I just think in this instance there didn't seem to be anything
substantive to replace what was torn down with those papers.
Okay, try this one then. Use Piaget instead of neo-Freudian theory.
There's a stage in development, around the onset of adolescence,
when humans transcend merely identifying with the hopes, joys,
desires, and sufferings of their immediate group (family, church,
tribe, clan, village, whatever) and begin to apply this ability to
empathize to people outside their immediate group. I think he called
it "the period of formal operations." During this period ethical
behavior arises as well as concern for abstract idealistic concerns
that mark the beginning of solid personal identity.
Now everyone gets hung up on stuff, but some people get hung up on
really early developmental stages and develop psychosis, while
others get hung up on later stages and develop neurosis. Yet just
because people can transcend and include earlier stages of
development does mean they are always over the hitches and glitches
of a successful identity.
People who are stuck with religious intolerance are recapitulating
an earlier stage of personal development that they didn't transcend
and include very successfully.
There you go. Another theory. Doesn't require the unconscious. Plus
it has some empirical backing.
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