This topic came up because I was trying to explain
Tags: Freud, Misc., psychology, Skinner, SMS family
Posted 06 Dec 2013 by theaveeditor
in Misc.
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What does this post have to do with your family – you tagged it with “SMS family”?
I think the importance of Freud and Skinner to any personality conflict should be obvious.
One of the high points of my own education was Skinner. His rationalism simplifies and enlightens the use of Freud’s mythic and cultural descriptions. If you look at such conflicts in adults through Freud’s glasses, the drive for dominance of Freud’s “ego” becomes clouded in an effort to assign incest as a cause. The same issue is easier to understand from Skinner’s objectivism. Skinner simply tied sibling conflicts to the real physiologic activation syndrome that accompanies conflict. In Skinner’s view, there were only two ways to resolve a conflict like the one I have described. One is via what Skinner termed “extinction.” If an emotion filled issue (either happiness or anger) is allowed to recur under non reinforcing conditions, the emotions die down and better behavior can be reinforced. This “extinction” is why both Freudian analysis and Catholic confession work. It is also why an Orthodox Rabbi may be able to help by providing a ruling from God’s law that allows the parties to blame God. The alternative is to not resolve the oedipal conflict and turn to force, usually the courts, to resolve the material aspects of the conflict.
Buddhism offers tools that can defuse the activation syndrome, but using those tools requires an effort to learn about suffering and detachment that few folks can follow. Look at the conflicts in today’s Burma. Fortunately science may have created pills that help. Since Skinner’s time, the physiology of his “activation syndrome” has begin to be better understood. Drugs can induce what Skinner called extinction. For those in our society willing to use such drugs, it is possible to lower the energy of a conflict to the point that rational help from a priest, rabbi friend or a psychologist can be very helpful.