Анна Давыдова-Городецкая – Ouroboros or the world inside out (страница 3)

Thus, Ouroboros, swallowed with the apple, promises and punishes everyone and always. He promises a return to Paradise, punishes by striving for perfection and the impossibility of achieving it. He exists in the psyche of all people – the same evil that was the fruit of the tree of Eden. And this evil is the punishment for the original sin of the forefathers.

Now let us imagine an infant in the mother's womb – there, the infant is protected, always fed, never lonely, has no worries, is always warm, and does not know about its «inferiority». The infant does not have to do anything there, only sleep. The mother's womb, the memory of which lives in the subconscious of each of us, may well be associated with the lost Paradise.

Ouroboros, transmitted by inheritance, having originated in a new person in the «paradise» of the mother's womb, leads this person through self-destruction to death in the life following birth, so that in a succession of incarnations, they again find themselves in the "paradise of the womb" together with a new life.

God → Paradise → Adam and Eve → Expulsion → life of labor and care → death → return to the earth, "from which one is taken".

And similarly: mother (God) → womb (paradise) → child (Adam or Eve) → Expulsion (birth) → life poisoned by the poison of the Ouroboros → self-destruction → death → hope of repeating the cycle.

Of course, no Ouroboros exists in our consciousness, and this book is about the emotional reactions and behavioral options of a person stuck at the infantile stage of psychological development. But if we take this fantasy as the starting point of a journey into our subconscious, it will be easier to navigate there. Therefore, let us accept as axiomatic the fact that every human being has in their psyche the structure of «Ouroboros», which I will discuss in this essay, because they are descendants of Adam and Eve. They also have the experience of life in the "paradise of the womb" and the experience of «expulsion» from the "paradise of the womb" at the moment of birth, followed by helpless infancy. With a responsive mother, the person successfully lives through this time and grows into a realized personality. However, even an adult personality under stress or overwork can regress to an earlier stage of psychological development.

The trigger mechanism for keeping the infantile personality structure intact, with the arrest of mental maturation, is maternal or substitute rejection – intentional, forced, or accidental. Probably, the more responsive and warm the mother is, the fewer the consequences of this birth shock – the expulsion from the "paradise of the womb". Conversely, the more indifferent or depressed the mother is, the greater the contrast between the womb and life outside it, and the stronger the desire to return there. The very fact of birth, from the infant's point of view, is already a fact of rejection. With repeated (post-birth) rejection by the mother, this infantile stage is fixed, and maturation does not occur; the personality remains stuck in the ouroboric structure.

The child's psyche probably seeks an explanation for what happened within itself and fixes on the paradigm: "If I become a better person, I will be worthy of love". Thus, the closure in the ouroboric circle is due to the coldness and insensitivity of the adults around the infant, who respond only to maximum crying and fulfill minimal needs. The child receives attention only after suffering. Another paradigm entrenched in their psyche is: "If I suffer, there is a chance that I will be noticed and given favors".

This work is not about specific people; it is about you and me. According to my observations, the overwhelming majority of those with whom I have had the opportunity to communicate have, in the structure of their psyche, an Ouroboros of larger or smaller size with all its «charms». Only a small percentage of people can adequately pass all the stages of adulthood and grow into an adult, responsible person, living not in illusions but in reality. I don't know what this is due to, as I have very little experience with such people, but I have come to the conclusion that it is not necessarily because they had a cloudless childhood and an accepting mother. Moreover, having a loving but ouroboric mother, generally devoid of true empathy, does not guarantee that her child will not grow up to be an infant; rather, it guarantees the opposite. Perhaps these superhumans living in reality have some innate volitional or intellectual traits that allow them not to fall prey to illusions. Perhaps such people don't care whether their mother is loving or rejecting, ouroboric or adult. Perhaps they have an experienced soul that has gone through many incarnations and matured through the ages. Perhaps in time, I will find the answer to these questions.

Chapter 1. Auto-aggression. Anxiety. Longing

I have already written that I was prompted to study my psyche by the realization of the multifaceted nature of auto-aggression, which, as it turns out, is not at all what we used to think based on traditional ideas about this phenomenon. When I tried to understand and systematize the mechanisms by which my consciousness works, I felt as if I were walking in a circle in a dense fog, from which unclear outlines were emerging. The more circles I made, the more distinct the contours and details of the blocks that formed the circle became, and the more obvious it became that they were all interrelated. It was impossible to study one without bringing out and studying the others.

I discovered that auto-aggression is closely connected with the illusory view of the self, which, in turn, generates a certain reference view of «happiness» and the external world. This, in turn, generates the devaluation of the real world, which is different from the reference one. The comparison of these worlds inevitably plunges one into despondency, which leads to auto-aggression as an attempt to defeat one's own «inferiority» and achieve a state of "full value" where the dream of the ideal has already been achieved, but this state is constantly slipping away. And again, auto-aggression, vulnerability, devaluation. And on and on in a circle, over and over again.

Having decided to share the experience of personal psychoanalysis, I initially wanted to lead the reader through this circle following me, focusing on my notes. However, I eventually abandoned this idea and will instead describe the components that make up the structure of the infantile personality, paying attention to the fact that everything in it is interconnected, has two opposites, and the whole structure has many degrees of protection from external influence.

We will consider the following blocks:

• Illusions: Beautiful dreams and terrible fears, what we take from the outside, transform in a certain way, and carry inside (import). Illusions form the basis of the structure of the Ouroboros.

• Full Value (ouroboric “happiness”, the embodied Reference Image) and Inferiority (ouroboric “unhappiness”): These are the two states of the infantile personality, the main character of the narrative – the actor. The actor strives to enter the first state but cannot get there, while they remain in the second state all the time.

• These states have manifestations – superiority and vulnerability – between which the actor oscillates on the outer circuit. The culmination of this oscillation cycle is the affect of superiority or vulnerability. This is what is translated from the inside to the outside.

Thus, illusions are imported, and the perception of reality altered by them is exported in the form of affects.

We will also consider the tools the ouroboric psyche uses to keep its structure intact:

• Aggression: External/internal (auto-).

• Devaluation of the true and idealization of the false.

Let's talk about the trigger mechanism of affect – comparison.

I would like to emphasize that the division into chapters is conditional, as this is a holistic, monolithic structure where each link is inseparably connected with others. This is clearly demonstrated in the scheme I developed while studying the phenomenon of Ouroboros.

Auto-aggression

Contrary to the traditional view that auto-aggression involves self-inflicted external injuries to the point of suicide, I think this is certainly true but extreme and not so frequent. Meanwhile, auto-aggressive attacks on oneself without obvious external signs occur almost constantly and are not identified by the personality as auto-aggression, and therefore cannot be brought into the zone of awareness and stopped.

Let’s take a step away from the prefix “auto-” and first figure out what aggression actually is. Defining this concept is hardly difficult – everyone knows it’s when fists come into play as a form of argument. It’s obviously unpleasant, even frightening, to find oneself on the receiving end of that kind of aggression.

There’s also passive aggression, something we’re equally familiar with: when, at the slightest misstep on our part, someone unleashes a flood of sarcastic reproaches in a specific tone. We call such people “toxic” and try to minimize contact with them, because we’re left feeling deeply uncomfortable – hurt, even – after such encounters.