Encoding meaningful psychosocial complexity otherwise

Global Civilization through Interweaving Polyamory and Polyanimosity? (Part #10)

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Exemplary challenge of the Freud-Jung relationship: Given their considerable influence with respect to thinking regarding sexuality and love, the friendship and enmity between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung merits particular attention in relation to this argument:

• Ora Gruengard: Freud-Jung controversy: a failed intercultural dialogue (International Wittgenstein Symposia, 2006)
• William Todd Schultz:
  • Why Freud and Jung Broke Up (Psychology Today, 19 March 2009)
  • Why Freud and Jung Broke Up: Part II (Psychology Today, 21 March 2009)
• Stephen A. Diamond: Freud, Jung and their Complexes (Psychology Today, 21 March 2009)
• Linda Donn: Freud and Jung: years of friendship, years of loss (Scribner, 1988)
• Duane Schultz: Intimate Friends: the turbulent relationship between Freud and Jung (Tarcher, 1990)

In this context their relationship is especially significant in the light of the little known role of Sabina Spielrein, the first female psychoanalyst, who endeavoured to reconcile their perspectives:

• John Kerr: A Most Dangerous Method: the story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein (Knopf, 1993)
• Aldo Carotenuto: A Secret Symmetry: Sabina Spielrein between Jung and Freud (Pantheon, 1982)
• C. Covington and B. Wharton (Eds.): Sabina Spielrein: forgotten pioneer of psychoanalysis (Brunner-Routledge, 2003)

The question to be asked is the capacity of either Jung or Freud to reframe fruitfully the associated conditions between them within their respective worldviews during their lifetimes. With those worldviews subsequently valued by their respective followers -- who continue to cultivate that enmity -- the question then extends to current capacity to reframe friendship and enmity arising from fundamental intellectual disagreements and the experiential significance with with these are associated.

Nominative determinism? There is a speculative case to be explored regarding the extent to which nominative determinism (in German) may have influenced the interplay of these iconic figures in framing comprehension of relationships. That Wikipedia entry cites Jung's own listing of striking instances among psychologists -- including himself: Herr Freud (Joy) champions the pleasure principle, Herr Adler (Eagle) the will to power, Herr Jung (Young) the idea of rebirth... In that sense "spielrein" offers an emphasis on "pure play"or a "clean game". This recalls the insightful study by James Carse (Finite and Infinite Games: a vision of life as play and possibility, 1986).

Appropriately the latter includes the relevance of sexuality, and follows from an earlier study of themes which were a particular focus of Spielrein (James Carse, Death and Existence: a conceptual history of human mortality, 1980). Speilrein had delivered a seminal paper on sexuality and death (Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being, 1912) arguing that human beings are torn between a static desire to remain as they are, and a dynamic one to reproduce, but that the reproductive instinct contains an aspect that is destructive of oneself as well as creative (Frank J. Marchese, Coming Into Being: Sabina Spielrein, Jung, Freud, and psychoanalysis, 2015).

Interweaving through interplay: There is then a case for exploring how polyamory and polyanimosity might be understood through the most fruitful forms of game-playing, as can be variously argued (Humour and Play-Fullness: essential integrative processes in governance, religion and transdisciplinarity, 2005). Some sense of this is offered by the art of flirting as a form of infinite game (Krystal D'Costa, Decoding the Art of Flirtation, Scientific American, 14 February 2013; Elizabeth Clark, Flirting For Dummies, John Wiley, 2011; Nicholas Boothman, The Art of Flirting, Love and Harmony; How To Flirt: the art of effortless flirtation, Attraction Institute). The sense of "interweaving" might then be offered by "interplay" and "playfullness", in contrast to the finite games only too characteristic of harassment, as once defined by the Anti-Flirt Club.

Could the currently influential set of psychoanalysts be explored as being engaged in an archetypal game analogous to that which might be suspected of the "gods" in their realm?

The potential implications of nominative determinism could be extended through anagrams of the names, as suggested by the work of Andrea Bachner (Retroping Concepts by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-Francois Lyotard: why anagrammatize psychoanalysis?, Comparative Literature Studies, 40, 2003). The primary anagram of "Lacan" is "canal", perhaps appropriately.

Knot theory: If the challenge indicated by the title is one of "interweaving" polyamory and polyanimosity then reference to topology is appropriate, given its association with knot theory. This is notably a feature of the work of psychiatrists R. D. Laing (Knots, 1972; The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, 1967) and of Jacques Lacan (From the Bridges of Königsberg: why topology matters in psychoanalysis, LacanOnline, 2015).

The relevance of the metaphor is also echoed by references to any "tying of the marital knot" -- or of the "contractual knot" (Shabnamzehra Bhojani, The Marital Knot: arranged marriages, love marriages and the ties that bind, 2017). Use of "weavng", also evokes a related metaphor (Warp and Weft of Future Governance: ninefold interweaving of incommensurable threads of discourse, 2010).

Of potential relevance is then the concept in knot theory of the unknot as it might apply to understanding the dynamics of the interplay of polyamory/polyanimosity. This can be related to the Möbius strip -- occasionally used in depictions of relationships, especially the ambiguity of the love/hate variety. A Möbius strip with one half twist has the unknot as its boundary; one with two half twists has a link of two unknots; one with three half twists has the trefoil knot as its boundary (Mathematics Stock Exchange).

Could the interplay of the iconic psychoanalysts be most usefully exemplified by interweaving Möbius strips -- whether between one another or with respect to any integrative comprehension of love/hate relationships? One such exercise is reproduced here from a discussion of strange attractors in relation to the relational "begging moment" (Mapping the cognitive dynamics of the begging moment, 2015)

Views of three mutually orthogonal Möbius strips framing the begging moment in a sphere at the centre of a cube Central animation can be interpreted as rotation of cube into 6 positions. Access interactive virtual reality version

For example, with such an approach, Jung (rebirth), Freud (joy), Adler (power), and Spielrein (play), could form the vertices of a tetrahedron whose 6 edges took the form of 6 Möbius strips. Other configurations of the drivers of the polyamory/polyanimosity dynamic are suggested by the following, reproduced from discussion of Reframing a strategic attractor as a vortex involving a "cognitive twist" (2014) and Game-playing, bull-leaping and laurel wreaths (2014).

Suggestive configurations of the drivers of the polyamory/polyanimosity dynamic
Representation of BaGua embodied within four interwoven Möbius strips	Logo of the International Mathematical Olympiad	Logo of International Mathematical Union
("Earlier Heaven" arrangement )	(reproduced from Wikipedia; see IMO animation)	(see Wolfram Mathematica animation)

Bonding ambiguity: In contrast to the conventional line as variously used to depict a relational bond, use of the Möbius strip as an alternative has great value in emphasizing the potential ambiguity of contractual bonding with its typical alternation -- like/dislike or love/hate. It offers another way of encoding what is indicated by the yang/yin (line/broken line) encoding in the I Ching system. Especially valuable is the paradox it embodies and the associated cognitive challenge of liminality, as separately argued (Living as an Imaginal Bridge between Worlds: global implications of "betwixt and between" and liminality, 2011). The form of the strip also usefully recalls both the wave function by which chemical bonding is characterized and the "waves" by which emotional bonds may be experienced and described metaphorically (Being a Waveform of Potential as an Experiential Choice: emergent dynamic qualities of identity and integrity, 2013).

It is in this way that the patterns of friendship/enmity bonds claimed between psychoanalysts could be used to exemplify those of polyamory/polyanimosity more generally. Beyond the binary bond, especially intriguing would then be the depictions of bonding configurations of smaller numbers of participants (3, 4, 5, etc). A tetrahedron of 4 participants with 6 such Möbius strips between them is the simplest, as suggested above. A cubical configuration of 12 strips could be used to suggest relationships between 8 participants, for example. However, given the fundamental biological role of the benzene molecule, with its integrity based on resonance, most intriguing is a configuration of 6 participants with 6 bonding strips -- possibly in the form of an octahedron. Clearly there would be value in exploring the two other Platonic solids -- the icosahedron and the dodecahedron -- given the patterns of 5-foldness and 12-foldness that they embody.

A configuration of a single Möbius strip and a heart is commonly used as one logo for polyamory -- curiously appropriate, especially given the above-mentioned significance of the coaction cardioid. However, as depicted, the "Möbius strip" is more probably understood as an infinity symbol -- in 2D rather than 3D. A further point could also be made by adding to that image the arrow traditionally associated with Cupid and the heart. Given the essentially linear nature of the arrow, this could also serve as a reminder of its role as a weapon, whether a stick, a gun barrel, or a missile -- typically characteristic of polyanimosity, if only as a metaphor of reduction of the subtle complexity of the Möbius "wave function" to linearity. The elements can be combined in the following simple animation to offer a suggestion of the dynamics implied in the argument above.

Polyamory/Polyanimosity logo? (indicative animation)

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