Circumcision's Structure and Function with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

No woman can call herself free who does not own her own body. Margaret Sanger.

Courtesy: huisjenphilosophy.wordpress.com

(MONTEREY, CA) - Before learning what pathology looks like, a surgeon must know what normal tissues look like.  The same pertains to ritual. This Report is based on Catherine Bell’s text Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, and Maslow’s Motivation and Personality.  The Way.

Rituals are repeated acts with perceived symbolic value. Social rituals are usually part of religion or tradition. In a more complex society, people adapt to the same contingencies in more complicated ways. Rituals are used as means of assumptions about the way things are and should be. My Way becomes The Way.

Ritual attempts to magically provide order from chaos. Our primal fear is nature opposes humanity. Ancient rituals were mostly designed to enhance survival. For humans and higher life forms order ensures success. Enactment of rituals like circumcision is based on an original mystic event. We are the Chosen of The Way.

Ritual is based on assumptions in moods and motivations.  Ritual gives a sense of power over nature as well as within self and society.  From this power comes the feeling of control.  As life continually proceeds authority to continue the ritual becomes presumptive as if in Repetition Compulsion.  We Must continue The Way.

 The goal of ritual is survival through domination.  With successful domination living with nature, guilt arises from destruction of parts of nature.  Killing and taking from nature against the perceived positive value of humanity’s continuance.  Prayers are offered for animals killed and crops harvested.  We are Not accountable for The Way.

All rituals manipulate objects.  Through ritual people address the properties of nature they desire to control.  Symbolic gestures and objects are used to represent the desired quality of nature.  Sometimes people dress and/or make images of themselves or others as if the object.  Then, during the ritual something is done.  Ritual never defines.  Manipulation in ritual sets the relationship between the ritualizing person and group of people, to the object.  This is how we are Instructed in The Way. Rituals are often violent social acts designed as outlets for violence.  They mimic the violence considered necessary for controlling, directing using and justifying social behavior.  Ritualization is pivotal in culture as the appearance of dominating nature and dominating the natural violence within humanity - ourselves.  Yet, ritual (=culture) is used as the necessary repression of our natural violence (=nature).  Culture is dependent on our aggressive energy as well as a modicum of restraint.  The problem is that it does not work.  We deceive Ourselves into The Way.

Originally ritual was directed toward controlling nature.  Once nature no longer became an immediate threat to survival many rituals were abandoned.  Focus turned inward to humanity itself.  Emphasis created internal hierarchy and external exclusivity.  Established leaders altered some of the old rituals and devised new rituals to maintain positions of power.  A caste with special powers is established as Ritual Agents to perform The Way. Humans are a gregarious species.  Individuals cannot sufficiently function without others.  Group identity is a necessary outcome.  Commonality of ritual emerges out of the Collective Unconscious.  Birth, puberty, marriage, death and feasting are universal.  We deceive Others into and about The Way.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Unlike most others, Maslow studied normal and exemplary people and top students. Maslow discovered five elemental steps from basic survival to the apogee of life lived. The process is lineal where a step must be reasonably satisfied before proceeding to the next. Regression occurs when an element becomes lost at a lower level. Briefly:

Physiological

Physiological needs are essentials for life: food, water, air, oxygen, nutrients, activity, rest, sleep, homeostasis, avoidance of pain, excretion and SEX.

Fetal, neonatal and pre-verbal pain remembrance is stored in the more primitive part of the brain. This cannot be accessed normally though hypnosis is a pathway. The nerves in the hippocampus die and reorganization occurs. This gives alter pathways to the hippocampus and the frontal lobe. Pre-verbal trauma causes night terrors as opposed to nightmares.

Safety

After Physiological needs are met next come Safety and Security concerns. These desires are for stability, structured living conditions, limits, law and order.

Reenactment is indirect when noticing circumcision status. Feelings of distrust and betrayal pass through creating a sense of safety concerns. Many carry sub-clinical PTSD when emerges clinically easier than others. This is one reason American soldiers develop overt signs of PTSD than those from other countries. Others outcomes involve personal quirks and oddities.

Love and Belonging

After the both the previous are reasonably met next enters the human need for closeness with affection: for friends, spouse and children. We need community.

Circumcised males are more prone to Schizoid Personality Disorder and Alexithemia. These make the person more distant and less able to form types of attachment. These conditions are not psychopathologic.

Esteem

There are two forms of Esteem. Self-esteem carries feelings of confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, interdependence, and freedom. The other is esteem from others as status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, even dominance.

Esteem is decreased in not being wholly acceptable. This is as prostitutes who were sexually abused as children and carry the feelings of being a Dirty Girl.

Self-Actualization

Self-Actualization involves creativity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, morality, spontaneity, acceptance of facts and lack of prejudice.

Self-Actualization is the satisfactory feeling of achieving the top of the ladder where that person has become what they were meant to be.

Conundrum

Self-Actualization is not static. Normally people move forward though some do not. Einstein developed the Expanding Universe Theory and became mired trying to disprove it due to his religious background.

Maslow’s study did not include psychopathy. The psychopathic element within some forces them to re-experience their deviancy over and over in Repetition Compulsion. Acts of deviancy becomes a psychopath’s Self-Actualization. Ritual circumcision is a mock-death ceremony. Killing, whether play or not, is the ultimate experience demanding more of the same.

Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them. Jean-Paul Sartre.

All articles are Mandated Reports to the social body regarding socialized and acculturated violence and abuse.

Richard Matteoli graduated from St. Mary's College of California in 1967 and Creighton University in 1971. He is retired from the US Navy where he spent most of his career attached to the United States Marine Corps and officially rated a Devil Doc. Other clinical experience outside private practice includes working for California Indian Health and California's Solano County Clinic for the poor as well as the Solano County Jail.

He is the author of the Handbook text references The Munchausen Complex: Socialization of Violence and Abuse and The Totemic Analogy in Bible Symbolism. Salem-News.com has carried several articles over the years. Dr. Matteoli has also been helpful in research for other articles we have carried, particularly with regard to military base contamination. We have been very pleased to have the honor of sharing his valuable writing with our readers.

You can write to Richard Matteoli at this address: richard.matteoli@goldrush.com