Rhetoric and Civic Life

As discussed in our previous blog, we will be exploring the importance of the Actual and the Imagined. For an in-depth explanation of these topics and their subdivisions, you can read the previous blog here. But for our purposes in this blog, all you have to know is that the “Imagined” describes one’s beliefs about the world, while the “Actual” describes one’s perceptions of the world.

Before we can discuss the application of this framework and its descriptive utility, we must first investigate how we develop our Imagined and Actual. Understanding the development of our Actual and Imagined will allow us to understand the extreme variance that can exist between different peoples’ Actual and Imagined.

The development of our Imagined and Actual is heavily influenced by our upbringing.

As is consistent with psychoanalytic theory, our upbringing plays a major role in the development of our Actual and Imagined. The way we behave as adults and interact with others is determined by the ways we were raised as children. Broadly, Attachment Theory is a set of concepts that explain the emotional bond between an infant and its caregiver, and how these bonds affect the child into adulthood.

There has been much discussion about why attachment occurs and its effects on our psychology, but I propose that the most meaningful impact attachment has on us, is by modifying and procuring our Actual and Imagined. This means that the way we are raised heavily influences the things we believe about ourselves, what we should expect from others, our willingness and ease of entering relationships with others, and more.

For instance, suppose your caregiver was unavailable throughout your childhood. It has been demonstrated empirically that that child will grow up and avoid close emotional relationships. Now, why does this happen? I propose that this is a byproduct of that child’s Imagined Other being altered. When that child’s attention and love is being unreciprocated from its caregivers, that child will modify its Imagined Other to believe that they shouldn’t expect reciprocation in emotional relationships.

There are a thousand and one ways that our upbringing influences the ways we grow up, but the attachment styles described by Attachment Theory give us a good guideline on how our upbringing alters our Imagined and Actual.

As an addendum, I should add that our upbringing is not the only thing that influences the development of our Actual and Imagined. There are a whole host of cultural and societal expectations that influence the way we think about the world and ourselves.

If you have any comments, criticisms, or questions, please comment them below!

First and foremost, I would like to extend a friendly “hello” to my new readers. I am eager to invite you on a journey through the field of psychology and hopefully help you learn something along the way. Throughout these blogs, I hope to impart some of my personal beliefs regarding human psychology. But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before we delve into the nooks and crannies of our psyches, we must orient ourselves by analyzing the current state of psychology.

We are on the edge of immense potential.

We currently live in a historical period with unprecedented levels of knowledge available to us. Many psychological theorists were impeded by their era’s embedded sexism and racism. However, now we understand that concepts such as race and gender are socially constructed categories, not biological characteristics. With this newfound knowledge, we have the capability to construct psychological theories based upon a greater volume of evidence.

Furthermore, we find ourselves in a time of unintegrated theorization. Simply put, we have a lot of good ideas, but not a cohesive “super theory”. For instance, we know that the unconscious mind exists in some capacity, yet mainstream psychological theories such as Cognitive-Behavioral psychology ignore its importance in our behavior. Similarly, Psychoanalytic theory contains important concepts such as projection and sublimation but is largely ignored because of its odious past. Simply put, we have yet to arrive at a “unifying theory” of psychology.

We are indeed on the edge of great potential. However, this potential coincides with great challenges we must face. Despite the many improvements in recognizing our own biases, no one is without them. To create ground-breaking psychological theories, we must be rigorous in our introspection to ensure our personal biases do not interfere with our psychological prescriptions.

Another challenge we face is the question of whether we can improve on our current psychological theories. It is inarguable that Psychoanalytic theory and Cognitive-Behavioral theory have descriptive utility in different situations. However, it may be the case that a series of disparate theories is the best we can get. It may be the case that the human psyche is so immensely complex that there could never be a “unifying theory” of psychology. But, I will try my hardest to inch towards that unification throughout my next blogs. Along the way, I encourage you to challenge my presuppositions, postulations, and conclusions. I am also curious to know, do you think we can ever reach a “unifying theory” of psychology?

“Knowledge is power”. You have undoubtedly heard this phrase a thousand times over. In its typical usage, it means that being educated will bring you success and material wealth in life. However, when it comes to the realm of psychology, I take this saying much more literally.

In this blog, we will explore the role that knowledge plays in the creation of our imagined self and the ramifications it has on our lives. 

First and foremost, we should analyze what we mean when we say “knowledge is power”. As we reviewed in the Change blog, we start to fear change and try to avoid that change starting in early development. Consequently, one of the best ways to avoid this change is by having knowledge of the world around you and the things that will happen to you. After all, if you have knowledge of what is happening then you can take actions to prevent that change. Fundamentally, this knowledge becomes something we strive after. It is why we are curious as children– it provides safety, comfort, and security.

The positive reinforcement that stems from having knowledge will lead us to incorporate being “knowledgeable” or “smart” into our sense of imagined self. Almost every person incorporates being “smart” or “knowledgeable” into their imagined self in one way or another. This quality is uniquely able to be incorporated into our imagined self; qualities like beauty and fitness have external modes of verification, whereas intelligence is subjective and almost anyone can lay claim to being intelligent.

Now, this is all fairly abstract, so let’s look at a common example: someone who dislikes their job or career path. This person is in their 20s or 30s and has recently found that they do not like their job or their chosen career path. They are fully capable of pursuing a different career but chose not to. More often than not, this decision to stay unhappy on their current career path stems from a fear of change. This person is more willing to stay unhappy in their current path than live in the unknown. In their mind, they rationalize that, “I don’t know what I would do if I don’t pursue ______”. For most people, it is more comforting to live in unhappiness than to live in the unknown. As uncomfortable as we may be in the present, it does bring along a level of certainty and predictability.

This idea of intelligence being incorporated with our imagined self also gives us an insight into the mental processes of a conspiracy theorist. One commonality to all conspiracy theorists is that they all believe that they are uniquely smart and have unique access to certain “facts”. Most conspiracy theorists also refuse to reject their conspiratorial beliefs when confronted with contradictory evidence. I believe that this stubbornness stems from the fact that they have incorporated this façade of intelligence into their imagined self, and as we discussed previously, people desperately hold onto their sense of imagined self.

Overall, it is not a bad thing to be knowledgeable or to be smart. However, it is always worth doing introspection to consider the extent to which this desire for knowledge has been incorporated into your imagined self. These irrational thought processes can wreak havoc on your life and happiness if allowed to persist.

Morality. Simply put, morality is a system or collection of ideas of what is right or wrong conduct. However, within the context of psychology, we will focus on how we arrive at a sense of what is right and what is wrong. 

The main disciplines of psychological analysis have largely ignored this question of how we arrive at our morality. Cognitive, behavioral, biological, evolutionary, and humanistic psychologists have written off the importance of this development and believe this question to be irrelevant to the understanding of the human mind. I would argue that this question is incredibly important and can reveal a lot about how and why we make the decisions we do. After all, many of our decisions are influenced by our sense of what is right or wrong. 

The one discipline of psychology that has explored this question is Freud’s psychoanalysis. Freud proposed that our mind was broken into three distinct parts: the id, ego, and superego. The id is our animalistic part of ourselves that will do anything to achieve pleasure, the superego is our internal sense of morality, and the ego is the part of our mind that mediates conflicts of the superego and id. Freud’s theory includes and emphasizes the importance of the superego on our psychological processes and decision-making processes.

Conversely, I propose that our morality is inextricably tied to our “imagined self” and “actual self”.

We covered the concepts of the imagined self and actual self in the previous blog about anxiety. In review, imagined self is a term to describe the internalized construction you’ve created for yourself. Actual self is a term to describe the conception of yourself that is constructed through the actions you take. You can refer to the previous blog for a more expansive exploration of each of these terms. 

From a young age, we don’t have an imagined self, our main psychological processes are desires for warmth, food, sleep, etc. These are more primordial psychological functions. It isn’t until we continue to mature that we start to develop a sense of our imagined self. At a certain point, we start to observe the actions and instructions of those around us. We start to learn about what is right and what is wrong. This learning process gradually engrains its information with our imagined self and what we ought to be. 

This construction of our imagined selves is Hegelian in nature; we learn our sense of morality upon the recognition of an other. It is only by the recognition of another consciousness that we are able to develop any sense of right or wrong.

Since the construction of our morality and imagined self is contingent upon the recognition of another consciousness, we can readily conclude that our morality is also related to our actual self. In other words, your actual self cannot be viewed as moral unless your outward behavior is seen as moral.

Now that we have established the connectedness of our morality and our imagined/actual selves, we can look at the ramifications of such a structure. 

When we behave in a way that is immoral there are two reasons this makes us uncomfortable. Firstly, it makes us uncomfortable because there exists an incongruence between our imagined and actual selves. Secondly, it makes us uncomfortable because our minds have a desire to preserve our imagined self. In other words, immoral behavior shifts our beliefs about who we are (changes our imagined self) and this change makes us uncomfortable. There are select instances in which this incongruence does not bother the individual, however, this usually stems from an intrapersonal lie. The aforementioned mechanisms of change and intrapersonal lies are detailed in previous blogs. 

Anxiety. Whether you recognize it or not, everyone experiences some level of anxiety. It is commonly known in psychology that moderate levels of cortisol (stress hormone) are beneficial and helps one to focus on daily tasks. This relationship between stress levels and performance of tasks is represented in the Yerkes-Dodson curve. At low and high levels of stress, we perform poorly on tasks. This high point is what is broadly referred to as anxiety. 

Anxiety manifests itself in many different forms and has been categorized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders (DSM V) into 6 major categories. While the DSM V can be useful to psychiatrists when trying to diagnose and treat anxiety disorders, it doesn’t tell us much about why people may have anxiety disorders. This blog will go over a few theories of why people experience anxiety.  

Proponents of the cognitive-behavioral psychology school of thought suggest that anxiety stems from the cognitive triangle. The cognitive triangle is a model that shows the relationship between our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. As it relates to anxiety, people have faulty beliefs about the world which causes them to have irrational feelings and behave irrationally. When the circumstances are proper, this combination of irrational thoughts and feelings will induce feelings of anxiety.  

On the other hand, members of the psychoanalytic school of thought suggest that anxiety is inextricably tied to the unconscious. Sigmund Freud’s first theory divided anxiety into two distinct categories, realistic anxiety, and neurotic anxiety. Realistic anxiety describes anxiety in response to actual danger, whereas neurotic anxiety is anxiety in response to internal psychic conflict. Freud emphasized trying to understand and combat the second type of anxiety.  

As with most of psychoanalysis, the internal psychic causes of the anxiety had to be identified in order to address them. Frequently, these psychological conflicts stemmed from childhood trauma.  

I propose that anxiety stems from the internal contradictions that occur from an incongruency between your imagined self and actual self.  

In order to understand my conception of anxiety, we must define the terms “imagined self” and “actual self”. Imagined self is a term to describe the internalized construction you’ve created for yourself. For example, an element of your imagined self could be that you are popular or that you are intelligent, or that you are physically attractive. Actual self is a term to describe the conception of yourself that is constructed through the actions you take. For example, your imagined self may include viewing yourself as intelligent, but your actual self would not be intelligent if you got Ds and Fs in school.  

This view of anxiety has its limitations and struggles to account for certain types of anxieties like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In these cases, Freud’s theory of anxiety serves more explanatory utility. Regardless, my “imagined/actual self” view of anxiety has explanatory utility.  

For example, suppose that you value being intelligent, this is an element of your imagined self. Now, let’s say that you have a big exam coming up. From what I have observed and experienced, people who value being intelligent/viewed as intelligent get anxious about doing poorly on exams. This anxiety stems from the incongruency between your imagined self and actual self.  

I have also identified three ways by which to alleviate this sense of anxiety. The first form is when people push this incongruency out of their consciousness. With the last example, this usually takes the form of procrastination; to study for a test is to tacitly accept the idea that you will not perform as well as you wish, and by procrastinating you don’t need to think about this incongruency.  

The second and third forms are similar in nature. The second form is to modify your actual self in order to resolve the incongruency. For our last example, this would involve studying until you convinced yourself that you would not perform poorly on the exam, this would entail the realignment of your imagined and actual self. The third form is by far the least used form. The third form entails modifying your imagined self and realigning your value system and how you view yourself. People rarely take this path, because as we discussed in the Roles blog, people hold desperately onto their roles and imagined self. For our last example, this method would require one de-emphasize the importance of being viewed as intelligent. The unfortunate thing about this third technique being the least used is the fact that it is the most effective. 

Memory. Simply put, our memory is our brain’s ability to encode, store, and retrieve information about the world around us. The mechanisms that underlie our memory and encoding processes are extremely complicated but follow a general path. First, we detect information with one of our senses, if we give attention to that information it will be processed in our short-term memory, and sometimes that information will be encoded in our long-term memory. 

Something that we’ve all done is forget information that we once knew. In its purest form, the act of forgetting is when we are unable to recall information from our long-term memory and bring it into our conscious short-term memory. There are two main theories of forgetting and the reasons behind why we forget information.  

The first, and most relevant reason for why we forget information is because of how our conscious works. When we live our lives, we don’t have the goal of remembering the details of our day. Instead, we have the goal of understanding the world around us. For example, if I gave you a list of 20 nouns and asked you to remember as many as you could, you would be able to recall most of them. Alternatively, if I just gave you the list without any specific instructions, you would struggle to name most of them.  

The second, and more interesting reason for why we forget information is because of our unconscious brain’s desire to protect itself. Forgetting can serve utility to prevent us from remembering traumatic or unpleasant events. After a traumatic event, the memories of that event will become less accessible and the details of the event will be “smoothed over”.  

A common example of the brain protecting itself through forgetting is with a soldier facing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The incidences of repressed memories increased drastically after the events of World War 2. Soldiers would come home with mental and physical scars and be unable to describe the events that lead to those damages.  

Another example of these repressed memories is common with abused children. Children will completely forget traumatic events of abuse because of the associated psychological stress. In some cases, these memories can be retrieved after seeing a scene in a movie or reading a chapter of a book that reminds them of the traumatic event.  

Some theorists such as Sigmund Freud take this theory of forgetting one step further. His argument is that this act of forgetting is fundamentally a defense mechanism of the brain and that this forgetting mechanism is not contained to only traumatic events. Instead, Freud suggests that people will forget things if it is psychologically discomforting in any manner.  

An example Freud gives in his Psychopathologies of Everyday Life is when he was unable to recall the name of a client. Freud deduced that his inability to recall the patient’s name was because it was Lederer; Lederer was also the name of a critic of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. It was psychologically distressing for Freud to think of the name Lederer because of its association with one of his critics.  

If we are to believe Freud’s hypothesis of forgetting, then a traumatic event is not a prerequisite to suffering this type of forgetfulness. I encourage you to be conscientious of the next time you happen to forget the name of something or the name of someone. When you end up remembering its name, do some introspection and free association. It may reveal that your unconscious brain was forcing you to forget that information to try and prevent psychological distress.  

The unconscious. While discussing the unconscious, people usually think about the “consciousness iceberg”, which is divided into three levels: conscious, subconscious, and unconscious. Those with more knowledge of psychological knowledge might think about the sexual drive theories of Freud. However, both of these models of the unconscious are antiquated and incongruent with modern research about the unconscious.

The unconscious is much simpler than the models posited by Freud and plays a more significant role than the “iceberg model” suggests. Broadly speaking, the conscious consists of all of the thoughts, feelings, and memories that we can acknowledge. Whereas the unconscious is the deeper mental processes that we can’t readily access.  

The first psychologist to analyze the ramifications of the unconscious mind in our lives was Sigmund Freud. In fact, psychoanalytic/psychodynamic psychology are the only two domains that actively consider the role that the unconscious has in our lives. Herein lies one of the major issues with modern psychology:  

Despite the constant role the unconscious plays in our everyday lives, many domains of psychology fail to account for its effects.  

The unconscious is, in its purest form, an engine for information processing. The brain is the busiest organ. It uses up 20% of the body’s total energy, is running 24/7, and is responsible for coordinating everything from movement to thinking to digestion to emotions. To have our conscious control everything that the brain coordinates would be both impossible and deadly. There is an obvious reason that our brain automatically tells our hearts to pump, our lungs to breathe, and for our eyes to blink.  

We know that the unconscious is responsible for most of the brain’s workings. What we can’t always know is what is part of our conscious brain and what isn’t. For example, we concretely know that the unconscious is responsible for the heart pumping blood, the body producing sweat, the alveoli expanding and contracting, etc. What we don’t know concretely are areas like emotion.  

For example, you may wake up feeling sad one day. You may not know why you’re feeling sad, but you have the conscious experience of feeling sad nonetheless. There is a constant interplay between the conscious experience of emotion and the unconscious causing of that emotion. The exploration of how emotions are created from the unconscious mind is still a major field of research, but some of it may have to do with the physiology of our brain. 

Our central nervous system is created from a network of neurons. Neurons are special types of cells that can send information from one neuron to another (there are many types of neurons and the function of those neurons can vary based on the neurotransmitters they contain, but this definition will suffice for our purposes). The brain is also built through a series of associative bundles. This means that the neurons in a particular part of the brain will all have similar functions. This associative nature of neurons has major ramifications for our unconscious brains.

Referring to our previous example, you might have woken up sad because a related series of neurons had fired the day before, and the neurons responsible for producing the emotion of sadness were activated accidentally. Many other emotional states and cognitive functions such as intuition, anger, repressed memories, and hidden beliefs are caused by similar associative networks of neurons.  

Now that we have a basic understanding of the unconscious and its relation to our physiology, we can delve into more interesting facets of the unconscious and how it affects your lives in upcoming blogs.