ch. 6 introduction to the ego structure

7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure

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Part Three: The Ego Structure

Chapter Six

Introduction to the Ego Structure

The question creates; the answer kills.1

in the same period in which the beginning of philosophy takes place,

the markeddomination of common sense (sophistry) also begins.2

all progress is made by and in striated space, but all becoming occurs in

smooth space.3

The psyche is the form of a peculiar dephasing, a loosening up or unclamping

of identity: the same prevented from coinciding with itself, at odds, torn up from

its rest, between sleep and insomnia, panting, shivering.4

Restoring the Primacy of AspirationTHEASPIRINGEGO. We are embarking into new territory. The workings of the

machinic assemblages we describe going forward, under the name The Ego Structure, bear

no resemblance to those of the Arteous System. In the course of our presentation each of the

assemblages of the Ego Structure we will be introducing will be immensely complex, each on

of them containing many working parts and multiple lines of engagement. That each of these

assemblages harbors multiple assemblages is a distinguishing feature of the Ego Structure.

Indeed, it is this complex multiplicity of machinics that sets the Ego Structure apart from the

Arteous System. Because of this complexity, the Ego Structure supports P/SS capabilities

that summon highly refined and articulated means of engagements with occurrences, which

1 Jabs, The Little Book of Unsuspected Subversion (Stanford, CA; 1996) p. 372 Heidegger, On the Essence of Truth, inPathmarks (New York; 1998); p. 152. Italics set by

Heidegger.3 Deleuze and Guattari,A Thousand Plateaus (op. cit.): p. 486.4 Levinas, Emmanuel, Otherwise Than Being (Pittsburgh, PA; 2009); p. 68.


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generates innumerably diverse, idiosyncratic and specially attuned engagements ever greater

proliferations of modes, styles, discourses and productions, and it does so relatively quickly

(some seemingly arise spontaneously). Each new invention that issues from the engagements

enacted by the Ego Structure provides new material for subsequent iteratively enacted

engagements. Many such inventions get lost in the hubbub, fall into the cracks; but enough of

them remain in play, picked up by one or more of the expanding population, so as to become

factors.

Some of the ways that the assemblages of the Ego Structure differ from those of the

Arteous System include these:

Historically Constructed. For one thing, these new operations arise not

spontaneously out of engaging with pure nature or even purely cosmic transversals, as

did the assemblages of the Arteous System. The assemblages into which we are voyaging

form in response to specific problems that arise as the Arteous workings are enacted in

daily living, by a P/SS that is generatively engaged with them. As such, they are P/SS

resources that enact existent solutions, modes of P/SS engagement that are saturated with

historicity, specificity and locality. These are solutions that arose in the Fertile Crescent

beginning some 4,000 years ago, and that were elaborated in Macedonia and Greece starting

around 3,000 years ago.

While these solutions were either ignored or were opposed vigorously by many

peoples (I think of Nargarjuna and other Buddhist and Hindus sects, for example), in the

European-Anglo-American theater, these solutions have established their hegemony over our

sense of what is real, has value and can be accomplished in the human endeavor. Great

institutions have valorized, glorified and enforced (and continue to do so, with great ferocity)

these ways such that they have since become the dominant culture that determines what of an

occurrence and its interpretations is right, good and true. Each such valorization has

contributed to the shaping of the assemblages and their engines as we have them in the Ego

Structure. In this way, they become machinics in a persons P/SS by virtue of that person

belonging to the people, speaking its language, and annealing to its laws. Aspiration, here

gains its shape, its limits and its margins of possibility.

Not Centered. For another thing, these assemblages are not geometrically or

functionally centered by a stationary, relatively (desiring to be) static attractor as is the SP

of the Arteous System. These assemblages can adopt idiosyncratic structures, and these


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strangely configured assemblages function quite competently as long as they are able to

iteratively engage the gathered forces that engender the assemblage. The shape of the

assemblage is only mandated by what is required in order to meet the demands of the manner

of individuation it has set out to enact. And, to meet these idiosyncratic standards, these

assemblages orient around attractors of a very different natures than those of the Arteous

System. These new assemblages are oriented around complex engines.

Engines. The assemblages of the Ego Structure are constructed in order to account for

the way individuation is to be conducted at the site of singularizing according to the demands

of a fully engaged P/SS. Whereas the Arteous System happened upon individuation and

generated P/SS systems that supported this factor, the Ego Structure elevates individuating to

a new and unprecedented primacy: making individuatingsingularizing the way occurrences

are engaged, interpreted and acted upon. And, no less important for us, the Ego Structure

enacts this primacy of the complex process of individuation within intensely dynamic milieus

that are driven by ever more diverse, rapid, encompassing and powerful human intentions.

Thus these assemblages are triply complex. As compared to the assemblages of the Arteous

System, these Ego Structure assemblages not only (1) sort out the ways that the engagements

are open to be affected by human, technical and pragmatic actions at the site, they not only (2)

take into account the desire, imagination and concepts that are being deployed in order to

guide those engagements and make sense of the dynamics in effect at the sites of P/SS

emergence, but they must also (3) construct viable means of consolidating those engagements

into IS configurations that are capable of take their places in continually more

encompassing and more expansive ways. Clearly, these assemblages cannot operate with

static memorializations or accomplished verities as their driving cores.

And so, instead of being oriented around a center that attracts to itself the most static

(near equilibrium) and repeatedly asserted energies, as does the Arteous Systems SP, the

assemblages of the Ego Structure are oriented around complex engines. These dynamic

attractors attract to themselves, instead of near equilibrium or quiescent factors, continually

driving energies that remain in motion (appearing and disappearing, moving from one place to

another), but have attributes that are (or are made to become) amenable to articulation and

interpretation (yes, in language). These engines, while being made of structured, organized

and stable materials (skills, talents, learning processes) these engines are constructed in

such as way that they can be relied upon as to enable passages, transformations and


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transportation of continually varied impressions into, through and out of their machinic

workings (and into aspiring actions, speech and decisions).

Divided Dominion. The dominion into which we embark is thus also a divided one:

divided between the need to come to solutions to the problems of existence that accord with

the ways of the people in its given status of competence versus taking up the potencies of

aspiring individuation. In its most compressed from we have the Ego Structure as a

battleground between Reason and aspiration. On the one hand there is the drive toward

solutions that accord with the given ways of the people, which precludes that opening and

dislocation, shuts it right down, in order to establish its objects, artifacts and laws. On the

other hand there is the instigating impetus, that of individuation (and aspiration), with all of its

power to open, dislocate our given P/SS accomplishments in order to anticipate

unprecedented ways to engage occurrences in a more expansive and more encompassing

manner.

PRIMACYOF ASPIRATION. It is my proposition that the aspiring mind is primary, or at

least co-primal, with any other P/SS development. In my view, in any logical, sequential or

sensible sequence of events, the aspirational mind the opening, dislocating, anticipating

impetus, the irrepressible urge to create, to individuate was the power, potency and drive

that exerted powers in such a way as to necessitate, impel and drive the formation of

something as complex as an Ego Structure. The primacy of aspiration, the irrepressible drive

to establish individuation as the human way, can no longer be relegated to the background, be

neutralized into mere whims or daydreams, or even be categorically and universally be placed

at the mercy of the regiments of Reason and its theological allies. These ferociously

consolidating (re-centering at the behest of the SPs memorializing sway) were mustered to

the front in order to forestall the affects of the powers being exerted by individuating

aspiration as it accommodates the open, the strange, the unsettling of laws, truths and

certainties.

The Ego Structures Engine Machinics

According to this schema, Ego Structure emerges as a latecomer to the bazaar of

experiments that are ventured in order to engage, accommodate and venture the forces of

individuation and, accordingly, we are neophytes in terms of developing and deploying its

resources, we are far from masters of this domain. The Ego Structure emerges at a relatively


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recent time when human engagements have already become massively complex and so the

P/SS already has to deal with fast moving socially engendered changes such as trade,

conquests, new gods and new technologies (metallurgy especially). The issues it contends

with surge to the surface of the milieu at the pace of human communication and

transportation, not natural rhythms; and the intensity of new artifacts, symbols and language

innovations it faces forbids any one-fits-all solution (unless that solution is a meditative

release from it all). The P/SS resource that has to be cultivated therefore has to be one that can

accommodate these dynamics in multiple directions: speed, intensity, variety, different logics

and means of expression, including advancing technologies.

The Ego Structure can operate in a complex manner because it is not the real time

in-gatherer of energies at the site of emergence that the Arteous System is. The Ego Structure

takes up what issues from, what is dispatched to it by the Arteous System. And what is

dispatched are all manner of variations on themes of relation, context, formation, soundings

and dissonances. What is dispatched is a welter of affecting energies, many of which are

stable enough to be named and placed into general circulation, but many of which remain so

complex that only images of the gods suffice to render them into a mode that is amenable to

be experienced and narrated. And still others are so aberrant, so excessively energized and

anonymous in their assaults on the system that they are cast out, banished as renegades, or

held apart in reverence as the sacred and holy of a different order. The job of the Ego

Structure is to make sense of these chaotic missives and thereby put them to work for the sake

of individuating singularization.

INDIVIDUATION ON ITS OWN. The rising of the Ego Structure marks a great and

momentous emergence in the course of the human endeavor. In this moment the more settled

factors that have been constellated are taken together with the less settled ones as moments of

thesame factors out of which sense has to be made.Individuation is thus elevated to the status

ofbeing what is the case, once and for all(for the Ego Structure, that is). The Ego Structure

turns the tables on the axis of singularization/individuation. In the case of the Arteous System,

whatever was generated there had no other drive than singularizing, and this drive was

continually interrupted by the dislocating and distancing affects that engendered the need for

the necessity for machinics that could individuate. On that occasion, when individuation was

added to the P/SS mix, it was secondary, it was an untoward disruption to the primary drive of

singularizing that was eventually (symbiotically) accommodated.


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Now, individuation is the only matter or condition that the Ego Structure

knows. Individuation is taken up as being the primary driver of the way of the people; the

state of ambiguity, dislocation, and dispersal and, to say the least, impermanence, is all that is

the case. The Ego Structure rises in orderto make sense, with a strong emphasis on make.

That is, the Ego Structure arises in order to establish engines that do nothing other than put

into play, into circulation and do so with nothing less than hegemonic power, the means,

methods, ways and modes (as in mode-rn) whereby nothing else but individuating

singularizing transpires.

That this mandate will necessitate generating complex machinics is putting it mildly.

And that such a project is still underway in establishing itself, is also not surprising. The

machinics that the Ego Structure develops must be able to continually (and differentially)

engage incessantly pressing states of formation, deformation and change, and then must

concentrate them (interpret them) into modes that can be singularized, or constructed into

unicities (complex subjects) of action, speech and decision. In this way, in this sense,

individuation andaspiration is now fully infused in each and every act, nuance, operation

and production of the Ego Structures machinics (which are machinics of action, operation

and production i.e. are engines). The question is, how to put this into effect in a way that

the human endeavor accepts individuation and aspiration, as much is it now depends on it.

Face it, generating these new machinics is a fools errand. The daunting immensity of

this task has yet to be appreciated. That we have really just begun, that there have been errors,

mistakes, wrong paths and dead ends along the way cannot be surprising either. As we

embark into this domain, which is nevertheless, against the odds, well underway, it might be

worthwhile to review what has to be accomplished, over and over again as aspirations take

shape. The tools that are available are only those provided by the basic dynamics of self-

organization; but even these have to be concentrated, specified and artfully deployed to

accomplish anything remotely effective as a way of individuating in evermore-complex

milieus.

To accomplish its vision of individuating then, the Ego Structures engine-machinic

capabilities have to be able to: (1) envelop energetic, hybrid and still ambiguous Arteous

formations and constellations even the ones that (as dispatches from the fourth orbit, for

instance) remain out of the general circulation of common sense and given reality; (2)

adjudicate these anomalies in terms made available by language so as understand, interpret


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and form modes of individuating engagement with blessed and certified facts and laws

and then reactivate their anomalous characteristics; (3)from moment to moment, read and

interpret transversals (thought an language) in ways that specifically, at the site of emergence,

on a case-by-case basis, relate to them to the highly articulated and dynamic states of affairs at

those sites, dynamics that continually develop and change; (4) construct coherent (if not

monolithically unified) ways, methods, interpretations, insights and interventions that produce

means of engagement that are effective at singularizing at the site of engagement, but that are

never finally defined by these interpretations; and then (5) continually develop new

(facultative) capabilities that can serially, iteratively (re)engage the site of occurrence in

manners befitting continually a diversely capable, productive, communicative and creative

individuated singularized being (a being that is capable of conducting itself in a manner that

continually, iteratively opens to the requirements posed by 1 4).

The Assemblages of the Ego Structure

No single operation can accommodate all of these demands. Over the eons since the

Prophetic Intercession and the Greek Pivot, the Ego Structure has so far come to comprise

three assemblages: (1) a Sense-Making Field (S-MF); (2) an Egoic Transducing Array (ETA);

and (3) a World. Each of these constitutes a complex machinic structure in its own right.

Each has its own materials, its own mode or form of organizing those materials, and its own

machinic engine that activates the individuating impetus.

To attune the reading that follows to this complexity, here is a summary, a brief fly-

over, of the machinics we will detail in the next chapters.

(1) THE SENSE-MAKING FIELD (S-MF). The S-MF takes up and embodies the

craving for producing greater specificity in engaging occurrences, so that the singularizing

that does eventually transpire will be competent and enduring (will incorporate the

individuating that is required of the P/SS at the site of its engaging the milieu). The S-MFs

operations specify how the SP-encoded dispatches and deliveries (energies marked, coded and

inscribed with their relation to the monument/memorialized core of the SP) from the Arteous

System are to be transmuted into entities that can be worked upon so as to accommodate

diverse, rapidly changing and complexly intense human engagements. The work here is to

interpretthrough large but homogenizing methods (concept, imagination, desire) the

loosely constellated impressions the Arteous has been able to configure.


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That is, the S-MF makes sense of these impressions, ormakes out of the material it

is given whatcan be accommodated as being sensical and therefore whatcan be deemed

as being amenable to engagement by the already existing, functioning and singularizing P/SS

resources -- but in a new way that activates aspiration, that is more expansive and more

encompassing modes of engaging than had previously been envisioned by the P/SS. The S-MF

concentrates on elaborating and strengthening the dispatches, in a sort of weaving operation

that gathers impressions into the dominant factors that determine a mode of engagement from

moment to moment.5 The S-MF only interprets, generates the idea of what is at stake in the

engagement at this moment of singularizing. The S-MF, in sum, as a shorthand for glimpsing

this assemblages working,specifies individuation as a techne, an ability to discern, analyze

and devise case by case engagements with aspects it can differentiate at the site of the IS

beings emergence.

It does this by delayingthe moments of singularizing action at the site, holding off the

rush to engage. In its machinics allows the dispatched impressions from the SP to course

through an expanse, traverse a distance, so that the individuating impetus has time to exert

its affects on these impressions, by swathing them in light, putting these brute impressions

under thegaze of what individuation has at stake, and what it insists that singularizing take

into account.6The S-MF turns the P/SS from being merely an adapting agent that preserves

5 I understand Derrida to be pointing to the deferring, spacing, opening characters of something likewhat I call selfstreams when he describes the processes that transpire under the heading of differance. This

is the weaving of more effervescent crucibles into new concepts. SeePositions (Chicago;1981); pp. 8 14

and 40 42. For a very elaborate and high level philosophical exposition of Derridas notion see Gasch, The

Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (op. cit.); pp. 194 -205.6 I take the liberty of crafting the long note that follows because this moment marks such a seminal

occasion in the emergence of the Ego Structure and of Western metaphysics, religion and philosophy over all. It

is in this moment that the encoding and supplementing of energies that have been constellated by thesupplementing affects of soundings come under the aegis of visibility, light and the gaze. This is an even more

revolutionary usurpation than what Heidegger cites in Platos Doctrine of Truth (inPathmarks (op. cit.) as the

domination by the Idea over the notion of aletheia, or unhiddenness. This latter concept, after all, still

operates in the regime of sightedness.

What is accomplished by Platonism, instead, is that by virtue of the opening of a space that is swathed

in light, in the Good, (which, as Heidegger presciently notes makes that which is capable of something and[most importantly for this schema as generativity] enables another[my italics MHS] to be capable of

something (p. 174)),presence is able to be heldby the knowing mind (nous)in an engagement with all of its

affecting energies (supposedly, by means of other P/SS resources recollection and naming for instance --

remaining in play at the site). What able to be engaged thereby only requires can be spoken, described,expressed and written (rendered as a sign: signified signifier), as engendering its being. (And thus, Heidegger

is blind, or deaf, to this assignedand constellated state of soundings, which, to be sure are enroute to becoming

language. By the time being rises to attention, the soundings we refer to here have been into a voice,

which Heidegger takes up in his phonocentric schema this according to Derrida: see for example, Positions

(Chicago; 1981); pp.10ff ). Platonism, in establishing the dominance of the gaze and the visible, places occurring

dynamics (including its appearing/disappearing character) in subordination to the conceptual selfstream of sense

making.


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imagination. That is, in the tradition we are considering, these dispatches are analyzed in

terms of three factors: (i) their attraction and significance for the singularizing of an

individuated and individuating Self their quotient ofDesire; (ii) their permeation and or

status in the flow of common language and institutional production theirConcept; (iii) and,

finally, in terms of their proximities, affinities and intensities as still forming processes

Imagination. We call these separated factors selfstreams, reflecting both their source, as be

in dispatches of self-encoded factors, and also the new form they are given as the unique

streams of energizing variable affects of the engaging person. These are commonly referred to

as a persons interests and or talents.

These selfstreams, as factors of individuation, engender feelings that mark the delay,

the interruption -- the inertia-braking that brings one up short, the hiatus in instinctual

reactions -- that is being imposed upon the surge into action. One hesitates to speak, one

draws back ones hand, and/or one catches ones breath, even as the occurrence speeds by.

The streams, as traversing an imposed distance, space, gap or aporia (unwanted, uninvited,

uncanny and uncomfortable questions) call into question any and every thing that might have

once been demarcates as a certainty (able to be acted upon immediately, instinctively). They

thereby impose a new factor into P/SS workings: the needfor engendering a lively, active and

competent circumspecting anticipation.8 We feel this as the need to know, or the lack of our

knowledge; we feel this as being thrown back onto our pure will to proceed, or onto our

values that impose an ineluctable demand for our decision.

In essence, this streaming field of forming senses of what the occurrence demands

exceeds what the former state of the IS being takes it to be, if its former state of being is not

sufficient to engage these new senses hoisted into view, what will be sufficient? And whence

and whereby doe such a sufficiency arise, since my former state has proven to be inadequate?

And how is any new state that is supposed as being sufficient to be certified and vouched safe

in fact being more sufficient than what the previous state had been capable of? Why change,

and if change is being proposed, change to what? These are the questions that stir mere

8 As we noted above, the ancient and classical notions of egoic action were bent on rendering avibrant milieu in some kind of static regime of sense, and, ultimately truth, the standard of the static. But, as

we are now beginning to see, the dynamics of the Ego Structure, in order to capture something and render it

static actually had to undertake a very fluid and active process of its own making. In order to render something

static, the egoic impetus had to undertake a most radical effort at anticipating: encompassing future and present

into what would become the past for things and minds alike. Thus we are beginning to glimpse how the notion

of anticipation will assume prominence in our subsequent discussion of the Ego Structure, and be translated

into a combined neologism of ante-cipation and ante-cedence.


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impressions into driving streams that are moving the P/SS to new configurations. The

composition of each of the selfstreams desire, concept, imagination -- determines what,

how, to what extent and in what relative quotients factors of occurrence need to be

emphasized, valued and ordered for them to be ventured as factors of the P/SSs viable

singularizing. In order to transpose the new and hypothetical or experimental senses into

singularizing action, these selfstreams have to be mapped onto configurations of intention,

will and values. This is the role performed by the engine of the S-MF, the iconic imago.

(1b)Iconic Imago. The machinic engine of the S-MF the attractor/driving

production what its very existenceproduces, takes the form on an iconic imago. This

consolidated formation provides an template and an architecture onto which all the

flowing and dynamic energies in play can take shape as highly individualized affinities,

associations and strengthened contiguities that are able to singularize as a univocal subject

or a unicity, at the site of emergence. 9

Thus the productive act of the S-MF does notconstruct knowledge, and its machinics

do notconstruct a cogito that is strictly devoted to such knowledge. The work of the iconic

imago combines the three selfstreams into an engine, into a concentrated force that will exert

its own singular way of engaging the site of this IS beings emergence, from moment to

moment, in all the splendor (and dignity) an IS being can muster. The S-MFs engine

therefore is not intellect or knowledge, but instead the iconic imago comprises a concentration

of the S-MFs selfstreams, produces and drives into existence a unique and singular

template, a schema of resources that acts to take its place. As an engine, it activates energies

by placing them into relative proximities that can be held together, ventured as a whole, and

9 This notion specifically intends to highlight a different logic of syntax and expression from that

offered by the logic of Reason. Rather than produce sense-elements that are composed of equivalent concepts

of delimited pairs of contradictions (that cancel each other out and are then born on by higher syntheses all the

way up to the Absolute or God), the S-MF in the aspiring mind produces a figuration in which aspects as

sorted out by the selfstreams are composed in asymmetrical, non-equal, non-sequential relations, proximities and

affiliations. This organization is hierarchical in that certain aspects of sense are deployed closer to the site ofemergence and are invested with greater force. But this arrangement is variable and situation dependent, and the

relations of affinity are based on sameness or the variety of means of engagement an arrangement makes

possible and these arrangements are themselves variable from situation to situation. This produces highly

idiosyncratic logics, or highly heterogeneous personae, personalities and role preferences, rather thanisomorphic and homogeneous logics that prescribe right and true ways of engaging. Thus, instead of a table

of categories or a system of logical arrangement of notions and ideas, the S-MF produces an imago of ones

own individuation; and it is iconic in that it is always constructed on the basis of predecessors that foster

comprehension, communication and intelligibility while never repressing the idiosyncratic dispositions of its

composing elements. While the conventional logic of Reason are in view as constituents of what, as constellated

elements of what is dispatched into the S-MF, these are continually displaced and idiosyncratically ordered by

the shape, contours and architecture of the iconic imago.


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can act as a touchstone for what occurs from moment to moment in this beings emergence at

the site. It is this engine that produces what we call an experience: literally the shaped

configuration of engagement that is gathered, creating, forming, giving structure to the

perimeters of our own being. And just as experiences are dynamic, are affecting and are

capable of generating affects, all the while being open to being affected and changing course

vis--vis what occurs, so too this iconic imago is complexly interactive and productively

dynamic. 10

The iconic imago projects its way of guiding the engagement at the point of the

persons contact with occurrence (by means of the ETA, which we will introduce presently) in

a unifying and cohering manner such that the way of engaging is spoken of as constituting a

persons role or figuration (including talents, personality, energy level, concentration on a

level of competence, etc.). As such, as this projection, the iconic imago illuminates some

facets and not others of the site. The projection filters what is allowed to be an affecting

aspect of the experience, what is taken to enhance the power of the imago, and what is fended

10 This notion distinguishes the aspirational account from the classical philosophical one that is focused

on knowledge and is dependent on a cogito. The issue for the Ego Structure as a macro-individuating

assemblage is to concentrate the diversity of energetic dispatches from the Arteous into asingle and directed

engagement that is both expansive and encompassing in the face of changing states of affairs from moment to

moment. The Ego Structure in its individuating singularizing aspect has regard neither for knowledge per se nor

an ethical stricture, nor a justification of its way. The Ego Structure puts its P/SS resources out there as the

being that it is, as the IS gathering of forces that it has composed, as the Self that has been assembled as being

at stake.

The classical cogito remains within the workings of language by channeling each and every notion of

sense that is constructed in the S-MF into the concept self-stream. In this account, all of the streams remain in

play, and are organized into the over-arching sense of a personhood or a figuration of ones aspirations

(driving singularizing in the forms of intention, will and values). Each persons imago is unique to a large

measure. That said, the less the S-MF insists on asserting its own constructions, the more likely that imago will

carry out a construction in line with the most available parameters of the good sense, and the common sense

derivatives from the prevailing socioeconomic scene. These become so entrenched and inscrutable to further

egoic interpretation as to act as organs or settled and unwavering faculties. Deleuze deals with thisphenomenon forcefully in The Logic of Sense (New York; 1990); pp. 75ff.

In the Breakout Creatives schema, there is an in between state, between stratification in the commons

and utter chaos of egoic disaster (to use Caputos term). That is there are gravitational tendencies, so to speak, in

which certain concentrations of selfstreams produce (in response to Thought see below) traditions of protestto the prevailing norms of engaging occurrences, and thus result in constructions of imagos that bear certain

traits that form according to a blueprint family, that produces a recognizable pattern of engagement,

nevertheless, and not a chaotic or completely destructive one (as in socio- or psycho-pathologies). The iconic

forms are: Leader/Arch; Artist/Amphitheater; Prophet/Bazaar; and Mystic/Open. It is in the context of these

figural iconic imagoes that we also take up what the world looks like and demands of the IS being at the point

of engagement.

These iconic imagoes are not prescribed, static or domineering P/SS formations. They have the shapes

they do by virtue of what information from the world they are given to organize and figure in the processes of

transduction carried out by the ETA. They are also more or less robust and able to drive impressions at the site of

the occurrence by virtue of the amplitudes and intensities of energies that the P/SS is able to accommodate by

virtue of its biological, neuroanatomical systems (as driven by mitochondrial productions).


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off as an assault against it. The iconic imago thus guides what is (able to be) perceived, from

moment to moment, by that being, at that time, and according to the individuated figuration of

all the selfstreams affects, at that site of emergence.

As we will see momentarily, this imago projects its iconic figuration, ventures and

radiates it right into the engagement. It does this by means of the next assemblages actions,

that of the Egoic Transducing Array. In that assemblage, the iconic imago has the form of a

hologram that has been rendered onto a membrane of this assemblages enacting

vocation. And thereby, in this projected exposure to the site of emergence, the imago itself is

placed at risk, as it is exposed to its own limits in enacting its engagement; and, by virtue of

its failures, its errancy, its states of inadequacy and uncomprehending navet, the imago is

thereby pressed to individuate to engage the occurrence in a manner that is more expansive

and more encompassing than the current state of its iconic form permits.

(2) THE EGOIC TRANSDUCING ARRAY (ETA). The S-MF is all preparation, is all

deep construction that goes on out of sight, but not out of mind (it is thus not what I would

consider activity that is of an unconscious nature). The Ego Structure, of which the S-MF

is a part, emerges out of the Arteous System so as to provide distance, delay and deferment,

so as to allow individuation the time/space to specify individuating amid highly volatile

circumstances. Clearly, to only to endow occurrences with sense does not fulfill this mandate.

To act therefore then requires another assemblage.

And since we are considering the aspiring mind here, the notion of action requires

some qualification on our part. The aspiring mind undertakes ventures, risks and

experiments. These are not the actions of the certain cogito that goes about its actions with the

fully authorized intention of exerting its singularizing potency to the hilt, even to the point of

destruction of all else at the site. The actions of the aspiring mind are always ventured,

meaning that they are imbued with all the ways that doubts and demands for greater

encompassments have their affects. That is why in our schema notions such as meaning or

action or world require our attention: in this context these familiar notions are most certainly

in play, but they just do not quite work in the same way, or have the same status, or value as

they do in those more conventional contexts.

And so, here, instead of a sense providing sufficient grounds or justification for a

particular action (an autonomic neuromuscular response, for instance), we have to describe a

more complex process: on in which even as an action flourishes in its expression, it is


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permeated with factors that diffuse any solidity, and that also include moments, fully

anticipated, in which these actions will be thrown back into the sense-making machinics, will

directly displace some elements of the iconic imago, and will then repeat this process of

venture, transmission and displacing. In its most important sense then, the incitement to action

in the context of aspiration, as venture and risk, is one of incessant learning, and reshaping

of the IS being that is in play.

(2a) Transduction. When we think of this inciting into action, we all can appreciate

that at a minimum, a change in the quality of the energies is engendered as they are driven to

move from being formative (making sense) to being expressive (acting), as the P/SS drives its

energies from being matters of internal construction to being factors that determine motor

enactments. We sometimes feel this change taking place, as when we feel the need to take a

deep breath, or the need to visualize the situation (which we will discuss below as world),

to get a handle on it before we plunge into series of attentive concentrations, motor motions

and exertions that the action requires. In this moment of gathering of resources, as the P/SS

presses the action onward, a transduction takes place: there is a bearing onward of

something that already has aformed quality into something else, something that has

engagement with another state of affairs (other than its own processing) as its priority. We

can rightly imagine that there needs to be a space in which energies can undergo a

switching of direction, amplitude and force can be affected; metaphorically we can liken sucha space to a sensate skin or membrane, or touch-sensing tissue that enacts this transduction

from one state to another.

Operationally, as a transducing agent of the Ego Structure, as an assemblage of the

aspiring mind, its mode of action is akin to firmware, not hardware. It provides for

machinic transformation, but not for definitive sculpting or determination. Its primary

sensitivity is to changing, not to consolidating. Thus, while maintains a coherent integrity

as an integument, it also morphs or reshapes from moment to moment, within a certain

range of action, according to the iconically shaped imago delivered up to it (to its surface) by

the S-MF.

(2b)Holographic, fractal dissemination. Furthermore this membrane is not

physically situated; it is not of the nature of an organ that is situated in only one physical

locale on or in ones body, as is skin, or a nose, an ear or a brain (or even the distributed

system of neurons). Instead, we have to imagine this acting and probing operation to be taking


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place and being operative all over and throughout the organism by means of a virtual cellular

distribution (or dissemination, in Derridas terminology). One can think of its dissemination

throughout the P/SS organism as taking place fractally. On the one hand it does its

venture/sensing as one operation, as the operation of one being; and also it does so in a

completely innumerably multiple, in a differentially and minutely distinctively separated way

at every single molecular or fractal locality at which our P/SS is making sense of

occurrence. Both of these moments are transpiring, from moment to moment, in every morsel

of the body, in every cell of the skin or constellation of neuronal synapses in the nervous

system, in every word, phrase, concept and question that is evoked in the Ego Structures

sense-making effort. At each and every one of these fractal locales, we might say, the ETA

concentrates into a projecting agent, one that carries forth the structured sense that now has

the shape of the iconic imago, the persona that is reaching into the occurrence with the senses

of what is at stake for it assembled, coherent and competent.

We are aware of this aspect of the ETAs operations when we sense something in

the air, even though our sensate organs are not in play. We cant say where this feeling is

getting its impetus, and we cant locate where or on what organ this feeling is having its

way. There is just this indefinite tingling that comes and goes, affecting ones heart beat, or

giving one goose bumps, or just loosening ones grip on the situation in general. This sixth

sense or intuition always heightens our anticipations at the scene, and as often as not

renders our sensate, conscious motor system inoperable as it overwhelms or enigmatically

freezes these organs in wonderment or fear. From experiences such as these we get the feeling

that something besides our sensate organs are engaged at the site. We get the feeling that

something else of our being is projecting into the scene and is picking up on affecting factors

there, of another quality than noise or odor or flash of light.

In terms of our schema we translate these feelings into the image of the ETA

comprising holographic fractals of enacting P/SS energies that have the shape of the iconic

imago, the senses it bears, at each fractal locale. This holographic projection splays out into

an array all manner of scaled, combined, iterated, superimposed and one-off surges of

holographic energies that are iconically arranged into an imago of a persons way. This

fractally composed array has a quality of integument, of binding its senses of engagement, in

all their pluralistic, multiple and varied modes, into a unicity, into a single, configured drive

(one with my name on it) tosingularize its intentions, will and values at the site. It composes


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an array, or a tapestry weaving, of different modes, qualities, codings, amplitudes and

intensities of engaging into a texture or a context that operates as a singular composing

agent, as an individuated covering over an expanse of occurrence, and illuminates what it is

competent and capable of discerning in and of that occurrence (and thereby also affecting the

nature and transpiring of that occurrence in the process thereof).

This holographic projection always and everywhere -- in each fractal and cumulatively

as the fractals compose larger arrays -- has the shape of the iconic imago. We could say, in a

more analytical frame, that each fractal projects onto the scene exactly and only the senses

that have been made of the occurrence (in a previous iteration) by the S-MF. Thus what a

person knows of the occurrence into which it is risking its being, is what has always already

been constructed as veritable and worthy of engagement. The holographic icon sorts and

filters what is discernable at the scene to begin with, and acts on those aspects of the (projects

its energies to those sense-constructed locales) scene it can already encompass. And, in its

anticipatory character (as a component of the Ego Structure), the sense of this constructs

passing and being made ready for the next learning or the next iteration of sense making is

also implicit in these operations.

(2c)Mobius Form. And so, this array is not thrown over the occurrence like a wet and

laden blanket that covers over the occurrence, weighing it down and so tamping down or

repressing the lively character of the occurrence. The array that touches the occurrence is

itself in motion. It does not linger there, hovering and blanketing the occasion, covering it

over with ossified meanings and significations. It is a transducing energy that allows itself to

be affected, moved, emotionally charged by the scene. Thus the transduction, lightly glancing

its caress on the scene transmits its energies in two directions: (1) toward the occurrence

and (2) back toward the S-MF as information that must be accommodated by the iconic imago

in its individuation.

The surface of the ETAs array of holographic fractals thus forms into a helical

membrane that rotates in the midst of the Ego Structures engagement with occurrences . It

takes the form of a turning mobius strip that continually has some aspects of its surface in

contact with the site, and others in contact with the S-MF, and still others in between, in the

process of enacting the turning itself. To enact the affective aspect of the Ego Structures

work the array thus continually exposes its surfaces to both the site of occurrence and the S-

MF in a continually changing, multi-faceted manner that transpires by ever-varying degrees of


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face-turning motions. It is engine that permits continual, varying and yet contiguous flow

between the S-MF and ETA. The result is the sense of experience, of an occurrence that is

not-me that is nothing other than me, but is never what I, myself, am, from moment to

moment.

The engine drives a constant generation and regeneration of communicative

engagements between the occurrences active elements (its own individuating forces) and

those of the IS being. Every act of this being, therefore, incorporates well and deeply

adjudicated senses (meanings) into highly individuated expressions (behaviors: acts, speech

and decisions) such that each taking of place generates a unique and primally original

(originating) locale. We are now beings who are free in the most profound sense, to actualize

occurrences in ways that generate open fields of endeavor if we so choose, that is.11

(3) WORLD. The final assemblage in the Ego Structure is more of a generated

meaning and interpretation than it is a thing or a set of objective forces that impress on the

sensate organs. (In contrast to the DC of the Arteous System, which more directly engages,

encompasses raw energies of occurrences.) The periphery of the Ego Structure, therefore is

not raw occurrence, but a fully endowed and affecting complex of energies that are taken up

into its drive to individuate and aspire to a more expansive and more encompassing manner of

engaging the occurrence that at stake in this moment, as it is touched upon by and touches the

ETAs iconically figured sense.For that reason, when speaking of the third assemblage of the Ego Structure, in its

individuating, aspiring impetus, I place the term, worldin quotation marks, rendering it

world. With this notation I want to keep in view that individuation and aspiration do not

have as their counterpoised state of affairs any composed or posited verity that is deemed

worthy of standing over againstthe IS being as a fact, certainty or set and finished nature.

To be sure, and to separate this notion from any nihilist insinuation, this world is utterly,

completely, without qualification in affect. Everything that individuating singularizing has to

take up and is placed at risk, does so because of the affects that constitute the conditions at the

site of emergence of the IS being is in play in this world.

World however, is not a fixed and objective fact. It is what that site of occurrence

11 A picture of schizoid, free-forming engagement such as this is offered by Guattari, The Machinic

Unconsciousness (Los Angeles; 2011); pp. 170ff. Also, Lyotard refers to such a configuration, in ways that

accord with our intent here, in The Libidinal Economy (Bloomington, IN; 1993); pp. 2ff.


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and P/SS emergence becomes for the IS beings Ego Structure, as a matter of the

engagement it anticipates and is organizing toward, so that its singularized enacting can

emerge competently and remain there for a duration as an affecting agent in its own right

(such that the milieu will take account of it, will recognize and respond to it).

Taken in that light, is nothing in the machinics of the Ego Structure that peremptorily,

presumptively or a priori establishes in advance that there is a necessary construction of a

world, as a picture, as an entity or force. Correlatively, there is no aspect of what occurs at the

site that necessarily generates affects in a prescribed manner such that one world is in play

for all time (for the life of the IS being) or for all people. World is thus neither given nor

is it assured that one will appear. The Ego Structure may as likely produce a blank, an

agglomeration of energies that the neither the SP nor the S-MF can encompass, as it is likely

to produce a coherent locus for engagement. And, given the groundless, liquefied,

phantasmagorical states of its machinic self-organizing engenderment, there is no guarantee

that what the Ego Structure renders (by means of the imagos cores on the surface of the

ETA) is actually there, for all and everyone. Indeed, let us keep in mind, that as an organ

of aspiration, the Ego Structure is most robust, is performing at its most energized peak of

generative production, when what appears to it is, in fact, relative to the standard renditions of

the world (with no quotation marks, and so, paradoxically, what is recited by the denizens of

knowledge and common sense), not apparent at all.12

The engine of the world thus drives these continually affecting dynamics into such

vividness and specificity that they resonate back and through all of the Ego Structures

aspiring assemblages. This engine comprises saturating phenomena.13 Such phenomenal

12 To the extent that knowledge of the site is at issue, this world takes up those aspects of thesynthetic unity of apperception of the transcendental imagination that Kant describes, and also the factors of

recognition that are in play in Hegels formation of self-consciousness (as the determinations of the Masters

intended usage of the factors of the occurrence). But to the extent that these anticipations take up individuating,

and therefore allow affects that exceed what knowledge requires for pragmatic and technical engagement, this

world also conveys aspects as ghosts, specters, and saturating phenomena that are not at issue in Reasons

adjudications. No thing in itself is at stake at all here; only the differentiata and traces of energies that openonto prospects for new horizons, that promise a coming, and not just a perception.

What we are speaking of is rather the corollary to what Derrida suggests as a text of modes of

engagement with occurrence (remember, the Ego Structure arises with the realization of the efficacy of the

word, narrative and thus textuality). This is the realm of engagement that is engaged by the project, as hecalls it, of deconstruction. Once again, Gaschs account of deconstruction is the most thorough and complete

rendering I know of; and it is appropriately difficult for that reason. See, Tain of the Mirror(op. cit.); pp.109ff.13 This term is taken directly from the ideas formulated by Jean-Luc Marion. See, for example,Being

Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness (Stanford, CA; 2002). In his onto-theological formulation

(which we appreciate but do not subscribe to), saturatedphenomena are notions of existents that the

cogito does not perceive, but a larger, more encompassing soul-like intelligence does. It is these existent

phenomena, richer and more vibrantly pressing than the Husserlian phenomena that are pressed into scientific


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are aspects of the Ego Structures machinics precisely because they ensue from the

individuating impetus that the Ego Structure establishes. No moment, complex, nuance or

iota of the Ego Structures productions will evade this mandate. Saturating Phenomena

therefore, drive individuation and the space freedom and temporal extension (duration) into

every construction it ventures. In this way then, aspiration knows nothing else but a

world that is amenable to individuation and to the impetus for this IS being to engage

occurrences as occasions for more expansive and more encompassing engagements.

The world ofaspiration, one has to conclude, therefore is vastly different from the

world given in knowledge.

Transversals Disturbing the Ego Structure

For all this complexity, we are still not quite done with our overview of the Ego

Structure; for once again, transversals muddy and roil the waters. However, the transversals

that are affective in the Ego structures, particularly in the S-MF, are of a different status and

composition they are, you guessed it, more complex than they were in the context of the

Arteous System. By this time in the process, the effects of transversals as forces that exceed

the instigating moment of singularization are largely quieted. The constellating forces exerted

by the SP are sufficient to engender a context of composed and viable entities (if not quite yet

objects) can be taken as vouched safe, at least as spirits, gods or natural regularities that canbe named. The transversals of stance, gender and onwarding that bedeviled the initial

singularization are now encompassed in relations that the people can appeal to, idolize and

worship that is ritualistically enact and evoke. As a result, notions of stance and gender and

even onwarding are translated into being spiritual projections from out of the ways of the

people, and are productively symbolized in its practices, artifacts and hierarchies.

New Transversals of Ego Structure. There are two exceptions to this peaceful

cohabitation with those DC-based transversals: they are, Language and Thought. These are

transversals that are generated by, or in excess of, the very workings of the Ego Structure

knowledge, that bespeak of God. I regard Marions account as being a particularly retrograde retreat into Arteous

formulations. I discuss this difference at greater length in later chapters.Briefly, I distance my appreciation for Marions ideas in this schema by naming saturating

phenomena. These factors are direct affects of the individuating impetus of the Ego Structures machinics of

world, and so are at once given, generated and pressed into active service at the site of occurrence by these

P/SS machinics as they engage the dynamic and complexly assertive powers at the site of emergence.

While the expansive and opening impetus of Marions depiction is appreciated and acknowledge by our

intentional and purposeful adoption of his terminology, our adoption implicitly imparts a bright line of difference

with his notions.


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itself. Well introduce each of these presently. (and, if the reader is interested, he or she can

refer to the appendices for considerations of each of these transversals as they make their way,

undergoing their transformations, as they course through the P/SS assemblages we have

diagrammed.)

Language as we know it takes shape only in this moment of our schema.

The complexity of this transversal derives from its status as being quasi-primal as

originating in the soundings from the redimensioning affects that impel the divergence of

individuating from singularizing (in the Arteous System). By the time these soundings are

taken up by the Ego Structure, many of them have already become factors in the human

milieu as language: first as artifact and repository of human-engendered names, and then as a

means to characterize discernments of the non-material factors that generate the Ego Structure

per se (as instigated by the Prophetic Intercession and the Greek Pivot). Language as such is

nevercompletely accounted for, subsumed or encompassed (or finalized) by whatever

formations the P/SS is able to enact.14

Of special consequence for us are those innumerably multiple ways soundings

supplement the anomalous surges of imagations and unincorporated energies in the fourth

orbit of the SP. These murmurs are hardly intelligible factors of everyday speech, but they do

provide some heft to the anomalies that roil established certainties and P/SS

accomplishments. Some of these combine with the language transversal sufficiently to

register an affect on the SP, even if the affecting is slight. In certain cases, however, for

certain people, that is, these constellations have a greater effect. They create larger

disturbances in workings, machinics and engines of the Ego Structure, not allowing them to

form robust constructions. Some of these anomalies actually firm up, form embolisms,

bubbles of grit (to use an impossible figuration) so to speak, that begin to roam freely

throughout the P/SS, causing havoc wherever they roam. These, as we will first note below

are what we call naked conceptualities, which constitute surging centers of what I call

thought.

Thought and the Naked Conceptuality. These anomalies, now robust enough to exert

their own affects, disturb the operations of sense making in the S-MF. They call into question

whatever is constructed there by subjecting them to strong, internally generated disruptions

every kind of disruption to linguistic/conceptual contradiction, to existential doubt, to

14 I offer a more complete account of this stream of development in Appendix One.


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psychological crises of anxiety, despair and psychic paralysis. They roil and disturb any and

all structuring of each and every line of continuity that the S-MF can assemble. I call these

missives from the beyond, so to speak, Naked Conceptualities. (NC)

The name indicates that they make no claim to having a definitive content or an

essence of their own, and so are bearers of immanent openings onto whatever structures are

ventured as elements of an iconic imago, its projections and worlds.15 But that is only one

side of their character. Because they also bear the marks of imagations that are supplemented

by soundings, that only emerge from the workings of the already affecting Arteous System,

they alsobear the markings of the IS beings P/SS engagement as being (ultimately) at stake.

NCs thus also bear the sense of anticipation, potential, indeed the aspiration for performing

the gathering/saying/inscribing functions that the S-MF transforms into new concepts.

However as confluences of very active, assertive and intense differentials (as

imagations and fourth orbit anomalies), as free radicals and unaffiliated affinities, no such

stabilities are allowed by them to be constructed with any firmness or conviction. In the

context of the S-MF, however, they can find aspects of formulated occurrences, fragments

and shards, so to speak, that have been hardened by the iterative transductions between the S-

MF and the world, as driven to some level of firmness by the ETAs singularizing impetus.

Forced into confrontations with these firm constructions, the NCs also congeal into firmer

factors. In their own way, then, as intruders, interlopers, nomadic insurgents, the NCs in theirown idiosyncratic manners, can construct their own alternative sense-making assemblages

(abstract machines). These can then be ventured into the world, by the transducing process

we outlined above, as twists in the iconic imago, as strange utterances and envisionings that

shows itself in ones behavior as either craziness, or what may even become new ideas.

This is the province of prophetic activity.16

15 I cannot resist quoting Derridas self-citation on the term thought: In a certain way, thought

means nothing.Thought (quotation marks: the words thought and what is called thought) means nothing:

it is the substantified void of a highly derivative ideality, the effect of a differance of forces, the illusoryautonomy of a discourse or a consciousness whose hypostasis is to be deconstructed, whose causality is to be

analyzedSecondly, the sentence can be read thus: if there is thought and there is, and it is just as suspect, for

analogous critical reasons, to contest the authority of all thought then whatever will continue to be called

thought, and which, for example, will designate the deconstruction of logocentrism, means nothing, for in thelast analysis, it no longer derives from meaning. Wherever it operates, thought means nothing. [Italics by

JD]. Positions, (op. cit.); p. 49.16 There are important precedents for this description. This description is intended to be in accord with

Derridas notion of differance, as a generator of pure difference out of which binary notions such as truth and

falsity, existence and nonexistence, being and non-being are generated in philosophy. It also accords with his

account of Platos Khora. Derrida deploys the notion of differance throughout his texts. One could do worse

for an introduction to this notion than refer to the essay Difference inMargins of Philosophy. ___, or for an


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The Topography of the Aspiring Mind

SURFACES, INSIDEAND OUTSIDE, IN FLUX. Concluding this introduction to the

Ego Structure, there is one more task to complete: we need to construct a picture of how these

two great macro systems (the Ego Structure and the Arteous System) interact vis--vis oneanother. This is not going to be a straightforward image, of one system being enclosed in the

other, or of one system operating first and then passing on its products to another system

that trails behind it as in a train. They relate to each other in the form of a figure wherein the

constant exchange with one another as to what is inside, what is outside, what is first in touch

with the milieu and what is second; And then what constitutes the interior of the

singularized engagement versus what is its outside or contacting surface. This

inside/outside depiction is in continual flux between Arteous System and the Ego Structure,

as one assemblage or another acts as the salient force at the site as to touching and/or being

touched. integrity, is nevertheless permeated at each and every fractal of its emergence with

the other.

Both the Arteous System and the Ego Structure are concerned with singularizing, and

each is capable of establishing itself as either an inside of the singularization that is in

contact with an external site in the milieu in which it is emerging (as a distinct site as well)

or as the outside of the contacting surface. The processes we describe are most certainly

temporal and sequential in that the Arteous enacts an instigating encompassing, whereas the

Ego Structure enacts the machinics of localized individuation (a singularizing efficacy,

already in effect, that is situated in a context). That said, the machinations of the Ego

Structure comprise that assemblage of world. The Ego Structure thus has as a moment,

and engages as an engine of its emergent formation, the saturating phenomena that drive all

its formations with that sense of the milieus otherness. The point is that what is thus sensed

as other, or as milieu has an immediately ambiguous character as being utterly external

and yet as also being or as having been encompassed by the I

S potency already. To someextent, that is, whatever the DC encompasses in an instigating moment has nuances that bear

markings, traces of the workings of Ego Structure, as it already being its world that is in

play and is therefore already at stake.

exposition that places this notion in larger contexts of Derridean intentions the essays in Positions (Chicago;

1981) are helpful For his exposition of Platos notion of Khora, see the essay by that name, in On the Name

(Stanford, CA;__). for example Then, for a detailed elaboration of the factors that are in play in terms of

emergent linguistic and conceptual structure, see Gasch, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy

of Refection (op. cit.); pp. 142ff. Guattari, TheMachinic Unconscious (op. cit.); p. 182


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Figure __. Inside Out. From this simple figure we can see how a surface can fold such that

its inside can also be its outside in another space, by means of a fold.

------- = Arteous System;_____= Ego Structure.

STATESOF PRIMACYAND DERIVATION So, structurally, as to their juxtaposed

relation to each other, the Arteous and the Ego Structure are in constant states of exchanging

what is touching and is touched by the external milieu. We can create an image of this as

one of a rotating, tumbling, involuting and folding, multi-dimensional surface. Think of a

folded sheaf that unfolds and refolds, turning, twisting and tumbling through a vast space,

driven and being opened by the forces of that space. We can also think of that surface as

comprising a mosaic of differentially arrayed combinations of the Arteous and the Ego

Structure as to what is inside or outside of one another, but that at each and every site, or

fractal of emergence of this combine, one system permeates the other, while remaining

integrally and machinically differentiated.17

And then, just to keep our picture adequately complex, the various states of the

transversals we have cited are in play at each fractal tile of the combined systems as well.

There is never any necessity, at any one site, or at any single surge of experiencing

the occurrence in play, as to what mode or proportion of combine will be dominant from

moment to moment; and in fact, in ever intensifying or compressed instances, one combined

agency will be in dominant effect and then, another will be. Depending on the scale at which

the P/SS is engaging the site (what its Ego Structure adumbrated intentions, will and values

17 Lest the reader think this is a notion of completely unhinged fantasy, consider the lowly Volvox. This

multicellular organism forms by collecting into a colony of single cells. According to an article my Douglas G

Cole and Mark V. Reedy in Current Biology (13:19 September 2003), During its development, the multicellular

green alga undergoes inversion, in which spherical embryos turn their multicellular sheet completely inside out.


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are set out to engage the site), one, the other or some combination of all can be summoned

into play.

Now, it is also true, in terms of the schema as we are presenting it, the Arteous

System is older and is more developed, or at least is better practiced, rehearsed and

iterated than is the Ego Structure. This latter system, in fact is very much still in its

developing stages. That said, however, some people have such highly affecting egoic

energies in play (especially as roiled by NCs), that no matter how unformed one or more of

their assemblages might be, these relatively chaotic (Ego Structure) energies impart to the

engagement a primacy of affect at the sites of the ISs emergence that may not be either

warranted, healthy or viable. And so, even the more highly developed and practiced

Arteous may not be able to wield its rightful hegemony in terms of shaping the actual

engagement at the site of the experienced emergence.

ASPIRATIONAND MENTORING. When we combine that notion of

underdevelopment with the role that the Ego Structure plays in our schema, as the enacting

assemblages of individuation and aspiration per se, we see that what presents itself as a

persons aspirations, will most likely reflect the undeveloped, underdeveloped or merely

nascent state of development of one aspect of the Ego Structure or another. Mentoring the

aspiring mind thus usually entails envisioning what kind of iconic imago is at work (how it

organizes what is occurring at the site for this person), nurturing the ability of that person towithstand the fluctuations that ensure from the shifting perspectives that the ETA engenders,

and then enduring the ineluctable, irrepressible sense of strangeness and otherness that

permeates the individuating/ aspiring minds world. That persons DC will only have these

ambiguities available to it as what characterizes the milieu to begin with.18

The mentoring engagement then does not cure, fix or nail down what is true for the

aspiring person. Instead, it aims at using language and thought as means toward constructing

robust Ego Structure assemblages, ones that are capable of engendering individuated

singularizations at the site of developing the unique facultative resources that the

construction requires at that moment, given the resources that can be mustered at that

moment, and then let go of that construct when more complex engagements, ones that are

18 This state of ambiguity of P/SS resources that are essential for the full realization, expression and

activation (in the mode of a creative figuration of role) also requires a specialized conversation between an

aspiring mentee and the mentor. This is the reason I am personally a strong advocate of specialized mentor

training that is attuned to the structures of aspiration and is able to sort out their affects from the leveling powers

of conventional language.


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ch. 6 introduction to the ego structure

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