Personality transformations can happen either bottom-up or top-down. Behavioral psychologists help with bottom-up transformation, focusing on the smallest viable change that can bring about the highest return results. Psychoanalysts focus on top-down transformation, generally more applicable to people with a creative bent. Unlike the rationalist tradition that sees understanding the world to be the underlying motive for all actions and utterances, Freud and Nietzsche held the romantic strand of thought that sees all actions and utterances are a result of unconscious instincts, and their interactions. Peterson argues that these two ideas can actually be reconciled. If one is driven by unconscious instincts alone then one is "possessed" and immature. If such instincts are integrated at the highest possible level then one is rational and mature. The prime example of immaturity is in infants. Infants are "possessed" by emotional states 100% at a time, and jump ship from one emotional state to the next with the same veracity. The emotions are not integrated at a higher level. Paul Ekman's schema of facial emotional coding was what allowed people to map out those infant emotions. It takes time and effort for children to learn such integration including delayed gratification. Thus, our rationality is better suited than our short-term, whimsical, emotional states at orienting us in the world. Our emotions have to be integrated at a higher level, instead of repressed as what Freud would suggest. >[!quote] Just because a want emerges doesn't mean you're that want. —Jordan Peterson Freud's conceptualization of the unconscious: - Conservative: stores memories. - Dissolutive: container of habits, once voluntary, now automatized, and dissociated personality elements, leading a parasitic existence. - Creative: it's the matrix of new ideas. - Mythopoetic: generates narratives or fantasies that appear religious or mythic. Other ideas: - Emotions as pathogens - Repression as source of pathology - Self-defense mechanisms—Denial, displacement, identification, rationalization, intellectualization, sublimation - Neurotic manifestations—psychosomatic symptoms Peterson's critiques of Freud: - Talking cure is no cure. Identifying the source of trauma aka complaining is not enough, one must think through why it happened, in order to ensure one is free from it in the present. - Psychopathology is often more of a moral failure than a medical condition, with all defense mechanisms being lies to oneself. - An ego that is tormented by the Id and crushed by the superego is the ego of a psychopathological man, and not a socially well integrated person. - Sexuality and aggression are not to be repressed, but to be integrated towards a higher purpose. The greatness of Freud lies in his courage in approaching the depths of his soul, which is an endeavor that requires sacrificial death of a great order. Many great thinkers and philosophers have tried but failed. It is hard to accurately measure how great his contribution is because his hypothesis of the unconscious is something that we have taken for granted. Two books to refer: Discovery of the Unconscious, and Freud biography. Back to: [[PA Personality and its Transformations]]