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YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO WATER BUT YOU CAN'T MAKE IT FISH

7/23/2014

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The human body is a singular organism or entity that barring any unforeseen accident or cataclysm retains itself intact and un-ruptured--it is "one" body.  This body is also ultimately and unsympathetically physical.  Almost a redundancy to even state.  The human psyche, on the other hand, is based on an assumed singularity, i.e. a self, an identity, a personality, etc.  The "healthy" human psyche is thought to consist of one "self" and not multiple as alternately this would be considered a major psychiatric disorder: Dissociative Identity Disorder.  Granted this singular identity or personality can be expanded upon to encompass a multiplicity or non-unary entity--An identity can incorporate being a mother/father, student/worker, child/adult, priest/sinner and on and on, but the main psychological thrust of any individual psyche is that it is a unitary, singular whole--a one.   This probably sounds almost as trite and obvious as stating that the human body is physical.

The reason it may sound excruciatingly trite is that it has always been the case due to the experiential evidence, compounded daily, that overwhelmingly seems to validate and correspond to the findings--"I am one."  The "fact" that you or I am a singular entity has been propounded, healthfully or otherwise, into our psyche since day ONE--birth.  A non-healthy parent or less-than-adequate care-giver may not have driven this fact home which potentially lays the foundation for the individual structuring of a non-healthy psyche--the psyche may need wholeness and individuation to properly function.  "May" because the human psyche is amazingly plastic and resilient and who is, let-alone-I, to identify and ceremonially declare--"here, here... This is the sane and sanitary psyche" and "this is what it looks like!"

This is not the objective of this article.  The objective of this article is to place into question well held assumptions which have the potential of defracting the light that inevitably leads to illusory misinterpretations.  These errors can insinuate themselves both into the external physical reality-based constructs we have of our environment(s) and our relation to it, while also causing disruptions of our internal psychological reality-based constructs of our internal psychic world.  Some very basic assumptions may lead to very obscure and inverted representations that we then unshakably but erroneously hold onto and that seriously affect our ability to adequately relate to ourselves, others and the environment.

With the objective clearly stated, the thesis of the article is that the well-held belief/fact that we ONLY have a singular and unary body with a correspondingly individual and singular psyche is only "half" of the story when it is traditionally considered the "whole" of the story--or it wouldn't be so trite to identify it as such.  What I want to highlight are the psychological ramifications of such a half truth and to not, in any way, suggest that these facts are not valid observations and constructs in themselves.  The singularity of both entities is self-evident and pragmatically essential to healthy functioning--the problem is that it is only half of the equation that can lead to a more grounded foundational metaphor for what it is to be human--physically and psychologically.

Again it is firmly instated at the earliest stages of life that each person is an individual, regardless if one lives in a collectivist or individualist culture--barring subtle as well as striking contextual differences--the base and definitional grounding of each individual is that they are unique and singular.  This can be validated in all cultures as each will have a process of some sort of differentiation, a la -- a proper name, which is the naming and individuating of the baby/child from the whole, and the other. 

This naming, via designation, implies on all fronts, psychologically and physically that there is here and now a separate and individual entity.  Again this article is not an attempt to disenfranchise this "fact" but it is to highlight instead the potential that this fact is only a half-truth.  Writing this article is an act of individuation and symbolizes my unary-perspective: A perspective (upon multiple varied options) on the psyche and what basic and foundational assumptions can do to negatively or positively do to affect that psyche.

There are countless books, from religious to academic, that seek to suture the "fractured" or unhealthfully divided psyche.  The perspective I am putting forward in this article is dissimilar in at least one major way to this objective: (1) Generally speaking the psyche, when fractured, needs to be maintained and re-oriented toward a virtual "wholeness" as countless books purport, but the struggle all of these varied books are unable to escape is this virtuality.  All abstractions or conceptualizations that are totalizations, such as "everything," "nothing," "wholeness," "completeness," "totality" itself are always virtual as opposed to actual, that is they are always theoretical and cannot be found in the physical or externality.  Wholeness is at best an idealization on a situation that is intractable or as Freud once put it interminable.  There are many tracts: Logical, Philosophical, Mathematical and all of the sub-divisions within these fields, that this latter statement can be directed but that is not the objective, nor scope of this article.

This wholeness is an analog and code for "one" or the quality of oneness.  Wholeness, oneness and the idea of being a singular entity

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