Psychoanalysis of The concept of The Third Eye and why we celebrate Halloween and Zombies

The idea that human beings are capable of evolving the Third Eye with divine powers is not an uncommon belief among people who want to achieve success in life beyond the mundane and to achieve this aim are attracted to the paranormal world of metaphysics, esotericism, mysticism, eastern cults and religions, New Age spiritualism and sci-fi movies and literature.
What is the psychology behind this eccentric striving? For an actual third eye on the forehead - that is where it is usually depicted in its artistic renderings -  in real life would only appear creepy and arouse horror.
In passing it may be mentioned that the horror at anatomical anomalies arises from the castration complex. Even the medical and accidental deformities such as the absence of an eye or a limb, the strange and distorted body postures and gaits seen in mentally retarded, mental retardation itself, growths from tumors, prominent birthmarks, skin aberrations such as vitiligo/leucoderma, even freckles to the evenly tanned Indian, cause a queasy repulsion and at bottom because they symbolize castration. The imagery of actual castration fails to emerge into consciousness, indicative of the strength of the repression, replaced by just a shudder up the spine in the sensitive ones and some such thought, "there but for the grace of God go I, for look how much worse my fate could have been. I should be thankful for what I have been blessed with."
Why does deformity in non-genital areas remind one of genital mutilation? It is simple association. One type of injury reminding of another. The vision of mutilation on one part of the body, through displacement, provoking the more dreaded possibility. The fear of castration is so ubiquitously present in all human interactions and so pervasively shapes every facet of our relationship with each other and yet so completely and phobically denied in the conscious thoughts, that any mutilation or deformity is capable of provoking the affect associated with castration without the emergence of its actual depiction in the consciousness.
Now the mutilation of other parts of the body while dreaded is less horrifying than the actual castration. And it is this lessening of the fear by repeating the idea of castration in other spheres than the genitals that lies at the core of festivals that celebrate castration, the chief of which would be  Halloween.
That Halloween is at bottom a festival to abreact the fear of castration is further strengthened when one compares it to Dushehra, an ancient Indian festival, predating Halloween by thousands of years, and most likely its progenitor, for it is observed around the same time of the year as Halloween, where clay sculptures of demons, chief of which is Ravana, the ten-headed twenty-armed demon king, with super-sized canine teeth and protruding blood-shot eyes, are paraded through the streets and then laid to rest at the nearest expanse of water. All these multiplication and awesome enlargement of body parts being a defiant denial of castration by emphasizing just its reverse.
The macabre enjoyment from viewing mangled, grisly, grotesque bodies, whether depicted in Halloween attires and accessories, or in haunted houses, or in horror movies, arises from trying to obtain a mastery over the fear of castration. The fascination with cemeteries, zombies, ghosts, ghouls, goblins and gnomes is at bottom viewing castrated individuals who will attack and drag one, out of jealousy and vengeance, into the same fate as they have been unfortunately subjected to -  brinkmanship with castration.  Even our love for action movies to a large part owes its origin to the fascination with castration, where body parts (penis substitutes) are cut off or mangled. It is a revenge for subjection to the threat of castration during the Oedipal phase.
Anyway, coming back to the Third Eye. It cannot be a real anatomic event. No amount of spiritual practices, no matter how dedicated, can abrogate the laws of nature and the emergence of a Third Eye capable of making connections with the already formed brain and the preexisting pair of eyes has to remain a fantasy. A Third Eye, therefore, must be a symbol of the development of some other kind of ability which is akin to visual function yet distinct from it. 
What could be this ability that the seekers of superhuman prowess prize so much and which they believe does happen though very rarely and only with great efforts?
Let us turn to the two great ancient religions of the world, Egyptian and Indian, where deities sometimes are shown with a Third Eye.
Egyptian Gods have the Third Eye at the same spot where often a serpent is shown darting out from a headgear. So behind the desire to awaken the Third Eye is there a desire to awaken some psychic force whose nature is similar to a darting snake?

Serpents, especially cobras, play a prominent role in enhancing the power of the Egyptian deities.  Since cobra is a quintessentially phallic symbol, adorning them with it, is it a glorification of their phallic prowess? By showing the cobra specifically at the spot where the Third Eye should be is it possible that there is a connection between the power of the phallic energy, some coveted quality of cobras and the concept of the Third Eye? Let us see if such a view is confirmed by the Hindu religion and its mythologies.


Shiva is undoubtedly the Hindu deity most often shown with the Third Eye, and never without the cobra with its prominent hood encircling his neck, and the Third Eye so powerful that if His ire is aroused its fury can instantly burn the disturber into ashes.
His devotees often harbor the ambition of acquiring the Third Eye as a boon from Him through Tapasya. 
What exactly is Tapasya?
It is a devotional meditation, usually concentrating upon a single favorite deity, but not necessarily so, and can be towards a few or towards Godhood in general, usually for something that one wants, which could be quite material, but most often it is for attaining an all-encompassing wisdom. The possibility of its happening, it is believed, depends upon the degree of asceticism practiced.  For example, while praying to the Sun, one may not breathe for so long that one may faint. Or one may stand submerged up to the waist in water for hours till all sensations from the body disappear. Or one may take a hatha yoga posture and stay in it concentrating upon the God from whom one wants the boon till he appears, a practice that may even lead to death. Buddha sat in a meditative pose for so long that the mud that had accumulated over his body had termites living in it and supposedly did not eat for 49 days under the Bodhi tree before the realization occurred to him that this is not the way to obtain Nirvana. Chandragupta Marya - a contemporary of Alexander the Great - took samadhi after abdicating his throne and died through starving himself (some variation of Anorexia Nervosa emerging as Tapasya). They are all forms of voluntary inhibitions of functions, especially motoric activity, something which happens involuntarily in depression, reaching complete immobility in catatonia.
What lies behind Tapasya? All forms of abstinence at the bottom are really refrainment from sexual satisfaction, with the sexual continence (brahmacharya) extending from genital sexuality to all forms of satisfaction. It is overdoing of not having sex into not having anything.
There is a belief that if I deny the body and mind gratification (self-mortification) it will be rewarded through obtaining something that will be manifold more than what is being sacrificed. 
Now the word tapasya is interesting. It originates from the Indu-European word root Taap which means heat in Hindi. The English temperature appears to be derived from the same word-root. If Tapasya means a method to generate heat, it, in all likelihood, is the generation of psychosexual heat from denial of physical sexual discharge.
The popular language recognizes a close connection between the rise of sexual tension and the affect of heat. We often say when a girl is suffused with sexuality that she is hot. A bitch is in heat we say when the dog is in her estrous phase. So tapasya is nothing but raising of the sexual tension (cathexis) through extreme continence, where no gratification is allowed through not just the genital but pregenital anal and oral phases of sexuality. The Jain nun barely eats. She is allowed to beg for food but has to stop after whatever she gets from the first benefactor for the rest of the day. To further block oral libidinal gratification she often takes the vow of not speaking which can be for hours, days, sometimes for years. Neither she is allowed pleasure in accumulating material goods nor in discharging the sexual tension through cruelty, practicing preservation of life (prevention of cruelty) to such an extent that she wears mouth-mask to prevent swallowing of microorganisms. So what the devotee aims through tapasya is to block the pleasure from sexual discharge not only genitally but from pregenital channels as well. Such blockage of sexuality multiplies its force like the dammed river.
But sexual energy cannot be held in check completely for too long without causing the death of the person as it happens in Anorexia Nervosa or iatrogenically with Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome. It will search for some discharge somewhere. And if the Tapaswi (one who practices Tapasya) is not allowed to put the objects suitable for his sexual needs in a position favorable for the sexual act through physical action, his eyes, including his mental eye (the Third Eye), will scan every nook and cranny of his environment to find alternative paths to achieve his aims. He will look at the world and all aspects of it with a sexually jaundiced eye. It will watch the actions and the ways of fellow humans in a much deeper manner than he would if he was not in such a state of sexual pressure. Just like for the man with a hammer everything looks like a nail, the man whose mental eye is in extreme search for a conduit for the discharge of his sexual tension, everything will turn into a potential female sexual object, searching for a defect in them that can be treated as a substitute for the female genital, in to which the searching vision can dart into like the cobra darts into rodent burrows.
But we know the instinct to look and gaze is a component of the anal phase of psychosexual development. Now it makes sense when the mythology tells that if you cross Shiva His Third Eye, will turn you to ashes. The whole of his sexual energy will emerge in red hot cruelty and destroy you.
In short, Tapasya with the aim of developing the Third Eye is nothing but empowering the scopophilic instinct - the love for looking - in ways that would not be possible if they were not conditioned by extreme asceticism.
So behind the wish for the Third Eye is the desire to intensify the scoptophilic instinct - the love for looking or knowing - to the highest possibility. It is the wish for procreative energy instead of getting discharged in actual physical intercourse (direct gratification) into the wish to know everything about the sexual act - how babies are born - and since our attitude and behavior towards the world is modeled after our sexuality, extending from there to know the origin of everything.  It is at its core turning the entire libido's satisfaction into getting curious about the world. Scoptophilia at its core is a form of discharge of cruelty where instead of tearing apart the loved object with hands one does it with the eyes.
So arousal of the Third Eye is giving ascendancy to the scopophilic instinct over all other forms of libidinal expression. It is a form of perversion but the most sublime perversion, where the pursuit of knowledge trumps every other desire.
It is interesting the Shiva is also called Bholenath - the credulous, gullible, simple God, who trusts everybody and is ready to believe in everything. His symbol is Om, ॐ, which is a modified way of writing the number 3.  Now number 3, per Freud, in dreams symbolizes the phallus - the penis with the two testicles. Shiva, in fact, is also depicted as an elongated black rock, recognized as phallus (lingam) by the devotees, on which symbol of ॐ is drawn with the fragrant paste of Chandan, and everybody looks upon it as Mahadev, the chief God, under whose umbrella and through him all other Gods discharge their heat. Hindus are thankful for Mahadev who through its medium, absorbs and discharges the Taap of all other deities, singing his praise in hymns for doing so.
But does not it sound like the sexual tensions arising from all other pregenital impulses are displaced and concentrated upon the Genital Impulse (Mahadev), which through its satisfaction/discharge brings mental peace to the humans?
Why Shiva is called Bholenath? Now we know a person who is sick with sexual tension, thinks with his penis (dickhead) and can be easily manipulated.  Shiva by extreme asceticism has all his sexual energy concentrated in his Third Eye and can be easily led by his devotees to be credulous towards the most outrageous things. And devotees who have more deviant aims behind getting favors from deities, choose Shiva over others, for he can be manipulated into granting boons which other Gods will immediately see as evil and not worthy of getting granted. Ravana, the great evil king of the demons, by hiding his wicked side, got Shiva to grant him the boon of immortality, by having 10 heads, each of which grows back the minute it is cut. This confirms the view that the nearest thing to death that humans can experience is the dread of castration (getting the penis/head cut off).
It is interesting too that Shiva's company is made up of the world's most outlandish motley crew. Not only Shiva when not in meditation hangs around graveyards/cremation grounds, where ghosts, spooks, spirits, ghouls, demons, and misfits of every kind, follow him - in fact, another name for Shiva is Bhootnath which means lord of the dead - his closest companions are Ganas, they are humanoid creatures with limbs that have no bones and which come out of odd parts of their bodies. They speak in the cacophony and appear distorted and demented beings. Now we are immediately struck here by recalling that they are similar to the folks with anatomical anomalies that arouse in us the horror of castration. 
So Siva's companions are castrated individuals at least socially. Which makes sense. It is fear of castration that forces people to abandon genital sexuality and then in the attempt to regain it their whole interest turns into understanding the nature of sexuality itself, generating the Third Eye in a lucky few, whose thirst for knowledge, scoptophilia, becomes the main, if not the entire conduit for the discharge of their libidinal energy. 

The Psychology of Laughter

The Psychology of Laughter

Why do humans laugh?

One thing everybody agrees upon is that laughter is good for us. "Laughter is the best medicine,” we are told. It boosts our immune system, decreases stress-induced inflammation, releases oxytocin, and bonds people. Even listening to somebody else's laughter releases endorphins, a classmate of mine from medical school made this comment on our class's Internet site, and its members, all doctors, usually at loggerheads, all were in agreement on this one. It goes without saying that the members of this highly competitive elite group are always trying to be the funniest one, often posting jokes that had made them laugh as if to boost each other's endorphins.

Why does laughter cause all those wonderful health-promoting physiochemical changes?

This brings us back to the basic question: what is laughter?

To answer this we will have to go first to the smile. For smiling is the forerunner of laughter, appearing in babies shortly after birth. It is a fear reflex, triggered by random stimuli interpreted as slightly different from other sensations, and, therefore, because of the novelty, worthy of a reaction with a hint of fear. It is not a full-fledged fear response, but a sliver of it, limited to the pulling back of the muscles surrounding the mouth and exposing the teeth as a show of retaliatory aggression. The objection that the baby does not yet have teeth can be explained by the consideration that the reflex to signal aggression by withdrawing the muscles of the mouth is present even before the teeth appear.

The appearance of fear in the baby, no matter how slight, immediately provokes in its caretakers one of the most fundamental impulses of mankind: protect the helpless. As Freud¹ put it: the original helplessness of human beings is....the primal source of all moral motives.

This moral impulse itself appears to be a reaction formation to an even more fundamental impulse - blind aggression upon the vulnerable. A real feel for this primal irrational aggression I fully appreciated in myself the other day when on seeing my handyman bent over doing some work on my house, with his back towards me, provoked a powerful urge to kick his defenseless behind. This aggressive impulse could be the same as the dread one feels on being asked to hold a newborn, afraid that one may dash the completely helpless thing to the floor. The exclusion of children from weddings, senior citizen housings, and other adult social get-togethers also perhaps arises from a fear that one may not be able to control one's impulse to discharge raw aggression towards the defenseless rambunctious hyperactive rug rats. Many a potential parent, who quite likely would have looked after his or her children no worse than others (perhaps better because of greater self-doubt) forgo parenthood under the sway of this impulse, afraid they will be terrible at it, if not through actual physical aggression, by maintaining an emotional distance to avoid acting out on the impulse.  It is interesting that they often make wonderful parents to pets upon whom they can freely shower the held-back love without fear that the ambivalence lurking behind will cause the animal harm. The dread of senselessly jumping off from great heights, like when one is on the ledges of the Grand Canyon, or crossing high suspension bridges like the Golden Gate Bridge, may also owe its origin to this same drive, however with a twist that the object of the aggression is reversed and directed towards one's own self. Self is treated as the helpless child and the immensity of the height treated as the potentially aggressive grownup. The great moral indignation some people feel over abortion also may be due to a detection of outrage in themselves over their failure to safeguard the vulnerability of the fetus, which interestingly is not felt so strongly by the woman who seeks it, or at least she is conflicted over it,  because she feels herself to be the more vulnerable one rather than the fetus which for her does not yet quite exist. This primal aggression perhaps is the most pure (minimally alloyed with libidinal impulses) expression of death instinct (Thanatos).

Let’s return to the nature of the smile. Showing a window of vulnerability to provoke the protective instinct in the caretakers and the other adults around the baby soon becomes a powerful social tool and almost "a magical means" to relate with and manipulate others. The fully developed smile response, with its ability to neutralize others' aggression towards one, should be regarded as the most important social feature the human species has evolved for its members to get along with each other. The smile is the primary lubricant of civilized behavior.

The next step in this developmental process is the emergence of laughter, alongside the smile. Laughter is the brake upon crying by the smile. Laughter is no more than crying punctuated by smiles. In rapid succession, crying alternates with smiling. Crying is a shriek for help emitted in distress, which readily occurs in babies because their level of tolerance for discomfort is very low. However, when crying turns out to be unjustified and the anticipated unknown fearful thing which should have brought pain, or at least a rise in the level of tension, turns out to be something pleasurable and familiar, the baby abruptly punctuates its crying with a smile. This punctuation of crying with a smile, when rapidly repeated, become peals of laughter. The baby replays the scenario of distress followed by pleasure over and over again as if to relive the trauma and the relief from it under the sway of repetition-compulsion, producing the characteristic sound of laughter.

That laughter is produced from a rise of distress/tension in anticipation of danger/harm followed by an abrupt relief because all that preparation was for naught is bolstered by the observations that mothers make their baby laugh by making funny faces (mock frightening faces) which after an initial brief period of fear and bracing for harm are recognized to be the familiar face of the mother. The same holds true for making animal sounds which are half frightening/half cajoling, where the threat is rapidly dissipated by the realization that after all it is not a scary animal but one's familiar mother; playing peek-a-boo where the distress of the mother's disappearance is quickly followed by her pleasurable appearance; chasing the baby where the fear of being caught, harmed or gobbled up by some dangerous entity is negated by the knowledge that it is one's harmless nay protective mother who is pretending to be that entity; and tickling where the aggressive act of the nail pushing through the skin which should cause pain instead gives the baby pleasure because the nail rather than hurting gives relief through the mechanism of counter-irritation (this pleasure from tickling/counter-irritation in its extreme form is one of the factors behind self-cutting). The confirmation of this biphasic mechanism behind laughing was even more strongly borne out to me a few weeks ago when I saw a young father playing with his two-year-old boy, dangling him over the parapet of a high deck, pretending that he was going to let him fall to the ground, resulting in serious injuries if not death, which the child, instead of finding it scary was finding it hilarious (or at least the fear was overlaid by the hilarity), making him laugh and laugh. Here the fear and stress of falling and getting hurt was activating the innervations that underlie crying which was being punctuated by the realization that the danger was only apparent and not real because his father loves him so much that in no way would he drop him to the ground below. It is no more than “just my father kidding me" which was activating the innervations of smiling, turning the combination of crying and smiling into laughter.

Theme Park thrill-seekers adhere to this same pattern as their roller coaster descends from dangerous heights. Because of the potential mortal danger, this should make them tense up and cry. Instead, they laugh, because of the realization that they will come out of it unscathed. The attraction of such joy rides exists because through this game of tensing up, expecting great harm and then finding a discharge for it by the realization it is not going to happen after all, one can also transfer and get rid of other tensions existing in one’s life/psyche.

Thus laughter occurs when one braces up, causing the brain, muscles, and autonomic system to tense up with a readiness to cry only to find that the tension and ratcheting up of the level of alertness was unwarranted. Laughter with its relaxation of the muscles around the mouth gives the signal that a similar decrease of psychic expenditure (tensing up to ward off potential harm) in the brain is occurring because what was expected is not what is happening. The smile, the mini-laughter, is the main tool humans use to ward off conflict when they meet strangers, as when passing somebody on the road, for it signals that I am relaxing the psychic tension that is building up inside me in preparation to defend myself or attack you.  I pose no threat and correspondingly gear down your own build-up of tension. We also smile at familiar people as well when we pass them to signal that there is no need to tense up for we are no strangers. But also we smile at the stranger in the familiar.  For just like we know our psyche only to what is capable of becoming conscious, we know the motives of even the most familiar only to a certain depth and no more and the closest of human relationships are not free of ambivalence. 

The greater the buildup of distress and tension before the realization that it was all for naught (false alarm), the greater the force of laughter (alternation between crying and smiling) and its duration.  For example, rolling on the floor laughing due to profound loss of muscle tone that extends through the body, with muscle tension plummeting so profoundly that it cannot support the erect posture. Such laughter sometimes is accompanied by a tear or two rolling down the cheek which bolsters the contention that laughter originates out of crying.

The person who has a gift for telling jokes uses this principle to first gradually build up a tense scenario with proper amounts of delay and sidetracking in the narration to incorporate more and more neuronal circuits of the brain into a preparatory action mode and when the audience is all keyed up, anticipating some grand action to resolve the complex situation, provides an escape from the tension but not with a solution which is commensurate with the dammed-up emotions but through some silly primary process^2,3 logic or some primary process play upon words, like a pun or double entendre, or some incongruous comic behavior, bringing the realization that all the gearing up of the energy to act was unnecessary and the relief that occurs from not having to maintain that psychic expenditure anymore brings pleasure, and whatever tension was already in the system is discharged through the innervations surrounding the mouth. The process perhaps is not too dissimilar from the sexual act, where the built-up tensions from the exigencies of life find an outlet through sexual arousal and discharge through the muscles - including the well-recognized phenomenon of the curling toe - which first experience a rise in tension and then the release (pleasure/orgasm). As to why this discharge takes place through the regions surrounding the mouth and [usually] not elsewhere may be because those were the first set of muscles to become socially functional in humans and therefore are most extensively represented in the brain, and then the mouth is centrally placed, easy to observe by others, and, with its ability to make sounds of crying and laughter, most apt to communicate the increase and reduction of tension. Of course, not all the psychic expenditure (tension) that becomes superfluous and needs discharge can always find an outlet through the innervation surrounding the mouth. If it is quite high, the respiratory, abdominal, and peripheral muscles also are dragged into the process as when one laughs so hysterically that one can hardly catch one's breath, or when one's abdominal muscles go into convulsions (belly laugh), or when one gleefully slaps one's knee or the back of one's accomplice in delight, or when one involuntarily moves one's torso back and forth with the head thrown back roaring laughter.  

Laughter then takes the next step in its evolution, entering into its final and most important phase, becoming the key social process behind the ability of human beings to get along with each other. With the smile/laughter at the very bottom being fear response, it became an excellent tool to pair with aggression, signaling that while I am attacking you I am also afraid of you, and the twain when interwoven and expressed together, allows humans to interact with each other in the most nuanced fashions in every facet of their social life. Yesterday I went to a "Home Improvement Show" where the vendors were doing their best to get the crowd to stop at their stall and listen to their sales pitch. It was obvious their main hurdle was the natural hesitancy of the visitor to start listening to somebody that they had never met before. For unfamiliarity means danger and anticipation of aggression. And so what were the salespeople doing to signal they would not bite you if you let them speak to you? They were breaking into welcoming smiles to arrest your attention and make you stop. One woman with her painted blooming cheeks and liberally applied red lipstick on her petal-like lips, which allowed just the right amount of opening of her mouth, reminded me of the girls with their alluring smiles in the Red Light district of Amsterdam. One could not help but wonder looking at her pretty inviting face whether the mouth in humans has not become beside the organ of digestion a substitute for flashing sexuality through the smile.

 Human interactions are full of microaggressions. We constantly try to triumph over others not only because our success in life to a great deal depends upon it but because the innate aggressive drive of humans (Thanatos), the death wish, demands frequent acting out and discharge. As Freud⁴ put it, if we were given full play to our wishes one would take any woman one pleases as a sexual object…[and]…without hesitation kill one’s rival for her love or anyone else who stands in one’s way. Since this cannot be, for there are strong internal inhibitions (conscience) and dangerous external circumstances, humans have developed equally powerful counterbalancing passive behaviors to go alongside the aggression. Laughter appears to be the most ubiquitously used maneuver to signal this passivity, which softens the impact of the aggression perpetrated and lessens the possibility of retaliatory counter-aggression. Most laughing, perhaps 90 percent of it, is done for the softening of this aggression that we are constantly discharging on each other. Whenever we say something which we think would sound to the hearer as if we are not giving him sufficient respect, ordering him around, slighting him, demeaning him, outright insulting him, raising our voice at him, acting his superior, defying him - in other words if our words, demeanor, or actions will be perceived by the hearer as an act of direct or indirect aggression that will upset the balance of power between the other and oneself  - we soften its force by some appeasement that is done before, simultaneously or immediately after the aggression. A hint of a smile or small mechanical laughter, usually with little emotions attached to it, is the most commonly used gesture of this counterbalancing. It has become as specialized for showing appeasement in humans as wagging of the tail in dogs and purring in cats. Back and forth aggression in human communications is often so subtle and indirect, clothed in submissive jocularity, gestures, and allusions, that we often only recognize it as an act of aggression by the accompanying sly smile or chortle of laughter. A bipolar patient of mine who is plagued with having to constantly master a relentless stream of contempt and hatred for others, periodically apologizes for possessing such negative emotions by abruptly breaking into laughter in the loudest possible manner which serves the purpose of appeasement, and yet because of its explosive, untamed, hostile tone simultaneously discharges the aggression. His abnormal incongruous laughter, through which the rage breaks through, betrays the disturbance of his mind and his social crudeness. It is not the kind of laughter which invites others to join in, like the uncontrollable laughter that leaves the person helplessly on the ground where the aggression has been totally overpowered by the mirth and therefore the person feels no need to maintain any tension in his muscles and which invites others to sympathetically laugh along with and partake in the pleasure of complete passivity.

Much of the gracefulness of humans lies in how well a person can seamlessly fuse appeasement/smile with aggression, hiding the latter so well that even when he is taking advantage of others they do not detect it. In those whom aggression and appeasement are defused, which often happens when the anger/aggressiveness

far outweighs the desire to appease, the laughter appears odd, incongruous, and with a gap between subject matter that is being expressed and the laughter that is supposed to counterbalance it. If the gap between the distressing emotion that is being discharged - whether it is of anger, sadness, lamentation, pain - which would be stressful to the listener, and the laughter that follows to cover it up is too long, it indicates failure of the mechanism of laughter to adequately soften the impact of the dysphoric emotion. Macabre, black and sick laughter/humor are terms used for describing covering up of aggressive behavior or thought with laughter where in a more moral person outright suppression of the aggression would have been the appropriate course.

 Laughter is not just used to cover up (lessen the impact) of the distressing emotions that we cause in others. Distressing emotions caused in oneself by others, where one is the object and not the subject of aggressive exchange, also is often dealt with [tearful] laughter. Bitter laughter is how the language describes the method of lessening the impact and pain of such aggression with laughter. When one deals with adversity - where the aggression towards oneself is lethal or near-lethal through laughing, it is aptly viewed as a sardonic laugh or gallows humor.

Even when there is no other person on whom one is discharging aggression and one is simply conversing about a third party or describing some situation where aggressive action occurred, laughter is often added as an additional soundtrack, a facade, to hide one's enjoyment of the cruel nature of what one is narrating. For example, a patient of mine who drove four hours from Dayton to Detroit to make it to the session on time, could not be happier that he was driving on the Interstate going North, for on the other side a semi carrying chemicals had overturned and the traffic going South was blocked for miles. And he smiled first gingerly at their plight, as he recreated the scene of those who were standing still on the other side of the interstate while he was  sailing happily over the speed limit on his side, and then laughed as if to apologize for indulging in that perverse cruel pleasure (schadenfreude). This schadenfreude varies among people. There are those [masochists] whose aggression towards others is so inhibited that for its slightest manifestation they have to immediately apologize with a great deal of sheepish laughter (in teenage girls it manifests as giggling), and then there are those [sadists] who behave like the Rakshas (Demons) of Hindu mythology who while vandalizing, maiming, and killing, guffaw loudly, which is more a mockery of appeasement than appeasement. Children’s teasing  and attacking the vulnerable amongst them, which can get quite demonic, is often coupled with laugher, which as with the demons of Hindu mythology, where there is total lack of empathy with the suffering of the victim, also should be looked upon as a mockery of appeasement.

A patient of mine whose primary problem is masochism, and because of that despite coming from a good family and having a license in a skilled trade is always broke, while talking about his near-fatal boat accident, caused by an error of his friend, described how half of his face has been reconstructed with 27 plastic parts and thirty-six inches of wire, all the while flashing a fixed smile (character defense) which turned into frank laughter when he came to the part where the hospital, instead of saving his life, damn near killed him again when the X-ray technician lost control and dropping him on the CAT-Scan table, fracturing his rib and puncturing his lung. Here the smile and laughter had emerged to soften the aggression, but one should note that the cruelty was directed against his own self which he was enjoying by identifying with the ones who had caused him harm. The aggression rightfully belonged against the person who had caused the boat accident and the hospital personnel who had compounded his injuries, but unable to take it out on them he was taking it out on himself. But after lessening its full fury with laughter, because hidden behind his own self were the figures of his boat companion and the powerful hospital, who could potentially retaliate and therefore had to be appeased.

The way one's sense of humor lessens the pain of ill-fortune also is best understood if we view it as an appeasement of aggression in a convoluted fashion. A patient of mine told me that whenever something bad happens to her sister, she giggles and grins through it. When their mother was terminally ill and in great suffering, her sister's coping mechanism was to grin and laugh through every piece of bad news they received from the doctors. What she was doing was to take an attitude towards fate (Ananke) that no matter what bad thing you hurl upon me I will just laugh at that aggression of yours, treating it as something humorous, and thus not allow it to provoke painful emotions in me.

But why package laughter with aggression and make the process unnecessarily complicated instead of just notching down the aggression itself a few pegs? This may have to do with the need to express the full extent - or as much as one can safely do - of the hostility/anger/aggression one feels to get maximum relief, but which can only be done if appeasement is also offered simultaneously as if the whole thing has been done in jest and not worthy of counter-aggression. By the laughter, I tell the other person not to get so distressed or offended with my aggression that he or she is compelled to retaliate with such severity that it will cause me more tension than the relief I am seeking from discharging my aggression upon you. By the accompanying laughter one makes the statement: Please treat my aggression with kid’s gloves. Consider it as not entirely real and serious, and just like you would not retaliate against a child who hits you playfully, please indulge me in the same manner. And lest you miss the point that my aggression is being done to humor you, let me initiate the laughing even before you do so.

It may not be totally without value to add that laughter is not utilized just to make aggression palatable but also when we make fun of somebody, make a sly dig, or even make an allusion to stealing from them. Looking at a big insurance company check which I had just received, one of our office secretaries once remarked that it is only a matter of time before she is going to cash one and be on her way to Jamaica and then covered up the allusion to stealing with a hearty laugh to make sure that I consider it  a joke and give no weight to the underlying temptation to actually embezzle. On another occasion, after charging a patient his co-pay, she failed to hand him back his credit card and instead told him that he was all set to leave. When he would not, she glared at him until he pointed out that she had failed to give him back the card, at which point she broke out in an embarrassed laughter. Here the mistake was immediately realized by her, and by the patient as well, to be a Freudian Slip, and the laughter emerged to cover up the intent to steal his card, which also should be looked upon as an act of aggression. Comedy, whether on stage, in movies, in TV shows or in comedy clubs, heavily relies upon aggression directed towards authorities, which the actors and the comic execute while the audience cover up the full impact of the aggression by laughing and thus protecting the protagonist of the show (with whom they identify) from retaliation, and thus vicariously discharge their own pent up aggression against authorities. Mr. Bean, the English disruptive comedian, is so popular because he goes around discharging his aggression towards the world at large by doing things the way a child would, rejecting the claims of reality and proceeding under the sway of the  primary process, which leaves us no choice but to laugh at his immature oppositional-defiant antics instead of punishing/inhibiting them. We also laugh because if he can get away with that kind of childishness why should I keep myself fearful and tense with my defenses up. I can relax, decrease the psychic expenditure on my neuronal networks and muscles, and discharge the liberated energy through laughter, secure in the knowledge that if any societal (and superego) castigation falls it will be upon that clown not me. Our laughter at other’s foolishness is owing to our superego’s relaxing its iron grip upon the ego to always behave ideally, for now its attention is deflected upon the comedian with his primary process (stupid/funny) behavior allowing for the ego, unshackled from being watched, to relax momentarily. To put it another way, though using more technical terms, observing someone using primary process for fulfillment of a wish (an extreme though a rather crude example would be giving into gastrointestinal relief by passing gas loudly in the midst of a solemn church proceedings) allows one to decathect one’s own secondary process inhibitions, with the freed energy finding discharge through laughter. Putting it in yet another way one can say that laughter quite often is due to a momentary deflation of the self-elevation (sense of superiority) which the ego feels at keeping one’s secondary process guards up (puffed up with self-importance) on observing someone using primary process thinking or behavior in defiance of the demands of societal and superego standards. While any primary process activity or logic is capable of bringing a smile to the face, the uproarious laughter occurs only on perceiving primary process shortcut outright triumphing over the elaborate secondary process in achieving the wish fulfillment. When Laurel and Hardy get mixed up with the matadors and Laurel does an astonishing job of killing the bull with his primary process reasoning and actions, it has us rolling on the floor with laughter.

Laughter and smile as a tool to sugarcoat aggression and other mean behaviors alone would not by itself bring the great physiochemical changes that we talked about at the start of this essay, and which supposedly bring so much health benefits. There has to be another element. It appears that laughter over time has evolved into not just a tool to show appeasement, but through that appeasement also find discharge for passive sexual trends.

Now our muscle tension, along with the skin, is the protective barrier that guards our vital organs from external irritants/aggression. If we anticipate aggression/attack, our muscles tense up. The defensive muscle wall that envelopes us has evolved to protect the core part of us, our essence, our vegetative system. So when we laugh, it is signaling to others that perceive no threat. I am dropping my guards and making the vital delicate part of me, which is more valuable than my outer shell, vulnerable to you. Consider my laughing as a signal that there is no tension between you and me. I am being passive and opening up to you. It is not different from the way dogs to show submissiveness to their master go down on their back and expose their chest and belly. Dogs go belly up; humans laugh. Both are acts of appeasement, signaling one’s lesser status. [Incidentally, this may explain why women laugh, or at least the young ones giggle, more than men, and why smiling and laughter lessens as one rises up in social hierarchy, with guys at the very pinnacle of their life trajectory often becoming grumpy old curmudgeons. According to one account (Osho, the Indian Sex Guru of Oregon), Jesus never laughed [for he had no aggressiveness towards anyone and therefore had no need to appease]. 

It may not be without merit to digress a little and throw light upon a social phenomenon that my medical school classmates were recently discussing on our Internet site.  They pointed out to me that since the Sixties, when posing for a picture, instead of looking stiff, solemn and proper, bordering on the melancholic, people now flash the broadest smile, cracking their mouth from ear to ear. This transformation perhaps has to do with our greater tolerance towards showing our passive softer sexual side to the world because of increasing global prosperity. In yesteryears, the portrait painters and the photographers tried to capture a man’s strongest aggressive self, making the statement that here is a person who is no milquetoast but a force to be reckoned with. Likewise, in portrait of a woman, they made sure no smile crept up on the face lest people suspect the presence of salaciousness in her character. Smiling was a no, no, which only the vulgar, the weak, the spineless, the sycophantic, the lewd quickly gave in to. With everybody having so much more to give now, people want to show in pictures how well off and happy they are and do not have as much fear of showing their windows of vulnerability, their softer side to the world. 

Now the peculiarity of the appeasement via laughing is that it contracts the muscles surrounding the mouth and gives a glimpse of the red mucosal lining of its inside, exposing the softer, the vital, the more essential part of ourselves. It is an act of making the defenseless flesh, unprotected by skin and muscle tension, vulnerable to others.  But isn’t that exactly what a woman does when she offers herself to be made love to, exposing the red mucosal lining of her genital passage by withdrawing the sheaths of covering clothes, skin and protective muscles? Human beings, or for that matter all living organisms, are composed of the inner core, which is the essence of our being, and in which all vital processes, including reproductive activity, occur, while surrounding it is the shielding outer husk of the skin, muscles and sense organs which, while the loudest aspect of us, really exist only as the bodyguard of the former. It is this sweet core, the heart of our being, which we offer to others when we smile and laugh and when we sexually submit ourselves to others. In dreams, it is not infrequent for the mouth to symbolize the genitals. In those whose genital sexuality comes under repression, mouth often replaces the vagina as the organ to be made love to. The peculiar strong attraction humans feel for dimples, a mark of sexual cuteness across cultures, owes its existence to the multiplication of this genital symbol on the face.

Do I have any other evidence than that region of the mouth symbolizes the region of the female genitals, and revealing the intimate aspect of oneself symbolically through the smile produces similar physiological responses as offering one’s genitals sexually?

Now there is a song from a great old Hindi movie, in which the heroine sings: “when I heard my lover’s voice, every piece of me bloomed into a smile.” It’s a very beautiful song, at least to my Indian ears and can be googled: Jane Na Nazar Pehchane jigar – Aah (1953 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90ooNta8icg) to appreciate its beauty. Besides the quality of its music, the song’s appeal owes to the fact that it reveals a most important secret of humans: why they smile. The girl goes on to sing: “I have not yet set my eyes on him but my heart has already recognized his voice turning every pore of my body in to a smile; who is this whose shadow has fallen over my soul, pervading the entire depth of my being, turning me into a ball of  [sexual] shyness; what game this magician is weaving that every particle of my body is smiling.”   

That the opening of the mouth in a smile or laughter and opening of the female genital passage both aim for passive sexual satisfaction is further bolstered by the fact that  popular language often refers to making someone smile or laugh as making them crack up; get an opening into their being. There is a saying in Hindi: hansi to fansi which roughly translates: make her laugh and she will be entrapped. A woman places so much emphasis upon a man’s ability to make her laugh because she knows she will be sexually responsive to him and he will be able to crack her open vaginally if he can crack her open into smiles by his sense of humor; one passive sexual trend will lead to the other. The recent fashion of wearing torn clothes, exposing the proud skin underneath – in some the clothes serving more to expose the erotogenic zones while covering the libidinally less sensitive areas (the attraction of fishnets and lingerie arises from the same principle) – is in a way smiling through the entire body, becoming eye candy for all who can lay their eyes upon oneself.   

So through smiling and laughter we take on the passive feminine role and appease others by giving them the active masculine one. 

Could it be possible that the numerous physiological responses that promote our health when we smile and laugh occur because they are mini-sexual expressions?

In his last decade, Freud⁸, on more than one occasion wrote to the effect that just like he worked upon the delineation of  psychopathology from the angle of libido, somebody, who is freshly starting out and has the luxury of time on his side, which he (Freud) no longer does, should elucidate it from the angle of aggression. In this essay, I have tried to trace some of the vicissitudes of aggression, and its binding and neutralization through the reflex of smiling and laughter. While quite a few fresh observations on the nature of laughter have been presented here, two deserve special mention.  One, that laughter is not so much signaling to others that one is experiencing pleasure due to perceiving primary process thinking or behavior but to soften the impact of aggression in interpersonal interactions. Second, that while the smile arose as a fear reflex to evoke the protective instinct of the newborn’s caretakers, it has evolved into a major conduit for expressing passive sexuality.

  References:

1.     Freud, S. (1895). Project for a scientific psychology. Standard Edition. 1: 318.

2.     Freud, S. (1911). Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. 12: 218-226.

3.     Freud, S. (1915). The unconscious. Standard Edition, 14: 159-204.

4.     Freud, S.  (1927). Future of an illusion. Standard Edition. 21:15.

5.     Spencer, H. (1860). Macmillan’s Magazine, March 1860 pp. 395-402.

6.     Freud, S. (1905). Jokes and their relationship to the unconscious. Standard Edition. 8.

7.     Freud, S. (1927). Humour. Standard Edition.21.

8.     Freud, S. (1933). The new introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. Standard Edition. 22: 105.

The Psychology behind putting coins in Wishing Wells

In dreams, the presence of an expanse of water - sometimes even the presence of the color blue - signifies the fantasy of rebirth. All living creatures have emerged from the water, and, even, though, for hundreds of millions of years we have been land-based, our intrauterine existence for nine months still occurs in water, where we float in our mother's womb. This long association between water and birth has left an indelible genetic imprint in our mind and the former often - in dreams regularly - symbolizes the latter. Because of this close association, seeing water provokes the wish/fantasy to be born again.
Water also has an amorous draw. Life process is drawn into water reaching its maximum density in the rainforests. In India, the months of monsoon, with its bountiful greenery is celebrated in songs as the time for romance and making love. The songs usually go as to how in the month of Sawan (the month when the monsoon is at its zenith) a kind of fire begins to burn in one's heart. The fire being an allusion to romantic passion. Now we know the antithesis of water is fire. Burning passion of the man can ultimately be doused only by the wetness of woman's genital passage.
In dream interpretation, rescuing someone out of the water, or, it's opposite, getting rescued out of the water by someone, is treated as a "symbol" of wishing a child by that someone. For we are rescued from mortality by being born again through childbirth (by procreating with another person). The other person is rescued from death too. So the act of procreation is symbolized equally well by rescuing somebody or getting rescued out of the water. For it is through birthing that we achieve a modicum of immortality.
The close connection between water and the wish for rebirth is also strongly supported by the fact that religious rituals like baptism in Christianity and similar rituals in other faiths, and as to how conversion into Christianity from other faiths, is celebrated through the ritual of dipping/immersing the person in water.
Now this association between water and impulse to procreate and be born again is not limited to its appearance in dreams and religious rituals but it seems to influence human behavior in many other contexts which at first glance seem to have nothing to do with sex and rebirth.
When a man begins to find others, his rivals, doing better than him in life, to avoid facing the humiliation and narcissistic injury of finding one is not at the top of the pyramid, if of a jealous and phobic disposition, he begins to avoid situations and places like roads, malls grocery stores, churches, where he is likely to meet his rival, preferring to stay around his home, where he  still is the king of his castle. Congregations and public venues, where the combined presence of others makes him realize his inferiority even more acutely, trigger panic attacks. As Freud put it 'behind agoraphobia lies failed ambitions'. The home becomes the mother's womb, where the agoraphobic wants to retreat to avoid facing those who have bested him in life.
The phobia of water appears to have similar roots. Here the overwhelming wish is not to retreat to the home, but jump in the (purifying) water, and be reborn, to do a better job next time, after washing off and getting rid of all the 'baggages' of this life. However since rebirth also means the end of one's current life, the person develops the phobia of water to avoid fulfillment of the wish. As if in the two contrary wishes to die and be born again and to avoid death, the latter wish triumphs through the formation of the phobia.
The phobia of crossing bridge, especially over a river or other expanse of water, arises to avoid the temptation to jump over and submerge oneself in water (to be born again). Higher the bridge greater is the temptation - for it assures certain death. Often temptation to have sex with somebody, which will be dangerous, is shown in dreams as trying to cross a bridge unsuccessfully. Being caught precariously trying to climb up ledges, or climbing up, or coming down the steps, or from the height of a building with great dread of falling down, or slipping, or not being able to hold on to the supporting structures, arises from the same complex.
 One of my patients, a married man, who was tempted to make love to a young girl, but who was of loose morals and black (he was white), he was plagued with a recurrent dream in which he saw himself wanting to jump off a bridge but horrified to do so by the fact that the water below was dirty and dark.
The phobia of crossing bridges also symbolizes fear of intercourse, afraid one will not be able to reach the other side. The two sides symbolizing the two sexes, with the bridge being the penis which bridges the separation between the mates.
It is interesting that in Zoroastrian religion, and Islam, after death the soul supposedly crosses a bridge to reach the afterlife. In Islam, this bridge is conceptualized to be as thin and sharp as a razor blade. Its symbolism appears to be conveying the message that to be reborn one has to traverse through a very sharp and dangerous bridge. The innate fear present in mankind of not being able to perform sex successfully the religious ideologies exploit it by preaching if one does not live a righteous life one will not be able to traverse the bridge from this life to the next.
Now, how all this relate to throwing coins in wishing wells?
To go into that we must first examine the interesting phenomenon which growing up in India I  observed while traveling on trains. Whenever the train crossed a river, especially a holy river, and India being a very ancient civilization with every river having become holy over time, people, especially the devout ones, would take out coins from their pockets and toss into the water.. They believe it brings good luck. Rivers are anthropomorphized as Goddesses and the hope/wish that the goddess would return the favor by giving a million coins back for getting offered one.
Doesn't the ritual/process sound quite like what we do when we throw coins in a wishing well?
The process of being born again by entering into water is replaced by just throwing a valuable part of oneself (the coin, precious metal, money) into the water. But isn't that nothing more than a substitute for having sex with the river goddess?
Wishing wells are not quite rivers but a man-made expanse of water, placed there by some clever entrepreneur. He makes money by giving outlet to this primal impulse of mankind to be aroused into a wish to have intercourse and be born again on seeing water. The greatest wish of mankind: to have intercourse/be born/and thus attain immortality over time has spread to lesser wishes, chief among them being the wish for all kinds of material gain. And thus when we throw a coin in wishing well, it is not just for the satisfaction of that great libidinal wish but also for lesser wishes.
Over time a wishing well garners the same aura of holiness as Indian rivers have done, strengthened by the collective piety and wishes of the believers that putting in the coin there makes one's wish come true. The circulation of stories of some wishes have come true - whether imagined or in reality, for occasional wish does come true -  becomes proof that there does exist some miraculous property in that wishing well.

The underlying cause for seeing hallucinatory faces in a schizophrenic patient

A patient who is in her late fifties and has suffered from paranoid schizophrenia since her twenties, which, fortunately, for the most part, remains in remission, came to the session and reported that after her Primary Care Physician started her on Gabapentin (Neurontin) 400 mg. three times a day for peripheral neuropathy and knee pain, she started feeling miserable and began seeing faces in everything she laid her eyes upon. "I see faces in clouds, on my wall, on the patterns of my couch, the knickknacks on your windowsill, even the mug from which you are drinking your coffee."
"Are you just inferring faces from the random lines and patterns that are always present in these objects like one does in Rorschach test or are they actual hallucinations?" I asked her.
"Well, I don't see too much difference between mistaking the patterns on objects as faces and their popping up as pure hallucinations. And you know in the past I have had florid hallucinations so I know what I am talking about. Also when I close my eyes and try to go to sleep faces pop up then too without my looking at any objects. In fact, they are even more intense when they emerge while my eyes are closed; so intense they prevent me from falling asleep."
Now the purpose of all mental symptoms is to prevent one from getting out of control (going wild/going crazy). What looks like crazy behavior (madness) to an outside observer is actually a watered down (relatively harmless) versions of something totally unacceptable and violent behavior.  When one's unacceptable impulses (internal world/id) become overwhelming and threaten to disintegrate the ego, or act against one's moral precepts (the superego/conscience) or come into conflict with others (the external world/reality) then one gives outlets to these impulses in form of bizarre behaviors (mental symptoms).  By restraining one from acting out the impulses in their pure (directly destructive) forms, one protects oneself from the wrath of others and one's conscience. The agency that suffers by this seeking of refuge in madness is the ego which instead of seeing reality correctly, sees it in distorted forms, that make it easier for it to act out the destructive impulses in their displaced relatively harmless substitutes.
Were these hallucinations there to prevent her from doing or thinking something unacceptable?
"Do these faces scare you and keep you from doing wrong things?"
"They are not scary but they do prevent me from thinking weird thoughts. I get so caught up with these faces, I can think of nothing else."
"What kind of weird thoughts?"
"Like my son coming to harm. You know he acts as head of security for rock bands when they go on tours. He is right now with a rock band which is touring South America. I was worrying about the crowds getting out of control and his security team unable to contain them, resulting in his and his people getting injured or even killed."
The patient who has been with me for over twenty years and therefore I know she suffers from great fears of harm coming to her loved ones (which is a displacement of harm coming to herself). She harbors, in her unconscious, very strong impulses to destroy the world and everybody in it. These wishes emerge in her conscious mind as fear of world falling apart and coming to an end (because of her). And the guilt over causing world-catastrophe, when it becomes too strong, emerges as hallucinations.
I asked her "Who are the people whose faces pop up?"
"Faces of people I don't even know. Especially at night, when I try to sleep, the faces of people emerge who I have never seen before."
Now we know from psychoanalytic study of dreams that people who we are very close to us, especially family members, to hide their identity, the dream-work substitutes them with faces of total strangers. So the fear of harm coming to herself was displaced on to harm coming to the family member - now we also know that irrational fears of harm coming to one's family members and altruistic worries about their safety is really projection of fear of harm coming to oneself. - and the hallucinatory faces were of family members who were coming partly as a retaliation for thinking of harm coming to them and partly to prevent her from thinking such weird thoughts.
At this point, she recalled that the faces started popping up after she had a very frightening dream. In this nightmare, a nuclear explosion had occurred. She was in her car trying to get away from its after effects. She noticed as she drove that there were people all over who had been afflicted by the nuclear fallout and needed help. But she could not help them because her dead relatives and friends were there too, but now appearing alive, and were warning her not to touch or help any of the people on the road because they had been afflicted by the nuclear explosion and she would suffer the same fate as them if she touched them.
The dream had woken her up in fright and from that time onward the hallucinations of popping faces had begun.
Patient went on to say that besides what the gabapentin had done to her mental stability, the frightening exchange of words between Trump and the leader of North Korea about nuclear war that had triggered her fears of world coming to an end and which had triggered the nightmare and seeing on TV the devastation that had occurred n Texas and Florida due to hurricanes Harvey and Irma, they had all contributed to the emergence of the hallucinations.
Then she remembered that this  hallucinations of faces had once before occurred and that time it was a premonition of some disaster happening and to her surprise a few days later 9/11 and World Trade Center collapse had occurred.
Patient opined, "The faces were popping up as a premonition of what was to occur due to Hurricane Irma and Harvey. Just like in 2001 the same hallucinations occurred as a premonition of what was to happen on 9/11."
Patient lays great store by her ability to cause massive destruction by her thoughts.
The patient added, "You know how I worry about the world coming to an end soon. I worry about going to sleep and not waking up (because in my sleep when I have less control over my thoughts I can cause world destruction). I have to pray in the night for God to make sure that I wake up in the morning with the world still there and I still alive. But all this happens when I am down and depressed. I think that gabapentin made me depressed and triggered my fear of world coming to an end and the faces emerged to prevent me from doing so.

A cause for lack of bonding between a mother and her newborn

A young mother, in her early twenties, who had the child just couple of months ago, complained that she cannot really bond with her baby.
"Is it postpartum depression?" she asked me.
She did not have quite the features of depression. But then these psychological concepts when used to complain about one's problem are so difficult to form a judgment upon.  Depression is after all a word and words are shorthand for complex phenomenon. And while words convey information they can only approximate to what the other person has in mind and cannot evoke the exact image in the hearer. Every individual experiences his or her mental misery somewhat uniquely and they all get lumped under the rubric of depression. Of course there are certain features which frequently cluster together, and gives the core of what we clinically understand as depression, but sometimes there may be none of those core symptoms and patient can still be not doing well and may be having what should be looked upon as depression (which is best defined as a general inhibition of functioning).
What exactly she meant by she cannot bond with her baby?
She described it as that while as a mother she does take care of the baby, she does it mechanically. She is not drawn to the baby as the baby's father and baby's two grandmothers are, who get so excited when with they are with the baby, and cannot wait for their turn to have it because they get so much pleasure out of cleaning, feeding and playing with her, and go into raptures if the baby smiles or does something that they were not expecting her to do.
Then the patient wondered if the baby will develop autism because of  this lack of bonding with her (mother).
While I agree that the etiology of autism may have similar origins, where the baby's caretakers are not quite in tune with the baby's emotional needs and may deal with the expressions of its emotions, especially aggression, without proper feel for it, suppressing instead of allowing them to blossom into age appropriate forms, forcing the baby's psyche to shove the manifestations of these aggressive drives back upon its own self, which will eventually find expression as autistic behaviors.
I assured her that most likely the baby will not have autistic traits because she seems to be getting enough acceptance and nurturance from her father and the two grandmothers.
"And you you may be overestimating your lack of emotional attachment to the child," I tried to be supportive.
Then I asked the patient if she was breastfeeding the baby.
It turned out she was not. She blamed it on some nutritional expert in the hospital who just after delivery came to teach her about breastfeeding but on hearing she was on Suboxone and Xanax immediately declared that it was not an option because Suboxone and Xanax will pass through the breast milk and will harm the baby's brain.
I felt sorry for the mother and the child who were harmed for life because some expert, based upon a single variable that Suboxone goes into the breast milk, had ignored all the other benefits of breastfeeding which easily outweigh the little opiate going into the baby's system. It is better to be ignorant than to have half-baked knowledge.
I asked her if she really wanted the child?
She was not sure if she did. She had known the baby's father for just six months before she got pregnant. They were living together but not because of any strong bond. They just moved in without thinking through and because they could never plan anything beyond what was right under their nose. They both were good looking, so there was physical attraction. But the biggest thing in common was their opiate dependence and addicts like to do drugs together as if they seek courage from others doing the wrong thing. Their partnership had persisted in trying to give up opiate abuse too and both were in treatment with me getting Suboxone, and supporting each other to remain abstinent.
There were couple of other points which held them together. She admired him as an exceptionally good tattoo artist, which he really was, and he once was  flown in to Florida from Michigan to tattoo a famous basketball player and had been feted while he was doing the job by that celebrity, which had made her really proud of him, but overall she did not think of him as a husband material. She claimed he worked only when he felt like - which was not very often - and feared when married they will be more broke than secure.  They were living together more for convenience in her mother's basement than anything else. Then she got pregnant and lacking decisiveness allowed the pregnancy to proceed till she had no choice but to go through the delivery.
Then both of them dropped out of treatment.
Six months later the girl's  mother came for her own session to my office and told how her daughter was back doing drugs, and raising Cain. She was stealing, partying and hanging out with all wrong men.
For all practical purposes she had abandoned the baby.
So the lack of bonding with the child had a motive. If she had gotten really bonded to the child, it would have been a powerful counter motive to return to drugs and party all the time. With the child latched on to her, she could not have abandoned herself entirely to fulfilling her these pregenital primitive selfish drives.
So what looked like a spontaneous failure of bonding was not all that spontaneous. There was a cause,  a hidden motive, the pull of living wild, with no restraints on one's basic animal urges.
One wonders too if postpartum depression does not just arise out of vacuum but has some similar hidden motive behind the profound dip in mood. If we go deeply into the psychology of Oedipal Phase of the female sex, one is left with no choice but to conclude that  the compensation for the lack of penis, which at that age the little girl suddenly realizes will relegate her to second class status in affairs of the world all through life, is having an exclusive possession over her own baby child when she has one.  What she was denied - the male genitals, which are so strikingly obvious in her male siblings and playmates - and the absence of which was most acutely felt during that phase was handled by fantasy of getting compensated on growing up via having a baby of one's own who will be completely dependent upon oneself. But in some women, rather in all women to different degrees, their birthing and having a baby over which one has complete possession is not felt as adequate compensation. The original penis envy and continued search for it through direct competition with men, which is manifested in all kinds of inexplicable behaviors which puzzles us to no extent, like entering into relationship to trick/cheat him into giving what he has to her (the woman's attitude on this matter is best explained by the saying, "What is mine is mine and what is yours is mine too", or through destroying him out of jealousy, often after falling in love with them and then once he becomes her life partner turning the relationship into a constant criticism of all his behaviors, or making his life miserable, governed by the illusion - unconscious of course - that this will hasten his destruction which will be equivalent to her getting what she has always envied and desired.
Girls who are into wild partying instead of settling down with a mate and seeing the purpose of life in having and raising children are really into this alternate lifestyle. The motive being to steal from some unsuspecting man - in the chaos of wild relationship - the penis that is so badly desired. Women's love for clutter, confusion and goofiness in conversation also owes to the same complex: in the disorder and turmoil to steal what one so badly wants. The tumultuous relationships, the modern generations are having, prior to settling down - for they are brought up with so much indulgence with all their desires immediately satisfied so they want everything - also owes to the young girls not giving up the desire to have the penis directly by stealing from a man through a deceptive relationship than through having a child by him and postponing that wish to the next generation.
And behind postpartum depression lies the same complex. "Let me kill this baby for it has not gotten me true parity with men and let me seek what I want not through marriage and playing with my child (the penis substitute) but through indulging in wild chaotic existence and changing places with a man. Even when these women come from socioeconomic backgrounds in which leading a wild sexual lifestyle is out of question just the fantasy of indulging in polymorphous perversions may act as sufficient counter motive to not take care of the baby to the point of even killing it; done under the delusional cloak of protecting him from evil (the evil itself being mother's own infanticidal tendencies).
Does a lack of instinctive understanding of the aggressive tendencies of the child who has disposition to develop autism on part of the mother also arises from some counter motive?
It is interesting that in the modern times as more and more information is being fed to people on how to be ideal parents paradoxically we are producing more and more obsessive/autistic children. It appears that more full of education, sophistication, and upper class one gets, greater is the chances for the child to turn autistic.
Why this paradox?
Perhaps all this acquiring of knowledge happens at a cerebral level and perhaps much of it as  an overcompensation for lack of feeling of natural motherly bond between oneself and one's child. In olden times women had children  in their teens and  twenties, when they were nearer to being child themselves and thus instinctively understood their babies and could instinctively identify with their children's drives. They did not need any Dr. Spock's books or Child Protective Services manuals and parenting classes on how to be a good parent. They did take care of the child instinctively and did not see themselves as separate from the baby. Mother and child were a unit. Of course, they neglected and ignored the child much more than they do today and the child was exposed to dangers and harm  far more than nowadays. Today the child is infinitely more protected and safe from physical dangers. But in earlier times while they had little time for their children, the time they did spend had far more emotional warmth and understanding than nowadays. And what the mother could not give emotionally, there were always siblings around picking up the slack, and acting as surrogate parents. Now with only one or two children in household, this substitute parenting role of siblings has disappeared.
Nowadays the parents are full of knowledge of how to raise a child but the counter motive to be drawn by other demands of life: their career, their friendships, their hobbies, their need to excel with peers, their social obligations which are far more ingrained in them for these distractions were practiced late into their twenties and thirties, with childbearing postponed to the limits of one's biological clock,  they all act against bonding with the child as the unsophisticated mothers of the past could instinctively do.
Once I was severely castigated by a neurologist for suggesting that inadequate parenting may be responsible for autistic children not finding proper outlets for their aggression. She insisted that of what she see of the parents of autistic children they are more attentive, more concerned, and more devoted to their child than ordinary parents.
I agreed with her but added that they may be more devoted and may be spending more time and may be doing everything as the book says they should do. But it is done more cerebrally than instinctively and spontaneously. Trying to heal problem of the heart with the carefully thought out solutions by the head often fail. These older aged mothers, who often become quite narcissistic, by postponing marriage and becoming androgynous for living by themselves rather than with a partner, try to bring up their children through doing everything right by the book instead of feeling emotionally one with the child.  

Further dreams of escaping death

The patient whose dream of trying to pass his own aggressive illness upon the friend of his son - see blog entry of April 25 - in his next session reported further dreams of escaping death which may be of some interest to aficionado of psychoanalysis, especially since the dreamwork used typical dream symbols to cobble together the manifest content.

Most of the dreams were chaotic and only a few fragments he could recall with reasonable accuracy. But since they all followed the same theme we could figure out what the dreams were trying to convey.

The following dream  he could recall with good amount of manifest material.

He was out in a business area, running from one place to another doing errands, even though it was like 2 am and no businesses would have been open. [The dream had disregarded this anomaly.] He felt an urgent need to urinate while driving from one spot to another and stopped to relieve himself at a house which he had recently purchased but had still not closed upon. He had the keys to the house or knew the keycode of the lockbox. He assumed it would be empty so there should be no problem in his slipping in and out and relieving himself. To his surprise he found a hobo living there with two of his family members. They were squatters. They had eased themselves into the house illegally.  In fact they were cooking something on the stove at that weird hour as if it was quite natural to do so with no concern the house did not belong to them and it was so late in night. He went out to find some legal authority to help him throw them out. A middle aged police woman happened to be around and came to his rescue. She ordered the hobo and his family out of there which, to his surprise, they agreed to without any protest. 

The house, where enroute, he had stopped, was his own body. Though he does possess many properties he had none in the area where the dream shows he had one. This falsehood conveyed the wish to deny his having the deadly disease. The occupied house/his body was taken over by the hobos (disease) but only in dream. But since dreams are fiction and do not exist in reality, the illness was fiction too and the disease did not exist. It was all a bad dream
The hobo and his family were obviously the illness that were occupying his body illegally and needed to be gotten rid of.
When he had the dream, it was actually around 2 am, and he did have an urgent need to urinate at that hour of the night. This need to urinate which was real need had been woven into the structure of the dream to escape getting up and getting rid of the need by actually going to the bathroom by dreaming of doing so in that house.
Having a lot of unfinished business was an attempt to postpone death. "I have so many things to take care of that there is no way I am dying." One of the unfinished business was to find the hobo (the disease) in his property (body) and throw him out. The police woman stood for his mother who had got rid of all the childhood ailments successfully, whose image he was now invoking to do the same with the current disease. She had been transformed into a police woman to symbolize the legal system whose help he was taking to get rid of the disease. For the disease had no legitimate right to invade his body and he was getting  the law enforcement to get the illegal aliens out of his body..
The hobo and his family departed so easily was another wish fulfillment. The disease had gotten rid of in a hurry without any difficulty.

In another dream he saw himself in a bright and sunny day on a road which had a row of shops from one end to the other. He was supposed to catch a train after he went through those shops, primarily to find a restaurant to eat.  Each restaurant he entered, he felt like he had been there before and the food  in the past had not been bad.  It looked like at every restaurant he stopped he could not make up his mind whether to eat there or not and kept on finding himself in the next restaurant doing the same thing. All this indetermination about eating and moving from one restaurant to the next was accompanied by anxiety that he will miss the train if he does not hurry up.

The train symbolized the last journey and exit from the world. Going to the row of restaurants was an attempt to go back to all the women from the past with whom he had had relationship and to get a fresh lease on life by impregnating one of them and starting a new family, which, because of the obligations incurred, would postpone taking the last journey (dying).  Restaurants symbolized the girls from the past and eating there for having intercourse with them. But just like all these relationships had not ended in his having a child with any of them when he actually was having relationship with them, even in the dream this reality was preventing him from indulging in the fantasy that he was getting a fresh lease on life through having a family with one of them. The anxiety/fear of dying was shifted, for lessening its impact, from fear of dying (getting on the train) to just its opposite, missing the train (not dying); a reversal.

Another dream a short one was of confronting death itself which came in form of a hoodlum/animal dressed in black hoodie, that was challenging him in front of Burger King. Fear and darkness was the ambiance.

Entering the Burger King restaurant was to eat food. Consuming food symbolized having intercouse, which would have given fresh lease on life through rebirth (having a child). But death, in the form of a frightening animal, was preventing it from happening. The  animal also symbolized the Oedipal father, the deathly fear of whom had first appeared during the Oedipal phase for having sexual attraction towards the mother the pursual of which would have led to castration and death.

There were a lot of other dreams, all vague, the common theme of which was that he was breaking the law and would get into trouble if caught. All of these dreams originated from the wish (which his conscience deemed illegal) to give his disease/fate to others. In one dream he had invited somebody to one of his houses for some educational instructions. He noticed the invited person had parked his car illegally. It was facing the wrong way. He felt the anxiety (guilt) of that man's wrongful action. The man then began entering the house. He was watching this from a distance. But while the man was crossing the threshold of the door, its wooden frame suddenly developed gaping splits,  giving it an eerie dilapidated look.

Doing something illegal was pushing somebody else into the jaws of death through transferring his own bad fate on to that person. Which his conscience was deeming illegal. However, the dream was pushing the blame for this unacceptable (illegal) wish by making the person who was getting pushed into death as the one who was doing the wrongful act (parking the car facing the wrong way). The dream however could not succeed in projecting the feelings of anxiety/guilt upon the victim and he still felt it, even though in the manifest dream it was not him but the victim who was doing the illegal parking. This proves Freud's rule that it is easier to reverse and change the visual content of the dream to suit one's wishes but the affect associated with it is much harder to block out.
The house as well as the wood frame symbolized woman. Wood is a typical symbol of woman (matter/material). But as he entered inside her (house/wooden frame) instead of deriving pleasure from the act he met the fate of death. The gaps (gaping splits) that appeared in the wooden frame were symbol of the frightening aspect of female genitals (reminders of castration and death).

Another set of dreams were about being poisoned. While in a hospital the nurse is trying to poison him through the IV, or a waitress is trying to poison through the food she is serving, or there is a bitter debate going on between him and the waitress over a credit card error. In all these the wish to poison the other person or put them on the wrong through giving them the disease and through such an action getting rid of it from one's own self is projected, reversed, and experienced as they are poisoning or harming him.

A dream of escaping death by passing it to somebody else

A man getting up in age after a long healthy life, in which he hardly ever was sick, came down with a very aggressive illness and when told he may not live for too long, dreamt the following:

He is in a house where a friend of his son is in great trouble. Some kind of legal trouble.  A  policewoman and a policeman are standing next to him to take him away. But the son's friend does not have proper black pants to wear which once he gets and puts it on they can take him away. The dreamer is offering the young man to take his black trousers - quite a few of which the son's friend is trying - but none of them are quite fitting him. It looks like he is purposely not trying on the right pants and in addition is doing some purposeless wasteful actions delaying everything instead of putting on those pants the way he should and leave with the police.  This is making the dreamer angry that the kid is incompetent and will not amount to anything.

The day before the dreamer had been going through his closet and had noticed how many of his black pants which were just lying there, never worn, because they were too tight, were now fitting him well and as an irony the ones which had been fitting him well, were now too baggy because of the weight loss and it had taken him some time to decide which pants to wear and while he was sifting through those black trousers the thought had passed through his mind that soon he will be wearing none of them.
In the dream this process of deciding upon which black trousers to wear had been projected upon his son's friend and had been made a ground for accusing him of being incompetent and someone who will amount to nothing. Since black, as much as white, shroud/cloth often symbolizes death, the black trousers symbolized death, which the dreamer was trying to escape by pushing it from himself upon the young lad and getting angry and accusing him of incompetence for not readily accepting it.
The two police were death itself, which had come to take him away but which the wish fulfillment had shifted it from himself to the young man. It is he who is in trouble with the police (death) not me. The accusation of incompetence was actually reversal of the realization, in service of the wish fulfillment, that the young kid is too smart to be pressured into accepting the fate of the dying old man upon himself.