Yesterday, I explained how Nietzsche, with all his flaws, pioneered the notion that Man's soul is actively created by him, from an initially disintegrated state - foreshadowing the works of both Psychoanalysts and Objectivists. Today, I will compare his views with the former.
In the context of this comparison, two things define Nietzsche's approach: vagueness, and an emphasis on domination. The philosopher talked about metaphysical power centers, but did not specify their objective nature, nor did he reduce that belief to the observation of concretes. He was specific, however, in his explanation of how that process took place: the mastery of one center over the others.
Nietzsche did not see the power centers that beget human life as harmonious, non-contradictory existents, but the exact opposite - they were, by his very definition, in constant conflict. The construction of one's self, then, is not seen as integration, but as the subjugation of all power centers to a single will. In concrete terms, to create your self would be to choose that one thing that drives you and, by sheer willpower, subjugate every single other aspect of your being to it.
The psychoanalysts identified the impossibility of carrying out this process. In contrast with Nietzsche, authors like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were more naturalistic. They identified those power centers to be relatively independent biological systems, that were unified by the Ego. In Nietzschean terms, our digestive system "wants" to eat, and manifests that will through hunger. Our reproductive system, however, "wants" to have sex, instead of eating - and the human mind is the one thing that balances these conflicting drives.
Psychoanalysis sees the non-contradictory integration of these systems by the mind as the ideal, but their moral relativism prevents them from further developing the idea. Freud groups every single type morality, from Kant's anti-life duty ethics to Rand's pro-life rational egoism, into "the superego", and sees it as an agent of repression that necessarily contradicts with our natural drives. Jung, on the other hand, is more optimistic on the issue, but, seeing ethics as a social construct, cannot specify the standards by which the Ego should abandon or stick to it on its way to become one with the Self.
Two psychoanalysts deserve praise in this matter: Viktor Frankl and Erich Neumann. A student of Freud's, Frankl adds what I can only describe as a "Randian flavour" to Freud's theory, changing the Ego's fuction - from a regulative to a creative one. According to him, the individual is not complete, and cannot achieve happiness, unless he has a meaningful purpose to actualize - a purpose chosen, not identified, or created from conflict.
Neumann, on the other hand, was a student of Jung's, and essentially brought his theory "down to earth". In doing so, he narrowed down the process of integrating one's personality. The author realized that, since we are individual beings, the pervasive altruism of traditional moralities was a necessary obstacle to be overcome. He then proposed that we could fashion a non-contradictory self by adopting a morality of rational egoism - an enterprise later successfully executed by Ayn Rand, as we will see tomorrow.
3252.728 SRY