March 16th 2014 - emotion onto and into their readings of animals. I have to agree with some of them. Animals don’t know all the words we do. They don’t know the word “cancer” but they know when they smell something that’s not right. They might show us a picture that makes us feel or know it’s cancer but they don’t know “cancer” and what it is. It’s a smell to them.
Many of my animal clients show me pictures of their ears to show me that it hurts or something is wrong, but they don’t say, “there’s a foxtail in my ear and it hurts” – mainly because they don’t know what a foxtail is.
I think as animal communicators we have to be careful what we say to the human client and how we say it. Animals think differently than we do and I think some people think all animals live a life like a Disney cartoon.
The animal kingdom is a very harsh and unforgiving place for most animals. There are of course examples of predators and prey getting along together at certain times and I hope more of this is to come. I would hope that the lamb and the lion could again lie down together but this is not the case in 95% of the world. As animal communicators we have a duty to talk to the animals and let the human owners know what they're saying but it is also our duty to keep our ego, emotions and past experiences out of our readings.
Freud had a theory about the human development and what runs us. He said we were born with ID which is the part of us that doesn’t care about anyone else. It's a baby crying for attention and doesn't care what you're doing. It wants the attention now. It has no idea that it should wait or that it might not be a good time for you. Babies do this because they live in the present moment.
Then about the age of 3 to 5 an ego is developed. The ego deals with reality and what is going on around us. We start to understand that other people have needs and we may have to wait to get the attention we need.
Than as we grow we develop a superego. This superego deals with morals and ethnic restraints. This is the part of us that deals with right or wrong.
Then we develop the unconscious. Freud believed that the unconscious is where we hide the stress of dealing with life and the Oedipus and Electra complex. Because the unconscious is where we bury things, in the long run it is what really drives us because we have not come to terms with our stress and who we really are.
In saying all this, I believe that animals are born with the ID and may even develop an ego but I feel that they do not develop a super ego. They learn what is right and wrong or acceptable or not acceptable from us humans. And this is only domesticated animals because animals in the wild do what they need to do to stay alive and think nothing about if it’s right or wrong. Animals do not develop an unconscious part of them either. They do not hide their stress or what they have to deal with in life. They live in the present moment like human babies.
I guess I just wanted to get this out in the open and to say to the animal communicators out there please be aware of what you are translating from the animal to the human. No animal thinks like a human being or they would be human. Many of them are much smarter than humans but we have to be very careful that we do not put the human condition on animals.
The worst thing we can do is put our humanness on animals. We need to let them be themselves. Animals have feelings and emotions but they deal with them in a different way than humans and we need to respect that. Trying to force an animal into thinking like a human or thinking they will “reason” things out like a human is just not right.
The lessons we can all learn from this is don't try to change things you can't change. Don't expect something from your pet, or anyone else for that matter, that they can’t give you or what their DNA or thought process doesn't allow them to do or think. Dogs are going to be dogs and cats will be cats. They know they aren't ducks and they're just fine with that. We are humans so we should be fine with that fact and let everything that is not human be when it came here to be.
Shirley Scott
59987 River Canyon Rd
Imnaha, OR 97842
United States