The Good and The Bad Way To Utilize 'The Oedipal Complex Theory' in Psychotherapy (Part 1)

Finished!....Feb. 21th, 2012...dgb

Our mind-brain (which includes the metaphysical dialectic interchange between what we usually separately call our 'mind' and our 'brain') is ideally an integrative, synergizing, process-oriented 'computer-organ' that can often times, under the wrong internal directions, get caught up in Aristolean 'either/or' conflicts and impasses -- both intra-psychically and/or inter-relationship-wise -- that brings all transactions, encounters, relationships to a grinding halt, or worse -- self-destructing inside a pool of toxic wasteland. Two types of 'neurotic pathology' are particularly relevant in this regard: 1. 'dissociative pathology' where two or more parts of the personality are alienated from each other; and 2. 'associative pathology' where two or more people, things, objects, places...are associatively linked together as being 'the same' or 'similar' -- and they are not. In other words, there are important, unique, individual characteristics that are being 'missed' because of the 'false association or connection' that is being made between the two or more phenomena.  

Freud was guilty of them both -- indeed, we all are guilty of them both to differing degrees at different times in different contexts. No matter how smart we are -- and Freud was very smart -- our mind-brains are not perfect, and we don't have the luxury of being able to say 'I make perfect conceptual and theoretical representations of the world that I live in.'  Indeed, we are all guilty at different times in different contexts and differing degrees of what in science they call: 1. 'false positives' (believing that something exists that doesn't exist); and 2. 'false negatives' (believing that something doesn't exist that does exist).

 In this regard, there is a point at which the issue of 'epistomology' and 'accurate knowledge' -- i.e., 'the truth' -- enters the clinical psychologist's therapeutic room, and can become a 'demon' in the room. How much of what my client is telling me do I believe? Do I believe what my client just told me? Or do I not? Do I believe that he or she was sexually assaulted as a child, or as a teenager, or as an adult? Or do I not?

A therapist's job is not one of being a judge or jury. But the therapist has existential -- and epistemological, and evaluative -- choices to make in the clinical setting, just as the client does. And a subset of the interpretive and evaluative choices that a therapist has to make relate to the question of: How accurate a picture of the client's internal and external world am I getting from the client?  How good or bad is the client I am dealing with here at 'reality-interpreting'? And 'reality-evaluating'? And 'reality-testing'? For example, am I dealing with a 'paranoid' person here? Or does the person's so called 'paranoia' have some lesser or greater 'substance' in reality that may or may not make it legitimately believable -- or not -- but either way, it may actually have 'some lesser or greater grounding' in reality.  This is one of the problems with Aristolean 'either/or' classification systems. (I hate to keep turning Aristotle into the 'epistemological bad guy' when he was a brilliant philosopher -- and a far better 'epistemologist' than Plato.  Plato, like Freud, had many of his ideas 'grounded in the sky' -- which is fine if we are talking about 'the sun' or 'the moon' or 'a star' but it isn't fine if we are talking about a 'childhood sexual assault'.)

Paradoxically, Freud was both a brilliant theorist and he was a terrible theorist. He was a brilliant theorist because almost every school of clinical psychology that exists today is a 'subset' -- a 'branch' -- of Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis. He was a terrible theorist because he was a terrible scientist -- meaning that there wasn't always, or even generally, a rock-solid, concrete connection between his 'clinical observations' and his 'abstract concepts and theories'.

Freud had a bad habit of 'jumping ahead of his clinical observations' and asserting dramatic, even shocking, theories -- indeed, he preferred his theories to be shocking or 'astonishing' rather than not shocking or not atonishing. (Indeed, this one of his personal 'obsessive-compulsive, transference complexes' that I have addressed in other essays, and probably will come back to again in the future.)

Freud would accumulate a 'data base' of particular clinical observations, and then he would choose a particular 'subset' of clinical observations from this data base, create a theory, but the theory would only be based on 'part of his clinical observations; not all of his clinical observations'. And he would try to make it seem to his audience that his theory was based on all of his clinical observations.  In this regard, his 'traumacy theory' was an overstated, overgeneralized theory; his 'seduction theory' was even more of an overstated, overgeneralized theory; and then, when he didn't like either of these theories anymore, he turned his theories upside down, created the theory of 'childhood sexuality' and the theory of 'The Oedipus Complex' and tried to make it seem like all of his clinical data supported these two theories -- and not the two preceding theories (the traumacy and seduction theories). But again he was overgeneralizing his latter two theories and overstating the clinical data that allegedly supported these latter two theories 100 percent -- i.e., his childhood sexuality and Oedipus theories. This is the part where I would like nothing better than to reach through the pages of The Standard Edition, or do some 'time travelling', metaphysically or empirically step into Freud's clinical room and/or writing room, and 'shake him' -- or at least give him a solid piece of my mind. Of course, many better psychologists before me tried in person to do what I would like to do metaphysically and epistemologically -- and all failed. Sometimes there is just no cure for 'obstinate stubborness' -- or 'extreme anal-retentiveness' -- you can lead a small boy to the toilet but you can't necessarily make him 'dump'!

Some people are better talkers and writers. Other people are better listeners and readers. Ideally, you want a 'homeostatic-dialectic balance' between both -- but it is rare that you find a 'perfect balance in any one person'. Certainly, Freud was no ideal mentor in this regard. Freud was 'righteously narcissistic' or 'narcissistically righteous' which was both a blessing and a curse. Usually, our greatest assets are also our greatest liabilities. This goes back to the Hegelian idea that every theory, every characteristic, carries within it the seeds to its own self-destruction. Worded in Freudian terminology, every theory, every characteristic, contains within it both 'the life instinct' and 'the death instinct'.

Let me take a few minutes here to talk about 'language' and 'meaning'.

One of the most troubling words that Freud used was the word 'infantile'. When I think of 'infantile', I think of an 'infant' -- meaning a 'baby'. By my reckoning, that would refer to about the first year of life. After that, we would generally use the word 'toddler' -- which by my interpretation would include the years 2, 3, and 4 (Freud might not have had an equivalent word in German to equate with the concept of 'toddler') -- from the age of about 5 to say about 9, 10, or 11 we might label a child as a 'pre-puberty child' -- and then after about 10, 11, 12, or 13,when puberty starts to kick in, we have a young 'teenager'. 14 to 17 we have an 'older teenager' and at 18 or 19 we have a teenager, who by law, is starting to be classified as an 'adult'.

Now, even this classification system is not 'rigidly anal-retentive' because it allows for the reality of different children growing at different rates, and reaching puberty at different ages. And this may all seem rather mundane to you, frivolous, unnecessary....but I would -- and am -- counter-arguing that this type of more precise clinical and empirical detail is hugely important for audiences in order to have a proper understanding of just what exactly is going on at what age, and in what percentage of case histories.

As soon as you start to 'over-abstractify' labels, and concepts, and theories, you start to 'sever ties' with their 'phenomenological-existential-empirical clinical data base'.    

You are likely to generate huge amounts of ambiguity and semantic confusion amongst your listeners or readers and this can create a conceptual-semantic nightmare. As a writer and a reader you need to recognize when this may be happening, and particularly when there is no 'dialectic communication', no 'dialectic feedback and exchange' between the writer and the reader, the danger of this actually happening increases many fold.

I have a way of using 'transference' that is both partly similar and partly different to any other theorist out there. A reader cannot be expected to have a 'direct window' into my mind. There is bound to be ambiguity and semantic confusion whenever I use this word until a motivated reader perhaps sees the use of this word in say a 'hundred different writing contexts' and/or I sit down one day and write an essay strictly on transference in which I do my best to delineate both its main 'focus of semantic usage' and 'the entire range of its different sub-usages'.

Both in a legal setting and in a clinical writeup of particular cases, 'labels', 'concepts' and their 'precise, concrete meaning' are hugely important -- particularly when the type of 'label' we are using is 'hugely important' enough to mean all the difference in the world in a clinical and/or legal setting -- and to the public at large.

It makes a huge difference whether we are talking about 'sexual assault' or 'sexual fantasy' and which particular label-phenomenon is attached to a particular client and/or case history along with a very abstract label that we also find attached to the same client such as 'hysteria' or 'obsessional neurosis'.

Sometimes -- indeed, oftentimes -- 'clinical labels' change over time. What used to be called 'manic-depression' is now called 'bipolar disorder' and it should be definitively added that the first label, i.e., 'manic-depression', is much more concretely descriptive of the disorder than the second label (assuming we are not talking about 101 other possibilities of what could also rightly be called 'bipolar disorder' that don't involve 'manic-depression'). In other words, 'manic-depression' should be classified as only one type of 'bipolar disorder' of which there are many, many possible others with 'manic-depression' being probably one of the most common and easily diagnosable. If a 'depressed' person goes through 'cycles' of 'acting out in extreme fashion' in a manner that would not usually be associated with 'depression' but rather its opposite -- 'mania' -- then yes, we are probably both talking about the same 'dialectic phenomenon', i.e., 'manic-depression'. 'Dialectic phenomena' can be easily recognized by a 'hyphen between two different words'. The whole idea of the dialectic is that the 'causal influence' between the two inter-connected phenomena works both ways, 'A influences B' and 'B influences A'; not 'A unilaterally causes B' or visa versa. That's falling into the Aristolean 'either/or' classifications system again.

When is a 'wolf' a 'dialectic phenomenon'? Well, always. In fact, every species of animal is always a dialectic phenomenon -- as in a 'dialectic-genetic-integration' between a 'male parent' and a 'female parent'. 'Species-integrations' even increase this level of 'dialecticity' (There's a new word for you I just invented -- 'dialecticity'.)
A 'wolf' and a 'coyote' mating together (as in 'dialectically-genetically-integrating genes) create a 'colf'. And now we have a new species of animal on the earth.

I saw a coyote the other day running between two farm fields while I was driving up in Georgina where coyotes habitat but still are certainly not an everyday sighting. At least I think what I saw was a coyote. It was certainly not a 'fox' because foxes are 'red-orange' and not as big as what I say. And it was certainly not a dog. It turned around and looked at me after it had put most of the distance of the farmer's field between it and me. I had stopped on the country road to watch it trot across the field. And it was not a wolf -- too skinny to be a wolf -- and probably not a 'colf' because I believe that most of them have been identified up by Belleville-Kingston area rather than Sutton area, in Southern Ontario. A quick point to be made here: When we attach 'living phenomena' to 'conceptual labels' or 'names', again there is a dialectic cognitive process going on here -- this time between 'what we saw' and 'what we associate what we saw with a conceptual label that we need to dig out of our memory templates in order to play the fitting game'. If we have no 'conceptual label' in one of our memory templates to fit what we think we saw -- well, we become 'befuddled' by what we can't put a name to what we saw. The other day I was watching 'The EXterminator' and saw a type of animal that I never had seen before, nor did I have a name for it. It looked like a beaver, only a little smaller maybe, and with a 'rat's tail' rather than a 'beaver's tail'. It was called a 'nutria'.  

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The nutria, Myocastor coypus, is a large semi-aquatic rodent. The generic name is derived from two Greek words (mys, for mouse, and kastor, for beaver)

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I have perhaps wandered too far away from the essence of my essay.

The essence of what I have just written above is that a good psychoanalyst -- whether theorist and/or therapist -- needs to also be a good 'cognitive-language-meaning' theorist and therapist as well. I believe that Lacan has at least partly gone down this path but I am not familiar enough with his work to editorialize it. There certainly do seem to be some areas in his work that are intriguing.

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From Wikipedia...

"[Lacan's] interest in surrealism predated his interest in psychoanalysis," Dylan Evans explains, speculating that "perhaps Lacan never really abandoned his early surrealist sympathies, its neo-Romantic view of madness as ‘convulsive beauty’, its celebration of irrationality, and its hostility to the scientist who murders nature by dissecting it".^[7] Others would agree that "the importance of surrealism can hardly be over-stated... to the young Lacan... [who] also shared the surrealists' taste for scandal and provocation, and viewed provocation as an important element in psycho-analysis itself".^[8]

Encouraged by the reception of "the return to Freud" and of his report "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis," Lacan began to re-read Freud's works in relation to contemporary philosophy, linguistics, ethnology, biology, and topology. From 1953 to 1964 at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, he held his Seminars and presented case histories of patients. During this period he wrote the texts that are found in the collection Écrits, which was first published in 1966. In his seventh Seminar "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis" (1959–60), Lacan defined the ethical foundations of psychoanalysis and presented his "ethics for our time"—one that would, in the words of Freud, prove to be equal to the tragedy of modern man and to the "discontent of civilization." At the roots of the ethics is desire: analysis' only promise is austere, it is the entrance-into-the-I (in French a play on words between l'entrée en je and l'entrée en jeu). "I must come to the place where the id was," where the analysand discovers, in its absolute nakedness, the truth of his desire. The end of psychoanalysis entails "the purification of desire." This text formed the foundation of Lacan's work for the subsequent years^{[citation needed]}. He defended three assertions: that psychoanalysis must not have a scientific status; that Freudian ideas have radically changed the concepts of subject, of knowledge, and of desire; and that the analytic field is the only place from which it is possible to question the insufficiencies of science and philosophy.

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From what I just read here, I would differentiate between the 'reductionistic and/or narcissistic scientist' who 'murders nature by dissecting it' only because he or she does not put it properly back together again. In contrast, 'the dialectic scientist' has a full appreciation and respect of the working inter-relationship between the 'part' and the 'whole' of the organism, and that you can't take the one out of the context of the other without 'conceptually, theoretically, and therapeutically murdering what you are studying and attempting to make better'.


Back to Freud.

The rest of what I write in this essay is not likely to be very popular. The Oedipal Complex can be used in a 'Classical Freudian' sense -- and this, I assert is a toxic, pathological way of using The Oedipal Complex, both theoretically and therapeutically. Alternatively, it can be used in a more Kleinian-Fairbairnian, Object Relations sense, that Freud, by 1923, in The Ego and The Id, had already partly moved towards, although he had still not let go of the Oedipal Complex Theory in its primal, instinctual, Classical Freudian sense -- and this, I am sorry to say, means that presumably, since no one in The Psychoanalytic Establishment has moved to 'fix' this problem, epistemologically, morally-ethically, and from a public relations standpoint, particularly relative to the ongoing 'equal rights' treatment of women, the 'toxic, pathological' use of The Oedipal Complex is still being taught, and still being practised, amongst 'Classical Freudian' psychoanalysts. Those psychoanalytic theorists and therapists, who no longer buy into the 'full Freudian package', have the option of turning to another 'Psychoanalytic paradigm' -- such as Object Relations, Self Psychology, Lacanian Psychoanalysis (although Lacan insisted that he was a 'Classical Freudian' psychoanalyst), Bionian Psychoanalysis, and/or whatever other 'sub-paradigm' of Psychoanalysis is out there that I am unfamiliar with, and missing.

Clearly, The Psychoanalytic Establishment does not want to be associated with the idea of suppressing and/or covering up childhood sexual assault, including within the family.

And yet equally clearly, that is exactly what the Classical Freudian interpretation of The Oedipal Complex still teaches psychoanalysts to do.

 Ethically standing up against this practice cost Dr. Jeffrey Masson his job and his career as Projects Director of The Freud Archives in the 1980s. In my editorial opinion, Masson was made a scapegoat for Freud's 'epistemological and moral-ethical pathology as both a psycho-theorist and as a psychotherapist'.

Masson accused Freud of 'losing moral courage' and obviously, that didn't sit very well with Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and the rest of the board members of The International Psychoanalytic Institute (Establishment). To paraphrase Kurt Eissler in a later interview, after the public scandal was over, how could you have The Projects Director of The Freud Archives challenging Freud's 'moral integrity'?

Well, it's like this. None of us are 'morally perfect' and obviously if you are Anna Freud -- Sigmund Freud's daughter -- or Kurt Eissler, one of Freud's most dedicated and loyal followers in the twilight of his career, and you are running 'The Psychoanalytic Establishment' all over the world -- 'The House that Sigmund Freud Built' -- you are going to have a very hard time admitting publicly that Sigmund Freud was at times (more times than any devoted Freudian follower would want to admit) 'ethically-morally challenged', even if the historical facts -- his 'cocaine misadventures', the Emma Ekstein nasal surgery scandal.....and his non-ethical usage of 'The Oedipal Complex Theory' as a conscious or non-conscious 'cover-up' for 'childhood sexual assault in the family'.

So -- if I am sitting in Anna Freud's shoes as the head of The International Psychoanalytic Institute back in 1981 or 1982 when this whole 'Masson-Freud Seduction Theory Scandal' started to go down, and Sigmund Freud is my father, and I know myself that I have 'screened out' some of Freud's most personal -- and 'ethically unfavorable' -- letters to Wilhelm Fliess in a previously 'edited, censored, and incomplete' rendition of these letters, well, I have to look at myself in the mirror and ask myself this: Is it better to try to maintain this 'public illusion' of my father's 'moral-ethical perfect integrity' while meanwhile women and particularly feminists all over the world are 'mocking my father's Victorian patriarchal bias against women'  with his 'Oedipal Complex Theory' being the most troubling of all his concept-theories because it asserts that 'all female memories of childhood sexual assaults in the family by their father are not to be taken seriously but rather are to be 're-construed' as the woman's/daughter's/client's 'sexual fantasy' of wanting to have sex with her dad -- and then 'distorting and repressing this fantasy in the form of a false, distorted childhood memory of being assaulted' -- to repeat, is it better to continue to deny that my father made a huge moral-ethical blunder here, or is it best for me to be my own person doing what today I believe to be in the best moral-ethical interests of The International Psychoanalytic Institute and  admit that my father made a bad ethical mistake, partly because he was the product of a 'male dominated Victorian, Austrian society', and now it is time to 'repair' that mistake by stating that, from now on, that masculine, narcissistic bias will be 'eliminated' by ensuring that in theory, in practisce, and in teaching Classical Psychoanalysis and/or The Oedipal Complex, we will no longer 'publicly or privately' dismiss any woman's private memories, but rather, female patients will be given the same type of equality, respect, and compassion that any male patient would likewise be given, and that means 'not re-construing' any memory in any fashion that could be used and abused to 'screen out' or 'cover up' a 'real childhood sexual assault memory'. 

If Anna Freud had publicly announced something like what I have stated above, my respect for her would have been immensely higher -- and I think it would have 'cemented' her own emancipation and independence from her father in a way that she was never able to carry out -- never able to 'free herself from the stereotyped legacy and, in this regard, sometimes the 'pseudo-legacy' or 'mythological legacy' of her father.

Instead, we have Freud's words in 1916 (Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, S.E., V. 16, p. 370) still being 'treated like they were gold' or, if not, then 'swept under the carpet' and/or 'hidden in the closet'....

'...if in the case of girls who produce such an event (seduction) in the story of their childhood their father figures fairly regularly as the seducer, there can be no doubt either of the imaginary nature of the accusation or of the motive  that has led to it.'...And he continues: ...up to the present we have not suceeded in pointing to any difference in the consequences, whether phantasy or reality has had the greater share in these events of childhood.'.....(I ask myself, when I read this, how would Freud recognize any such difference at this point in his career, because by this point, he has openly stated right above here that there is no reality in these memories -- that what may seem like real memories are to be re-construed as imagined fantasies.)

Now you tell me who has the stronger 'ethical leg to stand on' -- Freud or Masson who was claiming or at least speculating that 'Freud lost moral courage here because his medical peers and superiors didn't want to hear Freud's 'Seduction Theory' because it 'was not a politically correct or comfortable theory' for these established professional doctors of Vienna to want to deal with because there might have been, indeed quite possibly were, men amongst them or who they knew who were guilty of the types of childhood sexual assaults against their daughters that Freud was writing about in his very courageous and compassionate 1896 paper supporting sexually victimized women -- i.e. arguablly the most passionate and compassionate essay Freud ever wrote -- 'The Aetiology of Hysteria'.  

I will let you make up your own minds on this matter. As you can probably ascertain, I come down more in support of Masson than I do in support of Freud. I think Freud 'blew an ethical call' -- partly coerced or 'influenced' by the medical community that was referring, or not referring, patients to him .

 And in this regard, I think that The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society 'blew the same ethical call'.  As did Anna Freud. And Kurt Eissler. And the rest of The Psychoanalytic Institute that stood around and watched this scandal go down without saying or doing nothing.

Call this a private joke of mine...although it really isn't very funny....

How many psychoanalysts does it take to 'screw in a lightbulb'?

Sorry, I can't answer that one.....but I can answer this one...

How many psychoanalysts does it take to 'screw Dr. Jeffrey Masson'?


Well, a board full of shareholders...

And a thousand private psychoanalysts to stand around and watch...

They all played the role of two words I heard another writer use a few weeks back in another context -- 'passive enablers'.

What are they 'passively enabling'?  A toxic, pathological theory -- at least the way Freud insisted it be taught -- to continue to exist...

As Masson writes below, I am not saying that I have any 'window into Freud's brain' as to all the factors that were going through his mind when he chose to leave his traumacy and seduction theories behind...But like Masson, I can speculate based on the 'circumstantial evidence' surrounding this period of Freud's life as can be read in his uncensored letters to Fliess. And between the Emma Ekstein scandal and The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society calling 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' and Freud's Seduction Theory -- a 'scientific fairy tale', there was sufficient motivation for Freud to steer away from the 'politically incorrect' subject matter of childhood sexual abuse when this Society and everyone in it had power to make his career -- or break it.

This having been said, there are other factors that could have been, and probably were, at work here as well, most notably 'The Interpretation of Dreams' pounding through his creative mind, and the issues of 'childhood sexuality' and 'instinct theory' arriving with it. Through the winter of 1895/96 Freud could be caught using the word 'hysterical longing' to rationalize and deny what had happened to Emma Ekstein. Did that come from Fliess? Freud suggested that Fliess was the 'author' of this idea in one of his letters that winter/spring. (I will check but I think it is the May 4th, 1896 letter.) Narcissistic reasons and creative theoretical reasons seemed to be converging to form 'The Perfect (or Imperfect) Storm.

Regardless, it is Freud's finished product, his finished 'Oedipal Theory', that is being primarily judged here -- and how Freud wanted it taught and practised. And on this basis, what might have been 'fine' for Narcissistic, Patriarchal Vienna is not fine for the world in the 21st century. The Oedipal Complex Theory, as written -- and applied -- in Freud's own words above is discriminatory against his female patients' who may have been sexually assaulted in childhood by their respective fathers' -- and Freud was saying that these 'memories' shouldn't be taken seriously, that they were figments of his female patients' imagination.

And that today -- is morally deplorable for any psychotherapist to say that type of thing, let alone the most famous psychologist in the history of Western psychology.

If you are one of those therapists, or psychoanalysts in particular, who have 'introjected' Freud's Oedipal Complex Theory without properly 'chewing' and 'assimilating it', I believe that you should take a long look in your 'ethical mirror' and ask yourself this:

Am I still supporting this theory because I believe it is right? Or am I supporting it because I am making a six figure income doing so, and because my 'supporting' Psychoanalytic Institute taught me to practise Classical Psychoanalysis this way and insists that I not (at least publicly) rebel against it? Do I want to continue to make my six figure income or do I want to happen to me what happened to Dr. Jeffrey Masson when he 'publicly rebelled' against this theory?

When I come back, I will replay my interview with Dr. Jeffrey Masson from two years ago....

Think about it.....Sometimes we have to take an ethical stance against our employers who are feeding us if we want to maintain our own sense of ethical integrity.

Thanks for reading...

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Regarding my email transactions and short interview with Dr. Jeffrey Masson below...


I started emailing Dr. Masson sometime last fall (2009) and let him know that I was following up on his work -- but with a more 'integrative perspective' than the position he was advocating which was a more 'either/or perspective. Basically I aimed to 'bridge the theoretical and therapeutic gap' between Freudian theory before 1897 and after 1896, although the winter of 1895/96 seem to be a point of 'theoretical fluctation' for Freud during which time he was vascillating back and forth between his 'traumacy-seduction theory' and his quickly evolving and brand new 'instinct-fantasy-childhood sexuality theory'.  I was wondering if there might even be room for some form of 'reconciliation' and 'conflict resolution' between Masson and the current Psychoanalytic regime. We both agreed that this last possibility was highly unlikely and neither of us were in anyway, shape, or form, expecting this to happen. In the words of Bob Dylan, 'You were right from your side, I was right from mine. We're just one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind.'


Literarily, a thousand miles behind as Dr. Masson is now living in New Zealand and doing a wonderful job researching and writing about emotions in animals. He has written numerous books on this subject matter such as 'When Elephants Weep' and 'Dogs Don't Lie About Love'. Visit his website listed above.


Still 'integration' is the name of the game here in Hegel's Hotel (my network of blogsites on philosophy, psychology, politics, and more...), and that is my project relative to Psychoanalysis -- to integrate ALL 50 years of Freud's writing and theorizing. I want to 're-integrate the dissociative split' in psychoanalytic theory that happened in 1896.

To me, this year might be called the year of 'The Great Psychoanalytic Repression'.

And I intend to undo this 'repression', this 'dissociative split' in Classic Psychoanalytic Theory that separates -- and 'dissociates' -- the work of Freud before 1897 from his work after 1896.

How ironic that Psychoanalysis should 'mimic' the type of 'neurosis' that Freud spent so many years, in painstaking fashion, describing and explaining in his patients!!!

It is in this regard that Masson, in digging deep into the letters of The Freud Archive, became aware that he liked Freud's work better before 1897, rather than after. Masson argued that Freud 'lost moral courage' on the issue of 'childhood sexual abuse' after the spring of 1896 because of 'political' and 'economic' pressures being brought to bear on him from his medical peers and superiors, the most important leader of the meeting where Freud first read his infamous, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' (1896) -- i.e., his most pivotal essay on 'The Seduction (Childhood Sexual Assault) Theory' -- saying that he thought the essay was a 'scientific fairy tale'.

In stating that Freud 'lost moral courage' after 1896, Masson alienated himself from Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter, and also, Kurt Eissler, the second most esteemed psychoanalyst at the time that this 'scandal in The Freud Archives' broke out in the early 1980s, and with a continuing snowball effect, Masson, quickly alienated himself from (or was alienated by) the entire Psychoanalytic Establishment...

I talked to Masson about a week ago by email...and got the following short interview as a culmination of a number of email transactions that we had exchanged.

It is on this note, with Dr. Masson's consent, that I introduce you to Dr. Masson today, via a select few email transactions over the past week or so, and 9 selected questions by myself that I asked him in a quick makeshift email interview which we had talked about doing before Christmas (2009).


His answers were 'short but sweet'...


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March 18th, 2010


1. Question from DGB to Dr. Masson:

DGB. What is your final take, good and bad, of Anna Freud? What would you say to her if you were in the room with her right now?

1. Answer from Dr. Masson to DGB:

JM. Well, I think she was a lovely woman, but very much in the thrall of her
great father. Never a good thing! The amazing thing for me is that after
our talks, she told somebody (and it was published - I saw it and even
referred to it in one of the later editions of The Assault on Truth) that
sexual abuse was the greatest trauma in the lives of children!!

2. Question.

DGB. What is your final take, good and bad, of Kurt Eissler? What would you say
to him if you were in the room with him right now?
2. Answer.

JM. I "loved" Kurt Eissler. I still think he was a most remarkable man. I have
not been able to get hold of his book about the seduction theory. But I
would ask him why he was so eager to defend the establishment in public,
whereas in private he could say that I was entitlted to my opinions. Did he
never encounter patients in his many years of practice, who had, indeed,
been abused? If so, why did he never write about it? If not, is that not
odd, considering how much abuse there is in the culture? Why was this such
a contentious issue for analysts, including him?


3. Question.

DGB. Did you ever meet Brian Bird to any significant extent? If so, what was
your impression of him?

3. Answer.

JM. I think we only met once, and I was very deeply impressed. A remarkable
man, I thought. I know nothing of what happened to him later in life.

4. Question.

DGB. If you had the whole 1980s to play over again, would you have played it out
differently? If so, how?
4. Answer.

J.M. I suspect I would. I would have written a much more scholarly book, that
is, I would not have allowed my editor to take out so many of my footnotes,
and text. I handed in a manuscript of some 1,000 pages. She reduced it. I
also would have make it VERY clear that I was only speculating as to why
Freud gave up his theory of seduction. I would also have given each and
every passage in the later Freud where the terms occur to show how he deal
with it later on. So many analysts believe, falsely I think, that Freud
stayed with sexual trauma. He did not, especially if the woman said it was
her father. That was unthinkable, literally, to the later Freud!

5. Question.

DGB. What was the time and primary motivating reason for your switchover to the
study of animal psychology and particularly the study of animal emotions?
5. Answer.

J.M. Well, I was a pariah in psychoanalysis, and had to find something else to
do. I had always been fascinated by animals, and by emotions, so it made
sense to investigate the emotions of animals.

6. Question.

DGB. Do you see any 'allusions to immediacy' in your own life, relative to the
titles of at least two of your books on animal emotions: specifically, 'Dogs
Never Lie About Love'; and 'When Elephants Weep'?

6. Answer.

JM. I am sorry, I do not know the terms allusions to immediacy. If you mean personal experiences, then yes, I had always lived with dogs and adored them (still do - my new book is called The Dog Who Couldn't Stop Loving).

7. Question.

DGB. You will forgive me for not yet having read any of your animal psychology
books -- I will find and read at least some of them -- but I see from your
website that your book 'The Pig Who Sang to The Moon' turned you into a vegan
and became a subject for another one of your books: The Face on Your Plate.
Can you briefly explain what happened in this regard?

7. Answer.

JM. Once I saw that farm animals had similar emotions to dogs (and us!), I could
no longer justify imposing suffering on them for my taste buds, milk,
chocolate, butter, eggs. The gulf between what happened to them to provide
this and the pleasure it gave me, was simply too great.

8. Question.

DGB. What is new on your list of books to come? I see again from your website
that you are writing a book on 'the psychology of apex predators' (humans,
orcas, wolves, bears, and the big cats'. I saw a tv program the other day on
how New Zealand orcas specialize in killing and eating stingrays. Any brief
comments here and perhaps most significantly on the similarities and
differences between human and animal predators? What does 'apex' mean in this
context?

8. Answer.

JM. I am attaching what I have written about this.

9. Question.

DGB. Any commendations and/or criticisms regarding my work in Hegel's Hotel?
Maybe I am being too bold here -- I expect you will be truthful. Have I
influenced your thinking at all? I see you have an interest in the 'Us and
Them' phenomenon which has been a central 'dialectic' focal point of writing
for me in Hegel's Hotel; and also, we at least used to share a common interest
in the topic of 'counter-phobias' (if Janet Malcolm's quote here is right)
which remains a central focal point of my Psychoanalytic investigations.

9. Answer.

JM. Well, I have only read your work sporadically and not in depth. I can sense
your sincerity, and I respect your attempt to fuse both trauma and the later
Freud. It is not easy, and you are making a concerted attempt. Analysts
would do well to pay attention to your work, but of course they won't,
because you are not part of the establishment. That is a pity.

10. Final DGB comments:

Jeff, I have the utmost respect for your work and your character. I know that we disagree on the 'integration' issue -- you skeptical that it will work, and me confident that I can make it work. But regardless, your work on The Seduction Theory has been a source of great inspiration to me, impassioned me to follow up on your work wherever it may take me, and to do the best job I possibly can to make sure that your exhausting work in Psychoanalysis has not been in vain, and that you take your rightful, respectful place in the history and ongoing evolution of Psychoanalysis.

It has been the greatest pleasure meeting you and I hope that we can maintain some degree of ongoing contact with each other.

Sincerely, David Gordon Bain




.......................................................................................................................................


Email Transaction From Jeffrey Masson Regarding The Interview... (after it was written up but before it was publicly published)



Sunday March 14th, 2010


(Dave),


I read what you wrote, and I appreciate the generous comments about me. It
was very kind. Like you, I do not expect any reconciliation. And the truth
is, I really have lost interest in psychoanalysis. Perhaps if they had
responded as you have, or as you wish they had, it would be different.
Surely Freud has written some wonderful papers, has had some amazing
insights, has given us valuable material to think about. But I do believe
he missed out on something terribly important. Now, as to why he did so, I
cannot pretend to know. My hunch, my theory, my belief, is that it was due
to a lack of moral courage. But I could easily be wrong. You might be
right: he may have been headed in that direction in any case. We will
probably never know. But he did abandon what was an important and
courageous theory, and the result is that women and children were
disbelieved and suffered as a consequence. I am amazed, like you, that not
a single analyst has been able to acknowledge this! I just can't really get
my mind around this. So I have to wish them godspeed, and be on my way.
Same with you. I appreciate what you do, but I am concerned now with other
things and cannot give much more attention to this matter. Sorry. You are
doing a fine job on your own! Best, Jeff



Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Ph.D.
P.O.Box 25930, St. Heliers, Auckland 1740
New Zealand

www.jeffreymasson.com


.....................................................................................................................................

 

On Transference Complexes, Memories, and Dreams as Bi-Polar Paradoxes, Dichotomies, and Often Lifelong Impasses

Finished!...Feb. 19th., 2012...dgb

When I write at night, which is not often, I tend to write in a more free-flowing, free association, loosey goosey, loosely structured, Dionsysian style....At times, these essays can be more psychologically revealing in terms of my own personality, but generally speaking, these essays would not pass anywhere close to academic standards, and so it is, that I usually have to come back and 'repair the damage of my largely non-professional presentation' the next morning...in more logically coherent, more tightly structured, more properly referenced, more Apollonian, style...Such was the situation with this paper here....and hopefully, the presentation is a little better today than it was last night....

Regarding my references, sometimes the references I want to cite I haven't read in 20 or 30 or even more years.. I generally know the book that they came from, but I may be wrong, and this can make for a long detective hunt trying to re-find the quote that I want to reference....If I was writing an academic paper, this would absolutely mean finding the appropriate reference for the quote -- or not using it...because you can't say in an academic paper that 'I think I read it here but I haven't been able to find it yet....' The essay would probably be thrown back at you with a 'D' -- or simply not graded with the professor saying something like; 'Don't you ever hand in an essay like this to me again...'  I could certainly see Dr. Masson, as a professor, doing something like this...I once wrote to him last year some time, and said that I thought that Freud had used the analogy of 'finding the source of the Nile' twice -- once regarding The Seduction Theory, and once regarding The Oedipal Theory -- to which he promptly responded -- 'Where?'  -- and to which I sheepishly replied that I didn't know where, I would have to look for it...and I still haven't found it, I am assuming now because it doesn't exist. Memories can play tricks on people and on some people more than others....i.e., some people have more reliable memories than others....and 'subjective, narcissistic biases can, in particular, interfere with the 'objective reliablity' of memories....This is much of what makes 'The Seduction Theory vs. Oedipal Theory Controversy' a mind-twisting and wrenching challenge -- especially the deeper you get into it. No memory is likely 100 percent 'factual' unless we are talking about a very simple 'either/or' part of the memory...and even that is not always entirely reliable....In Nietzsche's words, 'There are no facts; just interpretations.' We will explore this dilemma in my next essay on 'The Good and Bad Aspects of The Oedipal Complex Theory'.

Meanwhile,  Fritz Perls once asserted in my paraphrased words that the repetition compulsion involves 'unfinished (transference) situations' or 'unfinished (transference) gestalts' where we are cyclically and compulsively trying to 'finish these unfinished transference situations' -- or 'work them through', or 'resolve a seemingly unresolvable conflict' -- over and over and over again, usually throughout the course of our lives, with generally not too much success....perhaps partial or even overwhelming success in one or many of our particular endeavors, but seemingly never enough to 'totally clear up our negative self-image and/or whatever else it is that obsessively-compulsively continues to drive us to symbolically return again and again to the scene of one of our early childhood, primal transference scenes'.....

In fact, it does not usually matter how much 'outside success' we experience if inside, we keep telling ourselves (from some introjected and/or self-taught childhood message) that we are 'a failure', 'a loser', and/or 'not worthy of our success'....Thus, we are talking about issues of 'childhood self-esteem' encompassed within 'childhood transference scripts, games, complexes, templates' that become the basis for a lifelong 'self-fulfilling prophecy' (the basis of the transference repetition compulsion) that can either seriously impair and/or 'compulsively stimulate' our evolutionary development, our existential being, and our road to becoming what or who we were/are meant to become....


In other words, usually these transference-repetition compulsion-serial behavior pattern issues of the type I am thinking about are issues that lie at the core of our psyche, They are what I believe it was either Jacob Moreno or Virginia Satir used to call 'core nuclear conflicts'.  This goes hand in hand with Perls calling a dream a 'paradox', an 'impasse', or in my words, a maze that we are stuck in, a house with no doors or windows that we can't see an 'outside perspective', a 'paradigm' that we are stuck inside that we again cannot see an outside perspective....

We remain 'transfixed', like a deer caught in a car's headlights, everyone else can see our way out of our self-created maze except ourselves; for us our 'psychotherapy' remains our 'blindspot'...we make the easy look impossible....we prefer the status-quo....we prefer our self-made prison over anyone trying to show us where the door is to this prison...our prison is our 'safety institution'....our means of 'escaping the responsibility and accountability for our own freedom' (Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom) rather than risking the failures and/or rejections and/or insecurities and/or potentially 'paralyzing anxiety' that comes with actually 'being free'....'the dizziness of freedom' (Kierkegaard)...of being 'congruent'...of lining up our 'Spiritual Self and Soul' with the behavior of our 'Central Executive Ego', our 'Chief Executive Officer'.....

When I say 'I love myself' or conversely 'I hate myself'....who is the 'I' and who is the 'myself'?  The 'I' is 'the judge' which could be any practically any part of our 'wholistic self' but it is probably most likely to be our 'Righteous, Critical Superego' which in turn could either be our 'Introjected Critical Childhood Parent' or our own 'Moral-Ethical Superego' or our own 'Existential Superego' judging the perceived 'failures' of our 'Central Executive Ego' -- the 'myself' in this equation. Or it could be our 'Approval-Seeking Underego' judging the performance of our 'Rebellious Dionysian or Apollonian Underego'....or the other way around....or it could be our 'Nurturing Superego' judging the judgments of our 'Righteous, Critical Superego'....or the other way around....There are a lot of theoretical and therapeutic possibilities within our 'Split Self' or 'Split Psyche' where 'psychotherapy' become the 'evolutionary process' of 'better dialectic-democratic internal integration'...

   When you look at my still evolving model of the human psyche, at first glance. it may seem overly large, complicated, and cumbersome, but it is designed to be 'multi-bipolar' and it is designed to accommodate a whole host of different, competing psycho-theoretical and therapeutic systems or paradigms....It is designed to accommodate significant elements of: 1. 'Pre-Classical' and 'Classical' Freudian Theory; 2. Adlerian Theory; 3. Jungian Theory; 4. Kleinian and Fairbairnian Object Relations Theory and Kohutian Narcissistic Theory; 5. Frommian Theory; 6. Gestalt Theory; 7. Bernean Transactional Analysis Theory; 8. elements of Janovian 'Primal Scream' Theory; 9. Cognitive Theory (Ellis and his 'ABC Theory', Beck, Kelly and his 'Personal Constructs', Frank and 'Persuasion and Healing', General Semantics (Korzybski and Hayakawa), and Self-Esteem Theory (Maltz and 'Psycho-Cybernetics', Branden and 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem') ; 10. Existential Theory (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Kafka, Camus, Frankl, Choice Theory (Glasser), and Cognitive-Behavioral Theory (Meichenbaum)....You could probably include Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs', Carl Rogers 'Congruent vs. Incongruent Self', Horney's 'Our Inner Conflicts', and I am not comfortable enough with the work of either Lacan or Bion to make any comments on them...

Is this overkill? Trying to 'appease' and/or 'integrate' too many different 'theoretical paradigms'? I don't think so....and you can see by my work on Freud that I am certainly not trying very hard to 'appease any psychoanalysts'....as much as Freud remains at the foundation of my 'multi-bipolar, theoretical system'.

My multi-bipolar model can easily be broken down into smaller, simple bipolar dichotomies and conflicts....such as:

1. Our Nurturing Superego vs. Our Righteous, Critical Superego;
2. Our Shadow-Id-Ego (or 'Alter-Ego') vs. Our Central Ego, or alternatively, 'Our Personna';
3. Our Dionysian Ego, Superego, or Underego vs. Our Apollonian Ego, Superego, or Underego;
4. Our Rebellious, Apollonian or Dionysian Underego vs. Our Approval-Seeking Ego;
5. Our Apollonian (Righteous) or Dionsyian (Hedonistic) Ego, Superego, or Underego vs. Our 'Romantic' and/or 'Spiritual-Religious' Ego, Superego, or Underego;
6. Our 'Abyss' vs. our 'Womb' vs. our 'Existential Mountain Peak';
7. Our Central Executive Ego and/or our Personna vs. Our 'Genetic, Existential Self' and/or our 'Spiritual Self' and/or our 'Wholistic Self'....

...........................................................................................................

Here's how the DGB model of the psyche currently looks....

A/ Our 'Introjected and/or Compensatory Parent' Ego-State Domain

1. Our Nurturing Superego;
2. Our Dionysian-Narcissistic-Hedonistic Superego;
3. Our Righteous-Critical-Rejecting (Exciting) Superego';

B/ Our'Humanistic-Existential-Decision-Making' Ego-State Domain

4. Our Romantic-Spiritual Ego (as mythologically and/or philosophically reflected by Aphrodite-Venus-Psyche-Eros-Cupid, Rousseau, Goethe, Schelling);
5. Our Apollonian, Dionysian, and/or Aphroditean Influenced Shadow-Id Ego; 
6. Our Central, Mediating, Executive Ego;
7. Our Personna;

C/ Our'Child' Ego-State Domain

08. Our Apollonian Rebellious Underego;
09. Our Dionysian-Narcissistic-Hedonistic Underego;
10. Our Approval-Seeking (Disapproval-Avoiding, Co-operative, Compliant) Underego;

D/ Our 'Underworld' Domain

11. Our 'Nietzschean Existential Mountain Peak' (Requiring a 'Rope' To Climb Over Our 'Abyss', Requiring Us To Be Our Own Personal 'Superman or Superwoman', Thus Spoke Zarathrusta...);
12. Our Dream Weaver (Revealing Inner Paradoxes and Impasses, Dangers and Wishes, Lost Love Objects, Unfinished Business of our Day's or Life's Residue, Suppressed Feelings, Transference Complexes...);
13. Our Shadow-Id Vault;
14. Our Shadow-Id;
15. Our Neurological, Biochemical, and Hormonal Influences;
16. Our Personal 'Womb';
17. Our Personal Abyss, Apeiron, Black Hole, Chaos;
18. Our Genetic-Spiritual-Mythological Self (Our Mythological Self...Projecting Outwards into Our External World The Contents and Essence of Our Inner Spiritual Self);

..............................................................................................................

There's a difference between a 'dualistic' and a 'dialectic' conception of man....Freud at different times was both....The dualistic philosopher-psychologist posits something like, say for example, a 'life' vs. 'death' instinct in an 'either/or' fashion....or a 'no conflict resolution is possible' fashion, whereas the dialectic philosopher-psychologist looks for 'dialectic integrations' and/or 'integrative balances' that can lead to 'healthy, balanced, functional behavior' as opposed to dichotomized, radically extreme dysfunctional behavior that goes unilaterally off the charts at one end of a particular bipolar spectrum...or the other....

Dialectic integration does not necessarily lead to 'healthy behavior'. Sadism, Freud would say...and I am paraphrasing here... that sadism was an integration of the 'life' and 'death' instincts, or alternatively, 'the sexual' and 'aggressive' instincts'...

One of the clearest dreams I can still remember dreaming while I was at The University of Waterloo....I dreamt that I was being chased through the campus grounds by German, Nazi soldiers....It was terrifying while I was dreaming it which is probably why I woke up promptly when they finally caught me...I did not want to experience my death while I was dreaming...

'Trauma-and/or-narcissistic fixation-transference-neurotic complexes', 'repetition compulsions', 'serial behavior patterns' -- these are all examples of 'unfinished gestalts' or 'unfinished business'...and since we never seem to 'finish' these 'unfinished gestalts', this would seem to suggest that these repetitive behavior patterns reflect either 'cyclical needs' inside our mind-body, and/or they reflect 'paradoxes' and 'impasses' that we never seem to be able to 'work our way through sufficiently enough to put an end to this  ongoing series of repetitive behavior patterns'. In effect, they reflect the existence of a 'core nuclear, transference conflict'....

Now, regarding 'trauma-and/or-narcissistic fixation-transference-neurotic complexes' (try saying that without stumbling or stuttering...'Stuttering' -- now there is a very intriguing anxiety neurotic symptom we could examine sometime...The mouth, the tongue, and the vocal chords become the warzone and central focus for an internal conflict between 'stop' and 'go' on what next I am going to say...The stutterer is ruled by a very harsh, introjected rejecting superego which then is projected out into the external world onto one or more of our perceived 'rejecting transference figures'...which could be either our 'reality' or our 'phantasy')...Regarding our childhood trauma transference complexes, our whole existential world comes to a grinding halt -- and paradoxical impasse -- at the point of our 're-visit' to our primal or childhood transference scene...Metaphorically or symbolically, we always return to the scene of our primal-childhood transference scene....over and over and over and over and over and over...again...often times 'excitedly'....other times 'horrifically'...and again 'traumatically'...

In Perls' words, we develop a 'neurotic blindspot' -- an 'impasse' -- a point at which all psychological growth stops evolving because of a particular 'phobia' resuting from the trauma....But another part of the mind (in my terminology 'the shadow-id' and 'shadow-id-ego' or often labelled as the 'alter ego') creates a 'counter-phobia' -- a 'counter obsessive-compulsion' to battle the dysfunctional element of the 'regressive, dysfunction phobia'...Thus, the 'transference phenomenon' -- or more particularly here, the 'transference counter phobia and obsessive compulsion' -- becomes a form of 'subconscious and oftentimes erotically narcissistic self psychotherapy'....


Freud described all dreams as 'wish fulfilments' (even nightmares like the dream example of the German Nazi soldiers chasing me through the university campus until they finally caught me at which point I promptly woke up...)  Alternatively, Perls described all dreams as 'paradoxes' where our 'split or dissociated personality' (my addition) represents both sides of the paradox.

The dream of being 'chased by Nazi soldiers' was actually one specific, frightful example of a whole 'serial dream complex' of being chased by 'bad men' who want to 'hurt or kill me'...or 'confine me'...

My lifelong 'masculine protest' (Adler), 'counter-phobia' and/or 'counter-obsessive-compulsion' can be summarized as: I will not be confined -- not by any one person nor by any one organization.'

 Consequently, I am not exclusively a Freudian, I am not exclusively an Adlerian, I am not exclusively a Jungian, I am not exclusively a Gestaltist.... I am both all of these...and none of these to the extent that each 'theoretical paradigm' 'confines' me and prevents me from 'stepping outside the particular paradigm' and investigating other paradigms....That is probably also why I will never be married.....I have 'commitment or confinement phobia'....and 'freedom-o-holism'....the desired freedom to step away from what 'is' and to visit and/or create a new paradigm...that creates a new 'is'...
The 'being chased serial nightmare' can be traced to one of my conscious early memories....not particularly traumatic or frightful...indeed more pleasurable than painful......I was about 6 or 7 years old, in Grade 1 (they had no kindergarten back then where I was going to school...) My classmates and I were playing a game of 'chase and catch' in the playground....the 'primary chaser' was a girl...her name was Cherry...the first girl I fell in love with....the 'secondary chasers' -- or perhaps they should be viewed as the 'primary chasers' -- were all boys in my class....The idea is that Cherry would chase all the boys in my class until she caught and kissed one of them....Then he would become her 'helper' until the next boy was caught -- and kissed....On and on it went, I was one of, if not, the fastest kid(s) in the class because I was the last one caught. I ran my best but I was no match for the whole class of boys chasing me....They finally caught me....and 'constrained me'...leaving me powerless....until Ms. Cherry caught up with the troop...and kissed me.... The kiss was nice...very nice...but I guess you could say that I have had a life long transference complex involving 'constraint-a-phobia'....The counter-impulse, counter-phobia, counter-obsessive-compulsion -- would have to be labelled as a 'constraint-compulsion'....This is my 'blind-spot' or at least one of them....My 'constraint-compulsion' is a 'very sneaky, subconscious, manipulative defense mechanism'....I don't even usually know I'm doing it....There is the 'wish fulfillment' part of the phantasy-nightmare....'The being caught by a transference-surrogate of Cherry....and finding that pleasurable..well, that's a no brainer....but that is never a part of my 'serial nightmare'.....which terrifies me when I have one of these types of 'chase dreams'.....Could the conscious early memory that I have cited here be a 'screen memory' for something much more traumatic? I don't know....I can't -- or won't -- remember anything more horrific and terrifying....But remember...as Freud articulated...neurotic complexes are always 'over-determined'....There have to be other associations...but maybe I am not willing to 'see them through'...and that would bring us to Freud's concept of 'repression'....or somewhere between a 'semi-conscious suppression' and a 'repression'...Hmmm.....Some new insights here for me....


We will stop here...Is this 'resistance'?...Sometimes, even when Freud was at least partly wrong, he was also at least partly right....I shake my head both at his creative brilliance and his obstinately, righteous, stupidly (or more likely dramatically for shock value and impact) overstated, reductionistic overgeneralizations...Both are equally astounding...the latter had much to do with Freud's breakup with Breuer as Breuer knew that Freud was hardly acting like a 'grounded scientist' when he leaped 'ahead of all of his clinical cases' to some of his early, dramatic, theoretical conclusions, most notably 'The Seduction Theory' and then 'flying over to the opposite side of the dialectic spectrum to 'The Oedipus Complex Theory'...Freud overgeneralized on 'repression', he overgeneralized on 'childhood sexual abuse', he overgeneralized on 'childhood sexual fantasy', and he overgeneralized or overidealized his rate and degree of 'therapeutic success'...

One of Freud's life paradoxes....caught between the 'wanna be grounded biologist and scientist' and the 'fly high into the sky abstractionist'...He was much better at being the latter...Even Ernest Jones knew this...

'We have already noted his (Freud's) early tendency to speculative rumination, one which he sternly checked. (When? How sternly? It sure didn't last long...My editorial comments.) (Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 1953, 1981, p. 34)

'Such considerations made him (Freud) feel the need of intellectual discipline, and everything pointed to science as the supreme opportunity. Science then meant, as it still does to many people, not only objectivity, but above all exactitude, measurement, precision, all the qualities in which Freud knew he was lacking.' (Ibid, p. 34)

One could call this one of Freud's lifelong 'Achilles Heels'...

-- dgb, February 18th, 2012...

-- David Gordon Bain

Different Ways of Defining and Describing 'Neurosis'

Updated...Feb. 18th, 2012...dgb


The term 'neurosis' stems back at least to the beginning of Freud's work in Psychoanalysis in the early 1890s, back to the point where the science of neurology first started to overlap with the art and science of psychiatry, clinical psychology, and psychotherapy.

Perhaps the easiest and quickest association between the name 'neurosis' and what it it is/was used to define/describe is the idea and experience of 'nervousness' and/or 'bad nerves'. This is particularly relevant in what Freud referred to as 'anxiety neurosis'.

For the longest while -- many years -- Freud equated anxiety neurosis with the idea of 'blocked sexual excitement and energy' (or 'libido'). It wasn't until very late in his career that Freud finally relented this position and more appropriately defined anxiety as that feeling/emotion that can best be equated with the perception of danger. This doesn't totally reject Freud's previous postion of 'blocked sexual excitement' because who doesn't often/usually feel at least partly 'nervous' or 'anxious' when their mind-body is 'filling up with sexual excitement' particularly in the close proximity to a 'perceived sexual object/person'.


Here are some internet definitions/descriptions of 'neurosis'.
........................................................................................................

Neurosis

1. A relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety) but not usually a severe loss of touch with reality. Contrast with psychosis which does involve a more severe loss of touch with reality.



2. (in nontechnical use) Excessive and irrational anxiety or obsession.

3. Neurosis is a term generally used to describe a nonpsychotic mental illness which triggers feelings of distress and anxiety and impairs functioning.


4. Wikipedia....Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms.[1] It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic. The term essentially describes an "invisible injury" and the resulting condition, and is no longer in official use by the scientific, medical, and psychiatric communities.



....................................................................................................



Since most of my work here is Freudian and/or Psychoanalytically based, and Freud used the term extensively, and broke it up into sub-categories, I will do the same although my sub-categories will be partly different. I still think it is a useful term although the term 'disorder' generally replaces it today.

Three broad 'mental health disorders' that are commonly differentiated from each other are: 1. 'Bi-Polar Disorder' (which usually means 'Manic-Depression Disorder'); 2. 'Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder' (which usually refers to what Freud would have classified as 'Anal' Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders; in contrast, the 'Oral' Obsessive-Compulsions are usually classified as 'Addictions' -- more on this distinction later); 3. 'Borderline Personality Disorder' which based on my understanding of this diagnostic category refers to a person who 'borders' between 'neurosis' and 'psychosis' and the only way that he or she can 'keep it together' is by subscribing to 'tight, anal-retentive, often obsessive-compulsive, defense mechanisms' that are designed to ward off 'extreme feelings of internal anxiety/panic'. High stress levels such as the loss of a job and/or the loss of a loved one are often likely to push this type of person 'over the top', resulting in the possibility of a 'nervous (psychotic) breakdown', and perhaps even hospitalization. Of course, if the intensity of 'stressor(s)' is strong enough, we don't necessarily need to be diagnosed as a 'borderline personality' for something of this order to happen. It is just that borderline personality 'neurotics' tend to be more prone to these types of breakdowns....



Another way of defining and describing 'neurosis' is by using the principle of 'homeostatic (or dialectic) balance'. This can be applied either 'culturally' or 'politically' or 'legally' or 'religiously' (which gets us into the problem of 'ethical relativism') or it can be applied 'trans-culturally' in terms of 'individual and social/civil needs and rights'.

Using the 'trans-cultural' -- in this case 'biological-medical' approach -- if a person has 'the flu', it doesn't matter what country or culture they live in; they still have 'the flu'. The 'bio-medical model or paradigm' works 'across different countries and cultures'.

In the case of 'psychological disorders', the 'bio-medical' approach doesn't always work as neatly and precisely. Schizophrenia is still schizophrenia but oftentimes -- indeed, almost always -- social, political, family, cultural, political, legal, economic, religious and/or philosophical factors all have to be taken into account in order to fully and properly understand this form of 'psychotic' illness as well as other forms of non-psychotic illness -- i.e., 'a non-psychotic, neurotic disorder' -- that we are dealing with. Psychotic illnesses may involve genetics, drugs, brain-neurological dysfunction -- as well as social and internal psychological stressors.

Mental health issues need to be place in a 'socio-economic-political-legal context' in order to be understood properly. Sometimes it may be the particular 'society' or 'culture' or 'religion' or 'political-legal landscape' that is more 'neurotic' than a thousand or a million particular individuals within this socio-economic-political-legal context that are trying to adapt in 'dysfunctional' ways to a 'dysfunctional environment' -- and that includes particularly more than any othe relevant factor the context of the 'nuclear family' which is the source of the main 'cogntive-emotional templates' that we develop as we are 'evolving' and/or 'de-volving' as children.


On a cultural-historical level, in Freud's Victorian time, you have to factor in 'the different types of individual neurosis' with what might be called the 'Victorian culture's distorted and/or overly-restrictive, views on human sexuality' that created what might be called a 'Socio-Cultural Pathology of Sexual Normalcy' in this cultural and family environment.
More specifically, in Freud's time, there was a whole network of 'neurotic socio-cultural fears and negative socio-cultural judgments and defenses' -- some reflected by Freud himself -- concerning the phenomenon of masturbation. You had a whole set of negative perceptions, interpretations, judgments, values, and directives around this alleged 'social problem' of 'masturbation'.

We laugh at this now but back then, 'the negative perception regarding the dangers of masturbation' caused a whole host of negative 'individual and social neurotic problems'. If a mom caught her little boy 'playing with himself', she might say, 'Quit playing with yourself or your dad will cut it off!' This, I would speculate, must have been something that Freud actually experienced and feared in his early childhood -- theoretically generalized many years later in his professional career under the concept and theory of 'castration anxiety'.

The concept of castration anxiety doesn't work too well for me as a theorist today -- except perhaps in a metaphorical sense -- but similar, associated concepts like '(sexual) peformance anxiety' (fear of not being able to sexually perform properly) -- particularly relevent now amongst an 'aging masculine (and feminine) baby boomer population' -- i.e., fear of loss of one's masculine and/or feminine prowess and capabilities and a resulting loss of 'masculine or feminine self-esteem' connected often to an 'internal raging against aging'...) -- all of these 'inter-connected, neurotic anxieties' connected in turn to 'loss of self-identity' and/or 'loss of (sexual) self-esteem' do seem to be very relevant today...in partly similar, partly different ways, for both men and women....
Alfred Adler's abandoned concept of 'The Masculine Protest' (the perceived social and internalized self need and demand for a man to perceive and evaluate himself as a 'real man') is still highly relevant today, and my extrapolation and extension of the above concept into 'The Feminine Protest' (the perceived social and internalized self need and demand for a woman to feel like a 'real woman') would seem to me to be equally just as currently relevant -- and a potential source of high level stress, distress, anxiety, rage, and/or depression...

Similarily, a seemingly outdated Freudian concept (that feminists have loved to hate) of 'penis envy' could/can be updated as well and fit into the syndrome of 'masculine and feminine protest neuroses'. Both men and women have 'sexually specific assets' that can be the 'lust' of the opposite (and/or same) sex. But 'lust' is not the same concept and phenomenon as 'envy'. 'Sexual envy' is more likely to be a 'same sex phenomenon, less so an opposite sex phenomenon'. Thus, a woman is more likely to 'lust' a penis, and 'envy' another woman's 'body shape', or 'breasts', or 'popularity among men'....It is actually more likely to be a man who is more prone to 'envy' another man's 'penis' or 'youth' or 'body shape' or 'popularity among women'....Thus, the 'long rejected Freudian concept and theory of women having 'penis envy' Freud equated mainly with the wrong sex...It is more likely to be a 'man's issue' rather than a woman's.

Freud distinguished between the 'psycho-neuroses' (childhood neuroses) and the 'actual neuroses' (present-day, adult neuroses). This distinction is still relevant today although I use different terminology -- 'the transference ('childhood' or 'there and then') neuroses vs. 'the existential ('here-and-now') neuroses. In most actual cases, transference neuroses and existential neuroses converge and join together into the 'same overall neurotic complex' -- in Freud's words, most neuroses (or neurotic complexes) are 'overdetermined'.


Freud's supposed 1896 'dilemma' regarding his 'conflict' between '(sexual and/or romantic traumacy' and 'instinct-fantasy' theory basically amount to 'opposite sides of the same coin' -- or the mythological image of 'Janus' -- one side looking back to the past, while the other side looks to the present and future. 'Sexual fantasies' are often 'narcissistic fixations/fetishes' and/or 'narcissistic-defensive compensations' against 'childhood ego-traumacies'.....

A 'childhood rejection and/or abandoment by a woman' might lead to the 'rejected child' -- as an adult -- becoming an 'abandoning philander' to 'internally prove to himself' -- symbolically speaking -- that his childhood rejector was wrong in rejecting him, and that he isn't/wasn't 'worthy of being rejected'....But then, this same 'rejected child syndrome' can lead to the phenomenon of 'identification with the childhood rejector' in which case the 'rejected child who was rejected by an adult woman (his mother or someone else)' becomes in the here-and-now a 'rejecting male adult who seduces women 'serially' -- and then promptly abandons them after he has seduced them'....

'Neurasthenia' was an interesting diagnostic category back in Freud's early, pre-1900 work. (He may have even used this category after 1900.) It can be equated with the idea of 'psychic lethargy and/or depression -- no energy, no libido, a lack of enthusiasm for life'...a technical word for a common human problem...

I think that the diagnostic category is still useful and can be sub-divided into 'transference neurasthenia' and 'existential neurasthenia'. The first is a 'carry-over' from our childhood life; the second is connected to 'here-and-now' factors such as: loss of love, loss of job, aging, health issues, 'lack of meaning in life', etc...

Freud had an interesting association between neurasthenia and sexual factors -- 'too much masturbation', according to Freud, will leave a person 'burnt out and energy-deprived, lethargic' (but happy -- sorry, I couldn't resist). That's like the more recent question of whether or not an athlete should have sex before an athletic performance...If the athlete is 'exhausted' after the sexual performance -- and it's just before the game -- probably not. But if he is 'up and still full of energy' -- a 'pre-game warmup' so to speak -- then, why not? No over-riding 'generalization' seems appropriate...except perhaps...'whatever works'...

Alternatively, a more logical and likely associative connection between neurasthenia and sexual factors ('sexual neurasthenia') would seem to me to be -- neurasthenia (lethargy, depression...) is more likely to be prevalent in situations where a person's life is 'sexless', i.e., not enough sensual and sexual touch...When the blood circulation is flowing properly, depression, apathy, lethargy, lifelessness -- neurasthenia -- generally is not likely to be an issue...unless the particular issues go deeper than simply a lack of 'touch' and 'hedonistic pleasure'... There may be underlying 'romantic' and/or 'spirituality' and/or 'more general self-esteem/self-identity, transference and/or existential issues'....

All neuroses -- like all medical disorders -- can generally be classified into either or both of these two types: 'too much of something'....and/or....'not enough of something'... the neuroses of 'toxic overload' and/or the neuroses of 'nutritional deficiency'...

This is based on our principle of 'homeostatic/dialectic balance and imbalance'...

Too much impulse or not enough impulse...too much restraint or not enough restraint...too much 'Apollonianism' or too much 'Dionysianism'....too much 'approval-seeking' or too much 'narcissism'...too much 'righteousness' or too much 'rebelliousness/anarchy'... Too much 'anal-retentiveness' or too much 'anal-explosiveness'...Too much 'oral receptiveness' or not enough 'oral receptiveness'...Too much protection of 'self-boundaries' or not enough protection of 'self-boundaries'... Too much living 'from the neck up'...or too much living 'from the neck down'... Too much 'giving'...or too much 'getting'....Too much 'anxiety and 'phobia' and/or too much'obsessive-compulsion' and/or 'avoiding'...
Too much 'agressiveness'...or not enough 'assertiveness'...Too much 'social sensitivity and empathy' or not enough 'social sensitivity and empathy'....Too much talking and not enough listening...or too much listening and not enough talking...Too much 'thinking' and not enough 'doing'...or too much 'doing' and not enough 'thinking'... Too much 'thinking' and not enough 'feeling' or too much 'feeling' and not enough 'thinking'... Too much 'eating' and not enough 'exercising' or too much 'exercising' and not enough 'eating'...

Another two distinctions can be made between the 'anxiety-avoidance' neuroses and the 'narcissistic' (social transgression) neuroses....as well as between the 'distancing' neuroses and the 'hanging on' and/or 'stalking' neuroses...

Finally, I will make the distinction between the 'impulsive neuroses' -- exploding impulses from 'The Shadow-Id Vault' up to the 'Central Ego'; vs. the 'overly-restraining, 'anal-defensive' neuroses of 'squashed impulses'...held back, or sent back, impulses from The Central Ego to the ego-defensive restraints of the 'Shadow-Id Vault'

What Charcot, Breuer, Janet, Freud, and other medical professionals called 'hysteria' back in their time -- a predominantly 'female neurosis' -- might best be viewed today as the 'cultural over-suppression of women -- and the sexuality of women' (and/or 'the masculine abuse' of the sexuality of women). These women were often stuck in their homes, often nursing sick fathers, caught between biological and psychological sexual impulses and cultural -- predominantly 'patriarchal' -- sexual restraints, and too often sexual abuses...and often these 'transference and existential self-cultural neuroses' showed up in the form of 'strange bodily and/or medical symptoms' without any perceived 'organic medical cause'...After May 1896, Freud would come to believe that the 'primary cause' of these 'hysterical neuroses' was 'repressed childhood sexual activity, fixations, fetishes, and/or impulsive fantasy' as opposed to before May 1896 when he took the more or less opposite viewpoint -- that hysteria was primarily caused by 'repressed childhood sexual traumacy/manipulation/exploitation/assault'....There's a pretty wide gulf between the two theories -- a controversial issue that is still causing disagreement and grief, both inside and outside the psychoanalytic community today...An unresolved theoretical and therapeutic conflict issue of huge proportions that I have addressed, and continue to address, in many of my 'bi-polar, dialectic-integrative essays', yesterday, today, and tomorrow...

Which theory was 'right'? Or were they both partly right and partly wrong? Or was one theory right in some cases; the other theory right in a different set of cases? Maybe they were both sometimes a part of the same 'neurotic complex and/or syndrome'. All of these issues I have addressed in essays gone past, as well as new essays still coming in the future....

Freud kept fighting with his 'either/or' dilemma of 'which theory was right' and 'which theory was wrong' -- or so we are led to believe -- and my historical hindsight vision of the situation is that Freud should have integrated both 'partial theoies' into one bigger, more 'synthesized' bi-polar theory... where the 'clinical exposition of a particular case' dictated what part of the theory was most utilized; not choosing 'half a bi-polar theory' and using 'the same half' to dictate how a therapist/psychoanalyst should approach the opposite half......'Seek first to understand; then to be understood'. (This was one of Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 1989). Freud often lost his sense of seeking first to understand his clients -- especially after 1896 -- in the 'game' of trying to 'communicate, persuade, and enforce his own personal, theoretical and therapeutic understandings that had a propensity to overstate and overgeneralize the clinical facts, first in one direction (before May 1896) and then in the opposite direction (after April 1896)...

The difference between a 'learning disability' and a 'neurotic learning disorder' is that in the first case, a person has trouble making the necessary associations to constitute what we call 'learning' and/or the person has trouble 'remembering' these associations -- this may be because of a 'neurological-biochemical-brain dysfunction' (or it may be because of 'lack of interest and/or desire to make the associative connection'; in contrast, with a 'neurotic learning disorder', a person in effect 'learns too much', he or she puts together 'bad, dysfunctional, associations' or as Freud called them -- 'false connections' -- which come back to haunt and hurt the person in later situations that are deemed 'similar' or 'the same' but may be 'significantly different' in important ways that are essentially missed. Freud was a significant, serial 'culprit' in generating his own 'associatively reductionistic and/or overly stated false connections'...

Transference 'counter-phobic', 'obsessive-compulsive' neuroses occur when we subconsciously take an adult scene that is partly similar, partly different than our 'earlier (usually childhood) traumacy scene' -- and we find ways of 'manipulating' the new scene until we have effectively turned it into a 'symbolic re-creation' of our earlier childhood scene. The 'transference goal or game' here is to 'turn this later scene into a re-creation of our earlier scene' so that we can use the present scene in an attempt to 'master' a 'surrogate adult transference figure' in a sexual and/or aggressive manner so as to attempt to 'undo the psychological message' that we keep repeating to ourselves courtesy of our childhood rejecting transference figure that we are 'weak, rejectable, helpless and/or not worthy' in the presence of our perceived more powerful, more worthy 'childhood/adult transference figure'...

With 'learning', we need a balance -- just like everything else in life -- between 'more than not enough' (of the 'right' type of learning) and 'less than too much' (of the 'wrong' type of learning).

The same goes for 'distinguishing differences' -- between 'not distinguishing enough differences' between different situations, different contexts, different people..., and 'distinguishing too many differences' between different situations, different contexts, different people...that or who may still hold a certain 'core commonality' that should be registered...relative to present and/or future interpretations, evaluations, and decisions...

That completes our little discussion about 'neurosis' today...

-- dgb, April 10th, 11th, 2011, updated Feb. 18th, 2012....

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...

A New, Updated, Partial Table of Contents For Hegel's Hotel....February 5th, 2012...

It is time to re-organize Hegel's Hotel again to bring it up-to-date with its current projectory...

Hegel's Hotel: A Philosophy-Psychology and Subjective-Objective Phenomenology of Mind-Body-Spirit For The 21st Century

Part A/

Floor 1: Introductory Essays To Hegel's Hotel and 'Multi-Dialectic Logic/Methodology';

Floor 2: More Essays on The Multi-Dialectic Mindset and Paradigm;

The DGB Expanded, Integrative Psychoanalytic Model of The Psyche

 
Floor 3: Essays on The Central Ego -- Responsibilities, Functioning and Dysfunctioning, Health and Pathology; 

Floor 4: The Nurturing-Supportive Superego;

Floor 5: The Narcissistic-Hedonistic ('Idian') Superego;

Floor 6: The Righteous-Critical-('Anti-Idian') Superego;

Floor 7: The Shadow-Id-Ego;

Floor 8: The Personna;

Floor 9: The Co-operative-Compliant (Disapproval-Conflict-Avoiding) Underego;

Floor 10: The Narcissistic-Hedonistic (Idian) Underego;

Floor 11: The Righteous-Rebellious Underego;

Floor 12: The Dream Weaver;

Floor 13: The Shadow Id-Ego Vault;

Floor 14: Memory-Learning-Transference Templates and Complexes;

Floor 15: The Shadow-Id;

Floor 16: Nietzsche's Existential Abyss (Existential Chaos);

Floor 17: Nietzsche's Existential Mountain and Spiritual God(s)-Hero(es)-Archetypes(s) (Zarathrusta);

Floor 18: The Genetic Potential Self (Our Personal 'GPS')


Floor 19: Biochemical, Hormonal Influences on The Psyche/Personality

Floor 20:  An Overview of Essays on DGB (Quantum-Dialectic, Expanded- Integrative) Psychoanalysis (or Philosophy-Psychology)


-- dgb, February 5th, 2012,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging (DGB) Creations and Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process....

Comparing 9 Other Models of The Psyche/Personality With My Own Multi-Integrative, '16 Compartment' DGB Model of The Psyche/Personality

All else being equal, simpler is usually preferrable to more complicated and convoluted... However, there is also a time when 'larger, more integrative, multi-dialectic models' may have their functional advantage as the larger, integrative model may minimize some of the disadvantages and limitations of the smaller, less integrative models.

Remember: Every theory carries the seeds of its own self-destruction (including mine). But just like 'The Quantum-Dialectic Model' in physics, maybe two or more opposing theories integrated together can carry us further in terms of their combined  overall 'evolutionary functionality' than any smaller, more 'unilateral' theory standing by its lonesome on a solitary hill, with a flag on top of this hill, like Napoleon with his white stallion, narcissistically proclaiming to to the world around him:  'This is my territory, only my territory, and thou shalt not trespass -- or meet my cannon!' 

The relative simplicity of the '3 compartment' Freudian model of the psyche (id, ego, superego), much like the even simpler '2 compartment' Gestalt model (topdog/underdog) is much of what makes each of these 'clinically used' models attractive.

It should be added that both the Freudian and the Gestalt model are 'bipolar' or 'dialectic' in that they involve 'opposite sides of the personality' either in conflict with each other, or in unity with each other, or somewhere in between. These models have their philosophical foundations in the most ancient Greek philosophies/philosophers -- specifically, Anaximander and Heraclitus who both examined opposite forces in the world as well as in the personality; the same can be said about Lao Tse and ancient Chinese philosophy, particularly Daoism, and more particularly, the bipolar concepts of 'yin' (feminine forces) and 'yang' (masculine forces).

In the Freudian model, the 'id' and 'superego' are usually at odds with each other (instinctual impulses vs. social restraints) with 'the ego' playing the combined roles of 'Primary Stimulus Perceiver, Interpreter, and Evaluator', 'Central Mediator Between Opposing Internal/External Forces', 'Compromise Creator and Negotiator', 'Conflict Resolver', and 'Chief Executive Officer'.

In the Gestalt model, the concept of the 'Central Integrating Ego' is basically assumed as 'the topdog' and 'underdog' parts of our personality try -- and/or don't try -- to work out their 'conflicting/competing differences' with each other.

The same goes for the Jungian model as again a study in  'bipolarities in the personality' is in order: first, between The Conscious and Unconscious Parts of The Personality or Psyche, then between The 'Personal' and 'Collective' Unconscious, then between The competing/conflicting 'Archetypes of: The 'Personna' and 'Shadow',  'The Animus' (in women) and 'The Anima' (in men), with the archetype of 'The Self' being the 'Central, Unconscious Integrating Force in The Personality/Psyche'.

'Dissociations/alienations' can happen between any and/or all of these bipolar parts in the personality that all have a biological, psychological, and evolutionary function, but each or any can become 'inflated' or 'deflated', 'dominant' or 'suppressed/repressed', 'in balance' or 'out of balance', 'unified' or, as stated above, dissociated/alienated/disconnected.

The different 'Object Relations' and 'Transactional Analysis' models that exist out there today all focus on the concept of 'ego-state' which involves dividing the 'ego' as defined by Freud into different bipolar 'ego-states' or 'competing/conflicting 'ego-instincts and/or functions'.

Alfred Adler's model of the personality/psyche is asserted to be 'unified' as opposed to 'conflicted' and/or 'bipolar' but Adler's concepts of  'inferiority feelings' and 'superiority striving' can easily be turned into 'competing ego states' such as the Gestalt concepts of 'topdog' vs. 'underdog' or 'inferiority' vs. 'superiority complexes' or 'under-ego' vs. 'super-ego' or 'superior-ego', which is one of the 'extrapolating features' of my own 16 compartment model.

Finally, the 'Humanistic-Existential' models of the personality that exist out there -- Erich Fromm, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, for example -- all trumpet the idea of 'self-actualization', which were preceded by what Jung called 'individuation', and before Jung by Nietzsche with his concepts such as 'The Dionysian vs. Apollonian Personalities' (and ideally, a nice balance between the two bipolar parts of the personality), 'The Will To Power', 'The Abyss', 'The Rope', and 'The Superman'.

A bipolarity can be seen in all these 'humanistic-existential' regards between the 'alienated and/or self-alientated' person on the one hand, vs. the more 'self-actualized' or 'self-fulfilled' or 'individuated' person on the other hand. This is deemed to be one of the most important distinctions between the 'healthy' and 'unhealty' personality by anyone claiming to be a 'humanistic-existentialist' out there.

I forgot one model. The 'Cognitive' models, the 'Cognitive-Behavioral' models, and The 'Korzybski-Hayakawa-General Semantic' model all strive to improve or enhance 'rational-empirical perceiving, interpreting, evaluating, and communicating functions' within what will be called in my model 'The Central Ego'.


Bring all of these partly different, partly similar models -- I count about 9 of them: 1. Ancient Bipolar/Dialectic Philosophy Models; 2. Nietzsche; 3. Freud; 4. Jung; 5. Adler; 6. Klein and The Object Relationists; 7. Berne and Transactional Analysis; 8. Eric Fromm and The Humanistic Existentialists; 9. Korzybski, Ellis, Beck, Meichenbaum, and the Cogitive-(Behavioral) Psychologists.

You should find all 9 of these different models of the personality at least partly captured in my 16 compartment model below.

The DGB Model of The Psyche

A/ The Conscious Personality

01. The Nurturing-(Encouraging-Supportive) Superego;
02. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Superego;
03. The Righteous-Critical-(Rejecting/Exciting) Superego;
04. The (Conscious) Shadow-Id;
05. The Central Ego;
06. The Personna;
07. The Co-Operative-Compliant-Disapproval-(Conflict)-Avoiding Underego;
08. The Rebellious-(Narcissistic-Hedonistic) Underego;
09. The Rebellious-(Righteous-Criticial-Rejecting) Underego;

B/ The Subconscious Personality

10. The Dream Weaver;
11. The (Subconscious) Shadow-Id Vault;
12. The Memory-Learning-Transference Templates and Complexes;
13. The (Subconscious) Shadow-Id;
14. The (Nietzschean Existential) Abyss;
15. The (Nietzschean Existential) Mountain;
16. The Genetic Potential Self (Our 'GPS').

Perhaps this will make my model look at least a little less foreign to my academic readers, and/or professional social workers, psychologists, and/or psychotherapists.

Enough for today...

-- dgb, Feb. 4th, 2012,

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Creations and Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...