For Every Trauma: An Idealization

For every micro-trauma, or "moment of misrecognition", there is a search within the self-organizing brain-body system for a way to regulate the dysregulating force of the trauma.
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The external elements that went into the trauma are recorded - registered - witihn a neural structure called the amygdala. The amygdala is the "spotlight" of the 'neuroceptive' system: or the functional reason for having a brain to begin with: defending against threats to the safety of the organism.

I know it might sound strange to some people here, but there really is - quite logically - an unconscious system in your body which controls your affects - your feelings - in the most logical way. In fact, we may wipe from the history of ideas the perverse dichotomy between reason and passions. All "passions" are reasonable - in the light of evolutinonary history. All the emotions and feelings you express, therefore, are perfectly and utterly reasonable from the perspective of your developmental 'canalization'. There is nothing inherently irrational; irrationality, if it is anything, or if we can give any substance to this idea, exists like this: anytime we misread a situation (which is simultaneously an emergent event emerging from an interaction between your body/self and the world; cause-effect also operates on the inside, but largely in a constricted form) we are more or less non-consciously projecting a past meaning stereotypically on a superficially similar context. Stupidity is ignorance; ignorance means 'not representing something coherently'. It is a lack of attunement between subject and object.

In any case, for every trauma, there is a system nudge in the direction of whatever sort of expressed experience in another serves or has been registered as an effective counter-response i.e. a defense.



The following chart seeks to represent this dynamic. Traumas on the left side, and Idealizations on the right, are dialectically correlated with one another in the organisms semiotic time-stream - which is more or less synonymous with the micro and macro structure of its brain wiring.

The self assimilates the 'self-object' structure implicitly present within every observed conversation or relation between humans. So much more information is present in these interactions than most people recognize; and what is of interest to the neuroceptive systems - or the systems of the brain which are wired to sense the safety of situations - is the embodied feeling of self (the value pole) and the object which induces it. For example: if I get bullied by person A, I come to experience a sense of myself as a victim. Any asymmetric interaction between humans (based in a lack of recognition of a persons feelings) produces this effect. Implicit within the aggressors activity - that is, the reason for his treating person B (me)this way - derives from a feeling of deficiency i.e. his own past victimization. Thus, a sort of fractal is present here. The aggressor ignores or pretends that his own victimhood isn't relavant to his role of playing the aggressor; thus, later on, person B too will come to do the same thing: if he see a vulnerability that was implicitly recoginzed in the aggressor who made person B feel a victim, he will assume the position of the aggressor and come to do to someone else what was once done to him.

Clearly then, the logic of this interaction is completely synonymous in every human brain-mind. Every human mind is really a 'dyad' consciousness with a "done to" pole and a "doer" pole. We unconsciously switch positions depending on the contexts we enter and the 'energetic' dynamics that the processses within it activate in us.

If we follow this train of thought to the point of adulthood, and to the point of the ressurrection of philosophies, such as the belief in being 'beyond good and evil', we find even in this ideas a higher level psycholinguistic emergence which is dialectically calling backwards to those early life meanings which registered threats and forced idealizations as defenses which structured the brainstem, vagal and mid-brain affective systems to metaphorically embody the meanings of the interactions in the forms that were inherited in our interactions.

It's quite clear that Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and perhaps even Marx and Engels, represent a very complicated and remarkably sophisticated rationalization of man being beyond good and evil, which is related to the premise that "power is everything", and that they, in fact, embody a "super form of human" which will engage in any artifice and deception to maintain power over others.

It's a very impressive creed, but in the light of evolution, as well as the important analysis of Karl Popper in the Open Society and its Enemies - a defense of liberal democracy - it seems to be nothing other than the rationalization of the needs created by humans who have inherited the psycholinguistic narratives, affective complexes, social context situations, and material institutions, that have historically emerged amongst human beings.

Popper believed that Plato recommended the ethics of the shaman-priest: the wanderer, which, coincidentally enough, is the name of the vagus nerve in its "wandering" through the subdiaphragmatic "realms" of the human body. Nowadays, the vagus nerves importance for the regulation of the biobehavioral relations of the organism in relation to the homeostasis of the body, is well recognized. The ancient or unmyelinated tracts - mostly sensory - convey the "knowledge" of the various organs of the digestive tract to the brain; 80% of the vagus is involved in this process. This section of the vagus, which is 'dorsal', or 'above', evolved in reptiles, and is related to the biobehavior of the organism in terms of "freezing" behaviors and 'playing dead' - which reptiles are fantastic at. Reptiles can go hours without breathing (low oxygen needs), hence why they move so little: they are evolved to live conservatively.

Mammals, meanwhile, run away from reptiles, and so were forced to evolve a myelinated vagus which allows for a syngergistic welding of the sympathetic nervous system (HPA axis) with the parasympathetic nervous system (dorsal vagus). Thus, the myelinated vagus links up with the facial muscles and the muscles of the pharynx and larynx, as well as the sinoatrial node of the heart (pacemaker) as well as the bronchi.

This anatomical mapping amounts to an understanding of human nature at a level that never before eixsted. It explains all the facts of autism, borderline personality disorders, depression, anxiety, bi-polar, schizophrenia and sociopathy. It is most clearly evident in trauma disorders, and also explains why gut disorders occur with major psychological disorders of self-regulation.

In fact, I would go so far to say that the polyvagal theory is like "turning the light" on when it comes to how our minds work. The body - its homeostasis - has a control on our consciousness that cannot be removed - but only accepted and understood as the "wisdom of the body".

The body has a history and meaning and NEED that is bigger than the idealizing ego. The ego is a mere speck in the process of meaning-making which our body does for us; yet, as ignorant creatures fundametnally dependent on knowldge for coherent functioning, it can take a lot of humbling for the mind to recognize the beauty and value in responding and cooperating instead of fighting.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Being an individual who has experienced a real "trauma", I would like to point out a certain fact. There are no "victims" ... as we, as humans are "predators".

This is an extremely important concept, that you need to be aware of in your anology. A person, who falls prey in a situation is searching for a way to turn his/her "prey" into a "predator". To overcome the threat, and kill it. This is an instinct, that is inheretary in every human being.

a reply to: bjarneorn

Looking at the shell (human or other biological machine) do not say what kind of awareness hides beneath. Different awarenesses give out different behavior despite being surrounded by predatory behavior. The wise introvert will disconnect as much as it can from the insane group behavior.

I am not saying you should be unconditional love/unity/acceptance toward insane predatory that refuse to control insane urges. There are beings who try to rewrite other beings behavior with psi and that also leads to insane sufferings on both parts. Rewrite other beings is not teaching awareness but a violent act.

The spirits who just compel away the predatory spirits that are to unaware to teach awareness and leave it to it's own suffering is the one that minimizes part of the suffering. There is nothing wrong with allowing awareness who cause suffering to face the mirror of that suffering. Many souls are to unwise to know what they are doing until they facing the backlash of their behavior.

a reply to: Astrocyte

The external elements that went into the trauma are recorded - registered - witihn a neural structure called the amygdala. The amygdala is the "spotlight" of the 'neuroceptive' system: or the functional reason for having a brain to begin with: defending against threats to the safety of the organism.

If you push thru a Amagydala fear overload the Amagydala function changes and the calmness follows.

Frank Herbert knew what he was describing.

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."