Hello, friend! Welcome to another post in The Creator’s Roulette. Today’s post may be of particular interest to those of you who love psychology. I am hosting author Kleanthis Bairaktaris today and he will be diving into the concept of ‘oneself’ and sharing about the philosophical psychology of self-wholeness. Let’s get to know him:
Kleanthis Evangelos Bairaktaris has a BSc degree in Psychology and specializes in Integrative Counseling & Psychotherapy. He works at the Ecclesiastical Orphanage of the Holy Metropolis of Chalkis and volunteers with the Ministry of Justice and the Prosecutor’s Office, supporting the work of Child Protection in his city.
Mr. Bairaktaris wrote the Psychological Position of Mental Health Professionals; the Position of the ΨΥ, then the Psychoanalytic work Embracing Pain in which the author explores the existential stages of pain and non-pain and the concept of God as an Archetype. He proposes an interpretive existentialistic approach to dreams, based on the hypothesis that: archetypical symbolisms and their parallelisms with the aforementioned existential stages, can be used to produce psychoanalytic interpretations of dreams, despite having minimal information about the dreamer.
His latest published work, drawing inspiration from psychoanalytic, existential philosophical Psychology, is the rhetorical, philosophical guide: Oneself.
Oneself: The Philosophical Psychology of Self-Wholeness
A guest post by Kleanthis Bairaktaris
The Inspiration
Oneself was born gradually. The encouragement of some relatives to write a self-help manual introjected the idea inside my head. The word introjection, first introduced by child psychoanalyst Melanie Klein and also used by the founder of the Person-centered therapeutic approach Carl Rogers as “introjected values and beliefs”, is one of my favorite psychoanalytic definitions.
Melanie Klein used this term to describe imaginary thoughts of the infant that the mother was stealing (introjecting) the father’s penises and the infant’s imaginary babies (Klein, 1933).
Rogerian introjected values and beliefs describe how the primary and most influential caretakers affect an individual’s cognitive state throughout life.
For example, when someone feels obliged to obtain a profession that does not desire but claims they must maintain this position because they ”must”; is very likely to be affected by those introjections (Freud used the term Superego to describe those more or less) (Mc Leod, 2016; Rogers, 1959).
I use this term to describe potential ideas, thoughts, and beliefs inserted and internalized to the high level of unconsciousness (introjections that are internalized but not suppressed too deep and can turn easier into conscious thoughts, behaviors, and actions).
For example, I consciously knew that writing a book too directive, leading the reader what to do and how would be against my writing style and how I perceive someone can really be self-helped on a deeper level. However, I was also acknowledging that my writing style – without explaining as simple as possible my theories and the new-sometimes-self-proposed words or phrases, would lead to an essay readable only by a few.
Thus, those introjections by relatives combined with my own personal writing style and belief system caused me to try to produce something in the middle; simplistic enough for the average reader (at least that was what I was hoping for), yet not too directive.
The Quotes
I gradually produced the quotes of Oneself after unconscious thought processes becoming conscious, reading posts on social media, and attending various discussions with acquaintances and friends.
The reason behind this introduced quoted stylistic preference combined with small sentences and center formatting served my purpose of a more simplified and quick reading; Providing the reader with a sense of completion, reading a 183-page book relatively quickly, and taking home at the same time some of its teachings.
Not that directional, however.
After all, I have always argued against entirely directive approaches (telling the reader what exactly to do, while most of the time ignoring subjective individualistic elements). Even though they might be beneficial, especially on specific issues and disorders (David et. al., 2018), offering psychoeducation if introduced and practiced right, I do not believe that they bring as long-term therapeutic profound results as analytical approaches.
Thus, I started working on the quotes I produced and decided to try their luck through a short interpretation based on psychoanalysis and existential philosophy.
So as I went along, I felt like I had to use my psychoanalytic skills to deliver to the reader – but without delivering a self-help lecture – the path to a more honest – always self-accepted and fully aware, self-centered – existence.
The Narcissistic Variance – Defense Mechanisms
At this point, I began to fall in love with the idea of producing a creation, receiving intense narcissistic gratification (a sense of idealizing oneself, believing that others would find them magnificent); presenting my theories, not directive or written in a hyper-analytical form.
Nevertheless, this idealized view of getting out in the world my theories, but in a form which they may understand in-depth, from time to time, was causing me narcissistic frustrations (a sense of devaluating oneself, believing that others would find them wrong or bad); their defensive mechanisms (unconscious mechanisms that protect a person from painful truths) would make them deny my theoretical ideologies (Story, et. al., 2021).
In fact, during and after the decision to write the Oneself, and as I proceeded more in-depth and sometimes observed the perspective of most towards my opinions, I was determined to attack their defenses to dissolve them. Of course, fortunately, or perhaps, unfortunately, I concluded – taking into account my psychotherapeutic training – that if I closed the “Oneself” with the reader’s defense mechanisms, they would become even more defensive (Cramer, 1998).
So I concluded that Oneself would completely lose any of its meaning and that I would end up with an essay in which I would simply oppose the classical – perhaps – ideal – easily introjected.
After all, even if one hates their parents or is disappointed based on what (thinks) have done to that person, would probably do not tolerate others to attack their perceived badness in most cases at least (Klein, 1933).
The same is true of the already introjected beliefs, which, even if one gets to the point of revealing their dysfunctionality and the falsified many times they present, will probably hardly accept their mediation by others (Rogers, 1959).
In fact, it is possible to get to the point of idealizing them – in a falsified form and consciously defending them – perhaps even more so than before. Of course, some other defenders may benefit from such an outer observation of their falsified beliefs and be able to notice things from a different perspective.
Oneself’s Principles
After completing the interpretative analysis of the quotes, I sensed that something was missing; I could further analyze them or potentially add more of them; keeping the laconic way I intended to interpret them from the beginning.
Hence, I decided to present a second chapter to this book, getting a more profound view; of how one can achieve a state of self-greatness; a state in which the person is whole on their own; existing without the need to fill up their psychological holes from themselves or phenomenologically from others.
I named this state of being: Self-Wholeness, and when one achieves that, they exist as Oneself. Nevertheless, this theoretical way of being cannot be achieved unless the person allows it and works on achieving it.
However, I believe everyone can get as close as possible to achieving a state of being, close enough to be Oneself, to benefit from an almost Self-Wholeness state.
According to my theories, most of us live in the state of oneself; a state in which we unconsciously let our defense mechanisms to hide our deeper truths from us, unconscious or even conscious unpleasant thoughts, and keep rejecting an entirely mindful experience.
However, an extensive avoidance of self-acceptance and self-awareness may lead a person to exist as one-self, the most potent unpleasant state of dissociating the self with the self. Which, I theorize, is first observed the moment the infant is borns; as the result of losing unexpectedly the so far most pleasant existence; being in their mother’s belly. Nevertheless, normally the infant in the infantile omnipotence will turn into oneself unless they suffer from unconscious formations, which may enhance and keep the one-self’s split; likely leading to psychosis or neurosis (Freud, 1961).
To get a deeper view of how Oneself can be achieved, I examined Dark Triad’s correlations of being whole. Narcissism, Psychopathy, and Machiavellianism seem to correlate to each other (Jonason & Zeigler – Hill, 2018). This correlation is examined and analyzed; concluding that dark personality traits must hit bottom zero for Oneself to be achieved; in combination with the annihilation of every defense mechanism; leading to the theorized state of Self-Wholeness; an existence in which the person exists in absolute self-acceptance and unconditional mindfulness (Faustino et. al., 2020).
Is absolute self-acceptance practically possible?
Share your thoughts in the comments.
Thank you so much for hanging out with us today! Learn more about Kleanthis’ book on Amazon.
References
- Cramer, P., 1998. Defensiveness and defense mechanisms. Journal of Personality, 66(6), pp.879-894.
- David, D., Cotet, C., Matu, S., Mogoase, C. and Stefan, S., 2018. 50 years of rational‐emotive and cognitive‐behavioral therapy: A systematic review and meta‐analysis. Journal of clinical psychology, 74(3), pp.304-318.
- Faustino, B., Vasco, A.B., Silva, A.N. and Marques, T., 2020. Relationships between emotional schemas, mindfulness, self-compassion and unconditional self-acceptance on the regulation of psychological needs. Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process, and Outcome, 23(2).
- Freud, S., 1961. Neurosis and psychosis. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX (1923-1925): The Ego and the Id and Other Works (pp. 147-154).
- Jonason, P.K. and Zeigler-Hill, V., 2018. The fundamental social motives that characterize dark personality traits. Personality and Individual Differences, 132, pp.98-107.
- Klein, M., 1933. The psycho-analysis of children. The Sociological Review, 25(3), pp.296-298.
- McLeod, S.A., 2016. Id, ego and superego. Simply Psychology, 3, pp.1-4.
- Rogers, C.R., 1959. A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships: As developed in the client-centered framework (Vol. 3, pp. 184-256). New York: McGraw-Hill.
- Story, G.W., Smith, R., Moutoussis, M., Berwian, I.M., Nolte, T., Bilek, E. and Dolan, R.J., 2021. Story et al. 2021 A Social Inference Model of Idealization and Devaluation.
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