Connections

I'm back. Thanks for being patient.


The psyche is a network. From the earliest studies of it, this was apparent. Take, for example, Jung's studies in word association, and Freud's concept of "free association." The basic premise of these experiments was that psychic contents (in the form of words, thoughts, feelings, images) are not just haphazardly placed about, but in fact are connected to each other. And what's more, they are connected meaningfully. An image from a dream may remind you of something you said yesterday, and, on closer inspection, the two will show some sort of relationship, frequently in the form of a feeling-tone.

At first this may seem an insignificant observation. One could easily dismiss it at face value and say "Well of course! The one reminded me of the other because they are similar!" But if we are interested in describing the psyche, then perhaps it does us some good to pay some attention to this phenomenon. What this means is that there is some connective "tissue" in the psyche.

Now by "tissue" I do not mean anything resembling the Matter we experience in the physical world. Clearly, matter separates itself with its aspect of tangibility. We cannot touch the psyche. But we can, for certain, see the effects of its connectedness. When you think of the word "home," what image comes to your mind? There is one pretty clearly defined picture. Other pictures, maybe thoughts, certainly follow it, but they were undoubtedly preceded by a primary "home" image.

Thus, could we say that the word "home," and the vibrations it produces in your psyche, strike a chord with the vibrations of your "home" image? Could they perhaps be in the same octave(?!), or at least "harmonious" with one another?

As you can see, I've brought in a new element. Some neuroscientists would say that the word "home" excites an electrical impulse in the brain which in turn generates an image. And they would be right, but they would not be complete. Certainly this is the physical correllate for the process, but it does not account for a psychic network that exists apart from the laws of conventional materialism.

The unconscious psyche is a dynamic, forceful presence whose effects cannot be accounted for if our investigation only includes a discussion of conscious intent. This fact leaves the door wide open to allow in the hypothesis that the psyche does not correspond identically with the body. As long as it has some measure of autonomy, we must allow for some extra-corporeal force into our discussion.

In this case, the psyche may well use material processes to express itself in the world, but it is not the material processes themselves. Nor does it exist in time, because time only exists in human consciousness. The psyche expresses itself in time, but it is not formally connected to time. This is a difficult concept to understand, but it has its roots in the idea that there is something invisible at work when we try to describe humans. The following example may help illustrate my point.

Take love. There is no proving that love exists between two people. Molecular biologists might point, with good reason, to the rush of activity that occurs physiologically when the two are in the heat of passion, the buzzing neurotransmitters, the secretion of hormones, etc. But nothing attests to the connection - the quite literal connection - between the two people. What of the instances when they are apart from each other? Imagine a birds' eye view of two people in love 500 miles away from one another. Nothing seems to be connecting them. The excitement of being together is gone - perhaps they are even preoccupied with their respective business at the moment. Has their love gone away? Of course not. It continues to exist in the two lovers' psyches.

(I should say here that I am not saying that love "only" exists in the psyche... I am using the term "psyche" in the broadest possible way - the way that closely resembles the definition of "soul.")

The example of the lovers attests to the fact that humans' psyches can be in a state of connection or disconnection. This "connection" should not be taken lightly. Human history is full of countless examples of one lover enduring extreme physical deprivation or even torture, and surviving only because of the knowledge that they were being loved. So, clearly, even when the loving partner is not present, the connection has some effect on the loved.

But where can we account for this "effect" of love? In the electrical impulses of neurons flashing thoughts and images of the lover? In the binding of warmth-generating peptides to cells? Probably not. In the instance of love, there is a collection of wavelengths that, as a result of being shone upon by the psychic "light," have become activated - conscious- giving the feeler access to an increased capacity for endurance, or whatever the task at hand is. It sounds like science fiction, but it's true!

There is actually some illuminating entity in the psyche which accounts for the difference between conscious and unconscious contents. What is it illuminating? Wavelengths! In fact, the light is the very thing that gives the psyche form. Without it, there is just a mess of unconsciousness, of unmet connections, of scrambled meaninglessness. Meaning, in fact, is actually probably just a rhythm, a beat in the psychic fabric that absorbs all the other abberant beats and tones in our lives.

Essentially, I am comparing love, and psyche, to music. So for all those romantics out there who were disillusioned by my seemingly reductionist view of love, I am only reductionist insofar as music can be reduced. And for anyone whose heartstrings have ever been pulled by that sweet song that evokes the feeling of a first love, the notion of reducing music should hopefully seem ridiculous.