Tom, List,
Here's an interesting snippet I found while looking for stuff on the "oceanic
feeling".
This says the term was actually coined by a novelist, Romain Rolland, who
communicated
the idea to Freud.
In his 1907 essay “Zwangshandlungen und Religionsübungen” (“Obsessive Acts and
Religious Practices,” later translated
as “Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices”) Freud had already contended
that obsessional neuroses are private
religious systems and religions themselves no more than the obsessional
neuroses of mankind. Twenty years later, in
Die Zukunft einer Illusion (1927; The Future of an Illusion), he elaborated
this argument, adding that belief in God
is a mythic reproduction of the universal state of infantile helplessness. Like
an idealized father, God is the
projection of childish wishes for an omnipotent protector. If children can
outgrow their dependence, he concluded
with cautious optimism, then humanity may also hope to leave behind its
immature heteronomy.
The simple Enlightenment faith underlying this analysis quickly elicited
critical comment, which led to its
modification. In an exchange of letters with the French novelist Romain
Rolland, Freud came to acknowledge a more
intractable source of religious sentiment. The opening section of his next
speculative tract, Das Unbehagen in der
Kultur (1930; Civilization and Its Discontents), was devoted to what Rolland
had dubbed the oceanic feeling. Freud
described it as a sense of indissoluble oneness with the universe, which
mystics in particular have celebrated as the
fundamental religious experience. Its origin, Freud claimed, is nostalgia for
the pre-Oedipal infant’s sense of unity
with its mother. Although still rooted in infantile helplessness, religion thus
derives to some extent from the
earliest stage of postnatal development. Regressive longings for its
restoration are possibly stronger than those for
a powerful father and thus cannot be worked through by way of a collective
resolution of the Oedipus complex.
> http://everyhistory.org/History%20of%20philosophy36.html
Regards,
Jon
On 7/19/2015 1:42 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote:
Tom,
I understand, I had to read yours a few times myself before I tumbled to the
ambiguity in my too succinct phrase.
I was much influenced in my undergrad years by the writings of Trigant Burrow
on the idea of an “oceanic feeling” but
couldn't find much on the web right off.
Regards,
Jon
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com
On Jul 18, 2015, at 6:16 PM, Ozzie <[email protected]> wrote:
Jon ~ I had to read twice to identify the change you made to your earlier comment
("The idea does not bear
examination"). Thank you for adding the patina of a future unspecified test
that my as-yet undeveloped theory
could not "survive" if I were foolish enough to continue working on it. That
is more academic-sounding.
Regards, Tom Wyrick
On Jul 18, 2015, at 12:35 PM, Jon Awbrey <[email protected]> wrote:
Tom, By "bear" I meant "bear up under", which is to say "survive", it being a
thesis already examined at length.
Regards,
Jon
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com
On Jul 18, 2015, at 1:09 PM, Ozzie <[email protected]> wrote:
Jon, List ~ My previous post on this subject was comprised of survey data and a
few summary comments that could
be verified by clicking a link.
The response: "The idea does not bear examination."
It is common that smart, busy people do not have time to ponder "trivial"
issues that other (less exceptional)
people DO have time to examine. I'm in that latter group.
Regards, Tom Wyrick
On Jul 18, 2015, at 7:20 AM, Jon Awbrey <[email protected]> wrote:
Tom, List,
A person is free to go on believing that we begin our lives in a state of
oceanic confluence with our
existential, biological, and social matrices but the idea does not bear
examination.
Regards,
Jon
Jon, List -
"I'll just leave my sample statistical for what it tells of themes universal."
Since you're on vacation, I looked up some figures on low-weight births. Among
non-Hispanic White women in the
USA, the low-weight birth rate is about 7.2%, or 1-in-14 births. The rate is
lower than the overall average
among women age 25-35, and is highest among women over 40 years and for women
giving birth to multiple children
-- a number on the upswing. The latter two causes appear to be
physiological/medical, and unrelated to neglect
of the child's welfare. So the rate of pre-birth "neglect" among this main
cohort of child-bearers must be
below 1-in-20. The trend is gradually trending higher over time. Very-low
weight births among non-Hispanic
White women is 1.2%. http://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa08/hstat/hsi/pages/203vlbw.html
Data on breast feeding show that about 75% of all mothers breast feed their
children some of the time, and
12.5% (1/8) breast feed exclusively during the first 6 months. Breast feeding
is positively related to
household income, ranging from about 10.6% at the bottom end of the income
scale to 14.7% at the top. (This
effect may reflect differences in leisure time, education and other things.)
I'm not suggesting these data answer any deeper questions. I only looked them
up to see how prevalent the
problem of "neglect" might be during the pre-birth (gestation) period.
Regards, Tom Wyrick
On Jul 17, 2015, at 3:40 PM, Jon Awbrey <[email protected]> wrote:
Tom, List,
Vacating as I am (on our annual dramatic immersion) and having no new thoughts
for the nonce on the hoary
old mater of nature v. nurser I would be reduced to recycling links to previous
adumbrations — were it not
that I've been chastened from that — so I'll just leave my sample statistical
for what it tells of themes
universal.
Regards,
Jon
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com
On Jul 17, 2015, at 3:43 PM, Ozzie <[email protected]> wrote:
Jon - I believe mothers who deny basic care to their fetuses and babies are a
minority, and that when the
neglected/abandoned children get older they are often emotionally disturbed and
have an impaired ability to
think objectively.
That does not seem to be the right starting point for a discussion of instinct
& emotion in the logical
process. If we want to discuss human instinct, we should focus on a
representative human instead of an
abnormal one. (The logic of emotionally damaged people is more psychology than
philosophy.)
Regards, Tom Wyrick
On Jul 17, 2015, at 2:08 PM, Jon Awbrey <[email protected]> wrote:
Tom, List,
Having done statistical consulting for nurse researchers I can tell you that "low
birth-weight babies"
and "mother-infant communication" are two major areas of research and practice.
In neither case is
perinatal life quite so halcyon as we'd like to imagine.
Regards,
Jon
On 7/17/2015 11:53 AM, Ozzie wrote: Ben, list - Thanks for your interesting
comments. I will spend
more time thinking about them later today.
Let me briefly address one sentence from your comments: "I'd say that
instincts can also be triggered
_inside_ the body, e.g., by prolonged emptiness of the stomach."
According to the common definition (interpretant) instincts are triggered by
things in the external
world. Before birth, food is ALWAYS available to the baby. After birth, and
assuming an attentive
mother (caregiver), food continues to be available without any effort or
reciprocation on the baby's
behalf. This goes on daily for many years, so not feeling hunger pains becomes
the norm, the
expectation.
Against that backdrop, when food is withheld (by the external environment),
one's sensation of hunger
(-) is a disturbance to the status quo (0), which summons the instinct to do
something (+) to make that
"pain" go away. When something from the environment is eaten (+), the
sensation (-) disappears (0).
It is in this sense hunger pains and their elimination are related to
(triggered by) the individual's
contact with the external world. If the individual eats a full meal AND THEN
feels hungry, I agree
that particular sensation has an *internal trigger (likely emotions or a
physical disability).
Regards, Tom Wyrick
On Jul 17, 2015, at 8:04 AM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]> wrote:
Regarding some of your comments, I'd say that instincts can also be triggered
_inside_ the body,
e.g., by prolonged emptiness of the stomach.
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