Spirituality In Politics

  • Home
  • Intro
  • Articles Index
    • Introductory
      • 1. Metaphysics in a Spiritual Society
      • 2. The Spirit of Guidance
      • 3. Divination
      • 4. Raynor C. Johnson: The Imprisoned Splendour
    • Articles 2: Headline Policies for a Spiritual Society
      • Education
        • The Importance of Fairy Tales
        • The Importance of Fairy Tales, Part 2 – Fairy Tales and Feminists
        • Fairy Tales and Feminism – the Story of Psyche
        • Fairy Tales and Feminism — the Story of Psyche, Interpretation
        • Save Our Fairy Tales — Concluding Remarks
    • ARTICLES 3: MORE DETAILED IDEAS
      • Politics from a Taoist Perspective – Arguing for the Centre
      • Politics from the Centre — Is that the only way forward?
      • Changing the World – Spirituality or Socialism?
      • The Superorganism – a Challenge to Materialist Science
      • Is the Earth a Superorganism?
      • Humanity as Part of the Superorganism
    • Articles 4 The Role of the Citizen
      • The Role of the Citizen in a Spiritual Society
      • Reflections on Eastern and Western Spirituality
    • The Superorganism Question and the European Union
    • A Vision for a Spiritual United Kingdom Outside the European Union
    • Consciousness
      • Is the Self an Illusion – Series Introduction
        • Is the Self an Illusion? – Neuroscience, Gurdjieff and Buddhism
        • Is the Self an Illusion? – The Opposing Viewpoint
        • Is the Self an Illusion? — Yes and No
        • Is the Self an Illusion? — Summary and Conclusions
      • The Hidden, Deeper Self - Introduction
        • The Hidden, Deeper Self - Freudian Slips
        • The Hidden, Deeper Self - Dreams
        • The Hidden, Deeper Self – Synchronicity
        • The Hidden, Deeper Self - Automatic Writing
        • The Hidden, Deeper Self – Divination
    • Why Christianity Must Change or Die – Introduction
      • Christianity Must Change or Die — Gnosticism and Carl Jung
      • Significant Moments in Church History – Introduction
        • Number 1, The Council of Nicaea, 325AD
        • Number 2 – The Anathema Against Origen, 553 A.D.
          • Reincarnation and Christianity
    • Was Jesus Divine? – Introduction
      • Was Jesus Divine, the Son of God? – 1. The Adoptionist Problem
      • 2. The Jewish Messiah
      • 3. The Eschatological Prophet
      • 4. Shakespeare’s Heretical Play
      • 5. The Resurrection of Jesus – part 1
      • Was Jesus Divine, the Son of God? - Summary and Conclusions so far
      • 6. Was Jesus Married?
      • 7. Was Jesus Married? — part 2
      • 8. Was Jesus Married? — part 3
  • Blog Introduction
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The Hidden, Deeper Self - Freudian Slips

    I assume that readers are familiar with the introduction to this series. There I said that I am going to suggest that the deeper self has access to the whole of human knowledge. That will follow in the third and fourth articles. In this first one I am going to suggest merely that the deeper self knows the hidden truth about the person, and that, in simple language, it is trying to help the conscious personality sort out its problems by trying to reveal this. A clear example of this process at work is the phenomenon of Freudian slips.    

    Sigmund Freud introduced this concept in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1), and it is now a term in common usage. In general terms, we can say that the ego is not in full possession of the truth, is prone to self-deception, possibly for ostensibly good reasons — acknowledging the truth may seem too painful. Something inside, however, wants the truth to be recognised. There is thus a hidden intelligence, what I am calling the deeper self, which somehow forces the ego to make a mistake in speech or action, revealing what it is trying to conceal.

    Freud’s most powerful example, to my mind, so extraordinary that it is almost impossible to believe, tells of a woman who, seeing a man in the street, fails to remember that she had recently married him. He reports that the marriage subsequently came “to a most unhappy end” (p261). This seems to be a clear message from the deeper, hidden self, which wants the woman to recognise the terrible mistake she has made.

    I have an outstanding example of a Freudian slip from my own experience. Some time ago I attended a group-therapy weekend. Some exercises were conducted in pairs, and I was involved in one of these with a man, I would estimate, in his late twenties. During a lull in the exercise, to avoid an embarrassing silence, I engaged him in conversation, and my opening gambit was “How long have you been in therapy?”. His reply was “since I was 11”. This was a strange answer — it seemed a young age to start — so I asked him, “why, what happened then?” He replied, “I was sent away to boarding school”. I was excited by this; it seemed like an obvious example of a Freudian slip — his deeper self was making him aware how his problems had started, a wonderful gift which would aid him in his therapy. However, when I started trying to point this out to him, his expression visibly changed, and he went into a state of anxiety and denial, and tried to explain that it meant nothing, was just a “slip of the tongue”. His ego-self clearly wasn’t ready to hear the message.

Footnote:

(1) The Penguin Freud Library, Volume 5, 1991

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