Psychology II: Notes on the nirnian mind (feat. Descartes, Freud, Lacan, Jung)

You can compare the universe of TES with ours and at the same time you can't. You can, because you are able to do so and you cannot, because it makes no sense. No sense? Yes. We don't know enough of a comparision of the two if it comes to universal rules, Science in short. Biology, Physics, Chemics etc.

In the perspective of the psyche, the psyche itself is the problem. What are we? is rather a philosophical question, but drew many answers with it over the last hundred years of human existence. It is no wonder that pyschology was born out of this philosophic term.

In TES it is a common accepted concept that we have souls or like other would say animi. Letting the discourse aside of monoists (no distinction) and dualists (body vs. soul), we can easily take that as the aequivalent of our psyche, our mind. At least the part what we call AE. The term describes what is and what is not + the differentation between both, LIFE if you want so. Compared to our world it means what we know as 'consciousness' and 'awareness'. Cogito ergo sum, as Descartes picked it (I think, therefore I am).

But science is on the run what consciousness and will really is: a mere illusion. But an illusion of the consciousness itself. That is no paradoxon. All have its purpose and so the consciousness is a 'tool' to come better along in our evolved life, in short form. (If you want to know more about that stuff and what I actually mean, I recommand 'Touching a nerve' by Patricia Churchland).

To come back to the Aurbis, AE is a similar 'artificial' structure, when out of another reason. In my thinking, it arrived through the implentation of the memory through dreamer, but the fact is: memory seems to be a key to personality, hence to an own mind. How do we define ourselves? Through what we are. And what are we? What we like, think and act. All saved in our brains to brought back up to consciousness: memory.

If we assume that the inhibitants of Nirn act the same way/ think and react similar to us, with all emotions and failures like it seems to be, there is the other problem. We at the same position where Freud start his 'revolution' of the new science: How do this function? How can we know that all derived from the same roots? Our psychology is grounded on the fact how our brain is wired. And it is wired in this specific way through evolution. The instinct of an animal is the fundament, characterizing our fundamental needs (hunger, safeness, sleep, procreation). It evolved to the stage, where we feel. Communicate through emotions, the wild inner core, waiting to break out: The IT (ES) like Freud named it in differenciation to the I (ICH, the self-aware self) and the Over-I (Über-ICH, the concentrat of moral laws to follow). The difficulty about that is not that Nirnians are not 'build' like that and rather that they can't have this through evolution. It is the assumption that the Ehlnofey were lesser spirits, who devolutioned in contrary what differs it. Either you assume an evolution or a devolution.

What made the nirnians aware? What defines there psyche? Lacan would rather assume that the 'others' made them this way. Not only the point where they became self-aware is important. The mirror: I am an independent being. That is the first step. But if I am an independend being, what makes me independent? What makes me me? Lacan coined the o (little other) and the O (big other). While the little other means the urge to re-merge to one unit with all wanted needs (an unfillable claim), the big other is the big unknown. First mother and father, who are there to teach the new being what the world is, what its role is. The rules. It reminds me of the jungian term Imago, an image of a beloved person, manifesting in the psyche.

But it always depends on the biggest debate of the psychology: Nature or nurture? Now we know, it is both. And again: The psychologic world of TES seem to be not different, but if this is the case, how we can imagine the reasons for that? Is the dream just an Imago itself? Pounding with various other beloved imagos, taken from the 'real' world, without a need to explain them?

If the aurbis is the mind, what are his parts? Mundus the consciousness and Oblivion the sub-consciousness (later term of the ES by Freud). Aetherius the link of death drive and life drive (describing the urge to live and to die, the fight between these functions). The void, the non-consciousness?

>The tip of the iceberg. Upcoming next times:Heroes journey, enantiomorph