BabyBoy

Language has been called a human instinct because it is so readily and universally learned by infants. At 10 months of age, little is said, but at 30-month-old infants speak in complete sentences and user over 500 words (Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 2006). Moreover, over this very 20 month period, the plastic infant brain reorganises itself to learn the language of its environment(s). At 10 months infants can distinguish the sounds of all languages, but by 30 months, they can readily discriminate only those sounds to which they have been exposed (Kraus and Banai, 2007). Once the ability to discriminate particular speech sounds is lost, it is very hard to regain in most, which is one of the reason why most adults tend to have difficulties with learning a new language without an accent.

Neuro_SpeakingAHeardWord

Processes involved in the brain when speaking a heard word. Damage to areas of the Primary auditory cortex on the Left temporal lobe induce Language Recognition Problems & damage to the same areas on the Right produce deficits in processing more complex & delicate sounds [e.g. music, vocal performances, etc]. Hence, in Neuroscience, although it is not always the case, it can be generalised with a fair amount of confidence that Left is concerned with Speed, and Right is focused on Complex Frequency Patterns.

Most intellectuals researching the evolution of sophisticated human languages turned first to comparative studies of the vocal communications between human beings and other lesser primates [e.g. apes / monkeys]. For example, vervet monkeys do not use alarm calls unless other similar monkeys are within the vicinity, and the calls are more likely to be made only if the surrounding monkeys are relatives (Cheney and Seyfarth, 2005). Furthermore, chimpanzees vary the screams they produce during aggressive encounters depending on the severity of the encounter, their role in it, and which other chimpanzees can hear them (Slocombe and Zuberbuhler, 2005).

A fairly consistent pattern has emerged in the study of non-human vocal communication: There is a substantial difference between vocal production and auditory comprehension. Even the most vocal non-human primates can produce a relatively few calls, yet they are capable of interpreting a wide range of other sonic patterns in their environment. This seems to suggest that non-human primates’ ability to produce vocal language is limited, not by their inability to interpret sounds, but by their inability to exert ‘fine motor control’ over their voices – only humans have this distinct ability. It also confidently suggests that human language has likely evolved from a competence in comprehension already existing in our primate ancestors.

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The species specificity to language has led to some linguistic theorist to assume that an innate component to language must be unique to humans, notably Noam Chomsky (1957) who argued that the most basic universal rules of grammar are innate [called a “Language Acquisition Device”] and are activated through social interaction which enables the “code of language” to be cracked. However some other theorists argue for a different proposal, believing that the basic rules of language may not be innate as they can be learnt from the prelinguistic parent-child interaction (Lock, 1978, 1980), furthermore the meanings of utterances are so dependent on social context that they seem unlikely to be innate (Bloom, 1970; Rommetveit, 1974; see Durkin, 1995).

Motor Theory of Speech Perception

The motor theory of speech perception proposes that the perception of speech depends on the words activating the same neural circuits in the motor system that would be activated if the listener said the words (see Scott, McGettigan, and Eisner, 2009). Support for this theory has come from evidence that simply thinking about performing a particular task often activates the similar brain areas as performing the action itself, and also the discover of mirror neurons, motor cortex neurons that fire when particular responses are either observed or performed (Fogassi and Ferrari, 2007).

Cerebellum

Broca’s area: Speech production & Language processing // Wernicke’s area: Speech Comprehension

This seems to make perfect sense when solving the equation on the simple observation that Broca’s Area [speech area] is a part of the left premotor cortex [motor skills/movement area]. And since the main thesis of the motor theory of speech perception is that the motor cortex is essential in language comprehension (Andres, Olivier, and Badets, 2008; Hagoort and Levelt, 2009; Sahin et al., 2009), the confirmation comes from the fact that many functional brain-imaging studies have revealed activity in the primary or secondary motor cortex during language tests that do not involve language expression at all (i.e., speaking or writing). This may also suggest that fine linguistic skills may be linked to fine motor skills. Scott, McGettigan, and Eisner (2009) compiled and evaluated results of recorded activity in the motor cortex during speech perception and concluded that the motor cortex is active during conversation.

Gestural Language

Since the unique ability of a high degree of motor control over the vocal apparatus is present only in humans, communication in lesser non-human primates are mainly gestural rather than vocal.

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Image: Reuters

This hypothesis was tested by Pollick, and de Waal in 2007, who compared the gestures and the vocalisations of chimpanzees. They found a highly nuanced vocabulary of hand gestures being used in numerous situations with a variety of combinations. To conclude, chimpanzees gestures were much more comparable to human language than were their vocalisations. Could this simply suggest that primate gestures have been a critical stage in the evolution of human language (Corballis, 2003)?

On this same note, we may focus on the already mentioned “Theory of Linguistic Relativity” (Whorf, 1956) which states that our internalised cognitions as a human being, i.e. perception, memory, inference, deduction, vary with the structural characteristics, i.e. lexicon, morphology and syntax of the language we speak [cultural influence shapes our thoughts].

Thoughts

In support of of Sapir and Whorf’s position, Diederik Stapel and Gun Semin (2007) refer poetically to the “magic spell of language” and report their research, showing how different categories in the language we speak guide our observations in particular ways. We tend to use our category of language to attend to different aspects of reality. The strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that language entirely determines thought, so those who speak different languages actually perceive the world in entirely different ways and effectively live in entirely different cognitive-perceptual universes. However extreme this suggestion may seem, a good argument against this assumption would be to consider whether the fact that we can distinguish between living and non-living things in English means that the Hopi of North-America, who do not, cannot distinguish between a bee and an aeroplane? Japanese personal pronouns differentiate between interpersonal relationships more subtly than do English personal pronouns; does this mean that English speakers cannot tell the difference between relationships? [What about Chong, Khan, Balaraggoo, Tyrone, Vodkadinov, Jacob, Obatemba M’benge and Boringski – where would you attribute their skills in the former question?]

The strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is believed to be the most extreme version to be applicable to the mainstream, so a weak form seems to better accord with the quantitative facts (Hoffman, Lau and Johnson, 1986). Language does not determine thought but allows for the communication of aspects of the physical or social environment deemed important for the community. Therefore in the event of being in a situation where the expertise in snow is deemed essential, one would likely develop a rich vocabulary around the subject. Similarly, should one feel the need to have a connoisseur’s discussion about fine wines, the language of the wine masters would be a vital requisite in being able to interact with flawless granularity in the expression of finer tasting experiences.

EQ2

Although language may not determine thought, its limitations across cultures may entrap those ‘cultured’ to a specific one due to its limited range of available words. Logically, if there are no words to express a particular thought or experience we would not likely be able to think about it. Nowadays such an idea based on enhancing freedom of expression and the evolution of human emancipation, a huge borrowing of words across languages has been noted over the years: for example, English has borrowed Zeitgeist from German, raison d’être from French, aficionado from Spanish and verandah from Hindi. This particular concept is powerfully illustrated in George Orwell’s novel 1984, in which a totalitarian regime based on Stalin’s Soviet Union is described as imposing its own highly restricted language called “Newspeak” designed specifically to prohibit people from even thinking non-orthodox or heretical thoughts, because the relevant words do not exist.

Further evidence over the impact of language on thought-restriction comes from research led by Andrea Carnaghi and her colleagues (Carnaghi, Maas, Gresta, Bianchi, Cardinu and Arcuri, 2008). In German, Italian and some other Indo-European languages [such as English], nouns and adjectives can have different effects on how we perceive people. Compare ‘Mark is gay’ [using an adjective] with ‘Mark is a gay’ [using a noun]. When describing an individual, the use of an adjective suggests an attribute of that individual; whereas a noun seems to imply a social group and being a member of a ‘gay’ group. The latter description with a noun is more likely to invoke further stereotypic/prejudicial inferences and an associated process of essentialism (e.g. Haslam, Rothschild and Ernst, 1998) that maps attributes onto invariant, often bio-genetic properties of the particular social category/group.

Paralanguage and speech style

The impact of language on communication is not only dependent on what is said but also by how it is said. Paralanguage refers to all the non-linguistic accompaniment of speech – volume, stress, pitch, speed, tone of voice, pauses, throat clearing, grunts and sighs (Knapp, 1978; Trager, 1958). Timing, pitch and loudness (the prosodic features of language; e.g. Argyle, 1975) play major roles in communication as they can completely change the meaning of utterances: a rising intonation at the end of a statement turns it into a question or communicates uncertainty, doubt or need for approval (Lakoff, 1973). Underlying emotions are often revealed in prosodic features of speech: low pitch could signify sadness or boredom, while high pitch could communicate anger, fear or surprise (Frick,1985). Naturally fast speech often reflects power and control (Ng and Bradac, 1993).

EQ

To gain further understanding of the feelings elicited by different paralinguistic features, Klaus Scherer (1974) used a synthesizer to vary short neutral utterances and has had individuals identify the emotions that were being communicated. Fig. A shows how different paralinguistic features communicate information about the speaker’s feelings.

In addition to paralinguistic cues, communication can also happen in different accents, different language varieties and different languages altogether. These are important speech style differences that have been well researched in social psychology (Giles and Coupland, 1991). From social psychology, the focus in language is mainly on how something is said rather than on what is said, with speech style instead of speech content; whereas discourse analytic approaches also place importance on what is said.

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Fig. A | Emotions displayed through paralinguistic cues

Social Markers in Speech

Most individuals have a repertoire of speech styles that is automatically or deliberately tailored depending on the context of the communicative event. For example, one would tend to speak slowly, use short words and simple grammatical constructions when dealing with foreigners and children (Clyne, 1981; Elliot, 1981). Longer, more complex constructions along with formalised language varieties or standard accents tend to be used in more formal contexts such as an interview or a speech.

In 1979, Penelope Brown and Colin Fraser categorised different components of a communicative situation that may influence speech style and distinguished between two broad features:

  • The scene (e.g. its purpose, time of day, whether there are bystanders or an audience, etc)
  • The participants (e.g. their personality, ethnicity, chemistry between them)

It is important to note however that individual differences have a major role to play in this objective classification of situations as different individuals may not define the similar “objective” situations similarly. For example, what is deemed formal for some may simply be common place to others; this subjective perception of objective situations has an effect on one’s chosen speech style.

RelaxedNaturally

One amazing point raised by Adrian Furnham (1986) is the fact that not only does one adjust speech styles to subjectively perceived situational demands, but one also seeks out situations that are appropriate to a preferred speech style. Contextual variations in speech style contains information about who is speaking to whom, in what context and on what topic? Speech contains social markers (Scherer and Giles, 1979). The most researched markers in social psychology are of group “memberships” such as society, social class, ethnicity, education, age and sex. Social markers are in most cases clearly identifiable and act as reliable clues to group membership. For example, most of the English can easily identify Americans, Australians and South Africans from their speech style alone, and (see Watson, 2009) are probably even better at identifying people who have been cultured in Exeter, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds and Essex! Speech style generally elicits a listener’s attitude towards the group that the speaker “represents” [at the exception of some non-mainstream individuals – as in any other group]. A mainstream media example could be the actress Eliza Doolittle’s tremendous efforts in the film My Fair Lady to acquire a standard English accent in order to hide her Cockney origins. This idea or concept is known as the match-guise technique, one of the most widely used research paradigms in the social psychology of language – devised to investigate language attitudes based on speech alone (Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner and Fillenbaum, 1960). The method involves individuals rating short speech extracts similar in paralinguistic, prosodic and content respects, differing ONLY in speech style (accent, dialect, language). All the speech extracts were spoken by the very same individual – who was fluently bilingual. The speaker is rated on a number of evaluative dimensions, which fall into 2 clusters reflecting competence and warmth as the 2 most basic dimensions of social perception (Fiske, Cuddy and Glick, 2007).

  • Status variables (e.g. intelligent, competent, powerful);
  • Solidarity variables (e.g. close, friendly, warm).

The matched-guise technique has been used extensively in a wide range of cultural contexts to investigate how speakers of standard and non-standard language varieties are evaluated. The standard language variety is the one that is associated with high economic status, power and media usage – in England, for example, it is what has been called received pronunciation (RP) English. Non-standard varieties include regional accents (e.g. Yorkshire, Essex), non-standard urban accents (e.g. Birmingham, North/South London) and minority ethnic languages (e.g. Afrikaan, Urdu, Arab, Hindi, Mandarin and other foreign minority languages in Britain). Research reveals that standard language varieties are more favourably evaluated on status and competence dimensions (such as intelligence, confidence, ambition) than non-standard varieties (e.g. Giles and Powesland, 1975).

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There is also a tendency for non-standard variety speakers to be more favourably evaluated on solidarity dimensions. For example, Cindy Gallois and her colleagues (1984) found that both white Australians and Australian Aborigines upgraded Aboriginal-accented English on solidarity dimensions (Gallois, Callan and Johnstone, 1984). Hogg, Joyce and Abrams (1984) found that a similar scenario occurs in other linguistic cultures, for e.g. Swiss Germans upgraded speakers of non-standard Swiss German relative to speakers of High German on solidarity dimensions.

Language, Identity & Ethnicity

Matched-guise technique and other studies in linguistics have revealed how our speech style [accents, language, grammatical proficiency & voice] can affect how others evaluate us socially. This is unlikely to be due to the fact that some speech styles are aesthetically more pleasant than others, but more likely to be because speech styles are associated with particular social groups that are consensually evaluated more or less positively in society’s scale. Unless being acted, a person speaking naturally in the speech style of lower-status groups may lead to an evaluation similar to that of the group and their image [i.e. way of life] in society [for most mainstream cases & not expert assessors of individuality]. This suggests that processes associated with intergroup relations and group memberships may affect language and social behaviour among the mainstream crowd.

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René Descartes (1596-1650) par C. Jacquand • Crédits : Gianni Dagli Orti / The Art Archive / The Picture Desk – AFP

Howard Giles and Richard Bourhis and their colleagues employed and extended principles from the social identity theory to develop an intergroup perspective on the social psychology of language (Giles, Bourhis and Taylor, 1977; Giles and Johnson, 1981, 1987). Since the original analysis focussed mainly on ethnic groups that differ in speech style, the theory is called ethnolinguistic identity theory; however, the wider intergroup analysis of language and communication casts a much wider net to embrace all manner of intergroup contexts (e.g. Giles, 2012; Giles, Reid and Harwood, 2010). 

Speech Style and Ethnicity

Although it is well know that ethnic groups differ in appearance, dress, cultural practices, and religious beliefs, language or speech style is often one of the most distinct and clear markers of ethnic identitysocial identity as a member of an ethnolinguistic group (an ethnic group defined by language or speech-style). For instance, the Welsh and the English in the UK are most distinctive in terms of accent and language. Speech style, then, is an important and often central stereotypical or normative property of group identity: one of the most powerful ways to display your Welshness is to speak English with a marked Welsh accent – or, even better to simply speak Welsh.

Language or speech style cues ethnolinguistic identity. Therefore, whether people accentuate or de-emphasise their ethnic language is generally influenced by the extent to which they see their ethnic identity as being a source of self-respect or pride. This perception will in turn be influenced by the real nature of the power and status relations between ethnic groups in society. Research in England, on regional accents rather than ethnic groups, illustrates this (e.g. Watson, 2009) – some accents are strengthening and spreading and others retreating or fading, but overall despite mobility, mass culture and the small size of England, the accent landscape is surprisingly unchanged. Northern accents in particular such as Scouse and Geordie have endured due to low immigration and marked subjective regional pride of these respective communities. Brummie is slowly spreading into the Welsh Marches due to population spread, and Cockney-influenced Estuary English popular due to it being portrayed in mainstream middle-class films has luckily not influenced East Anglia and South East England – that have kept their grammar and granularity.

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It should be noted that almost all major societies have a multicultural component with ethnic groups, however all contain a single dominant high-status group whose language is the lingua franca of the nation with ethnic groups whose languages are subordinate. However, in major immigrant economies such as the United States, Canada and Australia some of the biggest variety of large ethnic groups occur. Unsurprisingly, most of the research on ethnicity and language comes from these countries, in particular, Australia and Canada. In Australia for example, English is the lingua franca, but there are also large ethnic Chinese, Italian, Greek and Vietnamese communities – language research has been carried out on all these communities (e.g.  Gallois, Barker, Jones and Callan, 1992; Gallois and Callan, 1986; Giles, Rosenthal and Young, 1985; Hogg, D’Agata and Abrams, 1989; McNamara, 1987; Smolicz, 1983)

Speech Accommodation

Social categories such as ethnic groups may develop and maintain or lose their distinctive languages or speech style as a consequence of intergroup relations. However, categories do not speak. People speak, and it is generally done with one another, usually in face-to-face interaction. As mentioned earlier, when people interact conversationally, they tend to adapt their speech style to the context – the situation, and in particular the listener. This concept is the foundation of the speech accommodation theory (Giles, 1984; Giles, Taylor and Bourhis, 1973), which invokes specific motivations to explain the ways in which people accommodate their speech style to those who are present. Motivation involved for such adaptations may be a desire to help the listener to understand what is being said or to promote specific impressions of oneself.

Oxford Radcliffe Square at night by Y_Song2

Radcliffe Square at Night, Oxford [Image: Y. Song]

 Speech Convergence and Divergence 

Since most conversations involve individuals who are potentially of unequal social status, speech accommodation theory describes the type of accommodation that might occur as a function of the sort of social orientation that the speakers may have towards one another (See Fig. B). Where a simple interpersonal orientation exists (e.g. between two friends), bilateral speech convergence occurs. Higher-status speakers shift their accent or speech style ‘downwards’ towards that of the lower-status speakers, who in turn shift ‘upwards’. In this scenario, speech convergence satisfies a need for approval or liking. The act of convergence increases interpersonal speech style similarity and this enhances interpersonal approval and liking (Bourhis, Giles and Lambert, 1975), particularly if the convergence behaviour is clearly intentional (Simard, Taylor and Giles, 1976). The process is based on the supported idea that similarity typically leads to attraction in most cases (e.g. Byrne, 1971).

Table D1

Fig. B | Speech accommodation as a function of status, social orientation and subjective vitality

Consider a particular scenario where an intergroup orientation exists. If the lower status group has low subjective vitality coupled with a belief in social mobility (i.e. one can pass, linguistically, into the higher status group), there is unilateral upward convergence on the part of the lower status speaker and unilateral speech divergence on the part of the higher status speaker. In intergroup contexts, divergence achieves psycholinguistic distinctiveness: it differentiates the speaker’s ingroup on linguistic grounds from the outgroup. Where an intergroup orientation exists and the lower status group has high subjective vitality coupled with a belief in social change (i.e. one cannot pass into the higher status group), bilateral divergence occurs. Both speakers pursue psycholinguistic distinctiveness.

Speech accommodation theory has been well supported empirically (Gallois, Ogay and Giles, 2005; Giles and Coupland, 1991). Bourhis and Giles found that Welsh adults accentuated their Welsh accent in the presence of RP English speakers (i.e. the standard non-regional variety of English). Bourhis, Giles, Leyens and Tajfel (1979) obtained a similar finding in Belgium, with Flemish speakers in the presence of French speakers. In both cases, a language revival was under way at the same time, and thus an intergroup orientation with high vitality was salient. In a low-vitality social mobility context, Hogg (1985) found that female students in Britain shifted their speech style ‘upwards’ towards that of their male partners. Accommodation in intergroup contexts reflects an intergroup or social identity mechanism in which speech style is dynamically governed by the speakers’ motivation to adopt ingroup or outgroup speech patterns. These motivations are in turn formed by perception of:

  • The relative status and prestige of the speech varieties and their associated groups; and
  • The vitality of their own ethnolinguistic group

Stereotyped Speech

One important factor that may actually govern changes in speech style is conformity to stereotypical perceptions of the appropriate speech norm. Thakerar, Giles and Cheshire (1982) distinguished between objective and subjective accommodation. People converge on or diverge from what they perceive to be the relevant speech style. Objective accommodation may reflect this, but in some circumstances it may not: for instance subjective convergence may resemble objective divergence if the speech style stereotype is different from the actual speech behaviour of the other speaker.

Even the “Queen’s English” is susceptible to some accommodation towards a more popular stereotype (Harrington, 2006). An analysis of the phonetics in the speech of Elizabeth II from her Christmas broadcasts to the world since 1952 show a gradual change in the Royal vowels, moving from ‘upper-class’ RP to a more ‘standard’ and less aristocratic RP. This may simply reflect a softening of the once strong demarcation between the social classes – social change may sometimes be a catalyst for speech change. Where once she might have said “thet men in the bleck het”, she would now say “that man in the black hat”.

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Red Queen Illustration from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass (Oxford Classics)

Speech accommodation theory has been extended in recognition of the role of non-verbal behaviour in communication – now called communication accommodation theory (Gallois, Ogay and Giles, 2005; Giles, Mulac, Bradac and Johnson, 1987; Giles and Noels, 2002), which acknowledges that convergence and divergence can occur non-verbally as well as verbally. Anthony Mulac and his colleagues found that women in mixed-sex dyads converged towards the amount of eye contact (now called ‘gaze’) made by their partner (Mulac, Studley, Wiemann and Bradac, 1987). While accommodation is often synchronised in verbal and non-verbal channels, this is not necessarily the case. Frances Bilous and Robert Kraus (1988) found that women in mixed-sex dyads converged towards men on some dimensions (e.g. total words uttered and interruptions) but diverged on others (e.g. laughter).

Bilingualism and second-language acquisition 

Due to the excessive and culturally destructive waves of migration caused by the exploitation of diplomacy and corrupt politicians with their partners in the mainstream media to promote uncontrolled migration, most major countries are now bilingual or multilingual, meaning that people need to be able to speak two or more languages with a fair amount of proficiency to communicate effectively and successfully achieve their goals in different contexts. These countries contain a variety of ethnolinguistic groups with a single dominant group whose language is the lingua franca – very few countries are effectively monolingual (e.g. Portugal and Japan) anymore – which nowadays seems to be reflected in the lack of socio-psychological coherence and the clash of values and visions.

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The Intervention of Sabine Women par Jacques-Louis David (1795-1799)

The acquisition of a second language is rarely a matter of acquiring basic classroom proficiency, as one might in order to ‘get by’ on holiday – in fact, it is a wholesale acquisition of a language embedded in a highly cultural context with varying degrees of granularity to reach the levels of flawless/effective communication (Gardner, 1979). Second-language acquisition requires native-like mastery (being able to speak like a native speaker), and this hinges more on the motivations of the second-language learner than on linguistic aptitude or pedagogical factors. Failure to acquire native-like mastery can undermine self-confidence and cause physical and social isolation, leading to material hardship and psychological suffering. For example, Noels, Pon and Clément (1996) found low self-esteem and marked symptoms of stress among Chinese immigrants in Canada with poor English skills. Building on earlier models (Gardner, 1979; Clément, 1980), Giles and Byrne (1982) proposed an intergroup model of second language acquisition. There are five socio-psychological dimensions that influence a subordinate group member’s motivational goals in learning the language of a dominant group (see Fig. C):

  • Strength of ethnolinguistic identification
  • Number of alternative identities available
  • Number of high-status alternative identities available
  • Subjective vitality perceptions
  • Social beliefs regarding whether it is or is not possible to pass linguistically into the dominant group

Low identification with one’s ethnic ingroup, low subjective vitality and a belief that one can ‘pass’ linguistically coupled with a large number of other potential identities of which many are high-status are conditions that motivate someone to acquire native-like mastery in the second language. Proficiency in the second language is seen to be economically and culturally useful; it is considered additive to our identity. Realisation of this motivation is facilitated or inhibited by the extent to which we are made to feel confident or anxious about using the second language in specific contexts. The converse set of socio-psychological conditions motivates people to acquire only classroom proficiency. Through fear of assimilation, the second language is considered subtractive in that it may attract ingroup hostility and accusations of ethnic betrayal. Early education, individual Intelligence, personality and aptitude may also affect the individual’s proficiency.

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This analysis of second-language acquisition grounds language firmly in its cultural context and thus relates language acquisition to broader acculturation processes. John Berry and his colleagues distinguished between integration (individuals maintain ethnic culture and relate to dominant culture), assimilation (individuals give up their ethnic culture and wholeheartedly embrace the dominant culture), separation (individuals maintain their ethnic culture and isolate themselves from the dominant culture) and marginalisation (individuals give up their ethnic culture and fail to relate properly to the dominant culture (Berry, Trimble and Olmedo, 1986).

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Human brain specimen being studied in neuroscience professor Ron Kalil’s Medical School research lab. © UW-Madison News & Public Affairs 608/262-0067 Photo by: Jeff Miller

While the most effective forms of adjustments that completely benefit a system remain “native citizens[in terms of creating organisms equipped to be part of an inherited system from the lower to the upper scale of society], along with assimilation [i.e the culturally & educationally worthwhile & proficient organisms that manage to adjust themselves and become fully part of the dominant culture], the remaining could simply be qualified as burden to most systems, for example, unassimilated children deriving from labour and 3rd world migration who are being born in mass due to the higher fertility culture from their parents’ traditional origins, and who seem to want native-like treatment and consideration, which seem to be illogical demands and expectations if they are unable to interact, communicate, adjust their perspective and perception to orient and group themselves with native-like proficiency in order to fully identify with the dominant culture [i.e. cultural belonging and identity], find their place in the society and contribute like all the citizens to the development and continuity of the dominant civilisation. This unassimilated and ‘nomadic‘ generation whose parents initially moved from land to land simply for financial gains from a larger economy may unfortunately [at the exception of some mediocre college-educated extreme-leftist human rights activists] be a scenario fit to be described metaphorically as “parasitic“, while to others [e.g. another segment of the same crowd of mediocre college-educated extreme-leftist human rights activists], this could be what they describe as “cultural-enrichment[See the Essay: Psychological Explanations of Prejudice & Discrimination].

In a sophisticated reality, from the perspective of the experienced scholar and intellectual drenched in literature, psychology, science and philosophy that I have grown to become over the years, I believe that the “parasitic” example may simply be described as a mass phenomenon that civilised society is not used to dealing with and has not been monitoring effectively since the 1950s to a point where confusion and desperation sets for both native citizens and authorities when thinking of a “rational” solution that seems to be constantly shunned by illogical laws and extreme-leftists global conventions that are generally unfavourable to civilised societies while unconditionally defending excessive refugee resettlement programs and cheap and unskilled migration originating from linguistically, culturally and economically atavistic systems [e.g. the third world, middle east, some areas of Europe & parts of Southern and Eastern Asia] to be relocated and transformed into our collective burden.

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Thus, the consequences for second language learning can indeed be very dramatic and have a life changing impact. The major economies of Europe are still divided and unsynchronised due to linguistic barriers and psychosocial differences. Furthermore, language and discourse are refined, enhanced and cultivated from interactions and exposure; the lack of psychosocial and linguistic coherence may also play a role in the drop in cultural standards along with the appearance of a generation that does not seem to have any direction or to represent any concrete philosophical ideals or values, composed of nothing but a simple classroom proficiency in order to meet the basics of daily communication with hardly any granularity or refinement in the psycholinguistic and cultural context of a rich heritage built on and developed over centuries of human civilisation.

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Majority group members do not generally have the motivation to acquire native-like mastery of another language. According to John Edwards (1994), it is the international prestige and utility, and of course widespread use of English that makes native English speakers such poor language students: they simply lack the motivation to become proficient. Itesh Sachdev and Audrey Wright (1996) pursued this point and found that English children were more motivated to learn languages from the European continent (e.g. French, German, Italian) than those from the Asian continent (e.g. Mandarin, Hindi, Russian, Urdu, Tamil, Arabic, etc) even though a fair amount of children in the sample were exposed to more Asian & African immigration [due to years of mediocre policies linked to cheap democratic governments & extreme-leftist agendas bent on promoting alien invasions – fragmenting societies & violently destabilising geographical compositions] than languages & cultures from Europe. A possible reason would be that English children perceive more prestige and desirability in mastering additional languages & learning about cultures such as French, German & Italian instead of far-flung incompatible foreign ones [e.g. African Third world, Middle-East, Asia etc].

Communicating without words

Speech rarely happens in complete isolation from non-verbal cues. Even on a phone, individuals tend to automatically use a variety of gestures [body language] that cannot be ‘seen’ by the recipient at the other end of the phone line. In a similar fashion, phone and computer-mediated communication (CMC) conversations can be difficult precisely because many non-verbal cues are not accessible [e.g. users may interpret some messages as ‘cold’, ‘short’ or ‘rude’ when a participant might simply not be proficient at expressing themselves on a keyboard]. However, non-verbal channels do not always work in combination with speech to facilitate understanding. In some cases, non-verbal message starkly contradicts the verbal message [e.g. threats, sarcasm and other negative messages accompanied by a smile; Bugental, Love and Gianetto, 1971; Noller, 1984].

Agony, Torture, and Fright by Charles Darwin

Agony, Torture, and Fright | Charles Darwin, 1868

Human beings can produce about 20,000 different facial expressions and about 1,000 different cues based on paralanguage. There are also about 700,000 physical gestures, facial expressions and movements (see Birdwhistell, 1970; Hewes, 1957; Pei, 1965). Even the briefest interaction may involve the fleeting and simultaneous use of a huge number of such devices in combination, making it unclear even to code behaviour, let alone analyse the causes and consequences of particular non-verbal communications. However, their importance is now acknowledged in social psychology (Ambady and Weisbuch, 2010; Burgoon, Buller and Woodall, 1989; DePaulo and Friedman, 1998), and doing research in this area has remained a major challenge. Non-verbal behaviour can be used for a variety of purposes, one may use it to:

  • Glean information about feelings and intentions of others (e.g. non-verbal cues are often reliable indicators of whether someone likes you, is emotionally suffering, etc);
  • Regulate interactions (e.g. non-verbal cues can signal the approaching end of an utterance, or that someone else wishes to speak)
  • Express intimacy (e.g. touching and mutual eye contact);
  • Establish dominance or control (non-verbal threats);
  • Facilitate goal attainment (e.g. pointing)

These functions are to be found in most aspects of non-verbal behaviour such as gaze, facial expressions, body language, touch and interpersonal distance. Non-verbal communications has a large impact, yet it goes largely ‘unnoticed’ – perhaps since we acquire them unaware, we tend not to be conscious when using them. Most individuals acquire non-verbal skills without any formal training yet manage to master a rich repertoire of non-verbal behaviour very early in life – suggesting that huge individual differences in skills and uses should be noticed. Social norms can have a strong influence on our use of non-verbal language, for example, if one is delighted at the demise of an arrogant narcissist or foe, one would be unlikely to smile at their funeral – Schadenfreude is not a noble emotion to express [at least in most situations].

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Individual and group differences also have an influence on, or are associated with, non-verbal cues. Robert Rosenthal and his colleagues (Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, Rogers and Archer, 1979) devised a profile of non-verbal sensitivity (PONS) as a test to chart some of these differences. All things equal, non-verbal competence improves with age, is more advanced among successful people and is compromised among individuals with a range of psychopathologies (e.g. psychosis, autism).

Gender Differences 

Reviews conclude that women are generally better than men at decoding both visual cues and auditory cues, such as voice tone and pitch (E. T. Hall, 1979; J. A. Hall, 1978, 1984). The explanation for this seems to be rather social than evolutionary (Manstead, 1992), including child-rearing strategies that encourage girls more than boys to be emotionally expressive and attentive. One major question remains whether women’s greater competence is due to greater knowledge about non-verbal cues. According to Janelle Rosip and Judith Hall (2004), the answer seems to be ‘yes’ – women have a slight advantage, based on results from their test of non-verbal cue knowledge (TONCK). A meta-analysis by William Ickes has shown that when motivated to do so, women can become even more accurate: for example when women think they are being evaluated for their empathy or when gender-role expectations of empathy are brought to the fore (Ickes, Gesn and Graham, 2000).

Femelle Et Male

Most individuals can improve their non-verbal skills (Matsumoto and Hwang, 2011), that can be useful for improving interpersonal communication, detecting deception, presenting a good impression and hiding our feelings [when required in some situations]. Practical books have been written and courses on communications has always had an enduring appeal. Why not try yourself out on the TONCK?

Non-verbal behaviour differs among individuals since most have different attachment styles thus different relationships too. In the case of intimate relationships, we would tend to assume that partners would enhance each other’s emotional security through accurate decoding of their individualistic non-verbal cues and responding appropriately (Schachner, Shaver and Mikulincer, 2005). Although there are data dealing with non-verbal behaviour in parent-child interactions and how they relate to the development of attachment styles in children (Bugental, 2005), there is less research focussing on how adult attachment styles are reflected ‘non-verbally’ in intimate relationships.

Discovering the Self

In turning our attention to ourselves, we begin to apply the psychological concept of self to the individual’s consciousness of his or her own identity. What does the “mind’s eye” see when it looks into the self – into that special mirror that reveals one’s innermost thoughts and feelings, i.e. our own private world we so often hide from others. Ancient Greeks who travel to the Oracle at Delphi for answers to their problems, found this message inscribed on the shrine: “Know Thyself”.

Centuries later, it was William James who in 1890, set the stage for the modern resurgence of psychology’s interest in the self. In studying what he called “the mind from within”, James distinguished three aspects of the self: the material, the spiritual and the social.

The material self is our awareness of the physical world: our body and the people and things around us.

The spiritual self is the part that “thinks of ourselves as thinkers” – the inner witness to events.

And the part of the self that focuses on the images we create in the minds of others is called the social self.

While it was William James who pioneered the scientific concept of the self, many earlier philosophers and writers had also recognised this dimension of human nature. Some psychologists believe that the gradual separation of a young child from its mother, a process called individuation, is essential for developing a unique sense of self and a healthy personalityfailure to acquire an independent self-identity may lead to psychological problems.

Today many psychologists are keenly interested in studying the self, however there was a time when psychology focused almost exclusively on behaviour – there was no place for anything as fuzzy as the concept of self. Even to Freud, the conscious self was little more than a weak, passive link in his triad of Id, Ego and Superego. Freud defined the Id as a primitive, unconscious part of the personality where drives and passions originate. The Superego restrains the Id. For Freud the Superego is a combination of the conscience and the ideal self. The ego, our conscious self of self-identity, moderate between the Id and Superegobetween our primitive impulses and our sense of moral obligation. Freud was much more interested in the dramatic confrontations between the unconscious Id and Superego, than he was in the conscious processes of the ego [which we believe accommodates many basic principles of Cognitive Psychology, although not sufficient to explain a complete model of the mind, behaviour, drives and motivation as it tends to ignore the unconscious processes].

Carl Rogers in the 1960s placed a much greater emphasis on aspects of the conscious self [the conscious Ego]. Rogers led the humanistic movement, which was hugely responsible for psychology’s return to the self. In contrast to Freud’s view of a conflicted, impulse driven creature, Rogers offered a vision of psychological growth and health. There exists within the healthy individual, a capacity for self-understanding, for self-direction, for guiding behaviour in self-directed ways, which can be tapped if the right conditions [e.g. resources, education, commitment, training, etc] are provided.

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In other words, the individual does have the capacity and a potential for self-development, change and integration [eventually leading to assimilation in various “cultural” contexts, i.e. linguistic, socio-behavioural, philosophical, geographic, etc] – which does not need to be supplied from the “outside world”, but rather learnt and developed from within the individual. As Jacques Lacan beautifully puts it in describing the mirror stage, one unfortunate outcome of the stage is that individuals tend to look outward and not inward in their search for identity – such external orientation toward individuals’ own identity is doomed to fail.

One great historical example of self-development, change and integration is Paul Léautaud, the son of an indifferent father and an absent mother, who never had any formal literary education and left school at 15, worked in all kinds of small jobs to live, and educated himself by reading all the great authors voraciously late at night. Eventually, he would become part of the literary crowd and be pivotal in the discovery of Guillaume Apollinaire, even if he would not publish much himself. He was an Écrivain pour hommes de lettres” in his own words [French for: “Writer for men of letters”]. To have the freedom to write, something that meant the world to him, he accepted a badly paid job at the Mercure de France, where he was charged for a short time to be a drama critic under the name of Maurice Boissard; he would make himself known for his frankness, his mocking and subversive mind. Léautaud went through hard times financially but never allowed his problems to become an obstacle to his literary aspirations, stating “Quand je marque mes dépenses chaque jour, quand j’inscris 20 francs, il y a 15 francs pour les bêtes et 5 francs pour moi. Je vais avec des souliers percés, du linge en loques et souvent sale par économie, ce qui est une grande souffrance pour moi, je mange insuffisamment et des choses qui me répugnent, je porte mes vêtements au-delà de toute durée et toujours par économie ou impossibilité de les remplacer, je ne m’achète rien, je ne m’offre aucun plaisir, aucune fantaisie. Je vais même peut-être être obligé de cesser de m’éclairer à la bougie pour travailler, ce qui me plaît tant. Voilà ma vie à 52 ans accomplis ou presque” [French for: “When I mark my expenses every day, when I enter 20 francs, there are 15 francs for the animals and 5 francs for me. I go with pierced shoes, ragged clothes and often dirty by economy, which is a great suffering for me, I eat insufficiently and things that repel me, I wear my clothes beyond any duration and always by economy or impossibility to replace them, I buy nothing, I offer myself no pleasure, no fantasy. I may even have to stop lighting myself with candles to work, which I like so much. This is my life at 52 years or so.”] Solitary, collecting abandoned animals in his pavilion in Fontenay-aux-Roses and living in poverty himself, he devoted himself for more than 60 years to his Journal, which he called literary, where he recounted, day by day, under the direct impression, the events that affected him: « Je n’ai vécu que pour écrire. Je n’ai senti, vu, entendu les choses, les sentiments, les gens que pour écrire. J’ai préféré cela au bonheur matériel, aux réputations faciles. J’y ai même souvent sacrifié mon plaisir du moment, mes plus secrets bonheurs et affections, même le bonheur de quelques êtres, pour écrire ce qui me faisait plaisir à écrire. Je garde de tout cela un profond bonheur. » [French for: “I only lived to write. I only felt, saw, heard things, feelings, people only to write. I preferred this to material happiness, to easy reputations. I have even often sacrificed my pleasure of the moment, my most secret happiness and affections, even the happiness of a few people, to write what made me happy to write about. I keep a deep happiness from all this.“] He was also elitist, and in terms of the mind and the absence of prejudice, he puts himself above most of his contemporaries, declaring: “Sorti de l’école à 15 ans, mis aussitôt à travailler comme employé par mon père, ayant appris seul ce que je peux savoir, m’étant donné seul la culture que je peux avoir (je n’ai jamais cessé), m’étant perfectionné seul comme écrivain, cela n’a pas fait de moi un démocrate. Tout le contraire : un aristocrate. Je l’entends par mon esprit, ma façon de penser et de juger.” [French for: “Leaving school at 15, immediately made to work as an employee by my father, having learned alone what I can know, having alone given myself the culture that I can have (I have never stopped), having perfected myself alone as a writer, that did not make me a democrat. Quite the opposite: an aristocrat. I mean it by my mind, my way of thinking and judging.“] A great admirer of Stendhal, he readily acknowledged a taste for egotistical exploration: “J’ai un grand penchant […] à parler de moi, de mes souvenirs. Aussi, dans mes songeries, j’aurai passé ma vie à me revivre” [French for: “I have a great inclination[…] to talk about myself, about my memories. Also, in my thoughts, I will have spent my life reliving myself“]. He thought that good writing should have the qualities of tone, the sensitivity, of a certain personality and that the great brand is to write in complete relationship with the man we are and that it causes fire works. Léautaud’s last words before dying were, “Maintenant, foutez-moi la paix.” [French for: “Now, leave me alone.”] Marie Dormoy, whose lover he had been, became his universal legatee and executor and helped to publish and make known his Literary Journal after his death. The style of the journal is natural and spontaneous. Léautaud practiced, without vulgarity, a living French, a delicious mixture of writing and orality, through a stream of emotional, reactive and lively thought. For those who discovered Leautaud’s voice in his famous radio interviews, the reader has the impression, on each page, of hearing it. Few writers have been able to create the plastic dynamism of the French language as he has. A man of the eighteenth century lost in the first twentieth century, he had the dryness, naturalness and ease of the great masters of French prose before Chateaubriand. Paul Gilson, director of the Services artistiques de la radio would say: “Nous n’avons jamais eu d’entretiens aussi vivants, intéressants et qui aient un pareil succès.” [French for: “We have never had such lively, interesting and successful interviews.”] It seems that Paul Léautaud’s life can be resumed in one quotation from Adèle de Bellegarde, which is “Je n’ai réussi qu’une seule chose, vivre selon mon goût” [French for: “I only managed one thing, to live according to my taste.”]

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Traduction(EN): “I only managed one thing, to live according to my taste” – Adèle de Bellegarde

Marcel Gauchet put it well by explaining that when one lives in a world structured by republican meritocracy and when one is a good student, one knows that there are paths to social ascension.

Hence, in the humanistic view, we find a self that is striving towards personal fulfilmenta guiding force that moves us towards positive actions and enhancements imbued with a kind of virtue that gives humans kinship with the angels. For psychologists, the next step after describing the properties of the self has been to explore just how this dynamic mental structure works in controlling behaviour. Researchers who study the self usually speak of the self-concept: the individual’s awareness of his or her continuing identity as a person. This self-concept is viewed as an internal regulator of thoughts, feelings and behaviour. It interprets and organises our ongoing experiences. It reflects on how our present actions compare with our standards and expectations, and it affects our performance by providing plans, scripts, goals and incentives.

CITATION Socrate - s'ameliorer

Traduction [EN]: “The simplest and most noble way is not to crush others, but to improve oneself.” – Socrates

We tend to organise our beliefs and information about ourselves in terms of schemas, or knowledge clusters. For example, to some people, gender schemas are all-important – masculinity and femininity dominate their thinking. To others, “weight schematic” may be more important, where they may be trying to lose weight and perceive others primarily in terms of being fat (out of control) or being thin (having it all together). Our self-schema or self-image can have a powerful impact on our behaviour. If our self-image is good, we try to live up to our standard: we try harder and succeed more often. If our self-image is bad, we tend to adjust downward, and end up failing more often. So, self-image can work for or against us. Along this line, Albert Bandura of Stanford developed what he calls the theory of self-efficacy, a new theory of how the self works which can help us understand how some people translate promise and passion into optimal performance. In this experiment, researcher Delia Cioffi would give one subject the task of improving production at the model furniture factory. She would tell the subject that his ability to make good decisions for the factory is based on innate intelligence and ability. The higher one’s basic capacities in the skills, the better one will perform. Nowadays however computer programs tend to ease this process. The next subject is told that complex decision-making is an acquirable skill, and that his performance can improve through his own efforts. In any new skill, one does not begin with faultless performance, but the more one practices formulating and testing decisions, the better one gets at it. The first subject who believes that decision-making is a measure of his intelligence proceeds cautiously and sets lower goals for himself and is frustrated by an increasing number of incorrect decisions. His confidence is measured by the number on the lower left of the screen which keeps falling, as does his sense of efficacy. The second subject, however, sees early mistakes as a necessary part of learning. He profits by them and his performance improves. He sets higher goals for himself, and his response to questions about confidence demonstrate an increasing sense of his own efficacy.

It can be deduced that a subject made to believe that skill is something that can be acquired will continue to move forward on the path of progress and self-development even if his/her mistakes along the way could be qualified as steps backward. However, those steps backward were part of the overall path of continuously moving forward and progressing. This resonates with the popular quote by Jacques Sternberg: “Vivre, ce n’est jamais que reculer pour mieux sauter.” [French for: “To live is only to go backwards in order to better jump forward.”]

As such, the issue is not what we have, but how we use what you have. From this point of view, we can see that we can have the same competencies and subskills and use them poorly, adequately, or extraordinarily, depending on our self-belief. So for this reason, we can often predict people’s accomplishments better from their self-belief rather than from just their past attainments.

Up to this point we have been focusing on the part of the self which focuses inward to assess its capabilities. But there is another aspect of the self that focuses outward to get an understanding on the impression being created in others. This outward focus, the awareness of the social self, asked the questions: “How am I coming across? What impression am I creating? Do you see me the way I see myself? Do you see me the way I would like you to see me?”

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Image: Audiobook and child: Audiobooks are becoming increasingly popular to the literary crowd in 2019 as they ease the process of transfering information to the brain while leaving the hands free, but also pack a more powerful emotional punch through the sound of speech which also allow the listener [reader] to learn and improve their vocal skills. Neuroscience research has also shown that audiobooks are more emotionally engaging than film or TV [see: Richardson, D., Griffin, N., Zaki, L., Stephenson, A., Yan, J., Curry, T., Noble, R., Hogan, J., Skipper, J. and Devlin, J. (2018). Measuring narrative engagement: The heart tells the story.

Statistiques Livre Audio les Critères 2019 dpurb site web

Cette statistique montre les critères de choix les plus importants lors de l’achat de livres audio parmi les consommateurs français en 2017. On y apprend que près de 70 % des lecteurs accordaient une très grande importance au sujet des livres audio lors du choix. Un peu moins de la moitié des lecteurs considéraient la voix de l’interprète comme un critère très important. / Source: Statista France

« Je suis officier de la Légion d’honneur, je n’en tire pas de vanité. Je vous dis ces choses parce qu’aux yeux de certaines personnes cet accessoire vestimentaire confère à ceux qui le portent un certain prestige. Cet attribut me donne le privilège d’être écouté respectueusement par les imbéciles. Les autres ne me prêtant quelque attention qu’à cause de mon talent, de ma carrière ou de mon passé. » [Traduction(EN): « I’m an officer of the Legion of Honor, I don’t get any vanity out of it. I say these things to you because in the eyes of some people this clothing accessory confers a certain prestige on those who wear it. This attribute gives me the privilege of being listened to respectfully by imbeciles. Others only pay attention to me because of my talent, my career or my past. » – Professeur Lambertin (joué par Louis Jouvet) / Un Extrait du film, Entrée des artistes (1938)

To better explain this part about self-presentation, we are going to explore the arts, particularly drama which addresses the nuances of self-presentation. One of the greatest writing geniuses of all time, Honoré de Balzac, has been a great personal influence on my own writing, since like Napoléon, he had a precise mathematical style of organisation in his work, notably one of the most fundamental, “La Comédie Humaine” which he divided into 3 parts: studies of manners, philophical studies and analytical studies. The main message that “La Comédie Humaine” conveys is that the whole of human existence can be intrepreted with all the elements of drama and theatre since the role we play in society is the same role in which a great number of different actors can succeed each other.

As a former student of literature and drama, I will use the example of the drama teacher who trains young individuals and actors in self-presentation skills to help them convey an impression to an audience. How does this work? Well, we are going to use the concept of status, which has to do with how we manipulate the affect of our self to one another. The content in a given circumstance may be the same, however the way in which I choose to speak to you [the way I use non-verbal cues, i.e. body language] may affect my relationship to you.

These status transactions, come in different aspects, and here we are going to discuss some of them.

The first of these would be eye contact, as it is commonly known that eye contact is a useful device in asserting oneself.

The second variable is of course whether or not one’s body is moving in a sustained way or whether it has jerky movements. As soon as a person starts to move in jerky ways it also affects his or her speech, as it is hard to sustain sentences when for example one is moving there head up and down. Many people tend to speak uncomfortably while moving at the cost of their status [e.g. Uh, as soon as, um, I begin to move my body in, uh, jerky ways – it also affects my speech you notice, It’s hard to uh, sustain sentences when I’m moving, uh, kind uhbut, but it, uh…. At the cost of their status in some cases]. A third kind of jerky motion we notice often is people touching the face, their hair or their hands, which conveys a sense of nervousness – which again would be lowering their status as a speaker]. In other words, anything we might consider to be nervous gestures would be in the category of lowering one’s status. So, the prototype for high status would be someone who is basically calm and composed, and who speaks in complete sentences, breathes deeply, makes eye contact and [uh?] does not have any particular jerky mannerisms.

These factors in interactions are known as status transactions, and they take place all the time between all kinds of people. They are a form of interpersonal communication where individuals establish their degree of social status and power, and demonstrate as well as anything the social aspects of the self-concept. To manage the impressions we create in others, we all engage in what is known as strategic self-presentation – how we present ourselves to others so that they perceive us in the way we see ourselves. Society reacts to us according to the context our behaviour has created [e.g. profession(s), values, education, language(s), nationality(ies), etc], then we see the way they respond to us, which confirms our original belief about the kind of individual we truly are [have become through growth and development]. It is a closed circle – what researcher Mark Snyder has called behavioural confirmation. Our beliefs, our sense of self, create their own reality. That is why depressed people elicit negative reactions and tend to be treated as if, in fact, they are inadequate in most aspects of normal life. While extroverts create an easy-going social climate in which others tend to respond positively to them.

There is also an intimate connection between self and culture [please note that culture here may be related to many fields, e.g. language, profession, clubs, private circles, orientations, identities, musical circles, arts, etc] – culture can be defined objectively [scientifically] as behavioural patterns individualised to a particular select group.

When we talk about the self, we are referring to the way in which the biological organism/being becomes a person. Becoming a person [human being], is largely a social endeavour, and there is nothing more social than language [i.e. linguistic discourse]; language creates a social bond, as Jacques Lacan also pointed out, language [i.e. linguistic discourse] gives the Subject the ability to attain recognition from others [i.e. the rest of humanity]. We can be a biological being [a primate] all by ourselves but to become a person, to become a self, we must engage with or take on or incorporate the cultural meanings, cultural ideas and practices of a particular group or groups [for individuals who have the chance to be bi or tri-cultural] and all these are learnt by language in its different forms. We must use these to become a person as it would be impossible to be a self by ourself. We can be a biological entity, but to be a person with a sense of self, we normally do it in some set of culture specific ways.

Culture can be seen not as biologically based, but rather socially based. It is a set of behavioural patterns and attitudes that we adopt as a means of defining who we are depending of where we are and who we want to be.

Danny D'Purb dpurb.com official concept of self dpurb site web

« Le jour où je cesserai de questionner, d’apprendre, de créer et d’innover sera le jour où je serai mort. » – Danny J. D’Purb // Traduction(EN): « The day when I will stop questioning, learning, creating and innovating, will be the day that I will be dead. » -Danny J. D’Purb (2018)

Many tend to think of “culture” as an entity inside people, similar to some sort of essence. Taking myself as an example, I qualify myself as bi-cultural, being a Franco-British individual, and since the majority of people do not have the chance to receive the heritage of two European empires, I will focus on the French side. Many people tend to think about us French [yes, the heirs of the language of Napoléon, Voltaire, Descartes, Balzac, Camus, Lacan & Foucault] as having some kind of French genes, or French traits or some kind of French attributes that make us French. It is absolutely not true, as culture is “what we choose to do”. And so, as the French school of thought, which has always been avant-garde in structuring minds to the French family; if we take an individual and guide him or her to connect with and use French ideas/concepts, and French ways of perceiving, feeling, behaving and doing things [i.e. values], then eventually that person will become French. Similarly, if I took that same person and placed him or her in the British context, that person will then become British in that sense [at least the science of Psychology in 20th century has enough evidence that I have collected throughout the dpurb.com website, to show that such a scenario depending on the individual’s abilities should be scientifically and psychologically valid – the mainstream people at large are still to embed and share this principle to open new perspectives to their own lives and in doing so allow themselves to grow psychologically and culturally – like Boris Cyrulnik beautifully phrased it:

« Un savoir non partagé humilie ceux qui n’y ont pas accès. »

– Boris Cyrulnik

___________

French for :

“Unshared knowledge humiliates those who do not have access to it.

Boris Cyrulnik

Culture is simply a set of common ideas and common ways of doing things – although each culture has its sub-cultures that may vary [e.g. geographically, linguistically, artistically and philosophically]. We can view culture and self as a collaboration where each has an effect on the other: culture shapes self and the Self also has the power to shape culture. This idea is known as mutual constitution and it is reflected in the artefacts of all societies through art, literature and languages of all societies. It also affects each individuals differently in their choice of identification, consumption and adoption of particular products of culture.

CITATION Inconnu - lhomme qui ne lit pas de bons livres

Traduction [EN]: “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” – Anonymous

For example, having been brought up in a society with a Franco-British heritage, it was my choice to shape my self with French literature, arts, journalism, music, heritage, along with Oxford English, literature and heritage as a foundation to establishing myself as an individual with a self of Western European origin, and to make the region a place that I call home. As Jacques Lacan beautifully placed it:

«…en disant que seule la perspective de l’histoire de la reconnaissance permet de définir ce qui compte pour le sujet.

Je voudrais, pour ceux qui ne sont pas familiers avec cette dialectique que j’ai déjà abondamment développée, vous donner un certain nombre de notions de base. Il faut toujours être au niveau de l’alphabet. Aussi vais-je prendre un exemple qui vous fera bien comprendre les questions que pose pour la reconnaissance, et qui vous détourne de la noyer dans des notions aussi confuse que celles de mémoires ou de souvenir…

…un refoulement est autre chose qu’un jugement qui rejette et choisit. »

– Jacques Lacan

___________

French for :

“by saying that only the perspective of the history of recognition allows the definition of what matters for the subject.

I would like to, for those who are not familiar with that dialectic that I have already abundantly developed, give you a number of basic notions. We must always be at the level of the alphabet. So I will take an example that will make you understand the questions posed for recognition, and that distracts you from drowning it in notions as confusing as those of memories or souvenirs…

…a repression is something other than a judgment that rejects and chooses.”

– Jacques Lacan

Most of us are exposed to thousands of images in a given day, which many go by our conscious [not the unconscious] senses unnoticed. While these images discarded by our attention are deemed unnecessary, they collectively shape our thinking about how to be a person [a model to follow], how to be a self [the chosen self]. Take Richard Dawkins, Charles Darwin or Oscar Wilde for example; it is quite clear that none of those characters would be qualified as the boy next door; they have been taken here as examples because, as myself, none of us with an English linguistic, literary and intellectual heritage [specially those with the educational elements to optimise their output in life] choose to be the “boy next door”.

A discussion published in the Oxford Journal of Applied Linguistics based on the emerging field of heritage speaker bilingual studies challenged the generally accepted position in the linguistic sciences, conscious or not, that monolingualism and nativeness are exclusively synonymous; from modern academic discussions, it is now being acknowledged that heritage speaker bilinguals and multilinguals exposed to a language in early childhood are also natives; they have multiple native languages, and nativeness can be applicable to a state of linguistic knowledge that is characterized by significant differences to the monolingual baseline (Rothman and Treffers-Daller, 2014).

This may also be said in the French realm for those who received a French linguistic, literary, and intellectual heritage like myself, with examples such as Jean Fanchette, Malcolm de Chazal, Voltaire, René Descartes, François-René de Chateaubriand, Honoré de Balzac, Napoléon 1er, Jacques Lacan, Pierre Bourdieu, Francis Cabrel or Florent Pagny, since none of these “héritiers de la langue Française” would also qualify as the “boy next door”. This is because none of us of French heritage with the intellectual capacity to optimise our output in life would choose to be the “boy next door”.

BNF aventure écriture &amp; livre d'purb dpurb site web

“Chaque civilisation se forge un mythe destiné à expliquer son apparition et construit sa tradition écrite autour d’un support privilégié” / Découvrez (Liens): (i) l’aventure des écritures et (ii) l’aventure du livre | Source: La Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF)

The French heritage is known for its philosophical values embedded in the “grandeur d’esprit et de l’être”, as Charles de Gaulle famously said: “Un peuple comme le nôtre accoutumé aux malheurs comme aux gloires, sait reconnaître les États qui forment avec lui, l’équipe de la liberté.” [Translation: “A people like ours accustomed to misfortunes as well as glories, knows how to recognize the states that form with him, the team of freedom.”] We can thus conclude confidently that intelligent and reasoning beings are unlike unchangeable lifeless objects such as stones, coins and pennies.

pieces coins pennies d'purb dpurb site web

Unlike animals, humans have the ability to express themselves linguistically while using sophisticated and complex reasoning; we are bodies of flesh, blood and bones with a malleable brain and we know from anthropology and biological science that the morphology of our cerebral cortex is substantially less genetically heritable than in chimpanzees, the closest fossil and living relatives of humans, and this means that we, humans, have a brain that is highly responsive to moulding by complex environmental influences of various types; this specific anatomical property of increased plasticity which is likely related to the human pattern of development may underlie our species’ capacity for cultural evolution (Gómez-Robles, Hopkins, Schapiro and Sherwood, 2015).

Brain Activity danny d'purb dpurb site web

Video: 3D animation showing the neuronal activity of a healthy and functional human brain

Hence, we can conclude that individuals with a functional brain have the capacity to construct themselves based on their choices and abilities and are not absolute copies of their parents, siblings, or relatives [even if they may happen to share some personality traits such as for e.g. IQ, emotional intelligence, creativity, temperament, etc], neither are they simply products of exposure to their social circle, acquaintances, or “direct/initial” environment – as the reductionist and deterministic minds of pure cognitive-behavioural psychology wrongly assume [although a wide range of simple and basic vital behaviours can be explained from the cognitive-behavioural perspective in terms of Stimulus and Response, e.g. using the toilets, but complex thought processes of creativity and individuality in various aspects of mental life remain problematic to their branch of psychology]. This is because individuals are unique just like their finger prints, blood type and eyes, and this extends to their tastes, desires, direction, choices, field, creative influences, artistry, identities and parcours. For example, Leonardo Da Vinci’s father was not the productive and creative genius that his son was, but he may have shared some degree of fluid intelligence and reasoning that he passed to his son through his genes; Rafael Nadal’s parents cannot serve and destroy the world’s best tennis player like he does; Victor Hugo’s father was an imperial general and a military person, not the prolific writer and literary master that his son was; Napoleon’s father did not have the personality or imperial vision of his son but married his wife Maria Letizia Ramolino when she was 14 and was a man in law, however he may have had a good sense of judgement in matters related to the management of society that Napoleon inherited; Jacques Lacan’s father was a business man who simply dealt in oil and soap and was not the academically cultured and innovative theorist in psychology that Jacques Lacan was; the father of Sigmund Freud was a poor and unsuccessful wool merchant, and did not have Sigmund Freud’s theoretical creativity in psychology; the family of Carl Jung was very modest financially and were not the deep thinker and theorist that Carl Jung was; Pascal Picq, the author of  “L’homme est-il un grand singe politique?” was born to parents who worked in the market, and whose father later worked in transportation while his mother became a factory worker, they were not affiliated to the prestigious “Collège de France” as their son would later be; and Pierre Bourdieu, the author of “Langage et pouvoir symbolique” was the son of a man who came from the the small peasantry of Béarn, a daily farmer who then became a postman without leaving his rural environment, and was not the gifted researcher, thinker and speaker that his son Pierre would grow up to be.

Albert Camus: a intellectual life of struggle, dedication and libertarian philosophy

We should also consider the life of Albert Camus, the famous Algeria-born writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 and who has established himself among the great writers of the French intellectual heritage. In a public lecture hosted by Librairie Mollat and published online in 2012, French philosopher Michel Onfray covered interesting aspects about the astonishing life of Camus that fits perfectly to show the concept of Self in a case involving genuinely challenging factors such as linguistic and social barriers. In his speech, Onfray compared Albert Camus to Jean-Paul Sartre, where both are major figures of the French intellectual and philosophical heritage today. However, both had very different routes and often clashed on opinions and intellectual points. The important part to be noted is that both ended up as giants of the intellectual world, but their “construction” was different.

As the Organic Theory proposes, individual construction [i.e. training], which ‘can be’ mechanical and structured in its application [e.g. distance learning by text / video / audio], develops indirectly to create and give a socio-cultural dimension to the individual once the desired skills [i.e. communicative and behavioural patterns] have been fully adopted, mastered, and deployed in life. Here, we will see that the final outcome of both individuals placed them in a similar league even if their departing point and journey to self-construction was very different.

Jean-Paul Sartre was born to a bourgeois family which was financially stable. Onfray pointed out that Sartre hardly ever struggled with money problems and even had his taxes paid by his mother, and as such never truly understood the notion of money. Sartre played piano with his mother, and Onfray observed that he lived the life of a “petit bourgeois”. Sartre grew up in a household where he had a library, and literature was part of life; he would go to concerts, the cinema and the theatre. As such, Sartre had a path already set to become part of the intellectual circle; and he was eventually going to attend l’École Normale Supérieure and become an academic philosopher. For such a typical route, Onfray pointed out that Sartre had always felt at ease and legitimate in the world of culture.

Sartre spent all his life working as a university professor of philosophy, which Onfray noted, should be differentiated from the life of a philosopher. The professor is part of the academic structure and works on a set timetable, i.e. from 09:00 to 12:00 and 14:00 to 18:00, and when the week is over the professor stops working. By the time of his retirement, the professor ceases to be a philosopher, Onfray argued, also pointing out that the duty of a professor is to create philosophical arguments, to teach philosophy but he does not live his life according to it. Onfray observed that Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir theorised an existence as part of their duty as professors, but they did not experience or feel such a philosophical existence.

Onfray explained how the philosopher on the other hand, unlike the professor, is a philosopher all the time: the existential philosopher lives and experiences his philosophy [i.e. both the joy and the pain], e.g. Albert Camus, who practiced a visible existence. Camus was born to a very poor family in Algeria, to a father who was an agricultural worker and a mother who was illiterate and who worked as a maid. The area Albert Camus lived in was rural, and the future Nobel Prize winner was diagnosed with tuberculosis at 17 years old. He was excluded from attending l’École Normale Supérieure and also prohibited from the teaching profession and professorship. Hence, Albert Camus had to do his university course in Algeria where he was a national education scholarship holder, orphan and pupil of the nation.

Cérémonie Nobel 2015 d'purb dpurb site web

Photo: Cérémonie Nobel, 2015. Photo: Alexander Mahmoud

From his early years, Camus thought that he was not made for the world of culture, and it would luckily take his teacher Louis Germain and the philosophy professor Jean Grenier to shape him for his future career as a writer and philosopher. It was only after studying under them that he would later begin to consider that perhaps the world of culture may also be adequate for him. However, on a personal level, Camus never felt completely at ease or legitimate in that milieu. The life of Camus was very different from that of Sarte, since being the son of a poor family, Camus was destined to remain poor.

When Camus received the Nobel Prize for literature in Stockholm, he was depressed, stressed and did not like to improvise his interventions. Most of the time, journalists formulated questions that Camus responded to after minutely crafting the answers, which he had learnt by heart and delivered on the microphone as if he was on the stage of a theatre in front of the camera. Onfray pointed out that Camus was someone who was inhibited by what we would nowadays qualify as the mediatic system. Despite everything, Albert Camus has entered history as a French philosopher and “homme de letttres”, and was criticised at times by Jean-Paul Sartre for his poor background. The latter, as Onfray reminded, declared that Camus was the son of a poor man and should stop practising philosophy since he had not been trained for this discipline.

Albert Camus Prix Nobel 1957 d'purb dpurb site web

Albert Camus photographié lors d’une séance de dédicace après avoir récemment reçu le prix Nobel de littérature le 10 octobre 1957. © Getty / Bettmann / Contributeur

The philosophical perspective of Albert Camus sees the individual as a solitaire, using his own tuberculosis as an argument to point out that as a solitary individual, it is “his” disease and not that of another person. When he was 17 years old and he had been told that he would not live long, he discovered the philosophical concept of “solipsism”, i.e. the condition of being alone; which means that one is alone in his suffering, his jouissance and alone in living and experiencing life. One can love another person intensely and passionately but one will never live the life of that person, or experience the suffering of the other person. Hence, this philosophical argument makes a clear case that we are all locked inside ourselves; this is an existential truth that applies to all of us; Camus comes to term with this existential reality very early and very quickly [i.e. through illness and suffering].

Michel Onfray observed that the element of individualism in the philosophy of Camus is not related to egotism. Egotism brings everything to the individual [i.e. nothing else exists but that individual]; but individualism acknowledges the existence of other individuals: we are a group comprised of a sum of unique individuals. That sum of individuals never transcends the particularities that constitute it, i.e. it does not lead to something such as a mass or a crowd. This is in direct opposition to Jean-Paul Sartre who was fascinated by groups in fusion and the masses. For Camus, the individual cannot function completely alone, because he has a sense of justice, a sense of loyalty [to for e.g. his generation, his milieu, his personal and professional circle, etc], and that individual also has the desire for other individuals in society to be happy and live a prosperous life.

Camus did not want Capitalism to engulf and destroy individuals in the name of capital, interest, and the culture of consumption; he did not want communism to destroy people in the name of its own communist conception of progress, reason, and remained firmly against concentration camps [i.e. no Gulag, no atomic bomb]. Camus was hugely upset with Hiroshima’s bombing, which for him was the prototype of American barbarism. Hence, as French philosopher, Onfray pointed out, Camus did not want any victim or any executioner, i.e. no Soviet Union, no USA. Instead, Camus thought that the individual liberty of the USA was a positive element only if it could be paired with the justice of the Soviet Union. Onfray pointed out that Camus believed that the justice of the Soviet Union was a good element, but it lacked the element of individual liberty; and in the USA there was the element of individual liberty, but no proper justice. Camus wanted both, justice and liberty without any barbaric and violent capital punishment.

CITATION Nietzsche - l'instinct de punir

Traduction [EN]: “Be wary of all those in whom the instinct to punish is strong.” – Nietzsche

Camus remained firmly against the notion of taking away human life and hence, a strong opponent to capital punishment. The legacy of Camus is still strong nowadays and many humanist groups and activists in the US who are fighting to eradicate capital punishment are still inspired by his literary and philosophical writings and views; this was portrayed in the documentary “Vivre avec Camus” by Joël Calmettes in 2012.

Hence, the altruism in the philosophy of Camus is present in his concern and worry about the prosperity of others and the wider world, the solution lies in the sharing of the world on the egalitarian model, but not the religion of equality. We need individuals to work, but their dignity must be respected; we need a world firmly in touch with the values and ethics of humanism, fraternity, solidarity, where health is free and accessible to all. Onfray points out that Camus vision is in part similar to that of Charles de Gaulle, i.e. social security, sickness cover, retirement, trade union rights – the altruism of Camus goes through all those.

Albert Camus 2021 d'purb dpurb site web

Albert Camus (1913 – 1960)

In a sense, we can qualify the philosophy of Camus as a form of socialism, since it involves the harmony of individuals at both a personal and communal level, but it is not Bolshevik Socialism inspired by communism, it is a Libertarian Socialism – as Michel Onfray argues. Hence, Camus preached a revolution, but one that is peaceful and not bloody, one that does not lead to terror, but rather a revolution with true justice that goes through the refusal of the death sentence [i.e. against any form of capital punishment] – there is no reason good enough to take away the life of a human being!

Onfray argues that it involves a revolution in production, in enterprise, and in the relationship between the political class and the people. Hence, Camus believed in the man of reason and argued that such a man restrains himself, i.e. the man of reason restrains himself from barbaric and inhuman behaviours (e.g. killing). Camus wanted to change and sophisticate society without causing a single drop of blood to be shed. During his times, French philosopher, Michel Onfray points out that Gandhi came across as an example of such peaceful revolution and provided hope for such changes. Onfray noted that Gandhi was a man who erupted on the scene as an individual who, without shedding a single drop of blood, obtained the liberation of his people. Onfray observed that Gandhi and his people found that there was a force in non-violence, and that human beings could – in the spirit of French philosopher, La Boétie – consider that the first form of all resistances is to simply not consent to abusive power when it exerts its pressure on human beings.

When La Boétie said « Soyez donc résolus à ne plus servir et vous serez libres. Les tyrans ne sont grands que parce que nous sommes à genoux. » [French for : “Be resolved, therefore, to serve no more and you will be free. Tyrants are only great because we are on our knees.“], Onfray argued that this simply means that it may take some time, some lives may be lost to the abusive powers of inhuman regimes, but eventually that regime will fall.

In relation to the “Concept of Self” and the construction of self, Michel Onfray observed that Albert Camus took ideas and books very seriously, arguing that when one is born in a milieu where one is forced to learn French as a foreign language because the family speaks it badly; when one is forced to acquire culture by going to the municipal library to rent out major works because one never hears of literature in one’s own house, then in that case one takes books, ideas and writers very seriously indeed. Albert Camus went on to become the most translated and read French writer of the 20th century.

If we were to also extend these examples to the spiritual domain for Christians, we can also note that the father of Jesus Christ was a wood worker, not the prophet, messiah, philosopher and founder of Christianity that his son Jesus was, he also did not walk on water, turn it into wine and restore sight to the blind, perhaps on the same religious note for those who see science as the systematic study of God’s works, it may be perfect to quote Michael Langlois: « Si Dieu nous a créés avec un cerveau, c’est pour qu’on s’en serve ! » [which is French for “If God created us with a brain, it’s so we can use it!”].

CITATION D'Purb - pas responsable de votre comprenhension

Traduction [EN]: “I take full responsibility for what I say, but I am not responsible for your understanding and interpretation, since these are the results of the construction of your brain, the cultivation and finesse of your mind.” – Danny J. D’Purb

The lives of the men mentioned above come across as perfect examples to prove the Organic Theory of psychical construction while also firmly concluding that individuals are unique; they are not absolute copies or passive objects that transform into what is done to them, rather, in the perspective of the organismic worldview, organisms [i.e. individuals] have desires, make choices and have a pivotal role to play in their own construction and creation. While to the reasoning minds, especially those of the French intellectual heritage, individual construction is an acknowledged philosophical, psychological and scientific process at the heart of human progress and freedom, it seems that educating and cultivating the masses of the world about the reality of individual construction is the job [or burden] that destiny has placed on my shoulders. A lie will remain untrue even if the whole world believes in it, and the truth will always stay true even if no one believes in it.

Shakespeare - La Grandeur

Traduction [EN]: “Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” -Shakespeare

L’heritage de Voltaire: a pioneer of individual self-conception and the liberation of the mind

voltaire-heritage-des-lumieres-dpurb-dpurb-site-web

Voltaire (1694 – 1778)

We are now going to explore the life of one of the most enigmatic intellectuals of the enlightenment of the 18th century, Voltaire, because he is one of the pioneers of self-conception and the liberation of the individual. It is fundamental to understand that the society that we now live in was not simply given to us on a plateau. Many individuals have fought intellectually and dedicated their lives to justice and individual freedom and emancipation. It would be incredibly atavistic to remain ignorant about the intellectual heritage, the founding pillars passed on to us by men and women who have changed our world by the power of their mind and pen.

We all have heard of Voltaire, and today his name can be found on so many institutional buildings, monuments and places, not to mention paintings by some of the greatest artists and statues that adorn France and other countries. So, why do we do this? Why do we as a civilisation ensure that his name lives on throughout time? We do this in the hope that the fire that lived inside his mind is passed on to the next generation; we do this in the hope that the minds of the present and future generation may follow his example and choose a path of dedication, excellence, values, persistence and courage.

1jour1actu - Voltaire expliqué aux enfants - France Education - d'purb dpurb site web

Source: Education Philosophique en France: Voltaire expliqué aux enfants / Consulté le 7 novembre 2020 sur 1 Jour 1 Actu

In France, Voltaire’s life is even taught to young children, his legacy has become part of modern French intellectual heritage, identity and education, and the majority of people with a French intellectual and/or literary heritage embody the values of Voltaire – both consciously and in many cases unconsciously. Voltaire’s life has become part of French educational heritage and is taught to the young in order to shape their minds, character and values at an early age, he is considered as a sort of prophet, and remains to French identity and heritage what Muhammad is to Muslim identity and heritage.

During the times of Voltaire, 18th century Europe was going through an incredible period of change through the intellectual revolution of the enlightenment, a change that would be permanent and that has since shaped the mind of human civilisation. In those times, the whole of Europe, shook by the enlightenment, spoke French, i.e. the Europe of the intellectuals, diplomats, bureaucrats, emperors and even cooks. As Stéphane Bern phrased it in 2019: it is in the calm countryside on the Franco-Swiss border, in the Auverge-Rhône-Alpes region that slept a strange volcano, uncontrollable, it was a volcano of the mind, of relevance and liberty, his name was Voltaire – the great, the immense, who would die in Paris at the age of 83 years old on the 30th of May 1778. However, it was in the village of Ferney that he had moved to a few years before, in his refuge residence that has recently been restored at the heart of a village baptised Ferney-Voltaire in order to honour his memory.

Voltaire’s initial name was François -Marie Arouet, but for the whole of Europe, he is Voltaire, the prince of philosophers, the passionate poet, the dedicated historian and the writer in his twenties of his first play, “Oedipe” which would open the doors of all the theatres to him. He was also a passionate lover, most famously of the brilliant Émilie du Châtelet, the « grand amour » of his life with whom he discovered true love for more than 15 years.

A man who considered himself the equal or superior to people in power and who was never intimidated by them, crowned or not, Voltaire constantly fought against hypocrisy, superstition, and for justice while always remaining loyal to God, whom he never denied, but he never stopped denouncing the abuses of the religious authorities of his time as an atavistic institution that persecuted people and condemned many to atrocious deaths.

Ne vous conformez pas au monde actuel, soyez transformés par l'intelligence - Romains 12-2 d'purb dpurb site web

Romain 12:2 : Ne vous conformez pas au monde actuel, mais soyez transformés par le renouvellement de l’intelligence afin de discerner quelle est la volonté de Dieu, ce qui est bon, agréable et parfait. // Traduction(EN): Romans 12:2 : Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Voltaire is known for his usual irony and intellectual ferociousness along with a courage without equal in the conservative and unforgiving climate of the ancient regime of his time in the 18th century. Eventually, he paid harshly for such a flamboyant and defiant character through a few trips to La Bastille prison, but Voltaire’s mind remains free and alive!

As Stéphane Berne perfectly phrased it in the 2019 documentary « Voltaire ou la liberté de penser » dedicated to the memory of Voltaire: « Un homme seul peut parfois changer le monde avec sa plume » [French for: « One man alone can sometimes change the world with his pen. »]

Un homme seul peut parfois changer le monde avec sa plume - Stéphane Bern - d'purb dpurb site web

« Un homme seul peut parfois changer le monde avec sa plume » – Stéphane Bern [French for: « One man alone can sometimes change the world with his pen. »] Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

Voltaire never hesitated to defend causes deemed lost, such as that of Jean Callas, the unfortunate protestant from Toulouse who was unjustly condemned to death by the Catholic Church and whose name and honour would be restored by Voltaire. He was a dedicated intellectual, always connected with his era, never atavistic or living in the past, but was a passionate lover of the world with surprising originality who applied reason and philosophy to challenge all the irrational conventions of the social structure of the ancient regime and in doing so he is nowadays regarded as an intellectual who was always in advance over his contemporaries by a few centuries. Early in his life, he became a vegetarian, refusing to see meat at his table with this very Voltarian argument embedded with heavy connotations: « On ne mange pas ses semblables! » [French for: “one does not eat his similars!”]

Voltaire’s incredible parcours ends in apotheosis in 1791, when l’Assemblée National brings Voltaire into the Panthéon 13 years after his death – voilà, he reached immortality! That day was memorable because Voltaire’s body, before entering the Panthéon, crossed Paris by programmed stages; first it passed La Bastille where he spent some time, then Voltaire, homme de lettres (man of letters), homme de théâtre passed all the great Parisian theatres, the troops were there with texts that praised his memory. One of the moving parts was when the procession stopped where Voltaire died, l’hôtel de Villette which is on the quai des Théatins, which would later become the Quai Voltaire.

It is amazing to see how the French people treated a man who was not a noble, but through his mind and intellectual abilities rose to gain the respect and acclaim comparable to that of kings and emperors. This ceremony was so grandiose that a commentator had even said that it was a national ceremony, the ceremony of the nation who found itself around the remains of Voltaire. However, the remains arrived at the Panthéon at night and the bishop who was to consecrate Voltaire’s body was absent, since as a clergyman he did not want to receive the remains of a man who throughout his life had fought against the Catholic institutions. Yet, Voltaire’s remains entered the Panthéon and he has since been acknowledged as one of the greats of our civilisation; he entered a monument constructed to be a church and transformed into a pantheon for him. There is a funny anecdote from the obese Louis XVIII after the restoration when Napoléon I was sent to exile after his unfortunate last battle at Waterloo when at that point his regime was riddled with spies and traitors, apparently the monument was to be transformed into a church and there were debates about whether to move Voltaire, and the obese monarch said: « Laissez le, il sera bien puni d’entendre la messe tous les jours. » [French for: “Leave him, he will be punished by hearing mass every day!”]. So, Voltaire remains in the monument.

The tombeau of Voltaire constituted from the catafalque that crossed the whole of Paris is important for all the inscriptions that show the importance of the great man, historian, philosopher, poet, but it is also the recognition by the Assemblée Nationale of the immortal genius of Voltaire.

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Le tombeau de Voltaire au Panthéon / Traduction(EN): Poet, Historian, Philosopher He Widens The Human Mind And Showed It That It Had To Be Free

The intellectual also has a very special place, because he is in the front of the monument, hence all the great men and women have to pass in front of it before entering the Panthéon. In 1794, Voltaire will be joined by Rousseau, and although the two had some clashes in their life, they are considered as the two major philosophers who spread the mind of the enlightenment and carried its eternal spirit of freedom and justice.

It is to be noted that 11 years after Voltaire’s death in 1778, and 2 years before his remains were transferred to the Panthéon in 1789, a historical event would shake the world forever: France had for the first time in its history gone through the revolution, with the iconic takeover of La Bastille, but the Republic had not yet been proclaimed. To this day Voltaire remains the most ancient personality to remain at the Panthéon. The revolution was looking for modern heroes, men who were not saints, kings or men of war, and began to look for minds of the ancient regime who were already dead who in some way, announced the revolution.

Intellectuals debate to this day whether Voltaire could be seen as an artist and architect of the revolution. In some way it may be true, since the ideas of personal liberty and individual emancipation that he defended were the base on which the revolution was founded. But it can also be said that Voltaire was not a man made by the revolution, although in his times, he was aware of the English revolution of 1649 which sent shockwaves across Europe as Charles I was put to death in England after Oliver Cromwell, the English general and statesman had led the armies of the Parliament of England against the king during the English Civil War to then rule the British Isles as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death in 1658, also acting simultaneously as head of state and head of government of the new republican commonwealth. Voltaire in France was very close to many crowned heads, and although he was not of noble decent himself and despised the abuses of the church and royalty, he socialised with them and saw them as part of his circle; he was close to the monarchy and never thought that the monarchy in France could ever be overturned; however he wanted the monarchy to be constitutional, tolerant, humane and respectful towards individuals and their liberties. French historians argue that Voltaire was definitely not a republican, although this remains debatable since he is not alive to respond to the question and the world can keep on guessing.

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Image: Voltaire en train d’écrire / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

Voltaire was a sophisticated man of words and a refined thinker who believed in the power of the pen, mind and intellectual discourse, hence he was not a grotesque brute and would have probably been disgusted around the majority of average, simple, nasty, infantile and petty animalistic minds who infest the political scene of the 21st century, who probably would not be able to interact with him linguistically at the level of language he would have expected and naturally functioned at psychologically; his discourse would not have reached optimal understanding among the mediocre majority of his audience and he would have had to slow down and simplify himself constantly, which would have been very frustating and painful for such a brilliant intellectual; and a struggle in maintaining his mind sharp.

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Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

The man was definitely one of the most talented intellectuals of the 18th century that the Assemblée Nationale has crowned. French historian Évelyne Lever observed that Voltaire had an enigmatic and powerful gaze that marked his presence and would say:

« Le regard chez Voltaire c’est essentiel. C’est un regard qui capte tout et c’est un regard qui rend tout ce qu’il a vu, et il a évidemment des possibilités intellectuelles extrêmement vastes, c’est l’homme des lumières dans tous les sens du terme. »

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French for :

“The look in Voltaire’s eyes is essential. It is a gaze that captures everything and it is a gaze that gives back all that he saw, and he obviously has extremely vast intellectual possibilities, he is the man of the enlightenment in every sense of the word.”

For French writer Philippe Sollers, Voltaire was an adventurer who was very agitated, very clandestine, constantly fighting through his intellectual discourse, like being at war with the conventions of his time. The author of « L’invention de l’intellectuel dans l’Europe du XVIIIe siècle » and « Les Ennemis des Philosophes », who also co-directed « Inventaire Voltaire », Didier Masseau, saw in Voltaire, a character who had a great presence and who entertained some kind of tradition, with his large Louis XIV styled wig that was completely out of fashion in the 18th century; hence Voltaire was a very singular character. François Jacob, the author of « Voltaire », believes that Voltaire was someone who had always been conscious of his own worth, and knew that he was among the greatest –  someone who could bring a tremendous amount to his contemporaries.

The recognition obtained at the Panthéon, Voltaire had been looking for it during the early years of his life. Voltaire from the very beginning entertained the spark of the self-made and self-defined man, since the man who was not yet named Voltaire is in fact François-Marie Arouet and does not have any aristocratic ancestry, and hence could not be considered as noble. While in the 21st century the educational cultivation or the discourse, views and ideas of an individual may lead to him or her being perceived as a noble man or woman of intellect or a noble mind, it was not the case in the 18th century, where there was a strong division between classes – where nobility was usually given by royalty or inherited by birth. Hence, Voltaire from a very early age worked to make the notion of “origins” meaningless in the emancipation and development of the individual – a task that was titanic in the old days of the 18th century.

Voltaire’s father belonged to the middle-class, i.e. the bourgeoisie. It was a relatively well-to-do bourgeoisie and they lived comfortably, but they did not swim in gold either. François-Marie’s mother passed away when he was only 6, and he was raised by his father and benefited of an exceptional formation. At 10 years of age, he had gained admission at the most prestigious institution of the kingdom, the collège Louis-le-Grand, where both the sons of the bourgeoisie and highest nobility were scholarised. So, there he experienced a social climate generated by the best minds of his generation who were destined for a prestigious future and of course, some of his alliances had allowed him to build a network in some of the highest milieus. Even if the young François-Marie was not treated as well as some of his comrades, he would very soon distinguish himself through his intelligence, personality and individuality.

Among the young aristocrats there, some had a room with their own domestics and their private prefect, while the young Arouet was condemned to share the room with 15 or 20 of his classmates. Among the subjects taught, at the college, there was dissertation in Latin, the writing of poetry and versification. Voltaire was particularly gifted in those linguistic and literary fields, especially in exercises of amplification, that put the emphasis on a sense of rhetoric [i.e. the ability to analyse, synthesise, respond and argue convincingly], this is how he would get himself noticed. Voltaire would get the best results in linguistic eloquence in Latin, and this was also the first time that he developed the confidence and pride of a writer or a thinker, since he had just proven himself by winning a contest of eloquence and that would finally be the birth of his career as a thinker.

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Le jeune Voltaire au collège / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

During these college years, he also benefited from the teaching of the Jesuits which is characterised by a great open-minded view of the world, it was about forming a true citizen, i.e. a profoundly Christian mind but who is also open to the reality of his times, hence the importance of the voyages, history, and this constant open-minded view and of course the dramatic arts, such as the theatre. The theatrical arts after all is an opening on the city. The young Arouet developed a taste for drama and theatre, he did not play comedies, but rather tragedies, and from there Voltaire was already blossoming and was certainly thinking of a writing future.

The personality of the future Voltaire was also shaped by his godfather, a man of thought who was a member of the Société du Temple, a world apart that the young François-Marie was introduced to in his teenage years. That society had been a sort of microcosm in Paris, and Voltaire would develop a taste for its aristocratic and libertarian side and also for « le bon mot » [French for: the good word]. It is an epicurean society: a society that lives for pleasure as well as for the freedom of thought. There he had found people who were less conformist and who held different views about the social structure of his time, and the young Voltaire started to love this milieu as it opened new horizons to him. After his godfather had introduced him to one of his older female friends, the latter saw in Voltaire a young man with an exceptional intelligence and left him a small amount of money in her will. With that money, François-Marie, a lover of literature, would go and buy books since his choice had been made, he was not going to follow the career planned by his father since that notarial and legal bureaucratic bourgeois milieu would not have allowed him to fully explore and develop his literary talent, artistic and intellectual creativity, and would have been too narrow and mundane for his ambition and deep mind.

When the young Arouet left college, he was still not known as Voltaire, but in the logic of the future Voltaire, he already wanted to be an « homme de lettres » [French for: man of words or letters], an « homme de plume » [French for: man of the pen]. Of course, for his father that was truly scandalous, because from his bourgeois perspective and milieu, poets are considered as « crève-la-faim » [French for: someone who cannot afford to eat properly] – being a poet is not considered a job. Hence, Voltaire’s father had imagined him studying law and perhaps becoming a notary but he instead wanted to enter the domain of the “belles-lettres” [French for: beautiful words], and hence there the young intellectual’s choice experienced a first form of rejection by his father.

This unpleasant experience led him to even invent his own aristocratic origin, since ironically the future Voltaire would say that he was not the son of his father, and that his real father was an aristocrat who probably wrote verses and who was the lover of his mother; Voltaire said this openly without any shame, since he preferred to come across as a prestigious bastard born out of wedlock rather than a mediocre legitimate child. Of course, this was fairly petty, and could be attributed to a childish frustration, being a fiction that Voltaire created that allowed him to discard his own origin, but from a deeper look it showed how he was already being marked by the concept of the self-made and self-created individual governed by his own abilities and will-power.

Voltaire was already refusing to be a victim of the past and the random location where the fusion of a spermatozoid and an egg, i.e. birth, had placed him; we can take note here that it was what modern psychologists and psychoanalysts qualify as “the concept of self” , i.e. the individual is not dependent on anyone, is not simply a biological lump of flesh created by two primates who copulated, compelled to be defined by an imposed legacy and carry whatever burden it may include – that is an option of course, depending on the individual’s choice in relation to his or her desires but it is definitely not an obligation. We are who we are and who we choose to make ourselves through our own efforts, desires and choices – that is Voltairean heritage and the mind of the intellectual enlightenment! Coincidentally, this simple yet immense and fundamental concept aligns with my own reflections, scientific arguments and philosophical orientations based on the organismic perspective of the free organism that follows a constant evolution throughout its lifetime in a Piagetian style of cognitive growth. So in a way, it is like finding a partial form of synchronisation of my own intellectual thoughts with Voltaire’s, while Jacques Lacan’s theory of the mind, language and concept of symbolic chain and desires follows an almost similar line of thought – it shows that while most of my contemporaries missed the emphasis on the organismic perspective, one of the minds who changed the world in the 18th century shared my beliefs – this particular intellectual similarity is personally satisfying.

When later in his life Voltaire managed to acquire the château de Ferney, he had the old building demolished which he had qualified as atavistic in style, and had a new one built to his taste. It would also become the place where he received many intellectuals and also his friend, the mathematician Nicolas de Condorcet, along with the actor Lequin who would take part in many of the plays written by Voltaire. One of the other great intellectuals who never came to Ferney is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the solitary philosopher, since those two sometimes clashed on some philosophical issues without ever meeting each other, however they both recognised each other’s greatness which reminds us today that they have been two of the most illustrious [i.e. well known, respected and admired] homme de lettres of the century of the enlightenment. After his death, Voltaire’s heart was stored in a cenotaph in France at his Ferney residence for several years, with the inscription:

« Son esprit est partout et son coeur est ici. »

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French for :

« His mind is everywhere and his heart is here. »

Voltaire also invited the most intimate of his guests at Ferney into his personal library where he would read them extracts that meant a lot to him and were connected to his intellectual fight against the problems of the society of his time, for example, against the rigid religious institutions of the Ancient Regime and the persecutions and horrors they orchestrated. The complete works of Voltaire can also be found at Ferney, where he first started writing and focussed on tragedy, a popular genre in his times.

It is with the literature, dramatic arts and the theatre that he was drenched in at college that Voltaire would create and build a name for himself. He thought that this would suffice to take his legacy to posterity, i.e. through his tragedies, however as we would see, it took much more to have Voltaire accepted among the greats of his time, since the division of classes was rigid in the 18th century.

At around 20 years old, the young Arouet had already become quite used to the Parisian salons and his personality and mind quickly made him popular – he became well-known and a habitué of the court at the château de Sceaux. The young Arouet had already risen in society through his intellectual and artistic abilities and original personality, and at that court he was a little boute-en-train (i.e. joker); he improvised clever rhymes and poetry and would say exactly what the great seigneurs wanted to hear. He was stunned by the early success he had found at Sceaux; and although he should have toned himself down in this milieu, he just could not resist the urge to be even more extroverted, flamboyant, defiant and outgoing – it seems that Voltaire was an early embodiment of a form of open-minded libertarian conservatism. During his time there he also enjoyed a wide range of literary, theatrical and musical pleasures.

However, he would soon go beyond his limits, and reveal himself as an extremely biting, facetious mind that could become nasty when provoked, according to French historian Évelyne Lever. In his poem, « Puero Regnante », he offended a man whom no one would have dared to insult, namely Philippe d’Orléans who was the man in charge of the French monarchy since the death of Louis XIV in 1715; d’Orléans was ensuring the regency of the kingdom until the young Louis XV reached the age to govern. The futur Voltaire’s verses in his poem came with heavy consequences since his dramatic poem accused the regent of having killed the grand children of Louis XIV by poison in order to get as close as possible to power while going even further to accuse the regent of having sexual relations with his daughter.

The poem was so scary that Voltaire found himself imprisoned at La Bastille. He was incarcerated on the 16th of May 1717 while in his twenties, and he would remain locked for almost a year. However, his conditions while in detention were far from terrible; the young Arouet was placed in the quarters that we could consider in today’s terms as those reserved for the V.I.Ps [i.e. very important person]. There he had lunch with the governor, where people would also visit and write to him; it was a place where you could serenely plan and prepare for your release.

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Voltaire enfermé à La Bastille / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

If someone is imprisoned at the special quarters of La Bastille, it is because they hold a degree of importance and because they have the power over society, hence the writer used it as a formidable source of publicity to push himself at the front of the social scene. It is also during that period that François-Marie Arouet decided to bury his old name and transform himself into Voltaire; he thought that he should find himself a signature to match his size and to prepare for his future glory; he considered his old name, François-Marie Arouet, to have been a burden to him. French historian, Évelyne Lever noticed that the name, Voltaire, contained the term « Volte » which carries the connotation of one who danses and flies. On the name of Voltaire, the French intellectual, François Bessire said:

« C’est l’invention d’une marque, c’est l’invention d’un nom tout à fait remarquable, un travail de communication étonnamment réussie. »

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French for:

« It’s the invention of a brand, it’s the invention of a very remarkable name, a surprisingly successful work of communication. »

Voltaire also made the most of his time in detention to finalise his first play, however after his release, his perfectionist approach and the numerous repetitions and modifications he made to the script caused conflicts among the troop of actors of the Comédie-Française who accepted to take part in it. One of the actresses, Miss Desmares, had categorically refused to receive new verses from Voltaire to repeat, but had quite an appetite. So, Voltaire ironically sent over small pâtés that she would open to eat and inside there were the new lines that Voltaire wanted her to learn, everyone of course laughed at this adventure, yet the verses were learnt and of course the small pâtés eaten.

The première of Voltaire’s play, Oedipe, opened on the 18th of November 1718, and the whole of Paris rushed to watch the spectacle of the young author with a sulphurous reputation. It was a triumphant success for the writer, and that would be the moment that Voltaire began to earn a living with his pen, and his desire for glory at the same time was satisfied. The success of his writing was fundamental to Voltaire because it confirmed that he was a great author of the classical tragedies.

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Image: Le triomphe du premier oeuvre de Voltaire / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

After that event, Voltaire would start to build a network of acquaintances and friends among the nobles, and would visit Jean-René de Longueil at the Château de Maisons, today known as the Château de Maisons-Laffitte. It is there that Voltaire worked on his epic poem, la Henriade, and one time during a lecture in the great hall of the château, Voltaire did not hesitate to ask the opinions of the guests invited and they, who were not writers and never wrote a play in their life allowed themselves to a number of criticisms. As this went on, Voltaire began to lose his calm and in an abrupt gesture he took his manuscripts and threw them all in the fireplace in a raging gesture; one of the guests stormed to pick them up and gave them back to Voltaire.

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Image: La rage de Voltaire: les manuscrits dans la cheminée / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

Another unfortunate episode there was when Voltaire caught a potentially deadly disease: smallpox. However, Voltaire in a few weeks miraculously recovered but a fire spread from the chimney under his room, having been kept constantly lit during the weeks of his illness, the place was ravaged, but that blow of fate would not affect the solid friendship that bound him to Jean-René de Longueil.

After proving himself through his intellectual, linguistic, literary and artistic abilities, Voltaire in his thirties thought that he could finally consider himself as the equal of the nobles, him, a sort of aristocrat of the mind. However, an altercation with one of them during a soirée would cruelly prove him wrong. During that night, the chevalier de Rohan-Chabot had been joking unsympathetically about the name of Voltaire, trying to mock him, and Voltaire in an affirmative and insolent tone abruptly responded:

« Mon nom commence là où fini le votre! »

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French for:

« My name starts where your name ends! »

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Image: Voltaire à Rohan-Chabot: « Mon nom commence là où fini le votre! » / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

A few days later, Rohan-Chabot had Voltaire beaten violently as he was leaving a house where he had had him invited. Voltaire was permuted with pain with all the blows he received from sticks. Voltaire asked for reparation and began to realise that his noble friends certainly pitied him, but would do nothing concrete to help him as the days went by. Voltaire eventually realised that he was being advised to remain silent and to get over this humiliation. That event likely marked Voltaire for life in his fight against the atavistic structure of the ancient regime because it brought him back to the condition that the 18th century of France imposed on individuals; hence, he could be a star on the intellectual, literary and artistic scene, he could be the great Voltaire, but in the 18th century, to the nobles, he would always be considered a « roturier » [note that this is an archaic term that is not used anymore in the 21st century as it used to mean someone who does not have aristocratic origins, it is a term that can very rarely be heard in a minority of social circles that still abide by the social structure of the ancient regime, for example, among some circles in England, the English term is usually “commoner”]; and this irrational concept allowed the nobles of the 18th century to hold the illusory belief that they were superior to anyone who did not have aristocratic origins and that the person could be given the stick by them, even if the individual was incredibly educated, cultured and intellectually superior to the nobles. That was of course something that Voltaire would not accept and towards the end of his life he would receive the acclaim only reserved for kings and emperors for changing the perception of French society and the whole of Europe about individual emancipation forever. But for the time being Voltaire’s humiliation would not stop there, since conscious of Voltaire’s relentless and daring personality and character, the entourage of chevalier Rohan-Chabot feared for the desires of vengeance of the prolific author and so, they arranged for Voltaire to be sent once more to the Bastille prison. He would be freed after only 2 weeks on the condition that he left Paris.

For his exile, the man of letters chose to go to England. It was 1726 and Voltaire would end up staying in the neighbouring country for almost 3 years. It is important to note that in those times, England had already gone through the English Civil War and had shocked Europe by putting King Charles I to death, the latter was beheaded publicly after Oliver Cromwell had defeated the Royal armies. France on the other hand had not yet gone through the revolution, something that would take place 63 years later in 1789, 11 years after Voltaire’s death in 1778, with the iconic takeover of La Bastille on the 14th of July 1789. So, when Voltaire went to England, the power of the ancient regime there was already weakening through the socio-cultural change brought by the English civil war. Hence, in some aspects regarding the structure of society, England at that time appeared slightly in advance to Voltaire in matters regarding the personal liberties of the individual where the organisation of society was different compared to the strict climate imposed by the Ancient Regime of the monarchy in 18th century France, that caused Voltaire to be victimised and jailed for a simple vocal retaliation.

It was Voltaire’s curiosity that motivated him to go to England and also his personal circumstances; that trip would calm down the tension in France by allowing Voltaire to be forgotten for a few years at least. Once in England, Voltaire who was especially gifted with language quickly learned to master English, which is much simpler than French. Being a believer in the values of the intellectual enlightenment, a man who fought for individual freedom and self-conception, and also a proven man of words, intellect and a sort of aristocrat of the mind in France, it seemed logical to expect that Voltaire would work on a similar mastery of language in England and create his own individual identity, and so he did not learn English by socialising, but rather through Shakespeare. He would visit the theatre at Drury-Lane where it is believed that he took the prompter’s manuscripts to learn English through Shakespeare.

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France still conserves a collection of his courier that shows his incredible mastery of the English language but also the affinity he developed for some English customs. The fact that Voltaire took pride in writing in English while in England was not insignificant, because Voltaire in England had felt at home, and very quickly started to see himself as an Englishman, during his voyage he slightly toned down his French identity. Charles Eloi-Vidal, a curator at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France suggested that it seemed that Voltaire during his time in England gave the impression that he had fallen in love with the country and its people. Voltaire was seduced by the atmosphere of freedom that his anonymity may also have contributed to in England. The writer stated that in England, no mode of life seemed strange, we see men who complete 6 miles daily for their health, who feed on only roots, who never eat meat, who wear a lighter outfit in winter than your ladies’ costume on the hottest days. Voltaire thought that all that in England was perceived as a singularity but was not taxed by anyone as ridiculous or insane.

In reality, the French still mock the English for their eccentricity but what Voltaire saw in some aspects of the English society of the 18th century was the freedom to be anything we wanted, an opinion that seemed slightly exaggerated by Voltaire who only lived in England for about 3 years, since nowadays in the 21st century England is far behind modern day France in terms of individual social mobility, although it is encouraging to see that gradual progress is taking place through the contribution of dedicated intellectuals at major universities [e.g. the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford] who are changing the atavistic minds of the Anglo-Saxon masses through the propagation of modern psychological, scientific and philosophical works about development, conception, individuality and identity.

What also stunned Voltaire in 18th century England was the religious tolerance. When in France the rigid institutions firmly controlled and regulated by the Catholic church would persecute people for their beliefs and practices and even send them to horrible death sentences, in England Voltaire saw Jews, Muslims, Christians and atheists all somehow living together. However, in the 21st century when we scratch the surface, we find that underneath the illusion of this “living together” in a secular society with the vague concept of « political correctness », there is a passive and silent yet constant competition between each group, all desiring supremacy over one another; this even applies at a global level from the basic population count, to the geographical hold of living space of each group with different languages on our planet; and each group would be ready “diplomatically” to defend their borders with guns, tanks, fighter planes and even nuclear weapons if necessary, and of course, not to mention the periodic violence that traumatises society at large, especially from Muslim jihadists. It is also fair to note how each group – under the illusion of “living together” and “political correctness” – still “indirectly” fragment the population by organising events that celebrate and promote each group’s identity and characteristics within their own geographical population, and that does not seem to be a genuine sense of living together as a singular community but rather a politically correct form of hypocrisy.

We can observe that that the idea of « living together » can be associated with the modern-day phenomenon known as « globalisation » that portrays the society that Voltaire saw in 18th century England. Unfortunately, the “living together” of globalisation is simply focussed on labour and migratory movement and financial motives, whereas true harmony in a genuine community of sophisticated, educated and enlightened minds relies on the construction of a united society and is closer to post-revolutionary French philosophical values of « Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité », which is not simply a question of living side by side with each other, but involves getting all individuals – besides their personal tastes as unique humans beings – to also honestly agree on identity, belonging, values and goals; feel, understand and synchronise their lives with each other as a genuinely united community that supports and helps one another, while also working and building harmoniously together at every level of human life – not simply economically. After all, we are living in pivotal times where the human civilisation is evolving at breakneck speed in so many ways and changing era right before our eyes in the 21st century; with a generation that has the chance of having access to the wide range of accelerated learning technologies available. The world’s societies have evolved beyond recognition from their « primitive » past, and are today interconnected and inspire and influence each other in so many ways [e.g. science, sport, medicine, cuisine, arts, literature, philosophy & education]. We can only imagine what a brilliant mind like Voltaire would have achieved if he lived in our time with all the tools available to us in the 21st century.

Even if nowadays, in the 21st century, after centuries of imperfect democratic parliamentary regimes we have begun to see the lack of organisation, the corruption, the greed for money, the unethical financial motives, the apathy and lack of sophistication and sensibility from the average financial workers crowding the political scene along with their simple binary minds and outlook, the illogical concepts of political parties dividing people by orientation, and the badly organised departments of the state; in the times of Voltaire in the 18th century, this less than perfect parliamentary regime was considered as the only solution and represented a step towards defying the abuses of the Ancient Regime of hereditary traditions and undisputed domination of the crowned heads. So back then, when the parliamentary regime was in its early days in England, Voltaire was fascinated with it, since he thought of it as a movement that kept the King in check, since whenever the crown would try to abuse its powers, it could instantly be stopped by the parliamentary regime – that to Voltaire created a King that could only be kind. Since it was 1726, 63 years before the French revolution, hence this to Voltaire was quite another world – he would most certainly have much to write about if he was alive today to see the horror show of the majority of mediocrity in modern politics in the 21st century.

It is almost certain that if a brilliant, perceptive and volcanic mind like Voltaire lived in the 21st century he would have ferociously criticized the current democratic parliamentary regime, and would be engaged in a fight like ourself to crease out the imperfections, being just like ourself focussed on the liberation of the human mind through reason and science, individual liberty, meritocracy, order, love and justice for all, along with a concern about a harmonious, ethical, intellectually enlightened and a sophisticated society devoid of alienating irrational superstitions, political abuses and unnecessary suffering.

During his English séjour, Voltaire had maintained a journal that he completed once back in France, those écrits, packed with explosive content, would later become his « Lettres Philosophiques ». Those would have two objectives. Firstly, it was an expression of gratitude towards the English society that welcomed and hosted him for almost 3 years. Secondly, Voltaire wanted to point out the problems of the society of pre-revolutionary France in the 18th century where he castigated the French monarchical despotism along with the climate of intolerance towards individual liberties – such as religious beliefs – that it imposed on individuals with heavy consequences to those who chose to deviate from the Church’s rigid outlook [e.g. the persecution of other forms of Christianity such as Protestantism].

Voltaire’s writings were seized and burnt in front of the palais de justice in France; the power of the ancient regime understood that this was a bomb that could seriously cause a storm in France where unlike anywhere else in the world the people are sophisticated, highly receptive and reactive, and always in the constant quest to refine and cultivate themselves intellectually through fresh philosophical discourse. Hence, as soon as Voltaire returned from his exile in England, the enigmatic thinker and writer had once again become persona non grata in Paris and would have to remain discrete and keep a safe distance from monarchical power for some time. Besides, Voltaire using aspects of the English society of the 18th century as examples to criticize France was not going to be well perceived.

Although French society acknowledges the pivotal works of some hardworking individuals who dedicated their lives to particular fields [e.g. medecine, science, literature, music, etc] and who have been translated into French, for example, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Oscar Wilde, Alan Turing, just like many other professionally dedicated minds across the globe, it certainly does not consider the English heritage or the Anglo-Saxon world as superior, a model to follow or something to be envious about; that is an opinion even shared by a great amount of English intellectuals and people themselves and even the former English King, Henry V, who used the French language to write « Dieu et mon droit » on the coat of arms of the British monarchy. If anything, French society has always considered the Anglo-Saxon world as rough, mesquin (i.e. petty & trivial), cold, mechanical, calculating, ruthless and much less refined and sophisticated emotionally, philosophically, artistically and linguistically; while lacking sensibility in human affairs, with the tragedy of Jeanne d’Arc embedded in the hearts of the French people along with the Hundred Years War, not to mention Waterloo. Even the iconic English writer, Oscar Wilde, was persecuted by the society that produced him and ended up seeking refuge and spending the last days of his life in France; a fairly similar fate was imposed on the English mathematician, Alan Turing, who dedicated his life to saving his country and whose contributions were decisive in shifting the outcomes of World War II – he would be persecuted by his own country treated like a criminal and was left to die as a recluse in a room in almost complete anonymity. Hence, a tremendous work of cultivation remained to be done in the Anglo-Saxon world in order to reconcile and build a firm bridge between these two environments and create a genuine sense of trust and respect from the French – a work involving the cultivation of the masses to sophisticated French values that is still ongoing up to this day. The great way to put this could be by saying: « We are from the same planet but not from the same world. »

In the room of Voltaire at Ferney we still find an immense portrait of empress Maria Theresa of Austria and the inscription shows that it was given to Voltaire on the 15th of July 1770, historians do not know the circumstances of the arrival of the portrait here but its presence is quite surprising since Maria Theresa did not have a high esteem of Voltaire, she had in fact forbidden her son Joseph II to visit such a miscreant. To Voltaire, exposing such a portrait was nothing more than a way to show his familiarity with crowned heads even if his relations with kings were very complicated because of his intellectual and philosophical orientations.

French historians observe that Voltaire was an elegant man with incredible style who took great care of his body and cultivated his appearance and looks, however in private he sometimes received people in his night gown. In his residence at Ferney we can also find a portrait of the most meaningful woman in his life, Émilie de Châtelet, who according to the French painter Marianne Loir was among the first women to dedicate herself to science with whom Voltaire finds true love for more than 15 years Voltaire met her in 1733 when he was almost 40 years old while she was in her twenties and fell immediately under her spell, she had an impressive physique and a mind that was no less. Émilie was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant women of the 18th century, a true woman of science, but that did not prevent her from knowing literature admirably – there was a reciprocal coup de foudre between those two geniuses who acknowledged each other’s greatness. Their love story would blossom at the château de Cirey where Voltaire found refuge in 1734 after the scandal provoked by his « lettres philosophique » right after his return from England.

At first, Voltaire did not plan on settling at Cirey, and only intended to spend a few months, just enough time to be forgotten and for things to calm down in Paris. However, when he arrived at Cirey there was an instant feeling of love at first sight with the place and he decided to settle. In the beginning, he would restore an existing part and later decided to enlarge it to install a wing with his own apartments. What is striking is that Voltaire added his unique touch to the architecture, for example, a sculpted door that is still present today dedicated to the arts and to the sciences where we find a tribute to astronomy, painting, sculpture and of course the art of writing and literature.

Chateau de Cirey - La marque de Voltaire

Image: La touche de Voltaire à Cirey

Voltaire hated to waste time and was always busy and mentally drenched in a project. The days at Cirey were shared between philosophical discussions, the pleasures of love that of course should never be neglected and a range of experiments. The couple were 2 dedicated hard workers, each working in their office and they would meet over lunch. There was a real atmosphere of joy, both physical and the joy of being together while not being burdened by the surrounding society and intellectual crowd. Voltaire would say to a friend in one of his letters that they were very voluptuous philosophers. Once, the couple took part in a competition at the Académie des Sciences, and while they did not win, Voltaire had insisted for the memory of Émilie to be printed by the Académie des Sciences, which would have been a great honour – he never asked the same treatment for himself; a gesture that historians nowadays believe to have been a genuine proof of sincere love.

Voltaire ou la liberté de penser - Émilie du Châtelet traduit Newton - d'purb dpurb site web

Image: Tableau representant Émilie du Châtelet étudiant les travaux de Newton

Émilie du Châtelet also signed the first translation of Newton’s mathematical principles of philosophy, one of the major works of the 18th century regarding universal gravity. However, it is important to note that Voltaire cannot be considered as purely and simply a man of the mathematical sciences; he definitely took a genuine interest in the pivotal scientific discoveries of his time such as universal gravitation but only to meditate and extract philosophical meaning about the implications of scientific discoveries, i.e. to explain how all the scientific discoveries will impact the way society and humans function, such as the impact on the education of the individual, society at large and the values to be taught in relation to them.

Voltaire ou la liberté de penser - Émilie du Châtelet - d'purb dpurb site web

Image: Émilie du Châtelet en train de travailler sur ses écrits / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

Modern day French historians believe that Voltaire and Émilie du Châtelet were unquestionably the leading couple of that particular century, the 18th century, the century of the enlightenment that gave way to an open-minded view of our world and our wider environment, and that also motivated intellectuals worldwide to take the world out of the claws of obscurantism and into the light. It was the century enlightened by reason where men and women were encouraged to rely on their own experience and knowledge to apprehend the world around them [i.e. to work on their understanding and perception] – this was a turning point in the evolution of mankind! From then, the individual did not feel that he had to respect or abide uncritically to any form of hierarchy whether it was religious or political but was instead encouraged to learn to use intellectual and logical reasoning to understand the world instead of simply believing without thinking.

Voltaire ou la liberté de penser -Espace de Voltaire à Cirey d'purb dpurb site web

Image: Espace de Voltaire à Cirey / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

The 18th century was also the period where we almost completely mapped the terrestrial globe; where we had begun to get a deeper understanding of the inner mechanism of the human body since the early works Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th century. All this new knowledge led to a turning point because it allowed the emancipation of the individual; now we were no longer subject to the traditional obligation to play our role, to take our place quietly in a society that was regulated by religious authorities and that was patriarchal, because now we finally had the sensible and thoughtful knowledge and hence we had the ability to get out of our former conditions and follow a different chosen path, find our way and ourself.

During all those years at Cirey with Émilie, the main entertainment would somehow remain the arts, namely drama and theatre. Between his intellectual endeavours, Voltaire would not give up on his creative writings dedicated to the theatrical arts and his plays would be performed in a small home theatre that was under the attic, it would become an iconic place since many afternoons and evenings would be spent there and sometimes the only spectator would be the cat and Émilie. Sometimes the couple would also have arguments that would end up in disputes.

Voltaire dans une profonde réflexion

Image: Voltaire sérieux et dans une profonde réflexion / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

Émilie displayed an excessively authoritarian nature and would choose how Voltaire should dress, she would even choose the wine that he should drink, and would even forbid him from showing some texts that she had locked away; she knew of Voltaire’s explosive personality and that he would write special and subversive texts; conscious of the nature of those texts and the possible legal consequences that could be even more violent, Émilie kept a close eye on them along with Voltaire’s correspondence. All that would generate moments of tension when they already had disputes, and when those occured they communicated in English so that prying ears across doors and walls would not understand the content of their exchanges. Voltaire would often leave the table in anger when he was annoyed and would sulk, then after they would reconcile with each other and open dialogue through messages on small pieces of paper that they would send to each other through the domestics.

Voltaire dans une profonde réflexion et souriant d'purb dpurb site web

Image: Voltaire souriant et en train d’écrire / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

When Voltaire reached the age of 50, his relationship with crowned heads had already been complex, he looked for their favour but remained true to his intellectual perspectives that were not always favourable to the powers of the ancient regime. Voltaire never regarded the king as the representative of god on earth, hence it became incredibly hard for him to display the signs of adoration that the conventions expected. He was fairly insolent and impertinent and at the same time he had already built the solid reputation of a man of words who mastered the pen with incredible efficacy.

Voltaire ou la liberté de penser - Voltaire faisant de la recherche d'purb dpurb site web

Image: Voltaire faisant de la recherche / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

Hence, he was perceived as a scary revolutionary mind, so the royal powers in France would remain very wary of the ingenious writer permanently. Louis XV never accepted Voltaire, who for him was a profoundly unsympathetic man with subversive ideas that he did not want to hear anything about.

But even if he was not regarded highly by the monarchy in France, there was a sovereign in Europe who had boundless admiration for him and his avant-garde ideas. That man was Frederick II of Prussia, the one who would be known as Frederick the great, who had already been known as the philosopher king. It had been a while already since the two man had maintained a passionate correspondence which was initiated by Frederick himself when he was heir to the throne.

The future Frederick II wrote to Voltaire so that the prolific intellectual could correct his verses and help him with his French. The Prussian heir swore by the French language and only spoke German with the horses; to him the French language and the mastery of it was higher than everything else. So, he wrote to Voltaire as a sycophant, qualifying him as the greatest writer of all time and the man he admired the most in Europe. Voltaire was so flattered to find himself celebrated in this way by the future king of Prussia that it made him dizzy with pride. The form of complicity would eventually develop between those two, on the topics of the freedom of mind and ideas. Voltaire on the other hand saw in the future King of Prussia the possibility to hold a very particular role; the role of the one who thinks for the Prince and who participates in the elaboration of political reflections – he had imagined this as a great duo, philosopher and king.

When Frederik II was crowned, he continuously invited Voltaire to join him in Prussia. At around the same period, on the 10th of September 1749, Voltaire was struck by the most demoralising news of his life: Émilie de Châtelet had suddenly passed away. He would be utterly devastated by the death of the woman whom he had loved the most in his life, it was a very painful period for Voltaire who went mad with grief; and it is following this irreparable mourning for him that he left for Prussia.

In July 1750, Voltaire arrived in Potsdam near Berlin where the court of Frederick was located. Once there, his main task consisted in correcting and embellishing the verses of Frederick II. There however, he found many other philosophers and intellectuals united around Frederick II and hence did not feel like the greatest or the most important anymore. Voltaire thus found himself as a token among others of a king whose writing and verses were incredibly mediocre. The king however could be unsympathetic as Voltaire would later discover when a conversation was reported to him where apparently it was said that we squeeze the orange and we discard the core. This seemed to showcase the monarchic mentality about using talented people to further itself and to discard them when they were no longer needed.

That moment had Voltaire realising that he was to Frederick II someone considered as some kind of buffoon that could be disposed of when his services would not be required. Voltaire knew that his situation had changed and that he was not respected by Frederick anymore; so, he concluded that it was time to escape after having spent 3 years there. So, in March 1753, Voltaire left and turned a page on the king but a rocambolesque event will delay his return to France. After arriving at Francfort, he was stopped by Frederick’s men and assigned to residence until he returned a number of documents that he had kept; these were the drafts of poems that Frederick had written along with all the corrections that Voltaire brought. When the King found that out he realised that it would be a catastrophe for him since the world would find out the immense contribution of Voltaire who was almost the co-author of his originally mediocre writing.

Volaire bloqué à Francfor par Frédéric II

Voltaire enfermé à Francfort par Frédéric II / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

Voltaire would be held for several weeks as a form of humiliation from Frederick, someone that the writer had previously flattered. It was a sinister farce, but Voltaire eventually got out of it after returning the drafts. The two would not see each other again, however their epistolary relationship would resume. Before leaving the court in 1753, Voltaire had also made a series of scathing attacks on the head of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, and Frederick ordered that a satirical pamphlet written by Voltaire be publically burned. It is believed that when Voltaire left the court, he told a friend that he had been enthusiastic about [Frederick] for 16 years, but the latter had cured him of this long illness.

Back in Ferney, France near the Swiss border in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Voltaire thought that a tiny church nearby was hiding the perspective of the residence, so he took it upon him to move the church and had a central alley drawn. He started this modification without any authorisation which was of course not to the taste of the ecclesiastical authorities; hence Voltaire had to renounce to it and rebuild the facade. However cheekily, he had his name on it written much larger than that of god which was of course frowned upon.

In those times, Voltaire was often sick and he knew that death could come knocking at any moment. Since he had wished to be buried at Ferney, he would have a tombeau constructed in the shape of a pyramid that was leaning against the wall of the church, adjoined to the outside; Voltaire envisaged that clever people would say that he was neither inside or outside of the tomb. Voltaire had a particular liking for his garden and had a bower made for walks with his intimate guests sometimes; the talented writer’s influence was not limited to his residence since the whole village profits from his presence and saw its popularity rise. After all his adventures with the kings of France and Europe, it was in a way Voltaire’s own time to become the little king of Ferney. However, Voltaire’s independent and volcanic mind and intellectual orientations never allowed him to build strong links with those who held institutional powers, so he sought refuge to establish himself firmly. It would be in Geneva before finally ending up in Ferney that Voltaire’s last and perhaps most pivotal legacy would be forged.

Voltaire - le reigne à Ferney

In his sixties, Voltaire fell under the charm of a quiet and bucolic place near the Léman lake, a peaceful property in Geneva from where he had a view of the mountains. He would name his residence there « Les Délices » and had the place enlarged to live slightly more comfortably. It is to be noted that at that time, Geneva was independent and was not part of any kingdom, it was outside of the French and the Prussian borders and so Voltaire had settled in a completely neutral territory for a while. Voltaire would take many reflective walks in his garden there but his main activity remained writing, his eternal true love.

Les Délices to this day conserves a range of Voltaire’s furniture and other gadgets. We can find the iconic Louis XV styled desk with floral and musical motives. It was on that very desk that Voltaire wrote a great number of his literary and intellectual works.

Meubles de Voltaire aux Délices - d'purb dpurb site web

Image: Meubles et accesoires de Voltaire / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

Even in the 18th century, he seemed to have an affinity for gadgets as we can also find a small écritoire [i.e. writing case] which allowed him to write during his voyages, inside we can find a pen holder, and two small objects in silver with the coat of arms of Voltaire [i.e. the three flames and the two greyhounds] which are in fact a travel ink pot where the writer would draw the ink to write his letters and on the other side a powder case with sand that Voltaire would sprinkle over a page as soon as it was written to act as blotting paper in order to absorb the excess ink from the document; which in the 21st century could be the equivalent of a portable computer.

Aux Délices - Pot d'encre - Armoiries de Voltaire - Les 2 Levriers - d'purb dpurb site web

Image: Les armoiries de Voltaire sur le pot d’encre de voyage: Les trois flammes et les deux Levriers

Voltaire wrote his poem on the Lisbon disaster there after the terrible earthquake of 1755 but most importantly it was the location where he wrote his most famous work, the one that is still the most read in the 21st century, his philosophical tale that summarised and covered all the great themes of the movement of the enlightenment: Candide. The book would go to become a best-seller of the second half of the 18th century which surprised Voltaire himself to see his book sales reaching 20 000 copies; for that time, it was an incredible amount and considered as a planetary success with a range of smaller formats also released: pocket editions, luxurious editions and others.

However, soon Voltaire would lack the breathing space he needed in Geneva and return to Ferney. In Geneva, theatre was not allowed and the writer found this unacceptable when he made arrangements to have small theatrical representations at Les Délices. He would get into problems with the Geneva pastors who were not content with the fact that he was organising theatrical sessions and attracted the daughters of Calvinist pastors to take part and feature as characters in them, that was unacceptable to those pastors. So, he went back to Ferney which was located in a strategic place since it was in France but on the Swiss borders. He would turn Ferney into a living utopia, a world where the earth was celebrated, where one lives comfortably and safely. He would also take the opportunity to transform the village of Ferney which was in a miserable state and launch himself in a variety of enterprises; which shows that Voltaire was not only a pure mind but that he could also take actions and contribute to the benefit of society around him, and that would have an immense impact. Under Voltaire’s reign in Ferney, the village saw a spectacular development. It is also there that Voltaire’s fight against religious fanaticism amplified gloriously.

In a France where the Catholic institution occupied a dominant position, it is very important to understand that Voltaire’s perspective did not insult or deny the existence of a god as the creator, but he took a firm combative stance and spoke out against all dogmatisms. Voltaire has never been an atheist, he is a deist, he states that in the incredible complexity of the natural world there must be a godly power that governs it all. What shocked him are the institutions that claim supremacy over god: the weight of those institutions that tells us what we have the right to believe in or not, and that classifies us in different groups, among the heretics, and that even had the powers to send us to the stake to die a painful and horrible death. Voltaire fought against all the abuses of the religious institutions that declared to have been revealed, namely the 3 most popular monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

In 18th century France under Louis XV, tensions had been persistent between Catholics and Protestants. Protestantism was not a recognised religion and its adepts faced repression and even severe persecution.

Volatire - Tension entre les religions en France au 18ème siècle

Image: Persécution religieuse en France au XVIIIe siècle

What Voltaire had observed in the years 1750-60 was a resurgence of tension between religions and it was the letter of the contemporary world then: religious fanaticism. Voltaire could never accept that in the name of religion, in the name of a God that is supposed to be good and merciful, men have such atrocious practices and persecute one another – always in the name of their God. To Voltaire, religious fanaticism associated with power was still present and would always be a threat to civilisation, and as from 1760 he intensified his fight with the shocking formula: Écrasez l’infâme [French for: crush the infamous]. This expression surfaces again during the correspondence he exchanged with his friend, the philosopher, d’Alembert.

Voltaire ou la liberté de penser - d'Alembert - Écrasez l'infame d'purb dpurb site web

Image: Correspondence de Voltaire à d’Alembert: Adieu mon grand philosophe… Écrasez l’infâme! / Source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France | Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

We have records at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France of those exchanges where he spoke of his lectures, philosophy, life in Paris and concludes his letter by saying: « Adieu mon grand philosophe. Écrasez l’infâme. » What was that « infâme » [French for: infamous] that he wanted to crush? It was the superstition that clouded reason, it was the institutional power of religious authorities over justice and the management of society by enlightened minds.

Another incident that motivated Voltaire to be even more engaged in his fight took place on the 10th of March 1762, when Jean Callas, a merchant from Toulouse is sentenced to the torment of the wheel and killed by strangulation in the public square.

Voltaire - Jean Callas - condamné au supplice de la roue et étranglé

Image: Jean Callas le protestant étranglé en public

Jean Callas had been an old protestant accused in Toulouse to have assassinated his son because the latter wished to convert to the Catholic religion. In fact, the son perhaps wanted to convert but committed suicide by hanging. In the beginning of this affair, Voltaire showed no interest and even asked himself if Jean Callas could be guilty. He only really became aware of the reality behind through the visit of a reformed person who would tell him the story and how it had been an obvious injustice. Voltaire would study the case at length and denounce a quick and incriminating investigation. For him, there was no doubt that Jean Callas had been executed because he was a Protestant.

Voltaire - en colère et en train de lire à Ferney - d'purb dpurb site web

Image: Voltaire étudiant les dossiers sur Jean Callas à Ferney / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

For 3 years, Voltaire would attempt to rehabilitate the memory of Jean Callas by relying on his network. He wrote to all the people who were the most influent and tried to show that there had been a horrible misunderstanding. Today, when we simply look at Voltaire’s correspondence made of numerous letters to convince each of them to join the fight for Callas, we realise that hours and hours of his life were given to the memory of Callas, a man with whom he had no direct links and never even knew personally.

It would take several years for the judgement of Toulouse to be first adulated and for Jean Callas to be subsequently rehabilitated, but Voltaire would succeed; the King’s council would make this return which was quite exceptional for the conservative religious climate of the 18th century. Voltaire would also get involved in many other issues of the society of his time, however the story of Jean-Callas remained the fight of his life. It is in fact the major catalyst that led him to write his timeless treaty on tolerance, a work that remains until this day a reference on the subject.

In 2015, the working premises of the popular satirical and “over the top” newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, known for its defiant, exaggerated and limitless comics, was assaulted by Muslim Jihadists, Chérif and Said Kouachi and 11 people lost their lives brutally: the cartoonists, Jean Cabu, Stéphane Charbonnier, Philippe Honoré, Bernard Verlhac, Georges Wolinski; the psychoanalyst, Elsa Cayat; the economist, Bernard Maris; the corrector, Mustapha Ourrad; a maintenance worker, Frédéric Boisseau; and Michel Renaud, the cofounder of the festival « Rendez-vous du carnet de voyage », who had been invited to assist the editorial conference. The following day, another Muslim Jihadist who claimed to be of the Islamic State, namely, Amedy Coulibaly, stormed a super market and killed 4 people, fuelled by his Islamic jihadist teachings and Jew hatred. The whole of France and the world were in a state of shock. Parisians manifested in mass the following day, and it is to be noted that when they did, they brandished the writings of a man known as Voltaire who lived 250 years ago, and it was his « Traité de Tolérance ». Spontaneously, people and even the youth looked for Voltaire’s mind, since he remains the man who best embodied liberty “à la Française”; meaning a form of freedom for all that is superior to every other belief whatever it is and wherever it comes from – that proves how avant-garde and ahead of his time Voltaire was.

To this day, we can find a painting known as « Le Triomphe de Voltaire » [French for: The Triumph of Voltaire] at his former residence in Ferney, which was realised 3 years before his death that Stéphane Bern in 2019 pointed out to be very interesting for its biographical value, because in the centre we see two faces of Voltaire: one that shows a mortal man like all human beings on our planet, and a second that shows Voltaire as the immortal creator; at the bottom of the painting we see the Callas family who are portrayed as protégés of Voltaire, then we also see the bust of Voltaire that is going to be installed in a temple on the right next to the those of Sophocle, Euripide, Corneille and Racine; the temple also strangely resembles the Panthéon where Voltaire’s remains are, as if it was written in the books of destiny that Voltaire would have an incredible homage or that Voltaire knew that his memory would be celebrated by those who inherited, feel and stand for his values and philosophy.

During the last years of his life, Voltaire had become the best-known personality in Europe, so many people made the trip to meet him in Ferney. Voltaire called himself « l’aubergiste de l’Europe » [French for: Europe’s innkeeper], simply because his residence at Ferney would receive so many personalities from all over Europe. When visitors arrived daily, everyone was received by Voltaire himself; sometimes he would drop kind words, other times he would greet by nodding his head. His visitors could be writers, aristocrats, intellectuals from so many domains, for example, some of them worked in Italy on the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

It is also important to remember since we tend to forget, that the whole of Europe, the Europe of the aristocrats and of the bourgeoisie of the enlightenment spoke French, and in Europe no one was Voltaire’s equal because he made people laugh and also cry, and also because he had a mind with extraordinary agility – everyone read Voltaire!

Voltaire - en train de lire - d'purb dpurb site web

Voltaire en pleine lecture / Source: Voltaire ou la liberté de penser (2019)

Some women would even respectfully come and kiss Voltaire’s hands. To travel to such a place in order to meet a man of letters and bowing down before him as if he was a religious messiah remains a remarkable phenomenon – Voltaire is an 18th century star like that century would not have any other. This would also be one of the most fruitful periods in Voltaire’s correspondence at Ferney; he wrote nearly a quarter of his 25,000 known letters which is an integral part of his legacy and work.

Being a prolific communicator in the days where people wrote letters: official letters and clandestine letters, we found out how he dealt with those in power and the authorities; French writer, Philippe Sollers thought that Voltaire sliced and reigned with his words – just like Napoléon. To this day, there are very few correspondences that can be read and enjoyed as masterpieces.

La correspondence de Voltaire en plusieurs volumes - d'purb dpurb site web

Image: La correspondence de Voltaire compilé en plusieurs volumes

Voltaire spoke of everything in his correspondence, his own life and the life of others along with a number of extraordinary thoughts that emerged and that completes his work in a sense. French philosopher, Elizabeth Badinter considers the compiled volumes of Voltaire’s correspondence as the most exciting reading of all, arguing that one can read his correspondence over and over without ever being bored.

Another extraordinary achievement remains the fact that Voltaire was entitled to his marble statue during his lifetime when such a privilege had generally only been reserved for kings. The statue realised by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle is exposed at the Musée du Louvre, an iconic work of sculpture that represents Voltaire naked, with nothing but a small drapery, sitting on a tree trunk and we can also see two accessories: a mask which symbolised comedy, a dagger for tragedy, but also a phylactery which is a piece of paper that is usually attributed to prophets and Voltaire is represented with it, barefoot as a prophet, because he is seen as the prophet of the republic of letters who announced the time of the liberation of the individual.

Voltaire Nu de Jean-Baptiste Pigalle d'purb dpurb site web

Image; Voltaire nu (1776) par Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714 – 1785)

That extraordinary statue was funded through a subscription launched to all men of words, and we can find the names of the subscribers on the base of the statue: King Frederick of Prussia, the King of Denmark and even Jean-Jacques Rousseau his great intellectual rival.

The sculptor, Jean-Baptise Pigalle was inspired by the great philosophers of antiquity and hence realised a naked and natural Voltaire without exaggeratingly idealising him and that led to scandals. Pigalle wanted to portrait Voltaire in the reality of a man, that is, an old man, but a handsome old man. However, the statue would generate a lot of irony. King Gustav III of Sweden who was passing through Paris would say that he was willing to subscribe but for clothes, so we can conclude that Gustav was ignorant and did not understand anything of Pigalle’s artistic message and perspective. Many sarcasms will follow, minor sonnets that ridiculed Voltaire and the statue. Voltaire then understood that it was time to calm things down and put a stop to all the nonsense around the shock and perhaps jealousy of a man getting the accolade of an emperor with a statue in his living, and declared that he found Pigalle’s statue to be a masterpiece. Voltaire stated that he himself had suffered so much from censorship and if Pigalle perceived and conceived it like that, he is a great artist and should be free!

While Voltaire enjoyed a formidable recognition in Ferney, he still dreamt of a last séjour in Paris in his eighties, which was an exceptional age to reach in the 18th century when medicine was almost prehistoric without vaccines and antibiotics, and where people of various segments of society and all walks of life died of diseases such as tuberculosis, that would have been considered as minor and curable in the 21st century that we now live in, or they would sometimes be killed by the unscientific and barbaric surgical practices of the times when bacteria and medical hygiene were unknown; modern medicine would only begin in the 19th century with the invention of the stethoscope by René Laennec. Voltaire did not have much to fear from the power held by the young Louis XVI who had no idea that he would be the last king of France of the period known as the Ancien Régime and during the unstable reign of terror before the proclamation of a republican constitution, would be sentenced to the guillotine in 1793 at the Place de la Révolution in Paris along with his wife Marie-Antoinette of Austria, sadly even the pioneering chemist, Antoine Lavoisier, who is considered as the father of modern nutrition, would suffer the same fate for having worked as a tax collector for the monarchy.

In February 1778, Voltaire made his great return to the capital that he had left 30 years earlier. He was cheered by thousands of Parisians and would not be able to leave his house since his carriage was constantly surrounded by crowds of people. People wanted to touch him as they wanted to touch relics, some even proposed to uncouple the horses from his carriage to put themselves in their place in order to have the honour of transporting this modern-day Apollo to his home. There were crowds clustered on the rooftop balconies which was something surprising for the times. During his time in Paris, Voltaire stayed at his friend, Charles de Villette’s place at the Quai de Théatins also known today as Quai Voltaire. That would be the place where he completed his last play, Irène. Historians would later find out that in 1777, Voltaire tried to make the play, Irène, seem like a piece that he had just completed, but his correspondence revealed that he had been working on it and minutely crafted that story for more than twenty years before it came out.

Voltaire - Irène

Image: Irène par Voltaire

When Irène was played, the spectators were hardly interested in the show because everyone was interested in Voltaire and his presence. Yet, it was a success and after the play, Voltaire’s bust was brought in. The man of letters was crowned and the French actors sung verses in honour of the great man. Voltaire stood up while being crowned with laurels and said:

« Vous allez me faire mourir de plaisir. »

___________

French for:

« You are going to make me die of pleasure! »

That was Voltaire’s apotheosis! That same year, 1778, Voltaire died on the 30th of May at the age of 83 years old. The body was opened and embalmed by candlelight on the kitchen table of Charles de Villette; the heart and the brain were extracted to be conserved and the entrails would be thrown in the latrine. His skull was covered with a cap to hide the opening where his brain was removed, make up was applied on his lips and cheeks to give the illusion of life and his body was strapped upright in the carriage and all that jolly entourage would leave in complete discretion. Since, to the displeasure of his religious enemies, he remained true to his beliefs and never confessed to a sworn Catholic priest who could have given him the last rites of unction, people were worried that his remains would not be buried in Christian soil. To avoid the common grave, the transfer of his body out of Paris was hastily organised and sent to the Abbaye de Sellières.

There are tales that suggest that loud thunder manifested when Voltaire’s body was in the church, the weather was so bad that the doors slammed open and the candles were blown out and Voltaire’s body fell, the monks started to pray in panic in complete darkness and balls of fire were rolling on the grass. Voltaire was inhumated at Sellières where his remains stayed until 1791 when they were transferred to the Panthéon. The heart of Voltaire, which had been removed during the embalmment was first placed in the room of Voltaire at Ferney where a mausoleum was specially fitted out, it would then later be given to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France where it would be stored in the base of the famous statue of Voltaire sitting sculpted by Houdon between 1780 and 1790.

Voltaire_Assis par Jean-Antoine_Houdon 1780-1790 d'purb dpurb site web

Image: Voltaire assis (1780 – 1790) par Jean-Antoine Houdon (1714 – 1785)

In 2010, during renovation works to enlarge the BNF, Voltaire’s statue had to be temporarily moved and during that move, the base was opened and the workers found a shiny heart-shaped metal box with the inscription, « Coeur de Voltaire, mort à Paris le 30 Mai 1778 ». The heart has since been put back in the base of Houdon’s statue as we would have treated that of a Saint, which is ironic, and would have definitely amused the man who during his whole life fought the rigid religious institutions of the 18th century.

« Je meurs en adorant dieu, en aimant mes amis, en ne haïssant point mes ennemis, en détestant la superstition ! »

–        Voltaire

___________

French for:

« I die worshipping God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, hating superstition!  »

–        Voltaire

Those were the last words uttered at the end of his life which perfectly summarises his faith, personality and vision of the world. After the philosopher’s death, Ferney lost a great part of its economic activities but the memory of Voltaire continues to animate the little town. Iconic writers such as Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Flaubert and Alexandre Dumas père would come to pay homage to the great master of French letters after his death. The town has since been renamed Ferney-Voltaire to honour the man who will remain as the master craftsman of the Age of Enlightenment.

Ferney-Voltaire - Blason et Logo de la ville d'purb dpurb site web

Image: Blason et Logo de la ville de Ferney-Voltaire

The modern individual is unique and makes choices in self-conception

It is important to understand that an individual will never be what others believe or want them to be, whatever the size of the crowd, because individuals are creative and adaptive organisms with the ability to make conscious decisions about their lives and identities, and can leave their initial enviroment for new locations, adapt and recreate themselves to be part of a new society [there many illustrious examples in the 21st century to cite] depending on their desires and abilities, or they can also simply visit places for the sake of exploration without adapting or being part of them.

Fritz Perls Citation

Traduction(EN): “I am not in this world to live up to other people’s expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.” -Fritz Perls, Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist who coined the ‘Gestalt therapy’

In most modern and enlightened societies of Western European intellectual and philosophical heritage, we are a culture of individuals, a society of unique people who besides their individual characteristics and differences manage to synchronise and work together in matters of national importance without it being restrictive to our personal liberties and choices from one person to the other. To be a person generally means to be connected [even indirectly, e.g. through arts and literature] to others. However, taking the metaphor of a golf competition to explain the picture, we cannot all win the contest. Clearly, one person will win and others will still perform well while some will need training to reach a decent standard although not within competitive categories. However, in an advert promoting golf, no company would only show one golfer by himself on all its adverts, but rather they show and promote many golfers, happy to be together. Hence, the way to be a person in modern society seems to be a part of it [directly or indirectly, all representatives of the society but with varying degrees of skills and abilities].

As with myself, having pushed the limits of my Franco-British heritage to the academic stage globally, more and more people are slowly getting the opportunity to be bi or tri-cultural. It is not a simple thing to do or accommodate, but it will be the task of more and more people in the world if individuals are to overcome their limitations in perception, feeling and understanding, and experience the world from the finest socio-linguistic lenses to explore their different senses on a planet that is more accessible in its depth through the magic of modern media [e.g. internet, multimedia experiences, high definition packages, distance learning, virtual reality, audiobooks, and even university lectures online [e.g. Les cours de Michel Butor] that is changing the processes of learning at a speed never seen before.

The reasoning person, being the intelligent being who has infinite worth and dignity would logically try to assimilate into the best heritage / linguistic-culture(s), knowing that the world is not flat and that we have natural masters and natural slaves, where intelligence is the only thing that distinguishes them – as Immanuel Kant also concluded. Like the analogy of humans, who being more intelligent than other living creatures, have become the supreme beings at the top of the food chain to rule over our planet. If we also side with this evolutionary logic, the best and most sophisticated society or societies [in terms of language, education, philosophy, heritage, etc] should by the laws of meritocracy have the privilege to guide and/or inspire the human civilisation to create a singular society/human empire in synchronisation with itself in the future as our civilisation evolves and comes to terms with its insignificance as a mortal bunch of organisms on a small, depleting and lonely planet in the universe without a spare planet to colonise that could still be wiped out and never remembered like the dinosaurs with an asteroid at any moment.

Asteroid Impact on Earth

Image: Illustration of an asteroid impact on Earth that could wipe out all life / See: Le Jour Où Les Dinosaures Ont Disparu (2017)

Modern psychological research has shown that we are reflections of all social interactions that mark us throughout our life and these interactions do not only come in the physical form, but also through arts, film, modern media and literature, all these create symbolic desires that affects each individual differently. And those who choose who and what shapes them, will tend to be inspired by those they admire [this extends beyond minor interactions such as the fishmonger at the market place or the coconut seller at the beach, but reaches as far as the mind goes up to the highest level of culture through exposure directly or indirectly (modern media) and breaches barriers once thought impossible].

Descartes - conversation avec les meilleurs hommes

Traduction [EN]: “The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.” – Descartes

As Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic writings also suggest – relying heavily on linguistic theory and intellectual trends in late 20th-century France, such as the structuralist movementour sense of self is a tissue of identification with people we have known [i.e. directly or indirectly exposed to, e.g. mentors, fictional characters, authority figures, artists, etc], and the only wholeness we imagine ourselves to have is a fiction, a comforting and self-deceiving way of narrating our personal story, since our “selves” are profoundly “de-centred”.

The greatest child psychologist of all time, Jean Piaget argued that all forms of social interaction [which also includes artistic exposure] in the process of learning play an important role in “cognitive growth”. Bernard Lahire pointed out that differences in cultural education [e.g. various forms of artistic exposure] have an impact on the developing child and leads to inequalities early in life, i.e. the child exposed to finer artistic experiences (e.g. literature, music, film, digital experiences, etc) has a better chance of developing a sophisticated mastery of language early in life than the child who is not. This does not mean that all individuals are doomed for failure because of their inadequate early development, as some gifted or dedicated individuals do catch up on their linguistic development later in life.

La fabrique des inégalités

Crédits : Youst – Getty

However, one of the greatest challenges to individual cultural identity remains the overcoming of bigotry. The prejudices of a superior heritage can eat away the self-regard of inferior cultures, languages and heritage. Prejudice is a form of psychological genocide that works across generations and contributes to the despair, drug abuse and violence we see in communities whose cultural identities are under siege. This can be seen through high levels of depression, alcoholism and suicide among Native Americans for example. Hence, an agreement that respects the achievements, strengths and individuality of others would likely ease the tensions with inferior cultures who may have more to gain in assimilating into superior ones. Diplomacy and empathy will also help in the transition to adopting new patterns of living if we [as a group of organisms on planet Earth] take the direction that leads to a synchronized civilisation/empire in the future, looking into space for new planets to ensure our existence and continuity as a space race.

In the face of adversity we have seen another side of the self that creates new realities, transforming life into art. This is what Alfred Adler called the creative self. Throughout history, men and women have put their creative imprint on anything that can be shaped, coloured and re-arranged. Even in the depths of despair, Jews who were imprisoned in German deportation camps [that had been heavily damaged by allied bombings, and cut off from receiving rations due to bombed train tracks while the lack of sanitation led to outbreaks of typhus which killed thousands], still managed to create art on whatever scraps of paper they could get their hands on to give meaning to the incomprehensible horror of their lives at that time.

However, research from Brandeis University that explored the creativity of two groups of girls aged 7 to 11 from the community centre of an apartment complex has found that people will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest and enjoyment, the satisfaction, the challenge of the work itself, and not by external pressures (Amabile, 1982).

So, now, you have learnt some of the ways in which intellectuals, academics and psychologists try to follow the Delphic Oracle’s exhortation to “Know Thyself.” We have explored a number of aspects and dimensions of the self, some of which may be known readily – although not accurately – through empirical investigations [e.g. using basic constructs for variables such as traits in questionnaires of quantitative empirical research that remain questionable in terms of construct validity and internal consistency], while others [such as the impact of art on the mind and implicit learning] can only be explained theoretically [since traits too can be modified, affected or changed through an individual’s desires or external influence (e.g. arts) and evolve into different behaviours through cultural evolution as we move further into human history]. We have also seen how we differ in our self-concepts from one individual to another, and how our behaviour differs as a result [e.g. the choices we make as unique organisms/individuals with unique fingerprints and brain chemistry].

The Organic Theory (of Psychical Construction):  a theory of the 21st century mainly focussed on the conception of the individual

The organic theory is a theory of the 21st century proposed by Danny d’Purb [myself] mainly focussed on the conception of the individual. It is based on the post-revolutionary French school of thought where the individual embraces his own choices and defines himself through his abilities, desires and achievements. It is also founded on the theory of evolution, because it sees the individual as an organism that is shaped by its environment with the ability to adapt, evolve and change depending on the psychological, social and cultural environments it wants to be a part of.

CITATION Socrate - capacité d'adaptation

Traduction [EN]: “What makes man is his great faculty of adaptation.” – Socrates

However, what is unique the Organic Theory, is that it is the first theory that takes the unique conception of the individual organism to another level, because it remains focussed on the structure of thoughts and the interpretation of the world by considering what matters symbolically to the individual and is not founded on generalisations of assumption like most ancient theories do, hence this discards a lot of confusion because it shifts the focus on what matters to the unique individual organism and mind.

Another important aspect of the “Organic Theory” as a scientific theory that I would like to make clear in the mind of the masses is that a scientific theory is nothing like what most people tend to refer as “general theories”. A general theory is a common theory that generally used to explain every day matters of sometimes questionable importance related to social matters; this usage of the term “theory” generally encompasses subjective beliefs and insights about matters not related to the universality of human life or psychology, but instead tend to occupy social conversations that most people have in places such as coffee shops to discuss and provide explanations about possible reasons or causes on common matters such as “Why did World War II really happen?”, “Why did John quit his job?” or “Why did Jane marry John?”. Explanations to these questions tend to be referred by the common crowd as some “theory”, and this kind of theory has absolutely nothing to do with a “scientific theory” such as the Organic Theory.

A scientific theory is based on a combination of two ancient methods: rationalism and empiricism. These two methods are what make science a powerful tool. The rationalist school of thought go by the belief that mental operations or principles must be employed before knowledge can be attained, for example, rationalists state that the validity or invalidity of a certain proposition can be determined by carefully applying the rules of logic. The empiricist school of thought maintains on the other hand that the source of all knowledge is sensory observation, so for rigid empiricists true knowledge can be derived from or validated only by sensory experience. After centuries of inquiry, we found that by themselves, rationalism and empiricism both had limited usefulness, so modern science combined the two schools of thought, and since then, knowledge has been accumulating at an exponential rate.

Hence, the rationalist movement added its aspect to science and prevented it from simply collecting an endless array of disconnected empirical facts, because we intellectuals must somehow make sense out of what we observe, hence, we formulate scientific theories. A scientific theory has two main functions: (1) it organises empirical observations, and (2) it acts as a guide for future observations and generates confirmable propositions. In other words, a scientific theory suggests propositions that may be tested experimentally to a certain extent with some reductionist statistical methods. If the propositions generated by a theory are confirmed reasonably through experimentation, the theory gains strength; if the propositions are not confirmed, the theory loses strength. In science observation is often guided by theory.

The Organic Theory is a theory that I brought forward to the intellectual table but its foundations were lying dormant in the psychology and scientific literature for decades. It seems that I only had to piece together these objective observations and methodically arrange them to come to the deduction along with the reality it revealed. We are not complete masters of our life, but we do have a great amount of control of our own individual conception based on our desires, education, direction, capabilities and choices in life. However, no one and nothing can change an individual who does not want to change. Many individuals are prisoners of their own minds and cannot change simply because they do not have the desire to want to change.

CITATION D'Purb - le désir de vouloir changer

Traduction [EN]: “No one and nothing can change an individual who does not want to change. Many individuals are prisoners of their own minds and cannot change simply because they do not have the desire to want to change.” – Danny J. D’Purb

The organic theory follows the organismic worldview that already existed in the great psychological debates of the century and I have built upon this perspective, refined and extended it with modern day empirical and philosophical literature to give the individual more power of self-definition in our modern and sometimes confused society. In fact, I also took some concepts from Jacques Lacan to give the individual the power and the ability to achieve their dreams and also to open the minds of the surrounding crowd to let society know and understand that people are not static objects, but have the ability to create and recreate themselves when the desire to do so is present along with the motivation to take the steps towards such a goal.

The one fundamental message the Organic Theory brings are that we are not defined simply by where we are born or the people connected to us that we did not choose, or by bloodlines, but rather by our own choices, efforts, abilities, achievements and directions, and also the fact that any organism can be conditioned to become part of the environment of any other organism through the never ending process of learning and adaptation, as we can see from the examples of Adolf Hitler or Napoléon Bonaparte, to name two famous cases of leaders who came from modest foreign origins and who raised to the highest level in countries where they were not born, but recreated themselves to become the heart of these nations at a given point in time.

The Organic Theory proposes that individual construction [training], which ‘can be’ mechanical and structured in its application [e.g. distance learning by text / video / audio], develops indirectly to create and give a socio-cultural dimension to the individual once the desired skills [communicative and behavioural patterns] have been fully adopted, mastered, and deployed in life.

La Génération de la Culture Digitale dpurb

Au XXIe siècle, les industries des arts, de la culture et de l’éducation s’appuient principalement sur les médias numériques pour toucher des clients dans le monde entier / The industries of the arts, culture and education in the 21st century, mainly rely on digital outlets to reach customers across the planet

The term ‘social’ is also far too vague to be important as such… the term ‘social’ can simply be defined as the interaction [of all types, including cultural and artistic exposure] between organisms. So the term ‘social’ is not valid scientifically and it lacks precision itself since it may refer to a wide range of variables and constructs. What we are left with then is only the individual’s choices, language(s) & abilities of personal development [e.g. cultural & psycholinguistic synthesis]: the major factors in the psychological & philosophical explanation of his/her singular conception [to note that each conception is unique to the individual human organism such as his/her fingerprints, skull shape, or body structure: singularity]. Thus: training, meritocracy, order and love [simple… in theory]. Nicolás Gómez Dávila phrased it perfectly by saying “To interpret some men, sociology is enough. Psychology is too much.”

CITATION Davila - la sociologie la psychologie

Traduction (EN): “To interpret some men, sociology is enough. Psychology is too much.” – Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Marcel Gauchet put it well by explaining that when we live in a world structured by republican meritocracy and when we are a good student, we know that there are paths to social ascension. Unfortunately and shockingly, in some prehistoric, atavistic, misinformed and barbaric societies still governed and haunted by obscure, ancient, unsophisticated and unscientific structures of the Ancient regimes of the Middle Ages [for e.g. the Anglo-Saxon world], many people are still forced to wrongly believe that the individual was born to be a slave to his birth condition, to live on his knees in eternal inferiority and to be defined by the perception that their masses have developed through the knowledge [and lack of knowledge] they are conditioned by; a mass which in their mechanical world is primarily a collection of atomized individuals each locked on themself and their little personal circle.

So we remain focussed on our mission to change the perception of minds, as when we do change minds, we also have an impact on the mind of their children and grand-children; the impact of psychoanalysis saves generations from misery and has an eternal effect.

« Les hommes de génie sont des météores destinés à brûler pour éclairer leur siècle. »

-Napoléon

French for:

“Men of genius are meteors destined to burn to enlighten their century.”

-Napoleon

Clavier Napoleon Bonaparte dpurb site web

Image: Napoléon (2002) avec Christian Clavier

To understand the fundamental logic of individual conception of the unique organism, let us use the example of a man who is a product of French intellectual heritage which is deeply embedded in his psychology and is also known globally as a writer, academic essayist & intellectual innovator in the fields of psychology and philosophy, but has a son who decides to join a monastery in Tibet, and a daughter who converts to Hinduism, and a sister who learns Arab, marries a merchant and moves to his country, does this mean that the man himself is now a Tibetan Hindu Arab? Of course not! Another example would be to imagine a great philosopher of Western European intellectual heritage who happens to have a sister who due to a lack of attention is influenced by a petty social circle and becomes a strip dancer in the suburbs of France, similarly does this mean that the philosopher is now part of the sex industry? Of course not! Yet society and sadly, fully grown up men in the modern world still do not understand individual conception – which comes with the fundamental fact that each organism is responsible for his/her own conception and destiny and not that of others – I feel that the organic theory should clearly help society worldwide understand that an individual organism’s choice in life should be guided by their own rational deliberation and is not the responsibility or the burden of another.

The Organic Theory of Psychical Construction is a theory born out of my independent research that has lasted more than 15 years and brings neuroscientific evidence to explain plasticity [See: Essay // Biopsychology: How our Neurons work; Essay // Biopsychology: The Temporal Lobes: Vision, Sound & Awareness], philosophical discourse to explain perception [See: Essay // Philosophical Review: Moral Relativism – Aren’t we all entitled to an ugly opinion?; Essay // Philosophical Review: “The World as Will and Idea”, by Arthur Schopenhauer (1818)] and psychoanalytic theoretical explanations to explain the proceedings of the mind, along with construction and symbolic desires that guide the individual in achieving its goal in life [See: Essay // Psychoanalysis: History, Foundations, Legacy, Impact & Evolution]. Subsequently, it is also making the point that these scientific facts and philosophical discourses cannot be ignored by both the individual and societies at large, because we are a new generation of human beings, and we should be acting as enlightened organisms in the face of discovery, not atavistic and rigid beings of a long dead past, because we are not prisoners of the past.

CITATION Nietzsche - la foule une somme derreurs quil faut corriger

Traduction [EN]: “The crowd is a sum of errors that must be corrected.” – Nietzsche

The fundamental foundation to remember in order to grasp the universality of the “Organic Theory of Psychical Construction is the following factual observation, which states that, while the communicative patterns (i.e. language, other forms of communication and expression along with socio-behavioural schemas) learnt by human primates vary across geographical regions, individual IQ and intelligence (i.e creative, expressive, reflective, emotional, musical, artistic, philosophical, linguistic, psychological, numeric, etc) do not!

« Si les modes de communication appris par les primates humains varient d’une région géographique à l’autre, ce n’est pas le cas du QI et de l’intelligence individuels ! »

-Danny d’Purb

“While the communicative patterns learnt by human primates vary across geographical regions, individual IQ and intelligence do not!”

-Danny d’Purb

Jacques Lacan also reached a fairly similar conclusion since he also distinguished the speaking Subject of the enunciation [i.e. how words are pronounced] from the Subject of the statement [i.e. the genuine message of the discourse], which suggests that in order to evaluate the true worth of any linguistic discourse, it is the genuine message that should be extracted; in other words, it should be translated in the appropriate language of the reader/listener so that its true value and meaning can be assessed. This implies that genuine intelligence and talent cannot choose the brain or body from which they will appear, and neither the location; hence firmly proving the universality of the Organic Theory and the application of its concept.

However, individuals who intend to share their wisdom and contribute to the world’s development would have an advantage in adopting and mastering a communicative pattern (i.e. language) deemed superior by the fact that it comes with modern human values and is weaved in the fabric of a more refined and sophisticated intellectual, psychosocial, philosophical and artistic heritage [e.g. French, which is the most desired and most spoken second language in the UK and in Germany] since it would be understood by the wider audience of the civilized world, where the major intellectual and cultural evolution/revolution takes place.

Anglais VS Français Habsburg d'purb dpurb site web

Traduction(EN): “The English language is a shotgun: the shot is scattered. The French language is a rifle that shoots bullets, precisely. » -Otto von Habsburg

It was the French revolution, which had been heavily influenced by the movement of the Enlightenment [i.e. the 18th century intellectual movement of reason], that would secularise a number of philosophical concepts derived from the humane values of Christianity into the constitution, most notably the famous « Liberté, égalité, fraternité » [French for: “Liberty, equality, fraternity”], which is inspired from the free will of Christians, as the French philosopher Michel Onfray reminded. Equality [Égalité] is derived from the concept of equality before God, and brotherhood [Fraternité] is inspired from the concept of the community of the ecclesia. Liberté [Freedom], of course, most people know what this means, which is the freedom to explore, to choose, to discover, to learn, to express ourself, to speak, to have open debates, to question, to propose, to love, to create, to live life fully within the limits of reason and respect for the mother psychosocial sphere.

Hence, as French philosopher, Michel Onfray noted, we, heirs of the French intellectual heritage and school of thought, have a concept that was passed on from St. Paul to Robespierre, and that went through the French revolution, where the new generation of French minds secularised and embedded philosophical with the firm belief that “We have a universal world view! We want everyone to share our values of ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité!‘”.

CITATION Nietzsche Ne plus avoir honte de soi-même

Traduction [EN]: “What is the seal of freedom obtained? No longer being ashamed of oneself.” – Nietzsche

Onfray reminded that this universal view, has created a generation of French minds who believe that we have to go out into the wider world, where the vast majority of people are, in order to share our good news with them, which is our universal human values of « Liberté, égalité, fraternité ». At the Assemblée Nationale, Jules Ferry stood for the idea of free, secular and compulsory school, and so, that school, we people of French intellectual heritage thought that we would give it to the whole planet. This created the wave “We are going to colonise“. Onfray pointed to the example of the colonisation of Algeria as one that shows the intention of the French to pass on their good ideas and values. Hence, when we look back at the historical wars of the French revolution, we come to realise that they were wars of ideological and intellectual colonisation.

Hegel et Napoléon à Iéna - Harper's Magazine 1895 dpurb

Image: “Hegel et Napoléon à Iéna” (illustration tirée du Harper’s Magazine, 1895)

When we consider the German philosopher, Hegel’s passionate words about Napoléon, Hegel now comes across like a great collaborator for the French colonisation concept, as himself as an iconic German historical figure, described Napoléon’s conquering arrival in Germany as: “I saw the Emperor – this world-soul – riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it. Those words from Hegel were written in a letter to his friend Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer on the 13 October 1806, the day before the battle of Jena, which would be fought on the plateau west of the river Saale in today’s Germany between the forces of Napoleon and Frederick William III of Prussia, with the historic defeat suffered by the Prussian army subjugating the Kingdom of Prussia to the French Empire; the victory is celebrated as one of Napoleon’s greatest. It is quite ironic, because the great German, Hegel’s words admitted that the French heritage is superior to his own; and the post-modern French philosopher Michel Onfray ironically suggested « on a juste envie de lui dire ‘mais enfin, et ton Allemagne ? » [French for: You just want to say to him, “But what about your Germany?”].

It may also be useful for the majority of anglophones and fellow English people out there who hardly know their own cultural evolution, to point out that there is French on the emblem of the British monarchy. the words, “Dieu et mon droit” have been the motto since the time of Henry V (1413 – 1422), and since those times old English is not the language of the English elite anymore which resulted to the use of words and expressions of French and Norman origin that are now widely used in the English language. [Note: For advanced learners of French in the Anglo-Saxon world, the essay “The «FRANÇAIS»: Verbs & Tenses for Advanced English Learners of French” may help]. If Henry V decided to use the French language, which to him was a foreign language, on the emblem of his own country, just like Hegel, he must have believed that the French heritage is superior to his own in more ways that one. In a short video in 2022 for History Hit, British historian, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb brought in the confirmation that the English aristocracy valued the French language, with Thomas Boleyn [the best French speaker at the Tudor court] wanting his daughter, the iconic Anne Boleyn to master the French language.

Dieu et mon droit [Royal_Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom]

Image: The « Français » on the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom

French has also been identified as an important language for the UK’s future. In an article published by the British Council in 2014, Professor Michael Kelly, who heads the Modern Langages Department at the University of Southampton described the “je ne sais quoi” in learning to master the French language; the British see French as the language of love as he pointed out, and the French language has a romance to the English speaker’s ear. It is the French culture that sparked the “wow” factor for Kelly who admitted being “bowled over by the depth of feeling” and still getting the tingles when coming across the works of Charles Baudelaire, with “L’invitation au voyage” taking him on a journey to a country where tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté, luxe, calme et volupté [French for : “all is order and beauty, luxury, peace, and pleasure” – quoted from Baudelaire’s poem]. Professor Kelly argued that to him, this sums up France at its best. Kelly writes that when words are said in French, they conjure up a world beyond their ordinary English counterparts; what marks French as a romantic language for the British is that it can almost but not fully be understood. Since it is not used all the time, the English do not get the overlay of everyday meanings that may crowd out the magic for some native French speakers, and according to Kelly, this may be why the British see French as the “language of love”. French has left a lasting impression on the English language and like most other countries, the French do talk, write and sing about love, however, the British, Professor Kelly points out, suspect that the French are more articulate about love, unlike the more ‘buttoned-up English’ (referred to as “coincé” in French), who flounder like Hugh Grant in “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. The difference, Kelly observes, is the culture, not simply the language.

It is also to be noted that the French language has incredible international prestige since it was the language of culture for the European elites and also the language of international diplomacy up to the First World War. The negotiations for the Armistice in 1918 were conducted in French, with interpreters of French to German, however, the French generals and British admirals spoke to each other in French. French left its mark on the English language, and since the 16th century the French have taken pride in the precision and clarity of the language, embodied in the works of great minds such as René Descartes and Voltaire. Those factors attracted the Irish writer Samuel Beckett, who switched to writing in French, since in using the English language, the latter would end up saying more that he intended. French also has a wide range of resources to convey subtle nuances, for example, we have the delicate use of the familiar ‘tu’ and formal ‘vous’ to address another person as ‘you’ [the only option in English], making it clear what degree of familiarity [closeness] one feels one has [or has developed] with the person, or the status one thinks the person has in regards to oneself or the specific social situation and context of the interaction [e.g. in formal/professional matters or relaxed/personal social interaction]. The use of “tu” to address a person is known as the act of “tutoyer” (the “tutoiement”) and the use of “vous” as the act of vouvoyer (the “vouvoiement”). It is generally polite to ask someone in the Francophone sphere whom one believes to have become closer to, “Permettez-vous qu’on se tutoie?” [French for: “Would you mind if we used ‘tu’ towards each other?]. Professor Kelly observed that ‘Ce qui n’est pas clair n’est pas français’, coined by the 18th century writer Antoine Rivarol, became a pet phrase in French schools: ‘if it’s not clear, it’s not French’, though ‘it could be English, Italian, Greek or Latin’, Rivarol added.

Professor Kelly reminds that French is a significant language to learn for the UK industry since close neighbours in Europe [Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, regions of Northern Italy, Channel Islands] also function with it, and with a global empire comparable to and competing with that of the British in the past, the french language is also widely distributed across the Francophone world [e.g. French-speaking Canada, some parts of Africa, North America, the Caribbean, South America]. London is nowadays considered as France’s sixth biggest city with large numbers of French people living in the UK. Kelly observes that unfortunately, not enough English people have the French language skills required to work in industries in the Francophone world [e.g. aerospace (from Concorde to Airbus), defence, telecommunications, energy, water (Compagnie Lyonnaise des Eaux), fashion and beauty (L’Oréal, Chanel) and finance (BNP Paribas). Tourism is also a major factor in the importance of language since the British are the largest proportion of visitors to France and conversely, Britain welcomes more visitors from France than from anywhere else. French remains the most popular language for learners in school, in the workplace and for leisure in the UK; although other languages are also growing in popularity [such as Spanish], Kelly reminds that the geographical situation of the UK will continue to make French a vital language and a constant invitation to a journey.

The Scientific and Philosophical Impact of the Organic Theory of Psychical Construction

Philosophy and science are part of human culture after all, and scientific and technical progress is evolving rapidly, so it is fundamental to understand its impact on our reality on earth. As one of the members of the Academie des Sciences in France, Sanchez-Palencia, pointed out, culture is a fundamental part of our lives and is not a luxury of the rich; it allows us to understand the various facets of our environment on earth, allowing us to situate ourselves in it, to foresee the future or possible futures and to make responsible decisions while assuming the consequences. Of course, scientific knowledge is not exact, but it is close. Theories give us an approximate understanding of the fragments of our reality, and research contributes to the improvement of theories. Despite the limitations imposed by the simplicity of models in rigid empirical scientific research to study reality, these simple models allow us to understand their mechanisms of transformation and evolution and also to manipulate them to achieve a desired goal. It is also important to understand that scientific knowledge forms a compatible and coherent network that is always evolving like our world on earth, and therefore research adds new knowledge, and in doing so, it modifies and restructures old knowledgesynthesis and philosophical creative imagination are always present in quality research. Sanchez-Palencia also quoted Francois Jacob:

«Contrairement à ce que j’avais pu croire, la démarche scientifique ne consistait pas simplement à observer, à accumuler des données expérimentales et à en tirer une théorie. Elle commençait par l’invention d’un monde possible, ou d’un fragment de monde possible, pour la confronter, par l’expérimentation, au monde extérieur. C’était ce dialogue sans fin entre l’imagination et l’expérience qui permettait de se former une représentation toujours plus fine de ce qu’on appelle la réalité »

-François Jacob

French for:

« Contrary to what I had thought, the scientific approach was not simply a matter of observing, accumulating experimental data and deriving a theory. It began with the invention of a possible world, or a fragment of a possible world, to confront it, through experimentation, with the outside world. It was this never-ending dialogue between imagination and experience that made it possible to form an ever finer representation of what we call reality. »

– François Jacob

What society needs to understand is that new discoveries in science also have a philosophical impact and change and redefine our reality and make the past obsolete. Thus, our culture [our understanding of and relationship to our environment on earth] evolves in accordance with and through scientific progress [See: Essay // History on Western Philosophy, Religious cultures, Science, Medicine & Secularisation]. A good example would be the first trial of Edison’s phonograph, as also pointed out by Sanchez-Palencia in his essay to the Académie des Sciences. Edison in his trial had sung a short song to test the phonograph in the presence of his collaborators; and the sound was recorded and reproduced by the apparatus a few moments later. At this point, the whole audience was filled with admiration but also fear, and some of the listeners even made the sign of the cross; yet they all knew that Edison was working on the recording and reproduction of sound, but the human voice seemed too much for these shocked listeners. At that time, reproducing the human voice was seen as a transgression of the limits of what was permitted to mortals on earth, and this was in the realm of transcendence. Today, in the 21st century, some 150 years later, all this has been perfectly forgotten, today’s young people have become connoisseurs of technology, smartphones and digital media, and people posting and watching videos on the high-speed internet do not feel that they are dealing with the world of witchcraft – that is how human culture has evolved.

In the same essay published by the Académie des Sciences’, Sanchez-Palencia describes a feeling that many innovators have suffered from; that of having to pay to transgress the limits of reality of the human of his time, a sentiment that he believes is rooted in the conviction of the masses, who invent myths to redeem themselves from exceeding the supposed limits of the predominantly pagan deities. For example, the invention of the ignition of fire, which led to the myth of Prometheus, who was supposed to have stolen the secret from the gods and who was condemned to be eternally chained so that an eagle would come every day to devour his liver, which would then be renewed every night so that the painful experience of being devoured would continue every day with the flesh eating animal. A less bloody version of Prometheus’ liberation was imagined by the painter Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834 – 1890) [as shown below].

La Libération de Prométhée (1864) par Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834 – 1890)

Therefore, it is no longer surprising that like most intellectual innovators, I have encountered some obstacles that I have successfully overcome, basing my arguments on sound and strong scientific and philosophical arguments [Descartes, Lacan, Voltaire, Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Rousseau] while merging objective perspectives and rational observations based on evolutionary theories put forward by Charles Darwin and Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck. Indeed, I only started questioning human behaviour, the brain and the construction of our realities after having sacrificed years of my life in research and earned the knowledge and skills to do so.

The foundations of my theory are based on empirical facts gathered from a wide range of reputable scientific journals even if empiricism cannot capture everything precisely when dealing with the inner workings of the mind – as most cognitive-behavioural psychologists themselves know very well since they chose to embark in research that only deals with what is observable and measurable, and unfortunately not everything about the mind is measurable since we have too many confounding variables, and the psyche is after all a non-physical domain.

Psychisme Définition - Centre National de Resources Textuelles et Lexicales

Définition du mot “Psychisme” sur le site du Centre National de Resources Textuelles et Lexicales

The organic theory is to conclude, a theory that is meant to free the individual from nonsensical and imaginary barriers and to let them know that they are not bound by anything or anyone with whom they did not sign any agreement to abide by. Individuals are free to build themselves, to create social connections just as much as they can also discard of social burdens and links with any organism that is not in any way beneficial or progressive to their development, and this extends to any outside organism that is not their responsibility or part of their chosen reality [e.g. petty acquaintances, colleagues, family, etc].

What I am simply implying is that individual organisms are masters of their own destiny and to be able to achieve their dreams they should be smart enough to know what to sacrifice since it is not their burden or responsibility and what to create and/or keep. Indeed, I was always told that the measure of one’s success is the measure of one’s sacrifice, and this seems to be a simple matter of reasoning. Perhaps in some way the “Organic Theory” is also putting to the test the notion of “freedom” in our modern societies.

If we really do live in free societies then the individual should be free in his or her choices, because freedom itself entails having choices. The philosophy of the “Organic Theory” also seems to be suggesting that in an enlightened, educated, cultivated, sophisticated and modern society, a free individual should be able to say what he wants, when he wants, where he wants, how he wants, to whomever he wants, and depending on his abilities, he should also be able to choose his own path, identity, domain and circle, and when such acts do not cause death to anyone, this seems totally noble and right.

L'individu libre dans une société éclairée Danny D'Purb dpurb site web 2019

« Dans une société éclairée, éduquée, cultivée, sophistiquée et moderne, un individu libre devrait être capable de dire ce qu’il veut, quand il veut, où il veut, comment il veut, à qui il veut, et selon ses capacités, il devrait aussi pouvoir choisir son propre chemin, identité, domaine et cercle, et lorsque ces actes ne causent la mort à personne, cela semble totalement noble et juste. » -Danny d’Purb Traduction(EN): “In an enlightened, educated, cultivated, sophisticated and modern society, a free individual should be able to say what he wants, when he wants, where he wants, how he wants, to whomever he wants, and according to his abilities, he should also be able to choose his own path, identity, domain and circle, and when these acts do not cause death to anyone, this seems totally noble and right.” -Danny D’Purb

Communicative pattern, also known as “language” is also a fundamental element of the Organic Theory as it is one of the biggest facets of one’s identity. Through language an individual can be allocated to a particular civilisation or civilisations if the individual masters more than one, this is known as the mastery of communicative patters that is also related to behavioural patterns that are inherited from a particular linguistic sphere. As already mentioned, a discussion published in the Oxford Journal of Applied Linguistics based on the emerging field of heritage speaker bilingual studies challenged the generally accepted position in the linguistic sciences, conscious or not, that monolingualism and nativeness are exclusively synonymous; from modern academic discussions, it is now being acknowledged that heritage speaker bilinguals and multilinguals exposed to a language in early childhood are also natives; they have multiple native languages, and nativeness can be applicable to a state of linguistic knowledge that is characterized by significant differences to the monolingual baseline (Rothman and Treffers-Daller, 2014).

To conclude, The Organic Theory is a theory of individual conception and evolution. In the 21st century, as far as ‘The Organic Theory’ [which focuses on the singularity of the individual organism] is concerned, there is no debate between intellectuals in psychology, but simply the discovery of the new mechanical / scientific perspectives that it introduces to explain the psychological and philosophical conception of the individual – as Carl Sagan phrased it, ‘Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge’. Those observable facts are objective, thus they are completely independent and beyond human control, i.e. they cannot be denied or changed, as such, they compose a scientific truth through which philosophy introduces the necessary dose of humility to subjective opinions – as Bertrand Russell rightly pointed out. In the major book by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann originally published in 1966 about Constructivism [the theory that says learners construct knowledge rather than just passively take in information] and inspired by the tradition of phenomenology and the works of Alfred Schütz, “La Construction Sociale de la Réalité [French for: The Social Construction of Reality. A treatise in the sociology of knowledge]”, which over the years has become a source of understanding of the modes of (re)construction of reality for sociologists, we are introduced to the fact that institutions tend to control human behaviour by establishing predefined patterns of conduct, thus channeling it in a specific direction to the detriment of other directions that would theoretically be possible (Berger et al., 2022).

I have sacrificed years of my life studying the brain, development, psychology, art, literature, language, conception and singularity, and I would genuinely feel honoured to know what most of you out there believe in. I firmly believe that intellectuals of psychology and philosophy, have a tremendous work remaining to be done regarding the education of the masses about the construction of their own inner worlds that structures mental life in order to adjust society to a modern and enlightened reality: a positive mind helps everyoneThis procedure will also help in the sophistication of the mind of the masses as it develops a basic sense of scientific and philosophical understanding, and grasp the concept of the free organism on earth with more similarities than differences [Organisms differing in communicative patterns and IQ, but still repeating the similar vital patterns daily with minor variations geographically].

As such, the Organic Theory of Psychical Construction, brings into light the ignored logical fact that the geographical location of an embryo’s fertilisation cannot seal its destiny if the right choices are made and the appropriate resources for development are provided [See: Essay // Developmental Psychology: The 3 Major Theories of Childhood Development]. A biological organism has an almost limitless number of ways in which it can be rebuilt, modified and redefined [re-programmed] depending on the individual’s abilities and this leads to a scientifically and psychologically valid product – the mainstream people at large are still to embed and share this principle to open new perspectives to their own lives and in doing so allow themselves to grow psychologically and culturally.

After studying intellectual humility, psychologists have found that individuals with this personality trait have superior general knowledge (Krumrei-Mancuso, Haggard, LaBouff and Rowatt, 2019). Intellectual humility has consequences for learning and styles of thinking; the process of learning itself requires intellectual humility to acknowledge that one lacks a particular knowledge and hence has something to learn in order to continue evolving. In the same study in the Journal of Positive Psychology, Krumrei-Mancuso and her colleagues found that intellectual humility was associated with less claiming of knowledge that one does not have, indicating a more accurate assessment of one’s own knowledge.

Psychology Intellectual Humility is related to more General Knowledge

In the study, intellectual humility was also correlated with being more inclined to reflective thinking, and also possessing more “need for cognition” [i.e. enjoying thinking hard and problem solving], greater curiosity, and open-minded thinking. In the journal Self and Identity, the results from a study by Porter and Schumann (2017) suggest that intellectual humility can be increased in individuals through a growth mindset of intelligence; hence we could all benefit from intellectual humility in our lifetime development. The authors concluded that “teaching people a malleable view of intelligence may be one promising way to foster intellectual humility and its associated benefits.”

The organic theory is an ongoing project with the foundations having already been laid; it is a lifetime project that will be refined and updated in a series of books in the coming decades along with other works that I intend to bring to the intellectual table and the mainstream audience worldwide.

Reflections

Finesse

The concluding thoughts are logically the fact that men and women who make the choice and who have the necessary education and intelligence to guide them, build themselves and gain the ability to change cultural and national registers & identity, when they have the capacity for development, the linguistic heritage and the genetics of intellect with a mastery of expression, linguistic discourse and speech. It is only then that they manage to represent a nation or an empire [or two?].

However, the concept of self is not an overnight process but a gradual, systematic and intelligent process involving calculated, precise and minute adjustments to one’s inner thoughts, thus, over time [this depends on individual abilities], changing one’s cognitive schemas, personality, identity and linguistic proficiency. It is a process hugely dependent on individual motivation, education, dedication, capability, IQ and socio-psychological proficiency. This is also reminiscent of some of the writings of Diogenes Laërtius, which is likely a stoic interpretation that compares athletic training to psychological and moral training, which consequently highlights the idea of a form of asceticism in construction which implies a “Ponos [a labour and/or a challenge].

Fundamental to the concept of self, language(s) is the essence of identity because it creates a social bond and it is also fundamental to all forms of social activity and discourse which lead to cultural belonging, and thus, cognitive schemas related to internalised emotions and thoughts that allow one to navigate efficiently within the particular cultural theme and become part of the societies related to the languages. Together, psychology, linguistic culture, personality and intelligence are the core foundations of individual conception – to sum it up beautifully for colleagues in innovation, science, psychology and philosophy out there, “It is not what is in the book and brain that counts, but the ability to turn it into a believable logical reality and promote psychologically valid human concepts/identities.”

Bourdon-DescartesX2-dpurb-conceptofself

Images: (i) Sébastien Bourdon par Hyacinthe Rigaud (1733) | (ii) René Descartes par Sébastien Bourdon (1671) | (iii) René Descartes par Alessandro Lonati (2016)

Ad Augusta Per Angusta

Translation (EN): « Has grandiose results by narrow lanes » / Source: Le Petit Larousse 2018 / Les locutions étrangères gravées dans nos mémoires ont la magie des formules oubliées dont le charme va croissant lorsque l’alchimie des mots nous est plus mystérieuses. Elles ont l’autorité de la chose écrite. / Mot de passe des conjurés au quatrième acte d’Hernani, de Victor Hugo. On n’arrive au triomphe qu’en surmontant maintes épreuves.

uomo vitruviano - da vinci (1490) d'purb site

L’Huomo Vitruviano ” ou “L’Homme de Vitruve” par Léonard de Vinci (1490)

*****

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