The Adding Machine (14 page)

On December 3rd, 1973, the American Psychiatric Association decided that homosexuality would no longer be considered a mental deviation. Well, if they have more mental patients now than they can handle, it would seem to be a step in the right direction to remove homosexuals from this category. But the decision has caused a storm of protest. One psychiatrist compared the decision to ‘a psychiatric Watergate which we hope won’t be our Waterloo.. .’ They just don’t like to see any prospective patients escaping; it could start a mass walkout. Doctor Charles Socarides, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein Clinic staunchly opposes the new A.P.A. approach: ‘The A.P.A. has done what all civilizations have trembled to do . .. tamper with the biologic role between the sexes.’ Fancy that — and in a letter to
Playboy
in June of 1970, Dr Socarides says, ‘Five hundred million years of evolution have established the male/female standard as
the
functionally healthy pattern of human sexual fulfillment.’

Just a minute here, Doctor — the human species is not more than one million years old according to the earliest human remains so far discovered. Other species have had a longer run. Three hundred million years have established a big mouth that can bite off almost anything and a gut that can digest it, as a functionally healthy pattern for sharks. About 130 million years established large size as functionally healthy for dinosaurs. What may be functionally healthy at one time is not necessarily so under altered conditions, as the bones of discontinued models bear silent witness. But sharks, dinosaurs, and psychiatrists don’t want to change.

The sexual revolution is now moving into the electronic stage. Recent experiments in electric brain stimulation indicate that sexual excitement and orgasm can be produced at pushbutton control or push-button
choice,
depending on who is pushing the buttons. None of these bits of technology are in the future; the knowledge, and most of the hardware, exist today.

For example, there already exists a device that can be used in conjunction with bio-feedback and electric brain stimulation. I quote from an article by Patrick Carr, entitled ‘The Sonic Dildo: At Last, the No-Contact Orgasm’, about how a man named How Wachspress of San Franscisco has developed an audio machine that puts sound into the human body through the skin: ‘He begins to play with the controls of his synthesizer, programming a series of sonic patterns for sensual effect, and this
feeling
begins to spread down from my stomach toward my crotch, most certainly turning me on and relaxing me at the same time. My instant desire is for the same, only
louder.
Lovely sensations spread over my hips, crotch, stomach, and spine, and I am beginning to sense surprisingly precise nuances of tone and pattern as How performs ‘frequency sweeps’, a sharp attack with a long decay, a long rise with a sharp decay... oh,
yes
. .. “Very Indian, huh?” says How. “Y’know, I’m certain that ragas would be great for the body...” Afterward, disconnected from the unit, I experienced a wonderful body-buzzing calm.’

In terms of human sexuality what could it mean? Apparently there is no limit. A partner evoked by sophisticated electric brain stimulation could be as real and much more satisfying than the boy or girl next door. The machine can provide you with anything or anybody you want. All the stars in Hollywood living or dead are there for your pleasure. Sated with superstars, you can lay Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Isis, Madame Pompadour, or Aphrodite. You can get fucked by Pan, Jesus Christ, Apollo or the Devil himself. Anything you like likes you when you press the buttons. Boys, girls, gods, angels, devils. The appropriate sets can also be plugged in. Sex in an Egyptian palace? A Greek glade? A 1910 outhouse? Roman baths? Space capsule? 1920 rumble seat? Pirate ship? Log cabin? Mongol tent? And none of the sweat that goes with log cabins, tents, and pirate ships. It’s ready built, waiting for you, and you can leave any time you want.

Could real partners compete? Well, maybe. Experiments in autonomic shaping have demonstrated that subjects can learn to control these responses and reproduce them at will once they learn where the neutral buttons are located. Just decide what you want, and your local sex adjustment center will match your brain waves and provide you with a suitable mate of whatever sex, real or imaginary, while you wait. It is now possible to provide every man and woman with the best sex tricks he or she can tolerate without blowing a fuse. And any candidate running on that ticket should poll a lot of votes and bring a lot of issues right out into the open:

‘I promise you that I will disband the Army and the Navy and channel the entire defense budget into setting up sexual adjustment centers throughout the United States. And I promise you further that the psychic energy generated in these centers will turn any and all prospective enemies into friends, into
intimate
friends, as other nations follow our shining example.’

‘Control buttons to the People.’

Freud, who was one of the early researchers to point out the heavy toll in mental illness exacted by 19th century materialistic capitalism, never questioned the underlying ethic. He felt that we have paid a high price for what he calls civilization, and the price has been worth it. It did not occur to him to ask if the price was necessary. There is no reason why we could not enjoy the advantages of so called civilization without crippling conflicts. Freud uncovered the extent of marginal, unconscious thinking, but failed to realize that such thinking may be highly useful and advantageous. Where Id and Super Ego was, there shall Ego be, is certainly an outmoded objective. In fact the conscious ego is in many activities a liability as anyone knows who has set out to master a physical skill like shooting, fencing, boxing, driving, flying. Only when your responses become automatic and operative without conscious volition can you perform effectively.

The Buddhists have always regarded the ego as a spiritual hindrance. I recall a heckler who asked Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche why people stand up when he comes into the room. Trungpa replied ‘From respect’ ‘Respect for what?’ the heckler demanded. ‘Egolessness,’ his Holiness replied. Buddhism, and a number of other spiritual disciplines, are precisely designed to break down the ego. And I can testify from my own experience that the ego is an artistic liability. The best writing and painting is only accomplished when the ego is superseded or refuted. An artist is in fact transcribing from the unconscious.

Freud’s concept of the unconscious derived from his clinical experience. He observed a number of crippling symptoms that he traced to unconscious conflicts. So he tended to regard the unconscious as destructive or at least as a repository of irrational and atavistic urges. How then can a disadvantageous factor existing in the human psyche be explained biologically? Freud says that restraints on unconscious urges are necessary to hold a civilization together, but this explanation is altogether too rational, presupposing a consciously agreed upon social contract to suppress the irrational He must have seen the flaws in this argument and went on to develop his highly dubious concept of a Death Instinct and a Life Instinct in eternal conflict Here he is getting close to the Manichean position of postulating a battle between the forces of Good and Evil Though Freud criticized Jung for aspiring to be a philosopher and prophet rather than a simple clinician, he is certainly open to the same criticism. Ego, Super Ego and Id, floating about in a vacuum without any reference to the human nervous system, strike me as highly dubious metaphysical concepts.

In his later years Freud grudgingly accepted telepathy since he had encountered so many instances of telepathic exchange in his clinical practice.

I recall when I was in analysis with Doctor Federn, a number of telepathic exchanges turned up. For example I saw him in a dream giving out candy to children and told him to be careful or he would get a reputation as a child molester. When I related this dream he told me that he had actually given out candy on a vacation at Cape Cod and then realized, in his own words, ‘that people might think it is a sexy old man.’ And he told me of an analyst of his acquaintance who had collected twelve hundred instances of telepathy from his practise. But Doctor Federn refused to admit implications of telepathy. When I suggested that the curse of a malignant person might be effective he categorically denied that such a thing was possible. ‘Witches,’ he said ‘are hysterics and their victims are paranoid.’ However, if we admit telepathic contact we must logically admit that such contact can be as damaging as face to face contact.

Freud, while admitting the occurrence of telepathy, thought of it as an atavistic and undesirable vestige going back to the protoplasmic antiquity. It did not occur to him that this faculty could be useful or that it is used every day by ordinary people. The most hard-bitten police officer plays his hunches. He
knows
when a suspect is lying. Observe two horse traders and you will see telepathy in action. This one won’t go above a certain figure. The other won’t come down below a certain figure. You can see the closing figure taking shape in their minds. I will return later to the practical uses of ESP abilities. It is to be remembered that the unconscious was much more unconscious in Freud’s day than in ours. Sexual taboos were much more rigid and sexual behaviour was literally unmentionable. Four letter words could not appear on a printed page and the soft core porn sold now at any newstand would have been unthinkable in the 19th century. Hysteria, the classical example of unconsciously motivated symptoms, was quite common in clinical practice and is, I understand, quite rare at this present time.

So the unconscious is not a stable factor, but varies greatly from one individual to another and from one culture to another. I recall an analyst practising in Morocco who told me that the super ego seemed to be lacking or at least different in his Arab patients. In the west we seem to be at a stage which could be called the semi or marginally conscious. And perhaps we can look forward to a time when the unconscious will merge with the conscious.

Freud thought that the ego, super ego and id must eventually be placed onto a physiological basis and modem brain area. Research is coming close to accomplishing this. Professor Delgado, author of a book entitled
Physical Control of the Mind,
has demonstrated that irrational fear, aggression, anxiety, can be produced by the electrical stimulation of certain brain areas. All the symptoms of unconscious conflict can be turned off and on by the flick of a switch. Biofeedback has demonstrated that such autonomic reactions as sweating, increased heart beat rate and blood pressure, which are symptoms of unconscious conflict, can be brought under conscious control.

I do not think of myself as a materialist but I do insist that anything that effects the human nervous system must have a point of reference that is a definite location in the human nervous system. Julian Jaynes in his book
The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
puts forward a thesis that would tend to locate the unconscious in the non-dominant brain hemisphere. His theory postulates that the unconscious ego, the Id, is a comparatively recent development that occurred in the period from about 1000 to 800 B.C. Before that man obeyed the Voice of God which emanated from the non-dominant brain hemisphere, without question. There was no questioning entity. They literally had no ego but were governed by what Freud calls the super ego and their instinctual drives, the Id. He bolsters his thesis with ample clinical evidence gleaned from accident cases where part of the brain has been damaged or destroyed, and by experiments involving electrical stimulation of the non-dominant brain hemisphere which causes normal subjects to hear voices. However, the non-dominant hemisphere is not simply a source of irrational symptoms but performs a number of useful and in fact essential services. For example, the simplest spatial problems become extremely difficult to solve if the non-dominant brain hemisphere is damaged.

So Freud’s objective, where Id and Super Ego were, there shall Ego be, would be highly damaging if it were achieved. A more viable goal would be to bring about a harmonious coexistence of the two brain hemispheres rather than attempting to gain a precarious territorial advantage for the so-called rational hemisphere.

As soon as Jaynes puts forward his thesis that consciousness as we know it did not exist prior to 1000 B.C., the question of defining consciousness arises. Well definitions are usually not necessary and frequently confusing. We do not need to define electricity, to arrive at any formulation as to what electricity essentially is, to know how electricity operates and to use it effectively. I don’t have to define something in order to use it or describe its properties. Common sense formulations will suffice. We don’t need to define consciousness in order to map the areas of consciousness and to locate it tentatively in the cerebral cortex, the verbal centers and the dominant brain hemisphere. We can say further that consciousness is that instance that would attempt to define consciousness presenting the paradox of a ruler measuring itself. And we can tentatively locate the unconscious in the back brain and the non-dominant brain hemisphere. And however we derive consciousness it is obvious that certain activities require more of it than others. We need more consciousness crossing a city street than walking down a country lane. Bicameral man didn’t need much consciousness. His environment was vastly more uniform and predictable and he was, acording to Jaynes’s thesis, getting his orders straight from the voice of God in the non-dominant brain hemisphere. He was all Id and Super Ego with little or no Ego. Introspection was simply impossible.

According to Jaynes the awe in which the priest king was held derived from his ability to produce his voice in the brains of his loyal subjects. To hear on this level is to obey and there is no room for arguments or alternative courses of action. So consciousness, which decides between one course of action and another, had no function. The bicameral mind broke down in a period of social unrest, war, natural disasters and migrations. This period of chaos led to conflicting voices and eventually to the conscious ego as we know it today. A symptom of the bicameral breakdown was the use of oracles and divination. Divination, which puts the seeker in touch with his own consciousness, had no place in the bicameral mind since man was already merged with his unconsciousness. Now he had to go to oracles for the voice of God and the ego, in eternal conflict with itself and with other egos, slowly emerged.