http://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=Krampus
I picked up a copy of National Geographic for December. It has an article about something I had not encountered before. The link above gives the essential information. It is a strange new--rather resurrected--practice.
As I read about this, my psychological analysis kicks in. It bespeaks the "split" nature of personality I cited before with Reaction-Formation Psychosis being the basis of much modern religiosity.
Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, was a resident of Vienna, Austria. It is in the area where the Krampus roamed at his time. That time was one of great turmoil in philosophy / medicine / political unrest. It was the era which generated Karl Marx and his ideas of a government where the workers ran things with committees and all material goods should be shared equally. Out of unhappiness comes deeper thought and insight.
We are in a similar era today. All sorts of religions are in direct conflict. Americans are trying to say we must be a Christian country despite the clear constitutional demand that Congress shall make no laws concerning religion. We are certainly in a war tantamount to the Great Crusades! Conflict is everywhere.
Add to this conflict scenario the economic struggles which are world wide and you have pressure on most of us which causes our demons to come out like Krampus. The masks are scary and bespeak several people I have met lately. They have a demon within which lurks beneath the surface of their personality!
Freud posited 3 aspects of personality which are basic: Id / Ego / Super Ego.
According to his theory of personality the Id is our selfish self. It seeks to get what it wants when it wants it. There are no bounds on the lusts of the Id!
The Super Ego is exactly the opposite. It gives our personality a super human perfection. It seeks good and success. It treats people with the same good goals that Jesus prescribed: Love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself.
The Ego is the balance point trying to encompass both Id and Super ego. A balanced person has a sense of self that incorporates some of the Id and Super Ego and recognizes their existence. In short, Ego is the present moment self trying to maintain control of the excesses of Id and Super Ego.
Another concept of Freud was the importance of dreams. In our dreams, he posited, we are freed of normal conscious restraints. Each dream has strange objects which symbolize those things which are troubling the Ego--usually a conflict between Id and Super Ego. Out of these dreams and using hypnosis, Freud tried to help people understand themselves. His favorite questions were: "What does this mean to you?" "What was that symbol in your dream representing out of your past history?"
Freud started by trying to help himself in his terrors. He advocated that every practitioner should have therapy himself on, at least, a weekly basis. For him, the therapy was essential and a never ending process. Like many people in my Abnormal Psychology class years ago at Emory, the main reason for them studying was that they had emotional and personality problems driving them to the edge of sanity. As I looked around the classroom and witnessed the discussions and interaction, I concluded: about 10% of us in this class are normal--the rest be a little crazy!
Our professor, in the first lecture, stated clearly that as we studied the abnormal classifications that everyone here will find some of these things in his/her mind because none of us is perfect. If any of you find yourselves severely troubled by any of this, make an appointment and let's talk privately--I mean it!!! This is important!
Now back to Kampus.
The mask worn by the participant is hideous and scary. The reveling going on right now across Europe has a high amount of intoxication accompanying it. The purpose is to scare children into being good so Santa brings toys rather than the switches in the bag of the Kampus. Before the day of Freudian understanding, pagans used this practice to "get the demons out." Once demons are out and looked at, we can begin to acknowledge their presence and put them in perspective.
What troubles me in recent years is the dispersion Fundamentalist preachers are putting on Halloween. The costumes and spooks of All Hallows Eve deal with the same fears and worries of children. It is simply a way to make spooks fun and get candy from adults. As children go up and down the street, there are fun things to make their hair raise without killing them. It is similar to a roller coaster ride. In your heart you know you are safe despite things that go bump in the night!
Too much is being put out these days as scare tactics. We have seen them in abundance over the National Healthcare debate. George Bush used this tactic to the max by saying Sadam Hussain has "Weapons of Mass Destruction." In reality most of this amounts to "Weapons of Mass Distraction" so we have to fund and follow the leader of the US Government. Thereby, we sanction our soldiers using our Weapons of Mass Destruction applied against the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan who are killed by what is called "peripheral damage." Too often, our own soldiers are the victims of a bomb or artillery shell gone awry. Everyone is scared in war and innocent people die a bloody death.
In reverse, this is exactly the purpose of the Terrorist. The events of 9/11 now have us held captive with fear. We stand in long lines at airports for searches. The citizens of New York and the Pentagon employees go to work every day with hidden fears every time a plane passes close overhead. We are living in a current environment filled with fear!
Back to the Freud Id/Ego/Super Ego idea: Our fearful Id is putting massive doses of Adrenaline into our bodies. There are more panic attacks these days. We hear news reports of murder/suicides. We rejoice that the Oregon State killer of cops was cut down yesterday, but we can't help but wonder who will be next. In many ways we become our own worst enemy through fear!
If you keep watching the storms and hurricanes on the Weather Channel, you are obsessing on hidden fears and using the stories to scare them out of you. My mother lives in Atlanta where there is a murder or robbery every day. She acts as though each one happened right outside her door although she lives in a fairly safe and sane neighborhood. At age 91, she, like many elderly people, are filled with fear. However, at the same time she has a deep faith and trust that "God will take care of you." Remember that marvelous hymn. My daddy sang it often as he shaved getting ready for another day of trying to minister to people with deep troubles.
What I am saying is that, as Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is within you." The disciples were quizzing him on when he would return. They thought they could not exist without him. Jesus told them, in essence, "Quit relying on my presence. The Kingdom of God is IN YOU!"
God gives each of us the ability to cope if we rely on his Spirit and trust He will provide a way. The Kampus is awful, but it can be controlled by the centered person. With God's help, the Kampus is just a pretend costume designed to get the evil spirits out into the open so it can be seen a discovered to be---just a drunk in a silly mask and costume!
Freud is of interest as a relic of a bygone era in counseling. He was not all that friendly to religion. In fact, he seems to have regarded himself as the Devil's Advocate. The thesis, antithesis, synthesis idea of the Hegelian dialectic and of Plato's philosophical appoach are part and parcel of id/ego/super ego. The whole affair smells of poor philosophy and even poorer pscyhiatry, being based not in reality but in ideological formulations super-imposed on reality. A closer look at the dialectic suggests that the way the thing really works is that the synthesis which is composed of apprently contradictory thesis and antithesis creates a tension in the mind which enables one to be creative, balanced, flexible, and magnetic. Breakdowns in the process occur, when one polarizes on either the thesis or the antithesis thinking one of the other is the truth while the opposite is false. One-sided applications or the application of one idea without its counterpart leads to anomalies, which in turn leads to more extreme one-sided applications. Eventually the whole process leads to a collapse mentally and otherwise. I discussed this once with the chairman of the Psychology Dept. at State, and he was quite interested, saying, "I am doing research in that area right now. Come and do your MA and PhD under me." I did not, because I wanted to preach. My wife said I would be sorry, and she was right as I realized I had missed an opportunity to explore the issues of insanity in detail. However, even so, the preaching was still more important as only the Divine can empower the dialectic to work in the way God designed it, that is by synthesis holding the thesis and antithesis in tension, a tension to be desired and treasured, which will enable the holder of such to be flexible, to be objective or subjective as the reality of the situation requires. This is something like Feistinger (sp.?) cognitive dissonance or Paul Halmos's Creative Dissonance (cf. his The Faith of Counsellors). The trouble with the reaction formation stuff is something like (I think it was C.G. Jung) the psychiatrist whose patient was complaining of fear of birds attacking her. The reaction formatin and the effort to relieve it are obvious, but one day they were standing outside, when, well as the pscyhiatrist put it bluntly, "The birds attacked her." The problem really lies with the philosophical or mental formulation of the dialectic which, again, is divorced from and imposed upon reality whereas the approach that I worked out over forty years ago, and which derives from the biblical realm of ideas, is that of a dialectic that is reality based and suitable to dealing with reality while at the same time providing the impetus for progressive development, the aspect so much lacking in post-modern idiocy.
ReplyDeleteHarold Bloom's the American Religion is getting some chat at sbcimpact.net
ReplyDeleteSome of you may want to take a look at that
Gene,
ReplyDeletePlease don't publish this on your blog. This is the only way I could find to contact you.
Could you please re-post your comment to my Submission Tyranny blog--the "Thankful for God's provision of Divorce" post? I think it adds so much to the discussion. (I'll paste it in my next comment, since this one is saying it is too long to go through.) I published a comment on that post, not realizing if a person clicked on the commenter's name, it took the reader to a porn site. The only way I could figure out to get the thing off was to delete my post and repost it. Of course, that deleted your comment, too. (Thankx SO MUCH!!!) WD.
Here's your comment: (Thanks again!)
ReplyDeleteWaneta--
I am now 63. As I began my ministry in 1970, within the first year a couple came to my office wanting to get remarried after a divorce on both sides. No other minister in the town would marry them.
I told them to let me do a little Bible research and get back to them since I might be going against the other Baptist ministers in the town. Here is what I found:
What Jesus said about divorce being legalized adultery was said to a Jewish practice of divorce. It was allowed for any practicing Jewish man to come to his wife, present her with a certain written statement, and they were divorced. It left the woman without rank in society since that was tied to men as well.
At the time, many men simply got tired of their "old gal" and shed her for a new conquest. Marriage was just an easy contract to leave without making the man less orthodox. This, Jesus clearly says, is the same as adultery. It was just legal.
Jesus said NOTHING about the woman living for years in a loveless marriage full of selfishness on the part of the husband. More and more we have men who were reared to get what they want when they want it and use women in the process. They put all the home chores and child rearing on the wife. In their opinion, all they have to do is pay the bills and get with their buddies as they please.
This is the situation Jesus specifically addresses with a critical eye. It was my conclusion that nothing more specific is said on marriage. He was totally specific about loving God and your neighbor as yourself! Here is our measure of a good marriage vs. being used.
My own daughter, after 15 years of putting up with a child in a man's body, has had enough. Her 4 sons are becoming more like their dad with disrespect, bad language, and rowdy behaviour. This was the real deal breaker. He is trying to beg her back with the same empty promises he gave before when she caught him using drugs. He comes from 2 parents who focus on things and neglected to love that little boy. His momma trapped his daddy with a pregnancy. Both of them really didn't want that child and told him so with screaming rants while momma penned him to the floor spitting in his little face.
Sadly, he has no measure and hates himself as he was taught. After 15 years of showing love and submission, my daughter has had enough. She is troubled by his begging and wondering if she should give him another chance.
Here is my advice to her and every other woman who has come to me under these circumstances:
Tell him you have endured (X) years of hell. Show me the same number of years of proven good behaviour and then we will discuss it, BUT not one day sooner!
Fair enough?
No human deserves to be the object of demeaning actions from their spouse. Women can be just as bad as men. It all has to do with "love your neighbor as yourself." Put in total context, no one can love another if there is no self-love. We all fail and must learn to forgive ourselves and go on with life.
God made us--he loves us--he wants us to find joy and peace through love. First, find that kind of love, then you will experience the joy and love my wife and I have enjoyed for 41 years. It never has been perfect, but it has been, and continues to be, a great journey producing 2 grown children who saw love before them as we guided them and they now guide their children.
I am proud of my daughter's wise decision. I hate she endured the abuse so long. She has proven to this man a measure of patience he did not really deserve. Now it is time to move on and raise those boys in a healthy love. We will help her in any way we can!
I am not very impressed with Freud--particularly with his statements about penis envy, which we know today has more to do with a woman wanting control of her own life choices, instead of giving that control to a man.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, you have a point about Halloween. Perhaps people do make too much of it. Here in the states it is easy to believe evil spirits do not exist.
However, in some foreign countries, they are very real and very active. My sister and her family were missionaries in Ghana, Africa and saw evidence of them repeatedly.
In Ghana witches had a practice of killing a person they didn't like by sending the evil spirits to beat them up. Meanwhile, the person who went to the witch to have the person cursed, went and dug a grave for the person they were thus destroying. My nieces, both in their teens at the time--went to visit a woman who had been targeted for death in this way. Although no one had been in the house, she was litterally black and blue, and was so relieved the girls had come to visit. When the girls (who are Christian) got close to the woman's house, she reported, the evil spirits left. She was exhausted from their beating her. If I recall, she became a Christian, and that saved her life. The evil spirits could not beat her then.
My sister and her family also reported that witches DID ride on broomsticks with black cats. If you had a black cat as a pet, you had to guard it closely, or it would be stolen by a witch. Witches could also change themselves into other beings, temporarily. My Sister's family could sense the evil all around them, and it was very oppressive.
Later, I was at a conference here in the states, where a man who was previously a witch (or wizzard?) spoke. He reported that the stuff we have heard about witchcraft is not only true, it is much worse than that. Those who are super deeply involved also drink blood. He told of trying to put curses on people, and that when he tried to put a curse on a Christian, it came back and hit himself, instead. It was frightening and frustrating to him.
All this sounds so surreal. But I cannot discount what my sister and her family experienced. Interestingly, they were working in a heavily Muslim-populated area, and the Muslims were involved in the witchcraft.
Like most wierd people, Freud had his quirks. I have never understood nor held much stock in "penis envy." For me, it is just a way of childish mockery: "I have something you don't have!"
ReplyDeleteGirls always win when puberty happens. They have things all men want and don't have!!!!!
I would like to see Freud deal with a client who is a transvestite!! That is a theory he never broached: breast / curves / soft voice envy!
People be strange!