Last time I said to A.I.: Panksepp is referenced by Jungians and Solms. Who is he? What is his concept of the instincts or drives? Perhaps tangentially what is haptic communication?
"Jaak Panksepp was a visionary neuroscientist who dared to ask what rats feel when tickled—and in doing so, reshaped how we understand emotion, instinct, and the architecture of the psyche."
"🧠Who Was Jaak Panksepp?
- Estonian-American neuroscientist and founder of Affective Neuroscience, the field that studies the neural basis of emotion across species.
- He resisted behaviorist orthodoxy (Ã la B.F. Skinner), insisting that animal emotions are real and measurable.
- His work bridged neurobiology, psychology, and psychoanalysis, influencing thinkers like Mark Solms and Jungian analysts who seek biological grounding for archetypal and affective theory."
"🔥 Panksepp’s Concept of Instincts / Drives
"Rather than Freud’s abstract Triebe or Jung’s archetypal instincts, Panksepp identified seven primary emotional command systems—hardwired affective circuits in the mammalian brain:
| System | Function | Affect Type |
|---|---|---|
| SEEKING | Exploration, curiosity, motivation | Enthusiasm |
| CARE | Nurturing, maternal bonding | Tenderness |
| PLAY | Social joy, roughhousing | Joy |
| LUST | Sexual desire | Pleasure |
| FEAR | Threat response | Anxiety |
| SADNESS (PANIC) | Separation distress, grief | Sorrow |
| ANGER | Defensive aggression | Rage" |
"These systems are:
- Subcortical: rooted in ancient brain structures like the hypothalamus and periaqueductal gray.
- Affective: they generate subjective feeling states, not just behaviors.
- Evolutionary: conserved across mammals, forming the emotional scaffolding of instinctual life."
"Panksepp argued that these drives are conscious in their feeling tone, aligning with Solms’ reversal of Freud’s model—where the id is conscious (because it feels), and the ego is unconscious (because it predicts and regulates without awareness)."
"🤲 Tangent: What Is Haptic Communication?
"Haptic communication is the transmission of meaning through touch—a primal, nonverbal channel of emotional and relational exchange."
"Types of Haptic Communication:
- Functional/Professional: medical exams, haircuts
- Social/Polite: handshakes, pats on the back
- Friendship/Warmth: hugs, shoulder squeezes
- Love/Intimacy: cuddling, caressing
- Sexual/Arousal: erotic touch"
"Biological Resonance:
- Touch activates oxytocin, the “bonding hormone”
- It regulates homeostasis, soothes distress, and conveys safety
- In infants and animals, touch is essential for emotional development and survival"
"In Pankseppian terms, haptic communication is a somatic expression of CARE, PLAY, and LUST systems—a way instinct speaks through skin and gesture."
"Would you like to map these emotional systems onto Jungian archetypes or Solms’ cortical-subcortical model? Or explore how haptic ritual might restore instinctual flow in dissociated states?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaak_Panksepp
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2018.01025/full
https://powerfulspeak.com/what-is-haptic-communication/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haptic_communication
I thought your statement that the ego is a mask that doesn't know it is wearing itself was quite an insight into the "feel" of the ego. Can you riff on that a bit? And . . . can the Ego be seen as the gravemarker of the instincts?
"That’s a potent pairing, Gary—the ego as mask and the ego as gravemarker. Let’s riff on both, weaving them into a recursive meditation on identity, repression, and the symbolic cost of containment. [A death mask.]"
"🎠The Ego as a Mask That Doesn’t Know It’s Wearing Itself
"The ego, in its cortical sophistication, is a narrative interface—a predictive model that simulates coherence, agency, and continuity. But it’s not the source of feeling; it’s the interpreter, the editor, the PR department of the psyche."
"When we say the ego is a mask that doesn’t know it’s wearing itself, we’re pointing to:
- Self-deception: The ego believes its own story, mistaking its curated persona for the whole self.
- Alienation from affect: It often suppresses or rationalizes the raw voltage of instinct, mistaking regulation for truth.
- Symbolic amnesia: It forgets the mythic origins of its own structure—how it was shaped by trauma, culture, and archetypal inheritance."
"This mask is not malicious—it’s protective. But when it calcifies, it becomes a shell. And when it forgets it’s a shell, it becomes a tomb."
"🪦 The Ego as Gravemarker of the Instincts
"Now we enter the mythic terrain. If the ego is a gravemarker, it implies:
- Something has died—namely, the spontaneous, embodied, affective flow of instinct.
- The ego stands as a memorial to what once surged freely: eros, rage, hunger, play.
- It inscribes the name of the lost drive, but does not resurrect it. It may even deny it ever lived."
"In this framing:
- The SEEKING system becomes ambition without joy.
- CARE becomes obligation.
- LUST becomes shame or performance.
- PLAY becomes irony or avoidance."
"The ego, in its attempt to manage reality, buries the very forces that make reality worth inhabiting. It becomes a gravemarker not just of instinct, but of vitality, spontaneity, and mythic resonance."
"🌀 Recursive Synthesis
"Let’s spiral it:
- Instinct arises—raw, affective, embodied.
- The ego forms—to regulate, narrate, and protect.
- The ego forgets its origin, mistaking mask for face.
- Instinct is repressed, projected, or ritualized.
- The ego becomes a gravemarker, a monument to what it once contained.
- Only through ritual, dream, and embodied practice can the instincts be exhumed and reanimated."
"Would you like to build a ritual protocol for instinctual resurrection? Or perhaps a narrative structure where the protagonist must confront their own gravemarker to reclaim the beast beneath the mask?"
So we can think of implosions, eruptions, explosions of the shadow grown monstrous as of a zombie climbing out of the grave. Internal self-evisceration or external shadow projection or ritual killing of the disowned self.
