Let me begin by giving you a 'caveat emptor' (i.e., 'buyer beware').
I am currently engaged in a rather vigorous investigation into the history of Psychoanalysis, turning up new and different information each and every day, that I hadn't known previously. My last serious study of Psychoanalysis goes back to the mid 1980s and early 1990s, so I am even a little rusty on some of the details of ideas and issues and historical reports that I may have learned back in this time period.
Thus, each and everyone of my essays -- including this one -- is a part of an ongoing evolutionary process for me, and for the building process of 'Hegel's Hotel'.
In this regard, an essay of this type right here -- and every one I like it that I write on the subject and history of Psychoanalysis -- is necessarily of a quickly evolving nature -- new information entering my interpretive and evaluative process and sometimes necessitating sudden, perhaps even radical changes in judgment contingent on the quantity and quality of this new information.
I can only imagine -- and speculate -- that the same type of scenario was happening with Freud around 1895-1900. Fast changing clinical information may have easily -- or with great difficulty -- stimulated new theoretical conclusions and generalizations for Dr. Freud back in this very controversial and provocative time period.
In relatively quick succession between 1895 and 1900, Freud moved from Traumacy Theory to Seduction Theory to a systematic combination of Screen Memory Theory, Dream Interpretation Theory, Childhood Sexuality Theory, and Oedipal Theory.
The particular Freudian change from Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory to Oedipal Theory -- a 180 degree turn in Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory -- is the change that still has academics and professionals debating -- often with furious righteousness on both sides of the academic and professional, political fence -- the relative good and bad merits and consequences of Freud having made such a radical changeover in theory complete with its even more radical implications relativ eto therapeutic interpretation, evaluation, and technique.
In terms of public, academic, and professional volatility, the period from about 1980 to 1992 probably greatly outmatches the original period of 1896-1900 when Freud first had to defend his 'Abandonment of Seduction (Sexual Child Abuse) Theory against friends and foes alike; in the period of 1880 to 1892 was relatively alone (with some growing support that he listed in the 1992 version of his most controversial book, 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Abandonment of The Seduction Theory') to face the colossal wrath of the entire Psychoanalytic Establishment -- worldwide.
I have to smile at least a little (even as I feel compassion and empathy too) at the dark humor and irony of perhaps Masson experientially answering his own question that he posed historically to the world (and to Freud): Why did Freud abandon his Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory when there was at least some element of truth to it that needed to be looked at? Maybe Masson fully experienced the answer to that question between 1980 and 1985. Hell hath no fury like a society that doesn't want to talk about child sexual abuse. This topic was very high on the 'politically incorrect' scale back in 1896. Things hadn't changed much by 1980 as Masson took the full brunt of finding out.
Now, was Masson fair in his rather harsh character interpretation and judgment of Freud?
Writes Masson:
'I may disapprove of what I call Freud's loss of moral courage, but I cannot claim that I understand it. (Jeffrey Masson, Assault on Truth, 1992, Preface to the 1985 edition, pg. xxii.)
Now it is important to note that Masson was making an inferential interpretation and harsh judgment here into Freud's motivation and character for abandoning the seduction theory on information that is far from epistemologically clear. Masson stated that he didn't profess to know why 'Freud lost moral courage'; just that he did lose moral courage.
My question to Masson on this matter is how is this assumptive and judgmental claim relative to Freud's personality on Masson's part -- based on conflicting and totally unclear epistemological evidence around Freud's motivation for abandoning the seduction theory -- any less an example of 'character defamation' than what Masson accused Janet Malcolm of doing to Masson in her long article in The Newyorker around Masson's judgment of Freud which was probably the start of 5 to 10 years of living Hell for Masson as he was fighting with The Psychoanalytic Establishment, the media, the public, and Janet Malcolm and the Newyorker in court for 10 years (which according to internet information on Jeffrey Masson that I just read the other day ended in The Newyorker's favor.
One might be tempted to say, 'What goes around comes around?' There -- I just said it.
Now Masson is right that the whole scenario back around 1896 and after this up to about 1900 ended up in a change in various parts of his overall theory -- with the Seduction (Sexual Assault) Theory changing to the Oedipal (Repressed Incestuous Sexual Fantasy) Theory -- that when applied on a hardline basis with no moderation and no flexibility was a terrible changeover in theory.
Applied on a hardline basis, the post-1900 Oedipal Theory would practically guarantee that a woman sexually assaulted in childhood would not epistemologically and/or ethically be given a 'fair shake' just as I am not sure that Masson between 1980 and 1992 gave Freud a 'fair shake' in terms of 'character motivation' for a radical change in theory that was at least partly a collosal mistake. Competing theories can explain Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory that do not neccesitate the rather huge abstractive, interpretive character judgment that goes with Masson's words, 'loss of moral courage'.
Most notable of these alternative competing theories is the theory that Freud found out that one of his clients had 'lied' to him about a supposedly 'real infantile memory' that was instead a 'fantasy-memory' that never happened at all. This story was reported by the client -- treated by Freud -- to a German psychiatrist, Leopold Lowenfeld afterwards and written up in the psychiatrist's book, Sexualleben und Nervenleiden, in 1899.
If Freud changed his theory based strongly on this piece of clinical evidence, it would not imply that Freud 'lost any moral courage'. Rather, it would imply that Freud was trying to keep his theories in touch with the truth and reality of the evidence he was collecting in the clinical world. And if the clinical evidence -- or at least part of it -- suggested that some of Freud's clients were deliberately and/or unintentionally confusing 'real memories' for 'fantasy memories', then Freud was bound by his scientific integrity to 'stick to his clincal evidence' and to build his theories from this clinical evidence; not from clinical evidence that didn't exist. If this was indeed what happened, then Freud can hardly be interpreted as having lost his 'moral courage' -- just replacing a 'leaky' theory with an even leakier one. A bonehead, colossal theoretical mistake perhaps by Freud but not a 'loss in moral courage'. Freud's main theoretical problem was his tendency to 'overgeneralize and overcompensate'; not in my mind a lack of moral courage -- of course, I am speculating just as Masson was; neither of us have a telepathic connection to what was going on in Freud's mind at this time.
Masson's argument is at least partly tempting to believe. Aren't most of us at least tempted on a day to day basis to bend our ethics and moral for the sake of saving our job, career, and income. I see it happen around me every day in my corporate world and I generally keep my mouth shut when I know that my corporate bosses simply don't want to hear what I really believe. Call that 'narcissistic-corporate-survival-pragmatism' if you wish. And/or just call it a 'loss of moral courage'.
One has to judge the strength of the cultural-political-legal-socio-economic resistance, duress, and leverage against an individual person by the society -- or a portion of the society -- that they live in before anyone is labeled as 'lacking in moral courage'.
How many people even have the freedom to write anything close to the type of things I am writing about here in Hegel's Hotel with the type of editorial comments that I am making in half the countries around the world such as North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, Afghanastan, and many, many more...Do the millions of people in these countries all 'lack moral courage'. Or are they afraid for their survival, afraid for their very lives?
Strong political, legal, ideological, and/or socio-economic leverage often 'bends moral individual courage' on the basis of either feeling a strong need to protect one's own narcissistic safety and/or for the sake of narcissistic (economic) gain. Isn't that at least partly why you moved to New Zealand, Dr. Masson? To get out of the firestorm of psychiatry and into a new field of study that was both more pleasant and more economically viable?
In your own words, Dr. Masson -- unless you were misquoted:
“ "I'd written a whole series of books about psychiatry, and nobody bought them. Nobody liked them. Nobody. Psychiatrists hated them, and they were much too abstruse for the general public. It was very hard to make a living, and I thought, 'As long as I'm not making a living, I may as well write about something I really love: animals.'"[9] ”
How many of us can say that we have never compromised our moral-ethical integrity for the sake of narcissistic gain and/or preventing narcissistic loss? Some people may be more or less guilty of this transgression than others, some people may be guilty of this transgression more or less often than others, but let us not be the first ones to throw stones at someone else unless we feel entirely guilt-free which is a hard claim for any of us to make in an authoritarian corporate world, and a politically correct world where political, corporate, legal, and economic leverage is being applied to each and everyone of us, each and every day.
Does this mean that our whole society lacks 'moral courage'? Maybe.
I know that I personally cringe every time I start to write something on some politically incorrect topic such as: 'invasion of individual privacy and loss of civil rights through corporate and government internet spying'; reverse discrimination and loss of men's civil rights relative to domestic justice and sexual issues between men and women...and I could list off a few more equally provocotive and controversial topics but I won't.
I guess this means that perhaps I lack moral courage. But, at the same time, I don't see too many other people writing about these topics. Does this mean that other people do not see what is happening? Or does it more likely mean that they are too scared to write about an issue that can be used to 'tar and feather' them.
It is for this latter reason mainly that these topics, for the most part, remain 'civilly buried, civilly suppressed, civilly repressed...'
Call it 'social repression or suppression'.
Even this whole issue of 'childhood memories' still remains a political powderkeg
Now it can be easily argued that Freud indeed did lose 'moral courage' after the storm of professional controversy he stimulated in his reading presentation of probably the most infamous little essay ever written by Freud -- 'The Aetiology of Hysteria', 1896. (Well, maybe Freud's 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' rivaled 'The Aetiology' in terms of immediate and/or long-term controversy.)
A letter from Freud to Fliess on April 26th, 1896, 5 days after the presentation, reports:
A lecture on the aetiology of hysteria at the Psychiatric Society met with an icy reception from the asses, and from Krafft-Ebing the strange comment: It sounds like a scientific fairy tale. And this after one has demonstrated to them a solution to a more than thousand-year old problem, a "source of the Nile"! They can all go to hell. (Masson, Assault on Truth, 1992, p. 9.)
However, Freud hardly seems contrite or cowered in the aftermath of Kraft-Ebing's -- and the rest of the membership's -- critical onslaught that nigh. Indeed, at this point in time -- as throughout his entire career -- Freud comes across as every bit the righteous-rebellious unbowed soldier, like Hannibal perhaps, Freud's hero, or like Custer continuing to fight to his death, in The Battle Of Little Bighorn, Custer's Last Stand, in Montana in 1876 on June 25th, almost 20 years to the day that Freud probably felt like he was fighting to his death against the Psychiatric Society at that most emotionally volatile meeting.
Freud didn't lose moral courage although one could hardly blame him if he did with the amount of social, professional, political -- and perhaps economic -- pressure that was being applied against him by the medical community, or that could have been.
Maybe Freud felt 'just a snippet' of what he was bound to keep getting if he had kept pressing the truth and value of The 'Seduction Theory' that he was 'so sure' of back then but then soon was to dismiss over the next four years like 'awakening from a bad dream'.
Maybe a more accurate barometer of the full extent of the negative pressure that could have been applied against Freud politically, economically, and socially was approximately the negative treatment that Masson received between 1980 and 1985 -- for going where Freud generally chose not to go to after 1896: the unwanted public awareness and knowledge of childhood sexual abuse.
So, Dr. Masson, if you had it to do all over again -- would you do it again? Would you live 1980-1992 all over again. Was it worth it? The ten year lawsuit against Janet Malcolm and The New Yorker that didn't even end in your favor.
What were the words that particularly disturbed you -- someone calling you an 'intellectual gigolo' -- Gee, I can think of probably millions of men who would have worn that mantle proudly -- including myself.
Plus, can we really blame Janet Malcolm on that one -- unless she made up these words herself or took them from you or someone else and then quoted it from someone who didn't say them. That would be an unethical display of journalism.
At the same time, maybe you, yourself Dr. Masson, got a little too cocky and a little too arrogant in an unguarded moment. What was it? Something about -- opening all the windows in Anna Freud's house -- and letting some women in? Again 25 years after you may or may not have said it -- I support you fully if you did indeed say it. Bravo! Get some fresh air and new feminine energy into Psychoanalytic Institute and Establishment.
Get some feminine perspectives into The Psychoanalytic Institute -- not as suppressed and repressed hysterical clients (although even Anna O and Emma Ekstein were enlightening, even in their respective traumacies and tragedies.
No, what The Psychoanalytic Institute and Establishment needs is a new influx of Psychoanalytic students and graduates -- independent intellectuals, therapists, theorists and individuals in their own right with separate 'wills to power' and 'wills to truth' and 'wills to psychological and psycho-therapeutic excellence'. Not all these authoritarian patriarchs who continue to hang on to Freud like he is the one and only last lifeboat on the Titanic.
I have no Psychoanalytic reputation to protect. And I don't have enough money that anyone would want to take me to court.
Like Spinoza, and believe me, as much as Spinoza remains one of my greatest philosophical idols and role models, I don't profess to have a tenth of the ethical fortitude that he did (when your editorial opinion could cost you a 'beheading', or a 'hanging', or an 'excommunication from society' or a 'burning at the stake' like St. Joan of Arc, or a 'coerced poisoning' like Socrates, then you know that you are really dealing with a man or woman with an ultimate display of courage... still, like Spinoza, I prefer to operate in a 'non-partisan' environment where there is not serious leverage and pressure being applied to me to say one thing, and not another, because I am being paid to say be biased.
The Seduction Theory in and by itself is grossly reductionistic and overgeneralizing. Not every female and/or male child is sexually assaulted in childhood even if the number and percentage of female children that are sexually assaulted climbs significantly higher and higher the older each and every female -- and for that matter, male -- child gets.
Similarly, the Oedipal Theory too is grossly reductionistic and overgeneralizing particularly the more you treat the Oedipal Theory literally as opposed to symbolically and metaphorically.
Thesis: Seduction Theory. Anti-Thesis: Oedipal Theory.
That which divides us, defines us.
Two opposing bi-polar sexual theories dissociated and alienated from each other. Each drawing energy away from the middle. Each drawing 'theoretical partisans' away from the middle. The one is about 'Narcissistic Traumatic Memory'. The other is about 'Narcissistic Pleasurable Fantasy'.
If you are a post-Aristolean or a post-Kierkgaardian philosopher', you say to yourself, 'Either/Or'. 'Pick one'. 'The left door or the right door'. 'The left path or the right path.' 'The left paradigm or the right paradigm'. And if you are lucky, you may get a 'round peg of reality' that fits into a 'round hole of theory'. Or visa versa. If you are not lucky, and your theory doesn't fit the clinical facts, then you might: a) traumatize your client for trying to impose a 'false reality' on him or her; b) re-traumatize a client by doing the same thing -- and repeating what the client's childhood assaulter, for example, quite likely was saying to the client as a child: essentially, 'This didn't happen'; c) you alienate, dissociate -- and perhaps even lose the client (eg. Freud's case of Dora) because you try to 'impose on the client a false reality'.
In contrast, if you are a 'post-Hegelian philosopher like myself who believes in the value and authenticity of 'dialectic logic', then you see 'the creative energy and functional value of integrating opposite or paradoxical ideas'. Why? Because life is paradoxical -- ignited by opposites being attracted to each other, and energized by each other, in their conflicting-attracting, bi-polar characteristics and energies.
Who was it? -- Plato, in a part of The Symposium (the part on love) -- who had one of his various creative characters saying that men and women used to be 'united' as 'hermaphrodites'. But then some wise or smart or sadistic -- or 'jokerman' for a -- God decided that he would 'split men-women-hermaphrodites in half' so that they would become disconnected and alienated from each other and themselves until they found each other again in -- united love.
Male-Female, Testosterone-Estrogen, 'Yin-Yang'.
People -- and academics -- do not come close to fully understanding and appreciating how similar Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, The Han Philosophers, Hegel, and Darwin were in their respective evolutionary West, East, and Central Theories.
Particularly Hegel and Darwin -- lumped in with Freud, Fliess, and Jung.
It does not take rocket science to see how close Hegel and Darwin were in there respective theories with Hegel's theory of Epistemological and Existential Evolution and Alienation (The Phenomenology of Spirit/Mind', 1807) both pre-dating and subsuming Darwin's later even more controversial and provocative theory of evolution ('On the Origin of the Species, 1859').
Thesis: Female/Estrogen/Egg/Yin
Anti-thesis: Male/Testosterone/Sperm/Yang
Dialectic-Synthesis-Integration: Child/Shared DNA/Mixed Testosterone and Estrogen, Mixed Female and Male Energy, Mixed, Physiological and Psychological Bi-Sexuality.
Hegel's 'Dialectic Logic and Theory' simply followed, traced, and structurally was patterned after -- 'The Dialectic Nature of Life and Evolution'.
Hegel simply connected all the dialectic dots and lines and put them all together -- or at least most of them.
I have the decided advantage of having 200 more years of human intellectual evolution at my ready disposal -- at a click of my 'mouse' and a 'tapping of my keys'.
Wow! I am so phenomenally -- and phenomenologically -- lucky!
Each and everyone of us living today with any kind of serious and/or obsessive interest in human evolution and the history of ideas -- is technologically blessed.
My dad, back in the 1970s, partly foresaw this day coming when he was 'marketing his software and audio-visual hardware' -- and talked to me and his customers about a 'generic and customized information highway'.
Which brings me back to Freud, Psychoanalysis, The Seduction Theory, The Oedipal Theory -- and 'a creative bi-polar integration, orgasm, and cross-fertilization, of ideas, encounters, relationships...and DNA'.
Who said that ideas -- and drab old, patriarchal Psychoanalysis -- couldn't be sexually exciting and 'bi-polarly, bi-sexually energizing? Yin and yang. Estrogen and testosterone. Sperm and eggs. Men and women. Coming together -- and balancing together -- both internally and externally in creative, dialectic-democratic harmony. I forgot to mention Cannon's classic 'Wisdom of The Body' which also 'harmonizes dialectic logic' -- in the field of biology, chemistry, and physics. Freud and Jung 'harmonized dialectic logic' in psychology.
And with all of these 'allusions to sexuality and bi-sexuality', I am starting to write like Freud, Fliess, Wilhelm Reich, and Fritz Perls all rolled into one -- many of them 'psychoanalytic bad boys' before Jeffrey Masson rolled into town and perhaps took the cake.
I'm a taxi dispatcher, not a Psychoanalyst. (You see how we label ourselves according to our jobs and careers.)
But there is one thing that I can take out of taxi dispatching that can easily be applied to Psychoanalysis.
If I am dispatching late at night and I have a large area of potential customers north of Toronto to cover -- and say I have four taxi drivers to work with -- I will try my best to distribute those cars evenly over the area that I need to cover as a dispatcher and they need to cover as drivers. Such as: Upper Left Hand Quadrant (Richmond Hill), Lower Left Hand Quadrant (Thornhill), Lower Right Hand Quadrant (Lower Markham), Upper Right Hand Quadrant (Upper Markham).
Similarly, if I only have one driver to work with, I am going to try to place him right in the center of our whole area of business.
That makes logical sense -- so that the driver is essentially 'equi-distance' from any prospective customer who may phone in.
The same can be said for any 'ideal' Psychoanalytic Theory.
If you have a 'left-handed' theory of Psychoanalysis, then you are going to discriminate against 'right-handed clients'. And if you have a 'right-handed theory of Psychoanalysis, you are going to discriminate against 'left-handed clients'.
Idealistically, what Psychoanalysis needs is a 'Centralist Psychoanalytic Theory' that is 'equi-distant' and 'non-discriminatory' against any type of Psychoanalytic customer -- a theory that can move 'flexibly' to either the left or the right, up or down, to 'service a client properly'.
That is the type of theory that Psychoanalysis needs. And that is the type of theory that I will try my best to describe in more and more detail as we move along in our future essays on this topic.
That is enough for today.
-- dgb, July 10th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
Friday, July 10, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
DGB Philosophy vs. Anti-Communitarianism (Part 3): A Critique of Two Anti-Communitarian Essays (Updated and expanded, July 3rd, 5th, 9th, 10th, 2009)
Freshly updated, July 9th, 10th, 2009.
I don't trumpet Hegel in all aspects of his philosophy because, quite frankly, I don't like all aspects of his philosophy.
It is important that writers don't get caught up in 'over-idealizing' their favorite philosophers and/or in 'over-trashing' their most 'disagreed with' philosophers -- lumping ideas together that shouldn't be lumped, stereotyping philosophers positively or negatively in a way that oversimplifies, over-idealizes, and/or over-vilifies the philosopher and his or her work.
I too can be guilty of this practice -- it is is easier to oversimplify, over-idealize, and/or over-vilify a philosopher than it is to take the extra time required to more seriously investigate the intricacies of a complicated philosopher's work -- and analyze it properly.
Without spending a lifetime studying one and only one philosopher.
Nor should any of us hold on irrationally and unconditionally to ideas that have become outdated and archaic just because they belong to our favorite philosopher (or psychologist) or alternatively use our least favorite philosopher as our own 'private whipping post' so that we can let all of our individual frustrations and 'transferences' loose on this particular philosopher until we have effectively 'beat a dead horse'.
For one thing -- life evolves.
We should all understand that, for example, Psychoanalysis isn't
being practiced exactly the same way today as it was 100 or 115 years ago, although some of the most 'anal-retentive' -- 'I can't let go of Freud' -- analysts might try to. Maybe there is something to the fact that 'analyst' starts with 'anal' as in 'anal-retentive' with no 'common sense flexibility' to move away from an idea that just, plain and simple, isn't working.
Similarly, not all 'Hegelian thinkers' or 'post-Hegelian thinkers' think exactly today the same way that Hegel thought in 1807.
Indeed, no two thinkers ever think or feel exactly alike. When a group of thinkers are claiming that they think exactly like their leader -- and follow that leader 100 per cent to the alter and/to the grave -- they are quite likely lying of faking 'group unity' for the sake of 'social perception' and not wanting to appear that they are presenting ideas that are coming from a 'dialectically divided house'.
Sometimes there is real unity but my experience tells me that this is more the exception than the rule.
Indeed, even labeling yourself as a 'Hegelian philosopher' can become a conceptual and historical trap; better to label yourself as a 'post-Hegelian' philosopher and give yourself some freedom to move with certain particular Hegelian ideas staying on the table but other Hegelian ideas being thrown off the table. To be sure, this post-Hegelian philosopher doesn't want to get locked inside a 'Hegelian jail cell'.
My friends -- and/or philosophical adversaries -- over at 'The Anti-Communitarian: Living Outside The Dialectic' blog site make this particular paper that I am writing here -- and the type of distinctions I am making here -- absolutely necessary.
What divides us defines us.
Let us start with these easy distinctions here.
1. DGB Philosophy is not Classic Hegelian Philosophy (with any over-riding ideas of 'Absolute Knowledge', 'Collectivism', or 'Nationalistic Extremism'.
My brand of 'post-Hegelian' philosophy might be elongated and called: 'DGB Post-Hegelian, Multi-Dialectic-Democratic, Humanistic-Existential Evolutionary Theory or Philosophy'.
2. DGB Philosophy is not Communitarianism in any sense of the word as I have read it being described and/or defined.
3. DGB Philosophy is not Anti-Communitarianism in any sense of the way that it attacks Hegelian Dialectic Theory and/or stereotypes Communitarianism as being 'collectively and 'nationalistically' extreme and against individualism and individual civil rights.
Here are some examples of how the Anti-Communitarians have 'conflated' different Hegelian concepts together in a way that doesn't make sense in 2009 -- and probably doesn't even make any sense going back to 1807 whether we are talking about what Hegel had in mind or whether we are talking about the rather 'unique' interpretation of what the Anti-Communitarians think Hegel had in mind.
Incidentally, I have to thank the Anti-Communitarians for introducing me to the word 'conflation' which can be defined in the following manner:
...........................................................................
Conflation occurs when the identities of two or more individuals, concepts, or places, sharing some characteristics of one another, become confused until there seems to be only a single identity — the differences appear to become lost. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflation
..........................................................................
Here are some Anti-Communitarian examples of conflation:
1. 'The Dialectic' does not equal -- nor will a million or a billion or a trillion dialects ever equal -- 'Absolute Knowledge'. Most Post-Hegelians, I believe, have more or less thrown out Hegel's concept of 'Absolute Knowledge' as should be the case. The concept is archaic and about as relevant as Plato's 'Theory of The Caves' and 'The Forms'.
2. 'The Dialectic' does not equal in any manner the idea of 'Collectivism' or 'Nationalism' except in a possible 'dialectic process' of negotiating collectivism and nationalism against their opposite concepts -- for example, either 'individualism' or 'internationalism'.
3. 'The Dialectic' does not equal in any manner any sort of 'behind the scenes conspiracy theory and/or puppetmaster show' except to the extent that someone or some group is trying to manipulate and pathologize the sincerity, the integrity, and the existential immediacy of the dialectic either as a 'power playoff' and/or as a process of intended 'win-win compromise negotiation'.
4. 'The Dialectic' does not equal in any manner any definition of 'Communitarianism' unless the definition of 'Communitarianism' is so 'fluidly mobile and changing' that it in fact has no definition.
Let me spend the duration of this essay to once again clarify some of my main differences of opinion with Hegel, and once these differences of opinion are clarified, address the main complaints that are leveled against Hegel by the 'Anti-Communitarians' who seem to confuse and conflate Hegel's dialectic theory with his 'Nationalism/Collectivism' stance relative to political philosophy when the two are totally different and should not be treated as being the same or necessarily linked at all.
My main counter-argument against the Anti-Communitarians is that there are literally millions upon millions of 'dialectic conflicts and/or conflict resolutions' that are being worked on each and every day by different individuals and different groups of individuals so to steretype and blackball each and every type of dialectic process as being exactly the same in that each and every one of them is 'contrived', 'pre-ordained', 'manipulated', 'orchestrated by powerful players behind the scenes to a pre-engineered conclusion' -- the result of some 'massive idealistic and/or narcissistic world-wide conspiracy theory' is stretching things just a little bit past the point of 'normal believability'.
I am not saying that conspiracy theories can't or don't happen -- I am just saying that they don't happen all the time and it is important to make some critical distinctions here between different types of dialectic conflict processes and confict resolutions as opposed to lumping each and every dialectic process into one gigantic 'Sucker Bag' where we all -- meaning all of us not in the 'elite controlling circle' -- play the role of 'pawns on a chessboard' being 'sacrificed for the good of the more powerful pieces' and for the good of the 'elite few' that are the actual controlling players in this chess game.
If nothing else, we need to distinguish between 'real dialectic conflict processes' where the outcome of the conflict is highly volatile, humanistic-existential, narcissitically one-sided or two-sided, based on the principle of a 'will-to power' or the 'will to negotiate to a more homeostatically stable, win-win solution' -- and unpredictable during the whole process; vs. the type of 'contrived, manipulated, collusion-based, dog and pony show, smoke and mirrors, dialectic conflict that the Anti-Communitarians are obsessing about and against.
Anyways -- let us start with 2009 DGB Post-Hegelian Philosophy vs. 'Classic and/or Archaic' 1807 'Phenomenology of Spirit'-based Hegelian Philosophy.
Firstly, I do not like Hegel's heavy-duty abstractionism although, to confess, I can go off the abstractionism deep end just as many other serious philosophy writers can and do -- much depends on the degree of the philosophical sophistication of the reader we are writing to and/or whether, as a writer, our main purpose is to delve into the most complicated technicalities and convolutions of whatever the issue is we are writing about -- or whether we just want to cover and utilize or modify the main pragmatic implications and/or applications of the philosophical idea that is under discussion. In general, the more abstract a philosopher-writer is, the more likely he or she is of being misunderstood and/or being interpreted in many entirely different ways, and the more likely he or she is going to 'confuse and conflate' things by associating and linking things and/or processes together that are different and should not be treated as being the same or similar. This problem applies equally to Hegel's 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807)and also to my philosophical adversaries over there at the 'Anti-Communitarian Club' who still seem to be caught in a 'Hegelian Time and Abstraction Warp'.
Secondly, I do not like Hegel's 'nationalist-collectivist political stance' which seems to suppress and marginalize individual civil rights and seems to in effect be 'Anti-Hegelian' in my 'idealistic dialectic-democratic interpretation and/or modification of Hegel' -- or put another way, Hegel's nationalistist-collectivist political stance seems to be an internal contradiction in the way I would personally like to see Hegelian Philosophy interpreted and applied. This is going to take some explaining.
We have to distinguish first and foremost between two types of dialectics:
1. An 'Imperialistic-Narcissistic-Darwinian-Survival-of-the-Fittest-Winner-Takes-All-Will-to-Power' Dialectic; and
2. A 'Civil-Egalitarian-Will-to-Negotiate-and-Compromise' Dialectic.
The first is 'unilaterally assertive, aggressive, and authoritarian'. 'Might is right.' This is what I call the 'Power-War-Dialectic'.
The second is 'empathic, socially sensitive, compromising, conciliatory and consensus-striving'. This is what I call the 'Democratic-Fairness-Dialectic'. There are numerous different types of democratic-dialectics (some of which are more democratic than others) such as: a) 'Negotiating to Consensus'; b) 'Public Voting'; c) 'Parliament or Senate Representative Voting'; d) 'Autocratic Representation'; e) 'Autocratic Unrepresentation'; f) 'Representative Negotiating to Consensus'...
The rest of these 'Dialectic Transactions' are best described as 'half-dialectics' in that they need a 'dialectic dance partner' coming from a similar or different type of transaction.
3. The Altruistic-Nurturing' Dialectic can be like a 'nurturing parent, friend, or lover' dialectic or a 'community-church-and-or-government based agency' dialectic.
Now there are a whole host of other 'variations on a theme' relative to the first two dialectics (mainly the first one), some of which include:
4. A 'Market-Place' Dialectic where, for example, you are trying to sell me a house and I want to buy one, and you are trying to get your best price possible and I am trying to get my best price possible and if we can find that 'magic price' somewhere in the middle that we can both agree on, then we have a 'marketplace deal' -- a 'marketplace dialectic conflict resolution';
5. A 'Rebellious-Deconstructive' Dialectic where one side of a dialectic conflict ('The Anti-Establishment Underdog') is rhetorically -- or elsewise -- poking holes and sabotaging the 'Establishment Dialectic Law/Rule') that is under 'deconstructive attack';
6. A 'Covert, Sneaky Rebellious' Dialectic where a particular person or party says one thing and does another;
7. A 'Fraudulent, Manipulative type of dialectic' that pretends to be the second type but is actually the first type. This is the 'Dog-and-Pony-Show-Smoke-and-Mirrors Type of Dialectic' -- the type that tells you 'that you have won a million dollars with the intent of getting into your most private identification information particulars and your bank account information in order to steal your identity and as much money as they can get from you.
8. A 'Dissociative' Type of Dialectic where the diallectic transaction or potential dialectic transaction breaks down into an impasse with one side or both sides not willing to negotiate any further...and the two remaining detached, separated, alienated, schizoid from each other...
9. A 'Submissive-Masochistic-Approval-Seeking' Dialectic where one side will 'cave easily' from what he or she wants in a negotiation out of fear of intimidation, threat, or loss of approval/acceptance...
10. A 'Seductive-Manipulative' Dialectic where one side uses attractiveness, intellect, beauty, seductiveness, narcissistic vanity...to get what he or she wants in the dialectic transaction.
These are the main types of dialectic transactions that are designed to get goods, services, need-fulfillment, power, revenge, approval, sex, drugs, alchohol, money, cigarettes, love, and/or any of the other 101 things that people want and/or obsessively and addictively crave...
Now ideally, or idealistically, what people tend to want in a 'democratic-dialectic society' is an 'equally or homeostatically balanced' dialectic transaction/relationship where both people or parties get what they want out of the transaction/relationship -- and everybody goes home happy.
When all of the other 'mainly darker, more narcissistic, sides' of human motivation enter the picture however, then we get all of the other narcissistic dialectic possibilities -- and realities -- briefly mentioned above.
This is just a starting-point of later discussion. Adam Smith even had a strong idea of the nature of the 'market place dialectic' from which he wrote his masterpiece 'The Wealth of Nations'.
And Kant, Schelling, and Hegel came along shortly afterwards.
Hegel's philosophy of 'alienation' was extremely important -- almost as important as his philosophy of the dialectic. Hegel most certainly created the 'creative mix' in this regard from which 'Existentialism' was shortly thereafter born through the combined intellect of Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche...and others...
It is important for critics of Hegelian Philosophy to realize that all Hegelian theorists and philosophers are not the same, and in this regard, it is important, indeed imperative, to understand that not all of the Hegelian Philosohy that is being theorized and applied today is the same as the 'Classic -- some might say 'Archaic' -- Hegelian Philosophy' that Hegel was writing about and applying some 205 years.
DGB Philosophy in particular has made some significant adjustments and modifications to Classic Hegelian Philosophy which is why I call DGB Philosophy a 'Post-Hegelian-Humanistic-Existential-Democratic-Dialectic' Philosophy.
Any brand of 'Collectivist' or 'National' or 'Communitarian' Philosophy where individual civil rights are seriously suppressed and/or marginalized is not a 'democratic-dialectic' philosophy that is paying any serious attention to the 'founding fathers' of The United States of America (Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson...) and/or their French and English Enlightenment brethrin (Locke, Smith, Hume, Diderot, Voltaire, Montesque, etc.)
Indeed, from at least this one perspective it would seem that Hegel was 'self-contradictory' in that a 'collectivist' philosophy is an 'extremist-polar' philosophy that needs to be homeostatically balanced against 'the anti-thesis' of a more 'liberatarian' philosophy that takes individual and property rights to the opposite extreme. Such seems to be the mission of those sites dedicated to the pursuit of 'Anti-Communitarianism'.
However, not all 'dialectics' are the same or engage in the same type of process.
In this regard, three different types of 'dialectics' need to be distinguished from each other, two of them which are usually pathological, and one of which is usually healthy.
Let me introduce you to two 'Anti-Communitarian' essays below and then I will finish my critique of both of them together. -- dgb, July 1st, 2009.
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The Global Money Scam & The Hegelian Dialectic (No author's name cited...)
While there is an unconsciousable amount of political grandstanding taking place in this country, to the point it’s becoming a headache keeping up with the puffing and posturing, there is an even grander call to to expand the debauched schemes of the centralized banking system.
Not only have prominent vicars of the ruling elite in this country and their European arm called for a global monetary reserve, their arch enemies in the former Soviet have offered a vodka shot of support by saying recently:
“The current global economic crisis points to the need for discarding standard approaches and requires the adoption of collective decisions, agreed at the international level and geared to creating a system of globalization process management.”
This is startling.
As the G20 meet there will be a discussion on a proposed International Monetary Fund plan to print billions of dollars of something knowing as Special Drawing Rights as a preventionary measure to keep the “recession” from developing into a global depression:
“The International Monetary Fund is poised to embark on what analysts have described as “global quantitative easing” by printing billions of dollars worth of a global “super-currency.”
This would be a special new asset currency never before seen on the world market. It has huge implications to those of us concerned about retaining what is left, if anything, of all respectable countries’ sovereignty and the tightenting that would occur in the event of the transformation to a new “super” currency.
In my previous post, I briefly discussed the Federal Reserve and how, through the traitorous scheme of Congressmen who traded their US monetary control for a bit of chew, they have remained the sole authority of US finance and banking policy for the last century.
They have their cousin bank, the Bank Of England that operates in the same suit, and also foreign arms such as the IMF and the World Bank who have built a reputation in activists’ circles for instituting debt-causing policies to enslave third-world countries.
On one level it is appropriate, even logical as to why the money-changers of various countries would be calling for a global currency. Most of the world’s economies have been affected and the IMF reported weeks ago that the world’s advanced economies were already in a depression. If anyone has the credentials to anaylze what a depression is, it is the IMF. They have a parasitical “aid” program that has been the building block for dozens of depressions.
What blurs the whole “brave new world” design is how a globalized reforming of the entire international economy will benefit any single nation. The basic argument being thrown around is that a systemic risk agency or global financial reserve would allow the money-masters to diffuse a brushfire in one country before it became a forest fire threatening the whole world. One keen spectator doesn’t buy this argument and suggests that we in essence already have a global system and it is globalization that is the reason every nation on the face of the earth is at risk.
We witnessed or rather we were not informed that all throughout the latter part of the 20th century the rapacious globalist agenda impoverished country after country. Those who were victimized, disenfranchised, robbed of their farms and homes, were mostly hidden from sight as the IMF & World Bank negotiated loans for countries’ desperate to feed their hungry and employ the vagrant. Time after time the loans were attached with “structural adjustment programs” and “economic reform” requirements.
For any line of success in their agenda, there are volumes and tomes of failure as their economic policies devastated countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The consequences of these “structural adjustment programs” lead consistently to staggering unemployment, currency devaluation, price fixing, increased taxation, stagflation, inflation, asset, natural resources and property confiscation, political unrest and starvation, and in some cases, such as Pinochet in Chile, a violent military dictatorship where many dissenters were “disappeared.”
We could pull any one out of the archives of hidden history and even through an objective lens come to a conclusion about the real agenda of agencies like the Federal Reserve, IMF, & The World Bank. As Baron de Rothschild notoriously stated: “Give me control of a nation’s currency and I don’t care who makes it laws.”
Russia for instance was given assistance by the Fund in the 90s when faced with a ailing economy. Since the IMF’s inception in 1944, no other country had received more assistance than Russia as it attempted to transform to a more “modern” economy. But what followed was not a transformation but rather a degeneration. Whether the blame rest at the feet of the IMF or the Russian government, there remains the IMF trend that led the country to the point of hyperinflation. Former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz admitted that: “US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia’s industrial assets, with the effect that the corruption scheme cut national output nearly in half causing depression and starvation.”
Russia remains indebted to the IMF today.
The flagship offfice of the IMF is in Washington with their evil brother the World Bank right across the street. With the knowledge that the IMF is a United States agency posing as an international debt relief agency a few questions stir; namely, why the recent wrangling to reignite a Cold War atmosphere? Are Russia and the US secretly in kahoots but acting out strained relations to convince us of some looming threat on the horizon? And if that query could be proven, if there is indeed some international conspiracy of handicapped countries, still subject to the whims of their creditors, what is the end goal?
That brings me to the Hegelian Dialectic.
The basic premise behind the Hegelian Dialectic is that conflict creates history or in the case of this strategy leads unwitting participants into a predetermined outcome:
“In Hegelian terms, an existing force (the thesis) generates a counterforce (the antithesis). Conflict between the two forces results in the forming of a synthesis. Then the process starts all over again: Thesis vs. antithesis results in synthesis.”
This is the augmented strategy of divide and conquer; the politico-philosophical way that is mostly used by those who have always retained control behind the scenes of world power, though the faces and the parties may change. To research and learn about these many-faceted organizations and pinpoint what their overall agenda is, is to invite criticisms of being a “conspiracy theorist”, paranoid, or schizophrenic. But it is understanding the role they play in world affairs that all of the conflict, arranged, financed, and managed by many of the members and member nations of these groups begans to make a bit more sense. (If you are interested a few are the Club Of Rome, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberger, Council On Foreign Relations and of course, the United Nations itself being a resurrection of the failed League of Nations)
It is this Hegelian Dialectic process that brought about the dismantling of the communist grip in the east and the rise of the capitalist power in the West. The irony is that there has never been a complete eradication of the communist principle in the West; in fact, the West has openly embraced communist principles, at least in the management of its citizens. While the oligarchs and the power structure operate in a Capitalist way pooling all the wealth to themselves and those in their elite brotherhood, they legislate communistic, individual rights-rejecting, and property rights confiscation laws. The generated and well-managed conflict of communism vs. capitalism did not lead to the obliteration of communism as a statist policy but rather the symbiotic reconstruction with its antithesis, capitalism.
Even in our role in this capitalist/communist “democracy” we have been conscripted into the plan. Without the idea that we are active participants in the formation of society and its contents, we would not be malleable to the powers that be:
“The function of a Parliament or a Congress is for Hegelians, psychology. Merely to allow individuals to feel that their opinions have some value, and to allow a government to take advantage of whatever wisdom the ‘peasant’ may accidentally demonstrate. This is so obvious in Australian politics today. As Hegel puts it:
“By virtue of this participation, subjective liberty and conceit, with their general opinion, (individuals) can show themselves palpably efficacious and enjoy the satisfaction of feeling themselves to count for something.”
Truth is we count for very little other than a decorative curtain, not only to give the power structure their legitimacy, but while we are occupied with the “minor” conflicts of right vs. left, liberal vs. conservative, democrat vs. republican, the real agenda can march on behind closed doors. We don’t realize that the thesis/antithesis conflict of republican vs. democrat has blinded us to both party’s combined complicity in the black market sale of our Republic and the demolishing of the John Stuart Mill and Thomas Paine brand of individual liberty.
What we face now is the thesis of individual nation state economies vs. the antithesis of a global monetary system. For the last century we’ve been preoccupied with Republican vs. Democract and don’t realize how voting in the next “progressives” or “fiscal conservatives” because we desired change has instead led to the regression of the Founding Father’s dreams. Amid our continued refrain of ethocentricity and nationalism, we fail to realize that the US political structure is just another front, another pawn on the Grand Chessboard of global hegemony.
It doesn’t have to be believed but the globalist agenda has been secretly fed, perhaps intentionally by the globalist themselves, to the independent media and alternative truth gurus, who have worked earnestly to expose “new world order” plans to subjugate every nation state under the umbrella of a central governing agency to oversee the entire political and monetary structure of the world. Now, what was once just a “conspiracy nut” theory is on the mouth of every prominent leader of the world as they call vociferously for “a new world order,” “a global system,” and its many variations.
We all have our ideologies and most of those that we would get bloodied-knuckled over are simply rehashed political dogmas, such as socialism/communism, fascism, capitalism and all its disconents to keep us fighting over issues of irrelevancy. It is the exact ideological warfare that has monopolized the arena of public debate, and in truth, it does not matter two bits whether Obama is a socialist or not. That argument is a diffusion scheme to keep us Western “intellectuals” focused on the man and his plans so that we might protect our “free-market capitalist” society of the good life while the ultimate plan is proceeding without challenge because of our managed anger and confusion about where the real power lies. All of us are, including me, pawns in this scheme, if we choose to be.
Niki Raapana writes:
“Hegel’s dialectic is the tool which manipulates us into a frenzied circular pattern of thought and action. Every time we fight for or defend against an ideology we are playing a necessary role in Marx and Engels’ grand design to advance humanity into a dictatorship of the proletariat. The synthetic Hegelian solution to all these conflicts can’t be introduced unless we all take a side that will advance the agenda. The Marxist’s global agenda is moving along at breakneck speed. The only way to stop land grabs, privacy invasions, expanded domestic police powers, insane wars against inanimate objects (and transient verbs), covert actions, and outright assaults on individual liberty, is to step outside the dialectic. Only then can we be released from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.”
For the past few weeks I have been battling with the this “frenzied circular pattern.” It has felt irrational, neurotic and wasteful to preoccupy myself with the signatures behind the frame of our current society and its various social wars of memes and ideology. I have mostly felt a sense of deja vu standing at the gateway of our world’s next “transformation”; that I had been here before, that this very experiment in the world’s labatory had been conducted many times over.
What it is or isn’t leading to is something I believe all of us should have concern about, as it calls into question all of our deepest beliefs and doubts about society; whether this is the next step on our evolutionary crusade or if this whole Frankenstein manipulation of our culture by the “elite” behind the scenes is compatible with our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I would argue that all these matters should be discarded from our existence if we have no objection to the next “paradigm shift”; but if we do have objection, as I am certain most of us would if we had access to all the information we would need in order to decide for ourselves who should be setting the agenda for our lives, than now is the time to educate ourselves and recognize the many ways our lives are being systemically controlled for a purpose not consistent with our individual or collective desire.
Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
* IMF: Recession Will Be Unusually Long Lasting
* Obama hails the new world order
* HOW TO CREATE CHAOS AND REVOLUTION…NWO
* IMF says world economy is getting better — or not
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THE ANTI COMMUNITARIAN MANIFESTO
by Niki F. Raapana and Nordica M. Friedrich
Free online edition since 2003
NEW on April 1, 2008: ABSTRACT of the Anti Communitarian Manifesto. Comments welcome.
HARDCOPY: The first ACL Books' edition of the Manifesto is available now for $20 USD. 5 x 8 inch spiral bound, 140 pages, includes additional materials, references and commentary while leaving the original online thesis intact. Email for ordering details or go to the 2020 book order page and replace the word 2020 with Manifesto.
PART ONE:
What is the Hegelian Dialectic?
December 25, 2002
Poll : What prompted you to search for the Hegelian dialectic?
Introduction : Why study Hegel?
1. The origins of deductive and inductive reasoning
2. Webster's definition of the Hegelian dialectic
3. How the Hegelian dialectic changed the formula for deductive reasoning
4. Why it is almost impossible for a layman to understand the Hegelian dialectic
5. The communitarian purpose for the Hegelian dialectic
6. How we interpret the history of the Hegelian dialectic
7. The Anti Communitarian League's conclusion
8. Four examples of the power of the semantics in the dialectic
9. Four different impressions of the modern Hegelian dialectic theory
Poll : What prompted you to search for the Hegelian dialectic?
I'm writing a high school paper
I'm writing a college paper
I'm a high school teacher
I'm a college professor
I'm on a school review board
I work for a news publication
I just keep hearing the term
I was sent here
None of the above
free polls from Pollhost.com
---divider---
Introduction : Why study Hegel?
"... the State 'has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State... for the right of the world spirit is above all special priveleges.'"
-- Author/historian William Shirer, quoting Hegel in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959)
Hegel
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain..."
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a 19th century German philosopher and theologist who wrote the Science of Logic in 1812. For many historians, Hegel is "perhaps the greatest of the German idealist philosophers."
In 1847 the London Communist League (Marx and Engels, pictured left) used Hegel's theory of the dialectic to back up their economic theory of communism. Now, in the 21st century, Hegelian-Marxist thinking affects our entire social and political structure.
The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a predetermined solution. If we do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes our perceptions of the world, then we do not know how we are helping to implement the vision for the future.
Hegel's dialectic is the tool which manipulates us into a frenzied circular pattern of thought and action. Every time we fight for or defend against an ideology we are playing a necessary role in Marx and Engels' grand design to advance humanity into a dictatorship of the proletariat. The synthetic Hegelian solution to all these conflicts can't be introduced unless we all take a side that will advance the agenda. The Marxist's global agenda is moving along at breakneck speed. The only way to stop land grabs, privacy invasions, expanded domestic police powers, insane wars against inanimate objects (and transient verbs), covert actions, and outright assaults on individual liberty, is to step outside the dialectic. Only then can we be released from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.
When we understand what motivated Hegel, we can see his influence on all of our destinies. Then we become real players in the very real game that has been going on for at least 224 years. Hegelian conflicts steer every political arena on the planet, from the United Nations to the major American political parties, all the way down to local school boards and community councils. Dialogues and consensus-building are primary tools of the dialectic, and terror and intimidation are also acceptable formats for obtaining the goal.
The ultimate Third Way agenda is world government. Once we get what's really going on, we can cut the strings and move our lives in original directions outside the confines of the dialectical madness. Focusing on Hegel's and Engel's ultimate agenda, and avoiding getting caught up in their impenetrable theories of social evolution, gives us the opportunity to think and act our way toward freedom, justice, and genuine liberty for all.
Today the dialectic is active in every political issue that encourages taking sides. We can see it in environmentalists instigating conflicts against private property owners, in democrats against republicans, in greens against libertarians, in communists against socialists, in neo-cons against traditional conservatives, in community activists against individuals, in pro-choice versus pro-life, in Christians against Muslims, in isolationists versus interventionists, in peace activists against war hawks.
No matter what the issue, the invisible dialectic aims to control both the conflict and the resolution of differences, and leads everyone involved into a new cycle of conflicts. We're definitely not in Kansas anymore.
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DGB Editorial Critique vs. Anti-Communitarianism (cont'd)
Three Different Types of Dialectics: A Critique of Living Outside The Dialectic; and The Global Money Scam and The Hegelian Dialectic
The 'Hegelian Dialectic' is not the 'evil monster' as the two essays above would suggest...there are numerous different ways of both interpreting and evaluating 'different types' of Hegelian Dialectics -- no two of which is ever going to be exactly the same. To stereotype 'all dialectics' as being the same is another example of 'Anti-Communitarianist Conflationism'. (I just invented a new word -- 'conflationism'.)
As the first writer (he doesn't give his name) has aptly stated at the top of his website, we have to 'question every precept' -- not negatively stereotype a given precept, set it up like a 'house of cards, straw, or sand -- and then delight in deconstructively knocking down what we built unstably in the first theory. You want to talk about 'preordained conspiracy theory' seem to be making a lifelong mission of 'building the dialectic up weakly and stereotyping all dialectics as being the same so that they can spend the rest of their gleeful energy knocking it down again.
This is not to say that 'preordained dialectics' can't and don't happen -- they do happen but these are 'manipulative, pathological' dialectics and not all dialectics are manipulative, pathological dialectics; most dialectics -- meaning conflict situations -- are totally 'existentially immediate and real' -- with existentially unpredictable and real outcomes on human behavior, relationships, history and evolution.
Let me give you a rather 'emotionally explosive' example from my own life. My sister and her husband had bought an 'investment' townhouse with the pre-established agreement that my son, brother, and I would move in and share the rental cost of the townhouse. My son was still in high school and prone to making impulsive self-centered (narcissistic) decisions that did not include those people around him who were also affected by the outcome of his impulsive decisions. Anyway, he found a girlfriend who started 'staying over' at the townhouse more and more often until she had effectively 'moved in'. Furthermore, the two of them went out and bought a dog -- not just any dog but a cross between a rottweiler, a boxer, and a doberman. It was just a pup but it was untrained and obviously going to get significantly bigger.
My sister and her husband eventually found out about these two 'additions' to the townhouse living situation, were notably upset about these two additions, and arranged a meeting in which a 'decision' was going to be made about what to do about the situation. Before we got to the day of the meeting, it became apparent that a 'decision' had already been made by my sister and her husband about what was going to be done: Mike's girlfriend and the dog were going to have to find a new place to live. This is what you can call a 'pre-ordained dialectic outcome'.
Now, in this regard, I am no different than my friend and/or philosophical adversary, Niki Raapana over at the 'Anti-Communitarian' site -- I don't like 'pre-ordained dialectics anymore than she does. Only, unlike her, I don't try to say that 'every dialectic and every dialectic outcome in the world is preordained by some puppetmaster behind the scenes'. I don't take kindly to being a 'puppet' anymore than Ms. Raapana does. Thus, getting back to my example here, something happened between the intended 'pre-ordained outcome' of the dialectic meeting at the townhouse -- and the actual meeting as it started to evolve. Simmering in the back of my head was the fact that I do not like to be 'excluded' or 'marginalized' from any decision that involves my life -- and in this case, my son's. Also, there was the fact that, over the period of a month or two, I had started to become very attached to the dog.
As the meeting started to take place, and as my sister laid out her 'pre-ordained decsion relative to my son's girlfriend and their dog leaving, an 'emotional volcano' was starting to well up inside myself. To repeat, I don't like 'pre-ordained, unilateral, behind the scenes decisions masked in a pseudo-democratic meeting' any more than Niki Raapana and the rest of the Anti-Communitarians do.
So I told my sister, 'That's fine, I will be leaving too.' The 'dialectic' at this moment had completely lost its 'pre-ordained characteristic' and instead had become very 'existentially real -- with real consequences, and real relationships at stake'. The 'pre-ordained factor' had just 'flown the coup'.
My sister immediately accused me of 'trying to control the meeting' -- that I was being a 'control freak' (as if she wasn't) and raw human emotions of anger and ethical outrage blew into the townhouse living room -- again, eliminating any semblance of 'pre-ordained determinism and predictability'.
The meeting finally came back to order, I suggested that my son and his girlfriend pay an extra $200 a month to cover extra townhouse utility and rental expenses. The dog -- 'Sammy' -- I can't remember what the final townhouse decision was on the dog. She stayed but her life was tragic and brief which still to this day leaves a hole in my heart. The entire story reads like a Sarah Palin family soap opera but the story was, and still is, very 'existentially real'. There was nothing pre-ordained about what happened that day -- or afterwards.
'Seek first to understand, then to be understood.' A very wise person said that (Steven Covey, 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People').
Don't paint Hegel's 'Dialectic Theory of Evolution' with an all encompassing black brush. It is not Hegel's Dialectic Theory of Evolution that is the problem with his 205 year old philosophy; rather it is other parts of his philosophy such as his unbridled abstractionism, his unrealistic idealism, and his Fichte-like 'German Nationalism and Collectivism' that did not steer Germany in a very good direction at all (like Fascism, Herdism, Anti-Semiticism, Nazism, and two brutal world wars...)
Thus, we have a combination of two problems today regarding the interpretation, extrapolation, and application of Hegel's 205 year old philosophy: 1. those who try conservatively and 'anal-retentively' to hold onto Hegel's philosophy as it exactly was 205 years ago; and 2. those critics of Hegel (read the 'Anti-Communitarians') who are still trying to criticize 'Classic-Archaic' Hegelian Philosophy even though it is 205 years outdated and most, or at least some, current day Post-Hegelian Philosophers (read, yours truly) who have read Classic Hegelian Theory know its inherent 'weaknesses' as well, or better, than its detractors and critics do -- and have made contemporary, compensatory adjustments while Hegel's contempory critics keep hammering away at crticisms that are getting extremely boring, they have been repeated so often.
If you are going to criticize Hegel, get with the current program all ye critics of Hegel! Don't keep repeating what is 205 years old! Most serious philosophers who have read Hegel, have also read enough of Marx, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, etc. to know what the 'classic Hegelian criticisms' are -- we don't need to keep reading yesterday's newspapers over and over and over again.
Let me repeat -- hopefully, for the last time. Hegel's brutal, unbridled abstractionism is well documented in the philosophical literature. If I want a lesson in brutal, unbridled abstractionism, I have two choices: 1. I can pick up Hegel's classic philosophical treatise: 'The Phenomenology of Mind (Spirit)' (1804). Or I can try reading an anti-Communitarian essay and see very quickly that the strongest proponents of Anti-Communitarianism seem to have learned very well from Hegel in this one regard -- everything written about in terms of 'single universals' such as one type of 'universal dialectic' that is 'pre-ordained' in terms of some underlying 'global conspiracy theory' when, in reality, there are literally millions of actual and potential 'dialectic conflicts and conflict resolutions' -- every last which one which is uniquely different from the one preceding it and the one following it depending on the issue, the context, the participants, the mood, the creativity and/or non-creativity in the problem-solving/conflict-resolving, who's trying to negotiate to a fair and just outcome vs. who is trying to intimidate and/or steamroll over top of his or her adversar's 'anti-thesis' and opposite wishes...
Regarding Hegel's 'Political Collectivism, Herdism, Nationalism' -- the Anti-Communitarians are preaching to the choir here. No argument, plain and simple. Most intelligent, independent-minded philosophers know the dangers of 'Extreme Collectivism, Nationalism, Group Herdism'...Just read Nietzsche's 'pre-Nazi' criticisms of Collectivist, Herdist, Nationalistic Germany...One can almost say that Nietzsche was warning pre-Nazi Germany of the dangers and the slippery slope of evolving Nazism.
I view Nazi Germany as an excellent albeit 'pathological' example of what I would call a 'cultural transference-reversal'. Napoleon invaded 'pre-Germany' and steamrolled over top of it because 'pre-Germany' was not united -- it was simply a collection of smaller 'regional states'. So after Napoleon was finally defeated, 'pre-Germany' became 'Nationalistic' and united into Germany with visions of what Napoleon had done to them still 'crashing around in their collective minds'. The 'compensatory, cultural transference' became to 'grow stronger as a country -- and as a united army' -- so that this type of national catastrophy -- and 'national humiliation' -- would never happen again. So German Nationalism, Collectivism, and Herdism was born. And the beginning of the evolution of Nazi Germany.
But not only did Germany grow their army, improve their national strength and power for purposes of self-defence. They also took something much more ominous and pathological from Napoleon. The idea of 'world dominance, German superiority, German arrogance, ethnic cleansing' -- and the idea of a 'Napoleon-like, pre-emptive strike towards world domination'. Nazi Germany had now reached it zenith of 'National Socio- and Psycho-Pathology'. 'Collectivism and Herdism' -- as initiated by Fichte and Hegel in a culture and a nation that was ready to hear what Fichte and Hegel had to say in this regard -- even though the direction of movment was rhetorically counter-argued over and over again by Nietzsche, a philosopher who was much more accurately attuned and intuitive to the place in Hell that this Socio-psycho-pathological was ultimately going to take Nationalistic Germany -- would ultimately rule the day, and at least three generations of Germans. Nationalism would take Germany to the top of the world cliff, the zenith of national military power with its potential for world power and destruction as it also looked over the threatening precipace of potential national self-destruction. Just like Napoleon before them. This is what I call a 'cultural or national transference re-creation and repetition complex and compulsion brought on by identification with the National Aggressor and Victimizer(Napoleon). What goes around comes around. The tragedy of negative transference both individual and collective. What starts out as an individual or national 'childhood traumacy and tragedy' (pre-Germany being brutally victimized by Napoleon's army) becomes deeply remembered as such, indeed, internalized into the national psyche of Germany -- and then 'replayed' generations later with Nazi Germany -- and Hitler -- playing the role of Napoleon, the world conquerer, who is ultimately defeated and destroyed by a stronger army (or coalition of armies) outsmarting him and overpowering him. Again, this is what I call 'National Transference Reversal'.
Such is the potential danger of Nationalism, Collectivism, Herdism...Group Think...gone mad...
There is no greater proponents of individualism -- in balance with the individualism of other individuals -- than this man, this philosopher, right here.
So let me get the message out there to all my readers and to the 'Anti-Communitarian' philosophical camp: Don't paint DGB Post-Hegelian Philosophy with the all-encompassing black paintbrush of 'Nationalism, Collectivism, Herdism, Group Think -- and 'Communitarianism' in this pathological sense.
Hegelian philosophy 205 years ago is not DGB Post-Hegelian philosophy today. Recognize the difference.
Even to you Ms. Rapaani, I quote Votaire (Toleration and Other Essays, 1755):
I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death, your right to say it.
Criticize Hegel's 'nationalism' if you wish, his 'collectivism', and/or his own particular brand of 'communitarianism'....in the way that the 'Anti-Communitarians' have stereotyped '(Pathological) Communitarianism'.
However, there is an 'infinite potential for different types of 'Communitarianism' -- some healthier, some more pathological than others. And the same goes for a negatively stereotyped definition of 'the dialectic'.
Indeed, I will distinguish between three different types of dialectics:
1. The 'Narcissistic Power Dialectic': Winner takes all. (Until the 'marginalized' and the 'suppressed' start to compensate for their losing strategy, re-build themselves from the shadows, re-generate themselves, slowly re-gaining power until they can topple the dominant, the oppressive, and the suppressive. This is 'Anaxamander's Dialectic', this is Marx's Dialectic -- Power in the hands of The Proletariat (which has never happened...It certainly never happened under Mao Tse Tung, or Lenin, or Stalin. These were 'narcissistic Capitalist leaders trying to disguise themselves as 'humanistic socialists'. They weren't. Like in America -- all the money was collected, passed around, and used at the top.). Marx was a combination of humanist and narcissistic pit bull. The 'narcissistic pitbull' side of his character -- and his philosophy -- was pathological.
2. The 'Egalitarian-Democratic-Dialectic': A type of dialectic where two so-motivated individuals or groups of individuals are actually looking for a 'win-win solution, resolution, and/or compromise' knowing that 'two opposite polarities need each other and need to come together in dialectic unity, wholism, and harmony (at least for a short while, if not a long while, until dialectic disharmony resurrects itself and demands a new negotiation towards a 'different dialectic harmony'...This is 'Heraclitus' Dialectic', 'Lao Tse's Dialectic (yin meets yang in harmonious dialectic balance) Nietzsche's Dialectic (The Birth of Tragedy), Freud (The homeostatic balance of 'id' and 'superego'.), Jung (the homeostatic balance of 'personna' and 'shadow'), Cannon (The Wisdom -- and the Homeostatic Balance -- of The Body), Perls and Gestalt Therapy (the balance of 'topdog' and 'underdog'), Derrida (the balanced of the 'dominant' and the 'suppressed' through the philosophy of 'deconstruction)...
3. 'The Collusive, Manipulative, Dog and Pony, Smoke and Mirrors' Dialectic: This is the type of dialectic that you and your friend Niki describe as if it is the only type of dialectic that operates in the world....Yes, this is a 'pathological type of dialectic' but don't blame it on Hegel unless you want to blame it on his pathological Nationalism, his pathological Collectivism, his pathological brand of Communitarianism...But don't paint all types of 'the dialectic' with the same black paintbrush. Indeed, personally, I would argue that 'Nationalism', 'Collectivism', and 'No-Individual-Civil Rights' Communitarianism is 'anti-dialectic' in the 'egalitarian-democratic-homeostatic balance' sense. Rather it belongs to either and/or both brands of the other two -- pathological -- dialectics listed above.
In contrast, 'Healthy Communitarianism' demands a healthy homeostatic balance between individual civil rights and community rights. In this respect, it is my individual right to 'swing my right arm as often and as far as I want, as long as I don't swing it into your face'...Healthy Communitarianism does not contradict the values of individualism as laid out by America's founding fathers: Tom Paine, Jefferson...nor the French Enlightenment philosophers such as Diderot, Voltaire, Montesque, Adam Smith, John Locke...and others...
But everything depends on the 'type' of dialectic we are talking about...
The type of collusive, behind the scenes, dog and pony show, smoke and mirrors show that you are writing about is only one type of dialectic -- and obviously a pathological one that has nothing to do with 'Ideal, Transparent, Win-Win Democracy'.
We must remember that no two Hegelian thinkers are exactly alike, any more than two Republican, Democrat, Liberal, and/or Conservative thinkers are exactly light.
And Hegelian thinking as it was theorized and applied some 205 years ago by Hegel is not the way that all 'post-Hegelian' thinkers and theorists are using the Hegelian Dialectic today.
Every Hegelian, post-Hegelian, and anti-Hegelian thinker has to be understood and evaluated in his or her own particular individual right and uniqueness -- including the two writers I have critiqued above...
dgb, July 1st-3rd, 2009.
David Gordon Bain,
Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are Still In Process...
Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism...
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I don't trumpet Hegel in all aspects of his philosophy because, quite frankly, I don't like all aspects of his philosophy.
It is important that writers don't get caught up in 'over-idealizing' their favorite philosophers and/or in 'over-trashing' their most 'disagreed with' philosophers -- lumping ideas together that shouldn't be lumped, stereotyping philosophers positively or negatively in a way that oversimplifies, over-idealizes, and/or over-vilifies the philosopher and his or her work.
I too can be guilty of this practice -- it is is easier to oversimplify, over-idealize, and/or over-vilify a philosopher than it is to take the extra time required to more seriously investigate the intricacies of a complicated philosopher's work -- and analyze it properly.
Without spending a lifetime studying one and only one philosopher.
Nor should any of us hold on irrationally and unconditionally to ideas that have become outdated and archaic just because they belong to our favorite philosopher (or psychologist) or alternatively use our least favorite philosopher as our own 'private whipping post' so that we can let all of our individual frustrations and 'transferences' loose on this particular philosopher until we have effectively 'beat a dead horse'.
For one thing -- life evolves.
We should all understand that, for example, Psychoanalysis isn't
being practiced exactly the same way today as it was 100 or 115 years ago, although some of the most 'anal-retentive' -- 'I can't let go of Freud' -- analysts might try to. Maybe there is something to the fact that 'analyst' starts with 'anal' as in 'anal-retentive' with no 'common sense flexibility' to move away from an idea that just, plain and simple, isn't working.
Similarly, not all 'Hegelian thinkers' or 'post-Hegelian thinkers' think exactly today the same way that Hegel thought in 1807.
Indeed, no two thinkers ever think or feel exactly alike. When a group of thinkers are claiming that they think exactly like their leader -- and follow that leader 100 per cent to the alter and/to the grave -- they are quite likely lying of faking 'group unity' for the sake of 'social perception' and not wanting to appear that they are presenting ideas that are coming from a 'dialectically divided house'.
Sometimes there is real unity but my experience tells me that this is more the exception than the rule.
Indeed, even labeling yourself as a 'Hegelian philosopher' can become a conceptual and historical trap; better to label yourself as a 'post-Hegelian' philosopher and give yourself some freedom to move with certain particular Hegelian ideas staying on the table but other Hegelian ideas being thrown off the table. To be sure, this post-Hegelian philosopher doesn't want to get locked inside a 'Hegelian jail cell'.
My friends -- and/or philosophical adversaries -- over at 'The Anti-Communitarian: Living Outside The Dialectic' blog site make this particular paper that I am writing here -- and the type of distinctions I am making here -- absolutely necessary.
What divides us defines us.
Let us start with these easy distinctions here.
1. DGB Philosophy is not Classic Hegelian Philosophy (with any over-riding ideas of 'Absolute Knowledge', 'Collectivism', or 'Nationalistic Extremism'.
My brand of 'post-Hegelian' philosophy might be elongated and called: 'DGB Post-Hegelian, Multi-Dialectic-Democratic, Humanistic-Existential Evolutionary Theory or Philosophy'.
2. DGB Philosophy is not Communitarianism in any sense of the word as I have read it being described and/or defined.
3. DGB Philosophy is not Anti-Communitarianism in any sense of the way that it attacks Hegelian Dialectic Theory and/or stereotypes Communitarianism as being 'collectively and 'nationalistically' extreme and against individualism and individual civil rights.
Here are some examples of how the Anti-Communitarians have 'conflated' different Hegelian concepts together in a way that doesn't make sense in 2009 -- and probably doesn't even make any sense going back to 1807 whether we are talking about what Hegel had in mind or whether we are talking about the rather 'unique' interpretation of what the Anti-Communitarians think Hegel had in mind.
Incidentally, I have to thank the Anti-Communitarians for introducing me to the word 'conflation' which can be defined in the following manner:
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Conflation occurs when the identities of two or more individuals, concepts, or places, sharing some characteristics of one another, become confused until there seems to be only a single identity — the differences appear to become lost. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflation
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Here are some Anti-Communitarian examples of conflation:
1. 'The Dialectic' does not equal -- nor will a million or a billion or a trillion dialects ever equal -- 'Absolute Knowledge'. Most Post-Hegelians, I believe, have more or less thrown out Hegel's concept of 'Absolute Knowledge' as should be the case. The concept is archaic and about as relevant as Plato's 'Theory of The Caves' and 'The Forms'.
2. 'The Dialectic' does not equal in any manner the idea of 'Collectivism' or 'Nationalism' except in a possible 'dialectic process' of negotiating collectivism and nationalism against their opposite concepts -- for example, either 'individualism' or 'internationalism'.
3. 'The Dialectic' does not equal in any manner any sort of 'behind the scenes conspiracy theory and/or puppetmaster show' except to the extent that someone or some group is trying to manipulate and pathologize the sincerity, the integrity, and the existential immediacy of the dialectic either as a 'power playoff' and/or as a process of intended 'win-win compromise negotiation'.
4. 'The Dialectic' does not equal in any manner any definition of 'Communitarianism' unless the definition of 'Communitarianism' is so 'fluidly mobile and changing' that it in fact has no definition.
Let me spend the duration of this essay to once again clarify some of my main differences of opinion with Hegel, and once these differences of opinion are clarified, address the main complaints that are leveled against Hegel by the 'Anti-Communitarians' who seem to confuse and conflate Hegel's dialectic theory with his 'Nationalism/Collectivism' stance relative to political philosophy when the two are totally different and should not be treated as being the same or necessarily linked at all.
My main counter-argument against the Anti-Communitarians is that there are literally millions upon millions of 'dialectic conflicts and/or conflict resolutions' that are being worked on each and every day by different individuals and different groups of individuals so to steretype and blackball each and every type of dialectic process as being exactly the same in that each and every one of them is 'contrived', 'pre-ordained', 'manipulated', 'orchestrated by powerful players behind the scenes to a pre-engineered conclusion' -- the result of some 'massive idealistic and/or narcissistic world-wide conspiracy theory' is stretching things just a little bit past the point of 'normal believability'.
I am not saying that conspiracy theories can't or don't happen -- I am just saying that they don't happen all the time and it is important to make some critical distinctions here between different types of dialectic conflict processes and confict resolutions as opposed to lumping each and every dialectic process into one gigantic 'Sucker Bag' where we all -- meaning all of us not in the 'elite controlling circle' -- play the role of 'pawns on a chessboard' being 'sacrificed for the good of the more powerful pieces' and for the good of the 'elite few' that are the actual controlling players in this chess game.
If nothing else, we need to distinguish between 'real dialectic conflict processes' where the outcome of the conflict is highly volatile, humanistic-existential, narcissitically one-sided or two-sided, based on the principle of a 'will-to power' or the 'will to negotiate to a more homeostatically stable, win-win solution' -- and unpredictable during the whole process; vs. the type of 'contrived, manipulated, collusion-based, dog and pony show, smoke and mirrors, dialectic conflict that the Anti-Communitarians are obsessing about and against.
Anyways -- let us start with 2009 DGB Post-Hegelian Philosophy vs. 'Classic and/or Archaic' 1807 'Phenomenology of Spirit'-based Hegelian Philosophy.
Firstly, I do not like Hegel's heavy-duty abstractionism although, to confess, I can go off the abstractionism deep end just as many other serious philosophy writers can and do -- much depends on the degree of the philosophical sophistication of the reader we are writing to and/or whether, as a writer, our main purpose is to delve into the most complicated technicalities and convolutions of whatever the issue is we are writing about -- or whether we just want to cover and utilize or modify the main pragmatic implications and/or applications of the philosophical idea that is under discussion. In general, the more abstract a philosopher-writer is, the more likely he or she is of being misunderstood and/or being interpreted in many entirely different ways, and the more likely he or she is going to 'confuse and conflate' things by associating and linking things and/or processes together that are different and should not be treated as being the same or similar. This problem applies equally to Hegel's 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807)and also to my philosophical adversaries over there at the 'Anti-Communitarian Club' who still seem to be caught in a 'Hegelian Time and Abstraction Warp'.
Secondly, I do not like Hegel's 'nationalist-collectivist political stance' which seems to suppress and marginalize individual civil rights and seems to in effect be 'Anti-Hegelian' in my 'idealistic dialectic-democratic interpretation and/or modification of Hegel' -- or put another way, Hegel's nationalistist-collectivist political stance seems to be an internal contradiction in the way I would personally like to see Hegelian Philosophy interpreted and applied. This is going to take some explaining.
We have to distinguish first and foremost between two types of dialectics:
1. An 'Imperialistic-Narcissistic-Darwinian-Survival-of-the-Fittest-Winner-Takes-All-Will-to-Power' Dialectic; and
2. A 'Civil-Egalitarian-Will-to-Negotiate-and-Compromise' Dialectic.
The first is 'unilaterally assertive, aggressive, and authoritarian'. 'Might is right.' This is what I call the 'Power-War-Dialectic'.
The second is 'empathic, socially sensitive, compromising, conciliatory and consensus-striving'. This is what I call the 'Democratic-Fairness-Dialectic'. There are numerous different types of democratic-dialectics (some of which are more democratic than others) such as: a) 'Negotiating to Consensus'; b) 'Public Voting'; c) 'Parliament or Senate Representative Voting'; d) 'Autocratic Representation'; e) 'Autocratic Unrepresentation'; f) 'Representative Negotiating to Consensus'...
The rest of these 'Dialectic Transactions' are best described as 'half-dialectics' in that they need a 'dialectic dance partner' coming from a similar or different type of transaction.
3. The Altruistic-Nurturing' Dialectic can be like a 'nurturing parent, friend, or lover' dialectic or a 'community-church-and-or-government based agency' dialectic.
Now there are a whole host of other 'variations on a theme' relative to the first two dialectics (mainly the first one), some of which include:
4. A 'Market-Place' Dialectic where, for example, you are trying to sell me a house and I want to buy one, and you are trying to get your best price possible and I am trying to get my best price possible and if we can find that 'magic price' somewhere in the middle that we can both agree on, then we have a 'marketplace deal' -- a 'marketplace dialectic conflict resolution';
5. A 'Rebellious-Deconstructive' Dialectic where one side of a dialectic conflict ('The Anti-Establishment Underdog') is rhetorically -- or elsewise -- poking holes and sabotaging the 'Establishment Dialectic Law/Rule') that is under 'deconstructive attack';
6. A 'Covert, Sneaky Rebellious' Dialectic where a particular person or party says one thing and does another;
7. A 'Fraudulent, Manipulative type of dialectic' that pretends to be the second type but is actually the first type. This is the 'Dog-and-Pony-Show-Smoke-and-Mirrors Type of Dialectic' -- the type that tells you 'that you have won a million dollars with the intent of getting into your most private identification information particulars and your bank account information in order to steal your identity and as much money as they can get from you.
8. A 'Dissociative' Type of Dialectic where the diallectic transaction or potential dialectic transaction breaks down into an impasse with one side or both sides not willing to negotiate any further...and the two remaining detached, separated, alienated, schizoid from each other...
9. A 'Submissive-Masochistic-Approval-Seeking' Dialectic where one side will 'cave easily' from what he or she wants in a negotiation out of fear of intimidation, threat, or loss of approval/acceptance...
10. A 'Seductive-Manipulative' Dialectic where one side uses attractiveness, intellect, beauty, seductiveness, narcissistic vanity...to get what he or she wants in the dialectic transaction.
These are the main types of dialectic transactions that are designed to get goods, services, need-fulfillment, power, revenge, approval, sex, drugs, alchohol, money, cigarettes, love, and/or any of the other 101 things that people want and/or obsessively and addictively crave...
Now ideally, or idealistically, what people tend to want in a 'democratic-dialectic society' is an 'equally or homeostatically balanced' dialectic transaction/relationship where both people or parties get what they want out of the transaction/relationship -- and everybody goes home happy.
When all of the other 'mainly darker, more narcissistic, sides' of human motivation enter the picture however, then we get all of the other narcissistic dialectic possibilities -- and realities -- briefly mentioned above.
This is just a starting-point of later discussion. Adam Smith even had a strong idea of the nature of the 'market place dialectic' from which he wrote his masterpiece 'The Wealth of Nations'.
And Kant, Schelling, and Hegel came along shortly afterwards.
Hegel's philosophy of 'alienation' was extremely important -- almost as important as his philosophy of the dialectic. Hegel most certainly created the 'creative mix' in this regard from which 'Existentialism' was shortly thereafter born through the combined intellect of Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche...and others...
It is important for critics of Hegelian Philosophy to realize that all Hegelian theorists and philosophers are not the same, and in this regard, it is important, indeed imperative, to understand that not all of the Hegelian Philosohy that is being theorized and applied today is the same as the 'Classic -- some might say 'Archaic' -- Hegelian Philosophy' that Hegel was writing about and applying some 205 years.
DGB Philosophy in particular has made some significant adjustments and modifications to Classic Hegelian Philosophy which is why I call DGB Philosophy a 'Post-Hegelian-Humanistic-Existential-Democratic-Dialectic' Philosophy.
Any brand of 'Collectivist' or 'National' or 'Communitarian' Philosophy where individual civil rights are seriously suppressed and/or marginalized is not a 'democratic-dialectic' philosophy that is paying any serious attention to the 'founding fathers' of The United States of America (Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson...) and/or their French and English Enlightenment brethrin (Locke, Smith, Hume, Diderot, Voltaire, Montesque, etc.)
Indeed, from at least this one perspective it would seem that Hegel was 'self-contradictory' in that a 'collectivist' philosophy is an 'extremist-polar' philosophy that needs to be homeostatically balanced against 'the anti-thesis' of a more 'liberatarian' philosophy that takes individual and property rights to the opposite extreme. Such seems to be the mission of those sites dedicated to the pursuit of 'Anti-Communitarianism'.
However, not all 'dialectics' are the same or engage in the same type of process.
In this regard, three different types of 'dialectics' need to be distinguished from each other, two of them which are usually pathological, and one of which is usually healthy.
Let me introduce you to two 'Anti-Communitarian' essays below and then I will finish my critique of both of them together. -- dgb, July 1st, 2009.
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The Global Money Scam & The Hegelian Dialectic (No author's name cited...)
While there is an unconsciousable amount of political grandstanding taking place in this country, to the point it’s becoming a headache keeping up with the puffing and posturing, there is an even grander call to to expand the debauched schemes of the centralized banking system.
Not only have prominent vicars of the ruling elite in this country and their European arm called for a global monetary reserve, their arch enemies in the former Soviet have offered a vodka shot of support by saying recently:
“The current global economic crisis points to the need for discarding standard approaches and requires the adoption of collective decisions, agreed at the international level and geared to creating a system of globalization process management.”
This is startling.
As the G20 meet there will be a discussion on a proposed International Monetary Fund plan to print billions of dollars of something knowing as Special Drawing Rights as a preventionary measure to keep the “recession” from developing into a global depression:
“The International Monetary Fund is poised to embark on what analysts have described as “global quantitative easing” by printing billions of dollars worth of a global “super-currency.”
This would be a special new asset currency never before seen on the world market. It has huge implications to those of us concerned about retaining what is left, if anything, of all respectable countries’ sovereignty and the tightenting that would occur in the event of the transformation to a new “super” currency.
In my previous post, I briefly discussed the Federal Reserve and how, through the traitorous scheme of Congressmen who traded their US monetary control for a bit of chew, they have remained the sole authority of US finance and banking policy for the last century.
They have their cousin bank, the Bank Of England that operates in the same suit, and also foreign arms such as the IMF and the World Bank who have built a reputation in activists’ circles for instituting debt-causing policies to enslave third-world countries.
On one level it is appropriate, even logical as to why the money-changers of various countries would be calling for a global currency. Most of the world’s economies have been affected and the IMF reported weeks ago that the world’s advanced economies were already in a depression. If anyone has the credentials to anaylze what a depression is, it is the IMF. They have a parasitical “aid” program that has been the building block for dozens of depressions.
What blurs the whole “brave new world” design is how a globalized reforming of the entire international economy will benefit any single nation. The basic argument being thrown around is that a systemic risk agency or global financial reserve would allow the money-masters to diffuse a brushfire in one country before it became a forest fire threatening the whole world. One keen spectator doesn’t buy this argument and suggests that we in essence already have a global system and it is globalization that is the reason every nation on the face of the earth is at risk.
We witnessed or rather we were not informed that all throughout the latter part of the 20th century the rapacious globalist agenda impoverished country after country. Those who were victimized, disenfranchised, robbed of their farms and homes, were mostly hidden from sight as the IMF & World Bank negotiated loans for countries’ desperate to feed their hungry and employ the vagrant. Time after time the loans were attached with “structural adjustment programs” and “economic reform” requirements.
For any line of success in their agenda, there are volumes and tomes of failure as their economic policies devastated countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The consequences of these “structural adjustment programs” lead consistently to staggering unemployment, currency devaluation, price fixing, increased taxation, stagflation, inflation, asset, natural resources and property confiscation, political unrest and starvation, and in some cases, such as Pinochet in Chile, a violent military dictatorship where many dissenters were “disappeared.”
We could pull any one out of the archives of hidden history and even through an objective lens come to a conclusion about the real agenda of agencies like the Federal Reserve, IMF, & The World Bank. As Baron de Rothschild notoriously stated: “Give me control of a nation’s currency and I don’t care who makes it laws.”
Russia for instance was given assistance by the Fund in the 90s when faced with a ailing economy. Since the IMF’s inception in 1944, no other country had received more assistance than Russia as it attempted to transform to a more “modern” economy. But what followed was not a transformation but rather a degeneration. Whether the blame rest at the feet of the IMF or the Russian government, there remains the IMF trend that led the country to the point of hyperinflation. Former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz admitted that: “US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia’s industrial assets, with the effect that the corruption scheme cut national output nearly in half causing depression and starvation.”
Russia remains indebted to the IMF today.
The flagship offfice of the IMF is in Washington with their evil brother the World Bank right across the street. With the knowledge that the IMF is a United States agency posing as an international debt relief agency a few questions stir; namely, why the recent wrangling to reignite a Cold War atmosphere? Are Russia and the US secretly in kahoots but acting out strained relations to convince us of some looming threat on the horizon? And if that query could be proven, if there is indeed some international conspiracy of handicapped countries, still subject to the whims of their creditors, what is the end goal?
That brings me to the Hegelian Dialectic.
The basic premise behind the Hegelian Dialectic is that conflict creates history or in the case of this strategy leads unwitting participants into a predetermined outcome:
“In Hegelian terms, an existing force (the thesis) generates a counterforce (the antithesis). Conflict between the two forces results in the forming of a synthesis. Then the process starts all over again: Thesis vs. antithesis results in synthesis.”
This is the augmented strategy of divide and conquer; the politico-philosophical way that is mostly used by those who have always retained control behind the scenes of world power, though the faces and the parties may change. To research and learn about these many-faceted organizations and pinpoint what their overall agenda is, is to invite criticisms of being a “conspiracy theorist”, paranoid, or schizophrenic. But it is understanding the role they play in world affairs that all of the conflict, arranged, financed, and managed by many of the members and member nations of these groups begans to make a bit more sense. (If you are interested a few are the Club Of Rome, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberger, Council On Foreign Relations and of course, the United Nations itself being a resurrection of the failed League of Nations)
It is this Hegelian Dialectic process that brought about the dismantling of the communist grip in the east and the rise of the capitalist power in the West. The irony is that there has never been a complete eradication of the communist principle in the West; in fact, the West has openly embraced communist principles, at least in the management of its citizens. While the oligarchs and the power structure operate in a Capitalist way pooling all the wealth to themselves and those in their elite brotherhood, they legislate communistic, individual rights-rejecting, and property rights confiscation laws. The generated and well-managed conflict of communism vs. capitalism did not lead to the obliteration of communism as a statist policy but rather the symbiotic reconstruction with its antithesis, capitalism.
Even in our role in this capitalist/communist “democracy” we have been conscripted into the plan. Without the idea that we are active participants in the formation of society and its contents, we would not be malleable to the powers that be:
“The function of a Parliament or a Congress is for Hegelians, psychology. Merely to allow individuals to feel that their opinions have some value, and to allow a government to take advantage of whatever wisdom the ‘peasant’ may accidentally demonstrate. This is so obvious in Australian politics today. As Hegel puts it:
“By virtue of this participation, subjective liberty and conceit, with their general opinion, (individuals) can show themselves palpably efficacious and enjoy the satisfaction of feeling themselves to count for something.”
Truth is we count for very little other than a decorative curtain, not only to give the power structure their legitimacy, but while we are occupied with the “minor” conflicts of right vs. left, liberal vs. conservative, democrat vs. republican, the real agenda can march on behind closed doors. We don’t realize that the thesis/antithesis conflict of republican vs. democrat has blinded us to both party’s combined complicity in the black market sale of our Republic and the demolishing of the John Stuart Mill and Thomas Paine brand of individual liberty.
What we face now is the thesis of individual nation state economies vs. the antithesis of a global monetary system. For the last century we’ve been preoccupied with Republican vs. Democract and don’t realize how voting in the next “progressives” or “fiscal conservatives” because we desired change has instead led to the regression of the Founding Father’s dreams. Amid our continued refrain of ethocentricity and nationalism, we fail to realize that the US political structure is just another front, another pawn on the Grand Chessboard of global hegemony.
It doesn’t have to be believed but the globalist agenda has been secretly fed, perhaps intentionally by the globalist themselves, to the independent media and alternative truth gurus, who have worked earnestly to expose “new world order” plans to subjugate every nation state under the umbrella of a central governing agency to oversee the entire political and monetary structure of the world. Now, what was once just a “conspiracy nut” theory is on the mouth of every prominent leader of the world as they call vociferously for “a new world order,” “a global system,” and its many variations.
We all have our ideologies and most of those that we would get bloodied-knuckled over are simply rehashed political dogmas, such as socialism/communism, fascism, capitalism and all its disconents to keep us fighting over issues of irrelevancy. It is the exact ideological warfare that has monopolized the arena of public debate, and in truth, it does not matter two bits whether Obama is a socialist or not. That argument is a diffusion scheme to keep us Western “intellectuals” focused on the man and his plans so that we might protect our “free-market capitalist” society of the good life while the ultimate plan is proceeding without challenge because of our managed anger and confusion about where the real power lies. All of us are, including me, pawns in this scheme, if we choose to be.
Niki Raapana writes:
“Hegel’s dialectic is the tool which manipulates us into a frenzied circular pattern of thought and action. Every time we fight for or defend against an ideology we are playing a necessary role in Marx and Engels’ grand design to advance humanity into a dictatorship of the proletariat. The synthetic Hegelian solution to all these conflicts can’t be introduced unless we all take a side that will advance the agenda. The Marxist’s global agenda is moving along at breakneck speed. The only way to stop land grabs, privacy invasions, expanded domestic police powers, insane wars against inanimate objects (and transient verbs), covert actions, and outright assaults on individual liberty, is to step outside the dialectic. Only then can we be released from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.”
For the past few weeks I have been battling with the this “frenzied circular pattern.” It has felt irrational, neurotic and wasteful to preoccupy myself with the signatures behind the frame of our current society and its various social wars of memes and ideology. I have mostly felt a sense of deja vu standing at the gateway of our world’s next “transformation”; that I had been here before, that this very experiment in the world’s labatory had been conducted many times over.
What it is or isn’t leading to is something I believe all of us should have concern about, as it calls into question all of our deepest beliefs and doubts about society; whether this is the next step on our evolutionary crusade or if this whole Frankenstein manipulation of our culture by the “elite” behind the scenes is compatible with our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I would argue that all these matters should be discarded from our existence if we have no objection to the next “paradigm shift”; but if we do have objection, as I am certain most of us would if we had access to all the information we would need in order to decide for ourselves who should be setting the agenda for our lives, than now is the time to educate ourselves and recognize the many ways our lives are being systemically controlled for a purpose not consistent with our individual or collective desire.
Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
* IMF: Recession Will Be Unusually Long Lasting
* Obama hails the new world order
* HOW TO CREATE CHAOS AND REVOLUTION…NWO
* IMF says world economy is getting better — or not
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THE ANTI COMMUNITARIAN MANIFESTO
by Niki F. Raapana and Nordica M. Friedrich
Free online edition since 2003
NEW on April 1, 2008: ABSTRACT of the Anti Communitarian Manifesto. Comments welcome.
HARDCOPY: The first ACL Books' edition of the Manifesto is available now for $20 USD. 5 x 8 inch spiral bound, 140 pages, includes additional materials, references and commentary while leaving the original online thesis intact. Email for ordering details or go to the 2020 book order page and replace the word 2020 with Manifesto.
PART ONE:
What is the Hegelian Dialectic?
December 25, 2002
Poll : What prompted you to search for the Hegelian dialectic?
Introduction : Why study Hegel?
1. The origins of deductive and inductive reasoning
2. Webster's definition of the Hegelian dialectic
3. How the Hegelian dialectic changed the formula for deductive reasoning
4. Why it is almost impossible for a layman to understand the Hegelian dialectic
5. The communitarian purpose for the Hegelian dialectic
6. How we interpret the history of the Hegelian dialectic
7. The Anti Communitarian League's conclusion
8. Four examples of the power of the semantics in the dialectic
9. Four different impressions of the modern Hegelian dialectic theory
Poll : What prompted you to search for the Hegelian dialectic?
I'm writing a high school paper
I'm writing a college paper
I'm a high school teacher
I'm a college professor
I'm on a school review board
I work for a news publication
I just keep hearing the term
I was sent here
None of the above
free polls from Pollhost.com
---divider---
Introduction : Why study Hegel?
"... the State 'has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State... for the right of the world spirit is above all special priveleges.'"
-- Author/historian William Shirer, quoting Hegel in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959)
Hegel
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain..."
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a 19th century German philosopher and theologist who wrote the Science of Logic in 1812. For many historians, Hegel is "perhaps the greatest of the German idealist philosophers."
In 1847 the London Communist League (Marx and Engels, pictured left) used Hegel's theory of the dialectic to back up their economic theory of communism. Now, in the 21st century, Hegelian-Marxist thinking affects our entire social and political structure.
The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a predetermined solution. If we do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes our perceptions of the world, then we do not know how we are helping to implement the vision for the future.
Hegel's dialectic is the tool which manipulates us into a frenzied circular pattern of thought and action. Every time we fight for or defend against an ideology we are playing a necessary role in Marx and Engels' grand design to advance humanity into a dictatorship of the proletariat. The synthetic Hegelian solution to all these conflicts can't be introduced unless we all take a side that will advance the agenda. The Marxist's global agenda is moving along at breakneck speed. The only way to stop land grabs, privacy invasions, expanded domestic police powers, insane wars against inanimate objects (and transient verbs), covert actions, and outright assaults on individual liberty, is to step outside the dialectic. Only then can we be released from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.
When we understand what motivated Hegel, we can see his influence on all of our destinies. Then we become real players in the very real game that has been going on for at least 224 years. Hegelian conflicts steer every political arena on the planet, from the United Nations to the major American political parties, all the way down to local school boards and community councils. Dialogues and consensus-building are primary tools of the dialectic, and terror and intimidation are also acceptable formats for obtaining the goal.
The ultimate Third Way agenda is world government. Once we get what's really going on, we can cut the strings and move our lives in original directions outside the confines of the dialectical madness. Focusing on Hegel's and Engel's ultimate agenda, and avoiding getting caught up in their impenetrable theories of social evolution, gives us the opportunity to think and act our way toward freedom, justice, and genuine liberty for all.
Today the dialectic is active in every political issue that encourages taking sides. We can see it in environmentalists instigating conflicts against private property owners, in democrats against republicans, in greens against libertarians, in communists against socialists, in neo-cons against traditional conservatives, in community activists against individuals, in pro-choice versus pro-life, in Christians against Muslims, in isolationists versus interventionists, in peace activists against war hawks.
No matter what the issue, the invisible dialectic aims to control both the conflict and the resolution of differences, and leads everyone involved into a new cycle of conflicts. We're definitely not in Kansas anymore.
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DGB Editorial Critique vs. Anti-Communitarianism (cont'd)
Three Different Types of Dialectics: A Critique of Living Outside The Dialectic; and The Global Money Scam and The Hegelian Dialectic
The 'Hegelian Dialectic' is not the 'evil monster' as the two essays above would suggest...there are numerous different ways of both interpreting and evaluating 'different types' of Hegelian Dialectics -- no two of which is ever going to be exactly the same. To stereotype 'all dialectics' as being the same is another example of 'Anti-Communitarianist Conflationism'. (I just invented a new word -- 'conflationism'.)
As the first writer (he doesn't give his name) has aptly stated at the top of his website, we have to 'question every precept' -- not negatively stereotype a given precept, set it up like a 'house of cards, straw, or sand -- and then delight in deconstructively knocking down what we built unstably in the first theory. You want to talk about 'preordained conspiracy theory' seem to be making a lifelong mission of 'building the dialectic up weakly and stereotyping all dialectics as being the same so that they can spend the rest of their gleeful energy knocking it down again.
This is not to say that 'preordained dialectics' can't and don't happen -- they do happen but these are 'manipulative, pathological' dialectics and not all dialectics are manipulative, pathological dialectics; most dialectics -- meaning conflict situations -- are totally 'existentially immediate and real' -- with existentially unpredictable and real outcomes on human behavior, relationships, history and evolution.
Let me give you a rather 'emotionally explosive' example from my own life. My sister and her husband had bought an 'investment' townhouse with the pre-established agreement that my son, brother, and I would move in and share the rental cost of the townhouse. My son was still in high school and prone to making impulsive self-centered (narcissistic) decisions that did not include those people around him who were also affected by the outcome of his impulsive decisions. Anyway, he found a girlfriend who started 'staying over' at the townhouse more and more often until she had effectively 'moved in'. Furthermore, the two of them went out and bought a dog -- not just any dog but a cross between a rottweiler, a boxer, and a doberman. It was just a pup but it was untrained and obviously going to get significantly bigger.
My sister and her husband eventually found out about these two 'additions' to the townhouse living situation, were notably upset about these two additions, and arranged a meeting in which a 'decision' was going to be made about what to do about the situation. Before we got to the day of the meeting, it became apparent that a 'decision' had already been made by my sister and her husband about what was going to be done: Mike's girlfriend and the dog were going to have to find a new place to live. This is what you can call a 'pre-ordained dialectic outcome'.
Now, in this regard, I am no different than my friend and/or philosophical adversary, Niki Raapana over at the 'Anti-Communitarian' site -- I don't like 'pre-ordained dialectics anymore than she does. Only, unlike her, I don't try to say that 'every dialectic and every dialectic outcome in the world is preordained by some puppetmaster behind the scenes'. I don't take kindly to being a 'puppet' anymore than Ms. Raapana does. Thus, getting back to my example here, something happened between the intended 'pre-ordained outcome' of the dialectic meeting at the townhouse -- and the actual meeting as it started to evolve. Simmering in the back of my head was the fact that I do not like to be 'excluded' or 'marginalized' from any decision that involves my life -- and in this case, my son's. Also, there was the fact that, over the period of a month or two, I had started to become very attached to the dog.
As the meeting started to take place, and as my sister laid out her 'pre-ordained decsion relative to my son's girlfriend and their dog leaving, an 'emotional volcano' was starting to well up inside myself. To repeat, I don't like 'pre-ordained, unilateral, behind the scenes decisions masked in a pseudo-democratic meeting' any more than Niki Raapana and the rest of the Anti-Communitarians do.
So I told my sister, 'That's fine, I will be leaving too.' The 'dialectic' at this moment had completely lost its 'pre-ordained characteristic' and instead had become very 'existentially real -- with real consequences, and real relationships at stake'. The 'pre-ordained factor' had just 'flown the coup'.
My sister immediately accused me of 'trying to control the meeting' -- that I was being a 'control freak' (as if she wasn't) and raw human emotions of anger and ethical outrage blew into the townhouse living room -- again, eliminating any semblance of 'pre-ordained determinism and predictability'.
The meeting finally came back to order, I suggested that my son and his girlfriend pay an extra $200 a month to cover extra townhouse utility and rental expenses. The dog -- 'Sammy' -- I can't remember what the final townhouse decision was on the dog. She stayed but her life was tragic and brief which still to this day leaves a hole in my heart. The entire story reads like a Sarah Palin family soap opera but the story was, and still is, very 'existentially real'. There was nothing pre-ordained about what happened that day -- or afterwards.
'Seek first to understand, then to be understood.' A very wise person said that (Steven Covey, 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People').
Don't paint Hegel's 'Dialectic Theory of Evolution' with an all encompassing black brush. It is not Hegel's Dialectic Theory of Evolution that is the problem with his 205 year old philosophy; rather it is other parts of his philosophy such as his unbridled abstractionism, his unrealistic idealism, and his Fichte-like 'German Nationalism and Collectivism' that did not steer Germany in a very good direction at all (like Fascism, Herdism, Anti-Semiticism, Nazism, and two brutal world wars...)
Thus, we have a combination of two problems today regarding the interpretation, extrapolation, and application of Hegel's 205 year old philosophy: 1. those who try conservatively and 'anal-retentively' to hold onto Hegel's philosophy as it exactly was 205 years ago; and 2. those critics of Hegel (read the 'Anti-Communitarians') who are still trying to criticize 'Classic-Archaic' Hegelian Philosophy even though it is 205 years outdated and most, or at least some, current day Post-Hegelian Philosophers (read, yours truly) who have read Classic Hegelian Theory know its inherent 'weaknesses' as well, or better, than its detractors and critics do -- and have made contemporary, compensatory adjustments while Hegel's contempory critics keep hammering away at crticisms that are getting extremely boring, they have been repeated so often.
If you are going to criticize Hegel, get with the current program all ye critics of Hegel! Don't keep repeating what is 205 years old! Most serious philosophers who have read Hegel, have also read enough of Marx, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, etc. to know what the 'classic Hegelian criticisms' are -- we don't need to keep reading yesterday's newspapers over and over and over again.
Let me repeat -- hopefully, for the last time. Hegel's brutal, unbridled abstractionism is well documented in the philosophical literature. If I want a lesson in brutal, unbridled abstractionism, I have two choices: 1. I can pick up Hegel's classic philosophical treatise: 'The Phenomenology of Mind (Spirit)' (1804). Or I can try reading an anti-Communitarian essay and see very quickly that the strongest proponents of Anti-Communitarianism seem to have learned very well from Hegel in this one regard -- everything written about in terms of 'single universals' such as one type of 'universal dialectic' that is 'pre-ordained' in terms of some underlying 'global conspiracy theory' when, in reality, there are literally millions of actual and potential 'dialectic conflicts and conflict resolutions' -- every last which one which is uniquely different from the one preceding it and the one following it depending on the issue, the context, the participants, the mood, the creativity and/or non-creativity in the problem-solving/conflict-resolving, who's trying to negotiate to a fair and just outcome vs. who is trying to intimidate and/or steamroll over top of his or her adversar's 'anti-thesis' and opposite wishes...
Regarding Hegel's 'Political Collectivism, Herdism, Nationalism' -- the Anti-Communitarians are preaching to the choir here. No argument, plain and simple. Most intelligent, independent-minded philosophers know the dangers of 'Extreme Collectivism, Nationalism, Group Herdism'...Just read Nietzsche's 'pre-Nazi' criticisms of Collectivist, Herdist, Nationalistic Germany...One can almost say that Nietzsche was warning pre-Nazi Germany of the dangers and the slippery slope of evolving Nazism.
I view Nazi Germany as an excellent albeit 'pathological' example of what I would call a 'cultural transference-reversal'. Napoleon invaded 'pre-Germany' and steamrolled over top of it because 'pre-Germany' was not united -- it was simply a collection of smaller 'regional states'. So after Napoleon was finally defeated, 'pre-Germany' became 'Nationalistic' and united into Germany with visions of what Napoleon had done to them still 'crashing around in their collective minds'. The 'compensatory, cultural transference' became to 'grow stronger as a country -- and as a united army' -- so that this type of national catastrophy -- and 'national humiliation' -- would never happen again. So German Nationalism, Collectivism, and Herdism was born. And the beginning of the evolution of Nazi Germany.
But not only did Germany grow their army, improve their national strength and power for purposes of self-defence. They also took something much more ominous and pathological from Napoleon. The idea of 'world dominance, German superiority, German arrogance, ethnic cleansing' -- and the idea of a 'Napoleon-like, pre-emptive strike towards world domination'. Nazi Germany had now reached it zenith of 'National Socio- and Psycho-Pathology'. 'Collectivism and Herdism' -- as initiated by Fichte and Hegel in a culture and a nation that was ready to hear what Fichte and Hegel had to say in this regard -- even though the direction of movment was rhetorically counter-argued over and over again by Nietzsche, a philosopher who was much more accurately attuned and intuitive to the place in Hell that this Socio-psycho-pathological was ultimately going to take Nationalistic Germany -- would ultimately rule the day, and at least three generations of Germans. Nationalism would take Germany to the top of the world cliff, the zenith of national military power with its potential for world power and destruction as it also looked over the threatening precipace of potential national self-destruction. Just like Napoleon before them. This is what I call a 'cultural or national transference re-creation and repetition complex and compulsion brought on by identification with the National Aggressor and Victimizer(Napoleon). What goes around comes around. The tragedy of negative transference both individual and collective. What starts out as an individual or national 'childhood traumacy and tragedy' (pre-Germany being brutally victimized by Napoleon's army) becomes deeply remembered as such, indeed, internalized into the national psyche of Germany -- and then 'replayed' generations later with Nazi Germany -- and Hitler -- playing the role of Napoleon, the world conquerer, who is ultimately defeated and destroyed by a stronger army (or coalition of armies) outsmarting him and overpowering him. Again, this is what I call 'National Transference Reversal'.
Such is the potential danger of Nationalism, Collectivism, Herdism...Group Think...gone mad...
There is no greater proponents of individualism -- in balance with the individualism of other individuals -- than this man, this philosopher, right here.
So let me get the message out there to all my readers and to the 'Anti-Communitarian' philosophical camp: Don't paint DGB Post-Hegelian Philosophy with the all-encompassing black paintbrush of 'Nationalism, Collectivism, Herdism, Group Think -- and 'Communitarianism' in this pathological sense.
Hegelian philosophy 205 years ago is not DGB Post-Hegelian philosophy today. Recognize the difference.
Even to you Ms. Rapaani, I quote Votaire (Toleration and Other Essays, 1755):
I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death, your right to say it.
Criticize Hegel's 'nationalism' if you wish, his 'collectivism', and/or his own particular brand of 'communitarianism'....in the way that the 'Anti-Communitarians' have stereotyped '(Pathological) Communitarianism'.
However, there is an 'infinite potential for different types of 'Communitarianism' -- some healthier, some more pathological than others. And the same goes for a negatively stereotyped definition of 'the dialectic'.
Indeed, I will distinguish between three different types of dialectics:
1. The 'Narcissistic Power Dialectic': Winner takes all. (Until the 'marginalized' and the 'suppressed' start to compensate for their losing strategy, re-build themselves from the shadows, re-generate themselves, slowly re-gaining power until they can topple the dominant, the oppressive, and the suppressive. This is 'Anaxamander's Dialectic', this is Marx's Dialectic -- Power in the hands of The Proletariat (which has never happened...It certainly never happened under Mao Tse Tung, or Lenin, or Stalin. These were 'narcissistic Capitalist leaders trying to disguise themselves as 'humanistic socialists'. They weren't. Like in America -- all the money was collected, passed around, and used at the top.). Marx was a combination of humanist and narcissistic pit bull. The 'narcissistic pitbull' side of his character -- and his philosophy -- was pathological.
2. The 'Egalitarian-Democratic-Dialectic': A type of dialectic where two so-motivated individuals or groups of individuals are actually looking for a 'win-win solution, resolution, and/or compromise' knowing that 'two opposite polarities need each other and need to come together in dialectic unity, wholism, and harmony (at least for a short while, if not a long while, until dialectic disharmony resurrects itself and demands a new negotiation towards a 'different dialectic harmony'...This is 'Heraclitus' Dialectic', 'Lao Tse's Dialectic (yin meets yang in harmonious dialectic balance) Nietzsche's Dialectic (The Birth of Tragedy), Freud (The homeostatic balance of 'id' and 'superego'.), Jung (the homeostatic balance of 'personna' and 'shadow'), Cannon (The Wisdom -- and the Homeostatic Balance -- of The Body), Perls and Gestalt Therapy (the balance of 'topdog' and 'underdog'), Derrida (the balanced of the 'dominant' and the 'suppressed' through the philosophy of 'deconstruction)...
3. 'The Collusive, Manipulative, Dog and Pony, Smoke and Mirrors' Dialectic: This is the type of dialectic that you and your friend Niki describe as if it is the only type of dialectic that operates in the world....Yes, this is a 'pathological type of dialectic' but don't blame it on Hegel unless you want to blame it on his pathological Nationalism, his pathological Collectivism, his pathological brand of Communitarianism...But don't paint all types of 'the dialectic' with the same black paintbrush. Indeed, personally, I would argue that 'Nationalism', 'Collectivism', and 'No-Individual-Civil Rights' Communitarianism is 'anti-dialectic' in the 'egalitarian-democratic-homeostatic balance' sense. Rather it belongs to either and/or both brands of the other two -- pathological -- dialectics listed above.
In contrast, 'Healthy Communitarianism' demands a healthy homeostatic balance between individual civil rights and community rights. In this respect, it is my individual right to 'swing my right arm as often and as far as I want, as long as I don't swing it into your face'...Healthy Communitarianism does not contradict the values of individualism as laid out by America's founding fathers: Tom Paine, Jefferson...nor the French Enlightenment philosophers such as Diderot, Voltaire, Montesque, Adam Smith, John Locke...and others...
But everything depends on the 'type' of dialectic we are talking about...
The type of collusive, behind the scenes, dog and pony show, smoke and mirrors show that you are writing about is only one type of dialectic -- and obviously a pathological one that has nothing to do with 'Ideal, Transparent, Win-Win Democracy'.
We must remember that no two Hegelian thinkers are exactly alike, any more than two Republican, Democrat, Liberal, and/or Conservative thinkers are exactly light.
And Hegelian thinking as it was theorized and applied some 205 years ago by Hegel is not the way that all 'post-Hegelian' thinkers and theorists are using the Hegelian Dialectic today.
Every Hegelian, post-Hegelian, and anti-Hegelian thinker has to be understood and evaluated in his or her own particular individual right and uniqueness -- including the two writers I have critiqued above...
dgb, July 1st-3rd, 2009.
David Gordon Bain,
Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are Still In Process...
Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism...
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Monday, June 29, 2009
A DGB Analysis of The Freud vs. Masson Seduction Theory Controversy (Part 1)
Reconstructed...June 29th, 2009...
I will aim to make this my most definitive, up-to-date DGB editorial essay on the Freud vs. Masson Seduction Theory Controversy -- complete with all its associated moral-ethical and legal issues -- and how this still debated controversy fits into the overall theory, practice, and evolution of Psychoanalysis, real and/or ideal.
For those of you who know little or nothing about this controversy, let me fill you in very quickly.
In 1896, Freud posed a theory -- albeit very briefly (it lasted less than a year) that hysteria was basically caused by the repression of a childhood sexual assault memory (or series of associated memories) -- either a flat out forceful childhood rape or a more manipulative seduction. The main perpetrators of these crimes against children seemed to be fathers, older brothers, uncles, or 'friends' of the family.
Now looking at this from a 2009 perspective, I would say that there was probably a significant grain of truth in what Freud was arguing back in 1896. However, Freud had a strong tendency throughout his career to 'jump to fast conclusions' on the basis of 'overgeneralizations' that tended not to support all of -- but, at best, only part of -- the clinical evidence available to him, and to the rest of the clinical profession and general public.
Certainly, Freud was not, and is not, the only person in the world who has ever been guilty of 'jumping to fast conclusions' and 'overgeneralizing'. We all can be deemed guilty of these charges at different time, and in different contexts, in our lives -- some more often and with more drastic consequences than others.
However, when you are the creator of a brand new school of psychology -- a theory of the functioning of the human mind -- it is extremely important that the conclusions and generalizations you come to as a theorist are 'good conclusions' and based on 'good generalizations' relative to the clinical evidence that is available to you.
Otherwise, the whole foundation of the school of psychology you are building is going to creak at its very foundations -- and if the conclusions and/or overgeneralizations that you have made are faulty and bad enough -- your school of psychology is likely going to come tumbling down at some point like a house of cards.
The only thing that is going to delay this structural collapse from happening is perhaps otherwise intelligent people who are 'too loyal to the status quo, too loyal to the assumed and presumed ideas of The Establishment they work for, and who either do not see, do not want to see, are too 'brainwashed' to see, are too scared to challenge, and/or are too happy with their $100,000 plus salary and lifestyle to want to challenge, an assumption and/or a whole set of assumptions that may be simply wrong, and/or -- worse -- pathological. This is where Erich Fromm's concept of 'the pathology of normalcy' (See 'The Sane Society') comes to life, and needs to be fully examined by those theorists who are still idealistically striving for 'the pursuit of truth, fairness, justice and The Enlightenment Way'.
It is easy to lose touch with these values in a sea of cultural and individual, pathological narcissism. We have another dialectic formula here. Cultural narcissism stimulates and shapes more and more individual narcissism. And individual narcissism, in turn, stimulates and shapes more and more cultural narcissism. The two co-factors -- cultural narcissism and individual narcissism -- are dialectically and often pathologically entwined. Each co-influences the embellishment and exasperation of the other with both individual and cultural narcissism escalating in the process.
However, pathological narcissism -- in and by itself -- is a house of cards that will eventually tumble under its own weight an instability. Historically, we have seen that in The Fall of Rome. We have seen that in the Fall of The Roman Catholic Church. We have seen that in The American Revolution. We have seen that in The French Revolution. We have seen that in The American Civil War. We have seen that in the collapse of 'Masculine Dominated (Narcissistic, Chauvinistic) Western and European Societies'. We have seen that just recently in the American Financial Sector and Housing Market -- Wall Street which in turn is 'dialectically connected' to Main Street and both collapse together as well as other non-American economies around the world. We are seeing the potential collapse of The Government of Iran based on its 'Narcissistic (Self-Serving) Practices'. And we may even see it in the destruction and/or self destruction of North Korea.
Wherever cultural and individual narcissism proliferates in and by itself like weeds in a garden -- these cultures generally collapse under the weight and the toxicology of their own weight and internal poisons.
Ayn Rand's ethics -- the core of her ethical-morality -- 'The Virtue of Selfishness' is fundamentally flawed, fundamentally wrong. Why? Because it promotes individual and cultural narcissism. 'Selfishness' or 'narcissism' in and by itself, is an ethical-moral value that is 'one-sided', it is 'homeostatically out of balance'.
Narcissism absolutely needs its polar, paradoxical, ethical-moral 'alter-ego' in order to be homeostatically balanced properly -- and that alter-ego is 'altruism'.
Please permit me to philosophically meander away from the main thrust of this philosophical essay for a few minutes here. The philosophical connection I am about to make here is an important one that Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida have all dealt with before me...and that is the dialectic interconnection between so-called 'objective theorizing' and 'narcissistic bias'.
The fundamental principle of life is the principle of 'homeostatic balance' (Cannon, 'The Wisdom of The Body', Nietzsche, 'The Birth of Tragedy', Freud, 'The Ego and The Id', Jung, The Persona and The Shadow, Fairbairn, The Exciting Object and The Rejecting Object, Berne, The Nurturing Parent and The Critical Parent, The Co-operative Child and The Rebellious Child, Perls, The Topdog and The Underdog).
In DGB conceptuology and terminology, 'The Constructive Ego' and 'The Deconstructive Ego' are 'alter-egos' that need to be actively and dialectically engaged with each other in order to maintain proper homeostatic balance within the organism.
'The organism' here -- the 'living, breathing organism' -- can be applied to mean any individual, or more metaphorically, it can be applied to mean any organization, any institution, any corporation, any society, any culture...
If an organization, an institution, a corporation, a society, a culture does not contain within it a 'deconstructive element', 'a Deconstructive Ego', then it will 'narcissistically pathologize, toxify, and ultimately self-destruct.
The Deconstructive Ego is the mental, the psychological, the philosophical, the legal, and the political equivalent of 'the liver'. Biologically, the liver removes toxins and pathogens from the body in whatever means it has available to it -- the bowels, the bladder, the immune system, the skin...
The Deconstructive Ego functions in similar fashion on a psychological, philosophical, legal, and political level. It removes pathogens and toxins from the individual's psyche, the organization's psyche, the society's psyche, the culture's psyche.
If there is no Deconstructive Ego, no Deconstructive Element, in a society -- which happens when there is no 'freedom of speech', 'freedom of the press' and 'freedom of philosophical analysis' -- then overwhelmingly narcissistic toxins and pathogens are going to poison the society, the culture, until it self-destructs.
Such is what we have partly seen in the financial sector and housing market in America. Such is what we are also seeing happen in both Iran and North Korea.
Right now, the Iran government is too busy killing and trying to fend off its own people to be able to significantly threaten the rest of the world.
North Korea, on the other hand, is like the national equivalent of a 'suicide bomber' -- ready to take out as much of the rest of the world as it can in the process of self-destructing itself. Particularly dangerous here, is a leader who seems close to dying anyway -- so what does he have to lose.
I digress. Back to Freud and Psychoanalysis.
Freud was a very active 'Creative-Constructive' theorist. He was also a very active Deconstructionist. Freud was constantly changing and modifying his own theories throughout his own lifetime.
However, Freud was not very good at accepting -- or even properly listening too -- the 'deconstructionist criticisms' of other Psychoanalytic and non-Psychoanalytic theorists. He was too righteous, too narcissistic, too authoritarian, too anal-retentive when it came to listening to other theorists criticize -- and modify -- his own Psychoanalytic theories. How many theorists did he lose -- I can't count them all -- Breuer, Adler, Jung, Reik, Rank, Ferenczi, and that is just off the top of my head; indeed, I could also include the 'post-Freudians', the 'neo-Freudians', and the 'anti-Freudians'...Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Leif Erickson, Harry Stack Sullivan, Berne, Perls, and who knows whether Freud would have ever accepted the 'Object Relationists' and all their various deviations from Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis such as: Melanie Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip, Kohut...and many others...
And last of all their was Jeffrey Masson who turned our attention back to Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory in 1896. Why did Freud abandon a theory that seemed to have a strong 'truth element' in it?
Masson's answer to this question was rather harsh and non-forgiving -- coming from his 'Rejecting, Deconstructive Topdog or Underdog' in DGB integrative terminology if you will.
Freud 'lost moral courage' -- according to Masson's interpretation, analysis, and judgment of the situation. (Masson, The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory', 1984, 1985, 1992, preface)
Freud 'lost moral courage' because he did not want to jeopardize his career in medicine, psychiatry, and Psychoanalysis. He succumbed to the external social and economic pressures, forces, leverage applied against him by 'non-believing' Psychiatrists who had the political and economic power to make or break Freud's early Psychiatric and Psychoanalytic career. So argues Masson (The Assault, 1992.)
Masson could be at least partly right. It is quite possible that Freud had legitimate reason to fear the 'greater political and economic power' of other, older Psychiatrists and Doctors in his profession who could have potentially ruined his career.
Indeed, it could be easily argued that what could have happened to Freud in 1896 if he had continued to 'open the social can of worms' of childhood sexual abuse is exactly what did happen to Masson in the 1980s some 85 to 90 years later. Masson's career in Psychoanalysis was destroyed in the 1980s because he ethically persisted in an area where Freud -- for whatever reason -- backed away from, and didn't come back too often to this most controversial of issues, for the remainder of his long career (some 40 years).
Still, I will follow and accept Masson's logical argument about 50 percent of the way -- and no further.
If Freud wanted only to stay clear away from the most controversial issue of childhood sexual abuse, he could have done this much more easily than by 'turning Psychoanalysis upside down to do it'.
Freud didn't need to fully engage in, obsess with, and trumpet his 'new' Psychoanalytic theory of 'Childhood Sexuality, Oedipal and Fantasy Theory' just to escape the 'heat of talking about childhood sexual abuse and its relation to hysteria'.
So why then did Freud turn Psychoanalysis upside down from 'Seduction Theory' to Childhood Sexual Fantasy and Oedipal Theory'?
Freud turned Psychoanalysis upside down between 1896 and let us say 1905 because he thought he was right. Period.
No loss of moral courage. Or maybe some loss of moral courage to the extent that he steered away from the topic of childhood sexual abuse for most of the rest of his career.
However, how many of wouldn't have done the same? Particularly, in that 'highly patriarchal culture'. Knowing that by 'blowing the horn of child sexual abuse' you might be jeopardizing your own career, your own economic stability. It may be a sad statement of human motivation stemming all the way back to the philosophy of 'Sophism' in ancient Greece (who believed basically in the principle of 'subjective ethical relativism' based on 'monetary narcissism'), through Stoicism, Cynicism, Epicureanism, Hobbes, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Marx's 'cynical pessimism' relative to 'Narcissistic Capitalism': 'When money talks, ethics walks.' (my personal philosophical rendition of what Marx believed).
Ethical righteousness supersedes personal narcissism only when the personal narcissism doesn't involve us. (Call this 'the philosophy and psychology of personal and/or group exclusionism and marginalization').
Now, to be sure, this is a generalization as well -- and some might say an overgeneralization. Every generalization carries the seeds of its own self-destruction which is contained in exactly that part of 'life and truth' that lies outside of the boundaries of the generalization. (This is a Hegelian extrapolation.)
Narcissism and ethics are 'dialectic antagonists and war partners' (unless you follow 'The Virtue of Selfishness' Philosophy of Ayn Rand). We all have to walk the plank of personal narcissism vs. personal ethics each and every day. Dionysus and Narcissus vs. Apollo. (Perhaps an unfair fight -- two against one.) We all have to make a 'Kierkegaardian either/or choice' at different points in the day as we walk out onto our existential plank -- the plank and the choices that end up defining us:
Either jump into Dionysus and Narcissus' (non-ethical) pool. Or jump into Apollo's (ethical) pool. Depends partly on our character, partly on the context of the situaiton. Our impulses. Our restraints. Our values. The extent of the social, political and/or economic forces being used against us. And/or on the restraints and forces being used by ourselves, against ourselves.
From Dionysus in the Ancient Greek period arose an even more hedonistically and narcissistically extreme -- and evil -- mythological-religious figure in 'Satan', who, I speculate arose during the Scholastic-Religious-Medieval period of Western philosophy. I am not sure of my facts here. I will have to research this subject-matter and get back to you.
Apollo, Dionysus, Zeus, Hera, Gaia, Approdite, Aries, Cupid, God, Satan, Jesus...are all mythological-relgious projections and extensions of ourselves and our own inner conflicts between good and evil, narcissism and altruism, narcissism and ethics...patriarchy and matriarchy...love and war, love, lust, and reason...
Back to the issue of 'moral courage'...
How many of us don't choose to 'tell people what they don't want to hear' particularly if that person is our boss who could potentially end our job or career with perhaps just a little too much 'honesty', 'bluntness', 'internal congruence and essence' coming out of our mouth?
How many politicians turn their back on the number of ethical transgressions committed in the process of 'government functioning' (and/or dysfunctioning)?
Would Dr. Masson have shown the same 'moral courage' if he had the opportunity to re-live the 1980s all over again? Would he have re-endured a 10 year lawsuit against Janet Malcolm and The New Yorker -- all over again -- if he had the chance to 're-trumpet his moral righteousness and courage'?
Maybe. Maybe not. I take my hat off to you Dr. Masson. I think that your work has been important -- indeed, imperative -- to the proper evolution of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Psychology/Psychotherapy/Psychiatry in general.
I respect your moral courage.
Which is not to say that I think you are completely right about Freud's motivation -- or the validity of The Seduction Theory in general.
The Seduction Theory is a lopsided, one-sided, overly reductionist theory -- just as The Oedipal Theory is on the other side of The Psychoanalytic fence. It remains for a Post-Hegelian philosopher and psychological theorist like myself to integrate or synthesize the differences between Freud's Traumacy Theory, his Seduction Theory, and his Oedipal Theory -- along with any other theories that may be equally relevant. (Adler, Jung, Reich, Fairbairn, Guntrip, Berne, Kohut, Perls...)
And everything that I have read from other biographers and theorists -- other than from you, Dr. Masson -- have stated that Freud did not lack moral courage, in fact, this was a strength, not a weakness, in his character. I will search out some quotes by Erich Fromm in this regard.
No, Freud may have committed some ethical transgressions in his life, knowingly or unknowingly, such as in his 'trumpeting of cocaine usage', such as in the Emma Ekstein medical fiasco, such as in perhaps steering away from the controversial issue of childhood sexual abuse. But not to the tune of turning Psychoanalysis on its ear -- and re-theorizing everything.
This he did because he believed what he was doing was right -- even if it was partly or mainly wrong in the extent of his 'theoretical over-compensations'.
Freud was a 'theoretical extremist'. He would either steer 'hard right' and/or overcompensate and then 'steer hard left'.
It remains for other, clearer heads, and more moderate minds, to creatively integrate Freud's left and right, up and down, theoretical extremism.
That is our intent here -- in Hegel's Hotel.
-- dgb, June 29th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations,
-- Are still in process...
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Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (born March 28, 1941 as Jeffrey Lloyd Masson in Chicago, Illinois) is an American author, residing in New Zealand. Masson is known for his conclusions about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. In his book The Assault on Truth, Masson argued that Freud may have abandoned his seduction theory because he feared that granting the truth of his female patients' claims that they had been sexually abused would hinder the acceptance of his psychoanalytic methods. He has also written about animals and animal rights.
Contents
1 Life and career
2 Views on the Seduction Theory
3 Recent work
4 Personal life
5 Name
6 Writings by Masson
6.1 Reviews of his books
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
Life and career
Masson is the son of Jacques Moussaieff, a French Mizrahi Sephardic Jew of Bukharian ancestry, and Diana (Dina) Zeiger from a Ashkenazi strict Orthodox Jewish family. Both parents were followers of the British Jewish mystic Paul Brunton. During the 1940s and 1950s, Brunton often lived with them, eventually designating Jeffrey as his heir apparent. In 1956, Diana and Jacques Masson moved to Uruguay because Brunton believed that a third world war was imminent. Jeffrey and his sister Linda followed in 1959.
At Brunton's urging, Masson went to Harvard University to study Sanskrit. While at Harvard, Masson became disillusioned with Brunton. Brunton and his influence and the Masson family form the subject of Masson's autobiographical book My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion. Harvard University granted Masson a B.A. in 1964 and a Ph.D. with Honors in 1970. His degrees were in Sanskrit and Indian Studies. While undertaking his Ph.D., Masson also studied, supported by fellowships, at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, the University of Calcutta, and the University of Poona.
He taught Sanskrit and Indian Studies at the University of Toronto, 1969-80, reaching the rank of Professor. He has also held short term appointments at Brown University, the University of California, and the University of Michigan. From 1981 to 1992, he was a Research Associate, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, at the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Views on the Seduction Theory
In 1970, Masson began studying to become a psychoanalyst at the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute, completing a full clinical training course in 1978. During this time, he befriended the psychoanalyst Kurt Eissler and became acquainted with Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna Freud. Eissler designated Masson to succeed him as Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives after his and Anna Freud's death. Masson learned German and studied the history of psychoanalysis. In 1980 Masson was appointed Projects Director of the Freud Archives, with full access to Freud's correspondence and other unpublished papers. While perusing this material, Masson concluded that Freud might have rejected the seduction theory in order to advance the cause of psychoanalysis and to maintain his own place within the psychoanalytic inner circle. [1]
Masson's actions, along with those of Kurt Eissler and Peter Swales, form the subject of In the Freud Archives, an article in the New Yorker by Janet Malcolm, which she later expanded into a book.
In 1981, Masson's controversial conclusions were discussed in a series of New York Times articles by Ralph Blumenthal, to the dismay of the psychoanalytic establishment. Masson was subsequently dismissed from his position as project director of the Freud Archives. and stripped of his membership in psychoanalytic professional societies. Masson was defended by Alice Miller [2] and Muriel Gardiner ("While striving not to take sides," Gardiner said, "I consider him a good and energetic worker and a worthwhile scholar.") [3]
Masson later wrote several books critical of psychoanalysis, including The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. In the introduction to The Assault on Truth, Masson admitted that, "My pessimistic conclusions may possibly be wrong. The documents may in fact allow a very different reading." [4] Janet Malcolm interviewed Masson at length when writing her long New Yorker article on this controversy. Masson sued the New Yorker for defamation, claiming that Malcolm had misquoted him. The ensuing trial drew considerable attention.[5]The decade-long, $US10 million lawsuit came to a close when the court ruled in the New Yorker 's favor.[6]
In 1985, Masson edited and translated the complete correspondence of Freud with Wilhelm Fliess after having convinced Anna Freud to make all of it available. He also looked up the original places and documents in La Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris,[7] where Freud had studied with Charcot. Masson has written that people used to be very interested in himself but as far as the cause was concerned, there is silence from the scientific community. [8]
[edit] Recent work
Since the early 1990s, Masson has written a number of books on the emotional life of animals, one of which, When Elephants Weep, has been translated into 20 languages. He has explained this radical change in the subject of his writings as follows:
“ "I'd written a whole series of books about psychiatry, and nobody bought them. Nobody liked them. Nobody. Psychiatrists hated them, and they were much too abstruse for the general public. It was very hard to make a living, and I thought, 'As long as I'm not making a living, I may as well write about something I really love: animals.'"[9] ”
Masson also wrote a book about his new home country New Zealand, including an interview with Sir Edmund Hillary. [10] Among other things, Masson and Hillary talk about Alexandra David-Neel and the story of her Tulpa, both of them having read her books Magic and Mystery in Tibet, Initiation and Initiates in Tibet and My Journey to Lhasa. Masson says that he met her in 1957 when he was 16, at her country house at Digne in the south of France.
Personal life
Masson is married to Leila Masson, a pediatrician. [11] They have two sons, Ilan and Manu. He also has a daughter, Simone, by a previous marriage. [12] Masson was once engaged to University of Michigan feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, who wrote the preface to his A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality, and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century.
Name
Jeffrey Masson's grandgrandfather Shlomo Moussaieff (rabbi) was a kabbalist and founder of the Bukharian Quarter in Jerusalem. His grandfather Henry Mousaieff changed his familyname from Moussaieff to Masson. Jeffrey Masson changed his middlename from Lloyd to Moussaieff.
Masson's father's first cousin is Shlomo Moussaieff (businessman). Masson's first cousin is pianist James Raphael and his second cousin is First Lady of Iceland Dorrit Moussaieff.
[edit] Writings by Masson
1974. "India and the Unconscious: Erik Erikson on Gandhi," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 55: 519-26. Discussion by T. C. Sinha: 527.
1976. "Perversions-some observations", Israel Ann. Psychiat. rel. Disc., (1976b), 14, 354-61.
1976. (with Terri C. Masson) "The Navel of Neurosis: Trauma, Memory and Denial.", paper presented to the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society [13]
1978 (with Terri C. Masson), "Buried Memories on the Acropolis. Freud's Relation to Mysticism and Anti-Semitism", International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 59: 199-208.
1980. The Oceanic Feeling: The Origins of Religious Sentiment in Ancient India. (Table of contents)
1981. The Peacock's Egg: Love Poems from Ancient India, W. S. Merwin and J. Moussaieff Masson, eds. ISBN 0-86547-059-6
1984. The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. Farrar Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-374-10642-8
1984. "Freud and the Seduction Theory A challenge to the foundations of psychoanalysis," The Atlantic Monthly, February 1984.
1985 (editor). The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904. ISBN 0-674-15420-7
1986. A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century. ISBN 0-374-13501-0, last edition 1988
1988. Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing. ISBN 0-689-11929-1
1990. Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of A Psychoanalyst. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-52368-X, new edition 2003
1993. My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion, Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-56778-4
Dogs Never Lie About Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs.
1995. When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Life of Animals.
The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals.
The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey Into the Feline Heart. ISBN 0345448820
The Cat Who Came in from the Cold. Wheeler. ISBN 1587249146
The Emperors Embrace Reflections on Animal Families and Fatherhood.
The Evolution of Fatherhood: A Celebration of Animal and Human Families.
Raising the Peaceable Kingdom: What Animals Can Teach Us about the Social Origins of Tolerance and Friendship.
Lost Prince : The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. [14]
Sex and Yoga: Psychoanalysis and the Indian Religious Experience in Vishnu on Freud's Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism, T.G. Vaidyanathan & Jeffrey J. Kripal (editors): , Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195658353, Paperback (Edition: 2003)[15]
Slipping into Paradise: Why I live in New Zealand. ISBN 0-345-46634-9
2006. Altruistic Armadillos - Zen-Like Zebras: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals. ISBN 978-0-345-47881-8 (0-345-47881-9)
See Masson's praise of the book by Luna Tarlo, the mother of Andrew Cohen.
1995, "A Note on U.G. Krishnamurti."
[edit] Reviews of his books
The Original Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904: By William McGrath.
Against Therapy:
By Jeanne Stubbs.
By Wray Herbert.
Final Analysis: By Michael Sacks.
Breaking Away From the Cult: By Carol Tavris.
[edit] References
^ "Did Freud's Isolation Lead Him to Reverse Theory on Neurosis?" by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, August 25, 1981
^ PSYCHOLOGIE HEUTE, April 1987, P.21, 22: "Im Gegensatz zu manchen Interpreten, die, wie zum Beispiel Marianne Krüll, Marie Balmary oder Jeffrey Masson, Freuds Abkehr von der Wahrheit als Folge seiner Familiengeschichte deuten, sehe ich diesen Schritt als Folge und Ausdruck unserer jahrtausendealten kinderfeindlichen Tradition, in der wir auch heute noch leben. Die Ergebnisse der oben genannten historischen Forscher können trotzdem korrekt sein, aber ich meine, daß es Freud trotz der persönlichen Familiengeschichte möglich gewesen wäre, seiner Entdeckung treu zu bleiben, wenn die Gesellschaft als Ganzes nicht so kinderfeindlich gewesen wäre, wenn schon damals andere, freiere Erziehungsmuster denkbar gewesen wären. Doch zur Zeit Freuds war es noch absolut unmöglich, die Unschuld der Eltern in Frage zu stellen." Alice Miller in interview entitled Wie Psychotherapien das Kind verraten
^ "Freud Archives Research Chief Removed in Dispute Over Yale Talk" by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times November 9, 1981.
^ Masson, Jeffrey (1992). The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. New York: Harper Perennial. xxxv. ISBN 0-06-097457-5.
^ David Margolick (1994-11-03). "Psychoanalyst Loses Libel Suit Against a New Yorker Reporter". The New York Times.
^ SMH article October 6, 2007
^ History of La Salpêtrière
^ Masson, J., 1990. Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-52368-X.
^ Powells.com Interviews - Jeffrey Masson
^ Masson, J., "A Conversation with a Great Ordinary Kiwi: Sir Edmund Hillary," chpt. 7 in Slipping into Paradise.
^ [1]
^ [2]
^ [3]
^ Review
^ Table of Contents
[edit] Further reading
Kurt R. Eissler, 2001. Freud and the seduction theory: A brief love affair, New York: International Universities Press.
Janet Malcolm, 2002. In the Freud Archives, New York Review of Books. ISBN 159017027X
Sthitaprajna (Perfect Yogi) - Part 2
Luna Tarlo, 1997. The Mother of God. Plover Press. ISBN 9781570270437
[edit] External links
From Jeffrey Masson's Website
Masson's website.
About Jeff (with new Photo of Jeffrey and his family)
Photo
Articles
"Scholars seek the hidden Freud in newly emerging letters." The first of two NYT articles by Ralph Blumenthal, published August 18, 1981.
"Till Press Do Us Part: The Trial of Janet Malcolm and Jeffrey Masson."
Interviews
Transcript of an interview: Jeffrey Masson talking with Kirsten Garrett about Sigmund Freud and Emma Eckstein/ first broadcast on The Science Show in 1986, second broadcast 3 June 2006 presented by Robyn Williams
[4] A conversation about the lives of animals with Susan McCarthy and Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason on Jun 30, 1995, Duration 60 min (Audio)
"Walking on the Beach with Jeffrey Masson's Cats," November 14, 2002
"Conversation between Masson and Richard Fidler. Related Audio, December 14, 2007.
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Moussaieff_Masson"
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Janet Malcolm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Janet Malcolm (born 1934) is an American writer and journalist on staff at The New Yorker magazine. She is the author of The Journalist and the Murderer, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, and In the Freud Archives.
Malcolm is best known for the 1991 lawsuit triggered by In the Freud Archives, when psychoanalyst Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson sued Malcolm and The New Yorker for $10 million, after claiming that Malcolm had fabricated explosive quotations attributed to him. After several years of proceedings, the court found against Masson.
Craig Seligman wrote of her: "Like Sylvia Plath, whose not-niceness she has laid open with surgical skill, she discovered her vocation in not-niceness ... Malcolm's blade gleams with a razor edge. Her critics tend to go after her with broken bottles."[1] The influential critic Harold Bloom has praised her "wonderful exuberance," writing that Malcolm's books, "transcend what they appear to be: superb reportage."[2]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Background and personal
* 2 Masson case
* 3 The Journalist and the Murderer
* 4 Works
* 5 References
* 6 Sources
* 7 External links
[edit] Background and personal
Malcolm was born in Prague in 1934, one of two daughters--the other is author Marie Winn-- of a psychiatrist father. She has resided in the United States since her family emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1939. Malcolm was educated at the University of Michigan and lives in New York City. Her first husband, Donald Malcolm, reviewed books for The New Yorker in the 1950s and 1960's. Her second husband, whom she wed in 1975, was long-time New Yorker editor Gardner Botsford; Botsford died at age 87 in September, 2004.
Early Malcolm book jackets report her "living in New York with her husband and daughter." Her daughter is also mentioned in the text of The Crime of Sheila McGough.
[edit] Masson case
Publication of the book In The Freud Archives triggered a $10 million legal challenge by Jeffrey Masson, former project director for the Freud Archives, who claimed that Malcolm had libelled him by fabricating quotations attributed to him; these quotes, Masson contended, had brought him into disrepute.
In the disputed quotations, Masson called himself an "intellectual gigolo", who had slept with over 1000 women; said he wanted to turn the Freud estate into a haven of "sex, women and fun"; and claimed that he was, "after Freud, the greatest analyst that ever lived." Malcolm was unable to produce all the disputed material on tape. The case was partially adjudicated before the Supreme Court[3], and after years of proceedings, a jury finally found against Masson in 1994. (See the opinion at Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc. (89-1799), 501 U.S. 496 (1991))
In August, 1995, Malcolm discovered a misplaced notebook containing three of the disputed quotes. As reported in The New York Times[4] the author "declared in an affidavit under penalty of perjury that the notes were genuine."
[edit] The Journalist and the Murderer
The thesis of The Journalist and the Murderer is contained in its first sentence: "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible."[5]
Malcolm's example was popular non-fiction writer Joe McGinniss, author of The Selling of the President, among others; while researching his non-fiction, true crime book Fatal Vision, McGinniss lived with the defense team of former Green Beret doctor Jeffrey MacDonald, then on trial for the 1970 murders of his pregnant wife and two daughters. In the published Fatal Vision, McGinniss concluded that MacDonald was a sociopath and had been unbalanced by amphetamines when he slew his family. McGinniss drew upon the work of social critic Christopher Lasch to construct a portrait of MacDonald as a "pathological narcissist".[6]
Malcolm contended that McGinniss was pressed into this strategy for professional and structural reasons — by MacDonald's "lack of vividness"[7] as a real-life character who would be carrying the book. "As every journalist will confirm," Malcolm writes[8],
"MacDonald's uninterestingness is not unusual at all...When a journalist fetches up against someone like [him], all he can do is flee and hope that a more suitable subject will turn up soon. In the MacDonald-McGinniss case we have an instance of a journalist who apparently found out too late that the subject of his book was not up to scratch — not a member of the wonderful race of auto-fictionalizers, like Joseph Mitchell's Joe Gould and Truman Capote's Perry Smith, on whom the "non-fiction novel" depends for its life...The solution that McGinniss arrived at for dealing with MacDonald's characterlessness was not a satisfactory one, but it had to do."
Per Malcolm, it was to conceal this deficit that McGinniss quoted liberally from Lasch's 1979 study The Culture of Narcissism. This, to her, was a professional sin. McGinniss' moral sin, his "indefensible" act in her view, was to pretend to a belief in MacDonald's innocence, long after he'd become convinced of the man's guilt.
The book created a sensation when in March 1989 it appeared in two parts in The New Yorker magazine.[9] Roundly criticized upon first publication[10], the book is still controversial, though some have since become regarded as a classic[11], and ranks ninety-seventh in The Modern Library's list of the twentieth century's "100 Best Works of Nonfiction".[12] As Douglas McCollum wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review, "In the decade after Malcolm's essay appeared, her once controversial theory became received wisdom."
[edit] Works
* Diana & Nikon: Essays on the Aesthetic of Photography (1980)
* Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (1981)
* In The Freud Archives (1984)
* The Journalist and The Murderer (1990)
* The Purloined Clinic: Selected Writings (1992), which contains the essays "A Girl of the Zeitgeist" and "The Window Washer"
* The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes (1994)
* The Crime of Sheila McGough (1999)
* Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey (2001)
* Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (2007)
[edit] References
1. ^ Seligman, Craig. Salon, "Brilliant Careers: Janet Malcolm". February 2, 2000.
2. ^ Bloom, Harold, The New York Times Book Review, "War Within The Walls", May 27, 1984.
3. ^ / Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., 501 U.S. 496 (1991)
4. ^ Stout, David, The New York Times, "Malcolm's Notes and a Child at Play", August 30, 1995
5. ^ Malcolm, Janet, The Journalist and the Murderer, New York: Knopf, 1990.
6. ^ Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer, pps. 28, 72-3.
7. ^ Malcolm, p.68
8. ^ Malcolm, pps. 71-3.
9. ^ Scardino, Albert, The New York Times. "Ethic, Reporters and The New Yorker", March 21. 1989. "Janet Malcolm, a staff writer for The New Yorker, returned her magazine to the center of the long-running debate over ethics in journalism this month...Her declarations provoked outrage among authors, reporters and editors, who rushed last week to distinguish themselves from the journalists Miss Malcolm was describing."
10. ^ See Friendly, Fred W., The New York Times Book Review, "Was Trust Betrayed?", February 25, 1990, and Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher, The New York Times, "Deception and Journalism: How Far to Go for the Story", February 22, 1990.
11. ^ McCollum, Douglas, Columbia Journalism Review, "You Have The Right to Remain Silent", January, February, 2003.
12. ^ The Modern Library 100 Best
Sources
* Janet Malcolm by Craig Seligman, Salon.com, February 29, 2000
External links
* NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH?
* The Lives They Lived: Kurt Eissler, b. 1908; Keeper of Freud's Secrets, By JANET MALCOLM, Published: January 2, 2000
* Malcolm archive from The New York Review of Books
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Malcolm"
Categories: 1934 births | Living people | American journalists | Czech expatriates | Members of The American Academy of Arts and Letters | People from Prague | New Yorker staff writers | University of Michigan alumni
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Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc. (89-1799), 501 U.S. 496 (1991)
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MASSON v. NEW YORKER MAGAZINE, INC.
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
No. 89-1799
M. MASSON, PETITIONER v. NEW YORKER MAGAZINE, INC., ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. and JANET MALCOLM
[June 20, 1991]
Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this libel case, a public figure claims he was defamed by an author who, with full knowledge of the inaccuracy, used quotation marks to attribute to him comments he had not made. The First Amendment protects authors and journalists who write about public figures by requiring a plaintiff to prove that the defamatory statements were made with what we have called "actual malice," a term of art denoting deliberate or reckless falsification. We consider in this opinion whether the attributed quotations had the degree of falsity required to prove this state of mind, so that the public figure can defeat a motion for summary judgment and proceed to a trial on the merits of the defamation claim.
I
Petitioner Jeffrey Masson trained at Harvard University as a Sanskrit scholar, and in 1970 became a professor of Sanskrit & Indian Studies at the University of Toronto. He spent eight years in psychoanalytic training, and qualified as an analyst in 1978. Through his professional activities, he came to know Dr. Kurt Eissler, head of the Sigmund Freud Archives, and Dr. Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud and a major psychoanalyst in her own right. The Sigmund Freud Archives, located at Maresfield Gardens outside of London, serves as a repository for materials about Freud, including his own writings, letters, and personal library. The materials, and the right of access to them, are of immense value to those who study Freud, his theories, life and work.
In 1980, Eissler and Anna Freud hired petitioner as Projects Director of the Archives. After assuming his post, petitioner became disillusioned with Freudian psychology. In a 1981 lecture before the Western New England Psychoanalytical Society in New Haven, Connecticut, he advanced his theories of Freud. Soon after, the Board of the Archives terminated petitioner as Projects Director.
Respondent Janet Malcolm is an author and a contributor to respondent The New Yorker, a weekly magazine. She contacted petitioner in 1982 regarding the possibility of an article on his relationship with the Archives. He agreed, and the two met in person and spoke by telephone in a series of interviews. Based on the interviews and other sources, Malcolm wrote a lengthy article. One of Malcolm's narrative devices consists of enclosing lengthy passages in quotation marks, reporting statements of Masson, Eissler, and her other subjects.
During the editorial process, Nancy Franklin, a member of the fact-checking department at The New Yorker, called petitioner to confirm some of the facts underlying the article. According to petitioner, he expressed alarm at the number of errors in the few passages Franklin discussed with him. Petitioner contends that he asked permission to review those portions of the article which attributed quotations or information to him, but was brushed off with a never-fulfilled promise to "get back to [him]." App. 67. Franklin disputes petitioner's version of their conversation. App. 246-247.
The New Yorker published Malcolm's piece in December 1983, as a two-part series. In 1984, with knowledge of at least petitioner's general allegation that the article contained defamatory material, respondent Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., published the entire work as a book, entitled In the Freud Archives.
Malcolm's work received complimentary reviews. But this gave little joy to Masson, for the book portrays him in a most unflattering light. According to one reviewer,
"Masson the promising psychoanalytic scholar emerges gradually, as a grandiose egotist — mean-spirited, self-serving, full of braggadocio, impossibly arrogant and, in the end, a self-destructive fool. But it is not Janet Malcolm who calls him such: his own words reveal this psychological profile — a self-portrait offered to us through the efforts of an observer and listener who is, surely, as wise as any in the psychoanalytic profession." Coles, Freudianism Confronts Its Malcontents, Boston Globe, May 27, 1984, pp. 58, 60.
Petitioner wrote a letter to the New York Times Book Review calling the book "distorted." In response, Malcolm stated:
"Many of [the] things Mr. Masson told me (on tape) were discreditable to him, and I felt it best not to include them. Everything I do quote Mr. Masson as saying was said by him, almost word for word. (The `almost' refers to changes made for the sake of correct syntax.) I would be glad to play the tapes of my conversation with Mr. Masson to the editors of The Book Review whenever they have 40 or 50 short hours to spare." App. 222-223.
Petitioner brought an action for libel under California law in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. During extensive discovery and repeated amendments to the complaint, petitioner concentrated on various passages alleged to be defamatory, dropping some and adding others. The tape recordings of the interviews demonstrated that petitioner had, in fact, made statements substantially identical to a number of the passages, and those passages are no longer in the case. We discuss only the passages relied on by petitioner in his briefs to this Court.
Each passage before us purports to quote a statement made by petitioner during the interviews. Yet in each instance no identical statement appears in the more than 40 hours of taped interviews. Petitioner complains that Malcolm fabricated all but one passage; with respect to that passage, he claims Malcolm omitted a crucial portion, rendering the remainder misleading.
(a) "Intellectual Gigolo." Malcolm quoted a description by petitioner of his relationship with Eissler and Anna Freud as follows:
" `Then I met a rather attractive older graduate student and I had an affair with her. One day, she took me to some art event, and she was sorry afterward. She said, "Well, it is very nice sleeping with you in your room, but you're the kind of person who should never leave the room — you're just a social embarrassment anywhere else, though you do fine in your own room." And you know, in their way, if not in so many words, Eissler and Anna Freud told me the same thing. They like me well enough "in my own room." They loved to hear from me what creeps and dolts analysts are. I was like an intellectual gigolo — you get your pleasure from him, but you don't take him out in public. . . .' " In the Freud Archives 38.
The tape recordings contain the substance of petitioner's reference to his graduate student friend, App. 95, but no suggestion that Eissler or Anna Freud considered him, or that he considered himself, an " `intellectual gigolo.' " Instead, petitioner said:
"They felt, in a sense, I was a private asset but a public liability. . . . They liked me when I was alone in their living room, and I could talk and chat and tell them the truth about things and they would tell me. But that I was, in a sense, much too junior within the hierarchy of analysis, for these important training analysts to be caught dead with me." Id., at 104.
(b) "Sex, Women, Fun." Malcolm quoted petitioner as describing his plans for Maresfield Gardens, which he had hoped to occupy after Anna Freud's death:
" `It was a beautiful house, but it was dark and sombre and dead. Nothing ever went on there. I was the only person who ever came. I would have renovated it, opened it up, brought it to life. Maresfield Gardens would have been a center of scholarship, but it would also have been a place of sex, women, fun. It would have been like the change in The Wizard of Oz, from black-and-white into color.' " In the Freud Archives 33.
The tape recordings contain a similar statement, but in place of the reference to "sex, women, fun," and The Wizard of Oz, petitioner commented:
"[I]t is an incredible storehouse. I mean, the library, Freud's library alone is priceless in terms of what it contains: all his books with his annotations in them; the Schreber case annotated, that kind of thing. It's fascinating." App. 127.
Petitioner did talk, earlier in the interview, of his meeting with a London analyst:
"I like him. So, and we got on very well. That was the first time we ever met and you know, it was buddybuddy, and we were to stay with each other and [laughs] we were going to pass women on to each other, and we were going to have a great time together when I lived in the Freud house. We'd have great parties there and we were [laughs] —
. . . . .
". . . going to really, we were going to live it up." Id., at 129.
(c) "It Sounded Better." Petitioner spoke with Malcolm about the history of his family, including the reasons his grandfather changed the family name from Moussaieff to Masson, and why petitioner adopted the abandoned family name as his middle name. The article contains the passage:
" `My father is a gem merchant who doesn't like to stay in any one place too long. His father was a gem merchant, too — a Bessarabian gem merchant, named Moussaieff, who went to Paris in the twenties and adopted the name Masson. My parents named me Jeffrey Lloyd Masson, but in 1975 I decided to change my middle name to Moussaieff — it sounded better.' " In the Freud Archives 36.
In the most similar tape recorded statement, Masson explained at considerable length that his grandfather had changed the family name from Moussaieff to Masson when living in France, "[j]ust to hide his Jewishness." Petitioner had changed his last name back to Moussaieff, but his thenwife Terry objected that "nobody could pronounce it and nobody knew how to spell it, and it wasn't the name that she knew me by." Petitioner had changed his name to Mous saieff because he "just liked it." "[I]t was sort of part of analysis: a return to the roots, and your family tradition and so on." In the end, he had agreed with Terry that "it wasn't her name after all," and used Moussaieff as a middle instead of a last name. App. 87-89.
(d) "I Don't Know Why I Put It In." The article recounts part of a conversation between Malcolm and petitioner about the paper petitioner presented at his 1981 New Haven lecture:
"[I] asked him what had happened between the time of the lecture and the present to change him from a Freudian psychoanalyst with somewhat outre views into the bitter and belligerent anti-Freudian he had become.
"Masson sidestepped my question. `You're right, there was nothing disrespectful of analysis in that paper,' he said. `That remark about the sterility of psychoanalysis was something I tacked on at the last minute, and it was totally gratuitous. I don't know why I put it in.' " In the Freud Archives 53.
The tape recordings instead contain the following discussion of the New Haven lecture:
Masson: "So they really couldn't judge the material. And, in fact, until the last sentence I think they were quite fascinated. I think the last sentence was an in, [sic] possibly, gratuitously offensive way to end a paper to a group of analysts. Uh, — "
Malcolm: "What were the circumstances under which you put it [in]? . . ."
Masson: "That it was, was true.
. . . . .
". . . I really believe it. I didn't believe anybody would agree with me.
. . . . .
". . . But I felt I should say something because the paper's still well within the analytic tradition in a sense. . . .
. . . . .
". . . It's really not a deep criticism of Freud. It contains all the material that would allow one to criticize Freud but I didn't really do it. And then I thought, I really must say one thing that I really believe, that's not going to appeal to anybody and that was the very last sentence. Because I really do believe psychoanalysis is entirely sterile . . . ." App. 176.
(e) "Greatest Analyst Who Ever Lived." The article contains the following self-explanatory passage:
"A few days after my return to New York, Masson, in a state of elation, telephoned me to say that Farrar, Straus & Giroux has taken The Assault on Truth [Masson's book]. `Wait till it reaches the best-seller list, and watch how the analysts will crawl,' he crowed. `They move whichever way the wind blows. They will want me back, they will say that Masson is a great scholar, a major analyst — after Freud, he's the greatest analyst who ever lived. Suddenly they'll be calling, begging, cajoling: "Please take back what you've said about our profession; our patients are quitting." They'll try a short smear campaign, then they'll try to buy me, and ultimately they'll have to shut up. Judgment will be passed by history. There is no possible refutation of this book. It's going to cause a revolution in psychoanalysis. Analysis stands or falls with me now.' " In the Freud Archives 162.
This material does not appear in the tape recordings. Petitioner did make the following statements on related topics in one of the taped interviews with Malcolm:
". . . I assure you when that book comes out, which I honestly believe is an honest book, there is nothing, you know, mean-minded about it. It's the honest fruit of research and intellectual toil. And there is not an analyst in the country who will say a single word in favor of it." App. 136.
"Talk to enough analysts and get them right down to these concrete issues and you watch how different it is from my position. It's utterly the opposite and that's finally what I realized, that I hold a position that no other analyst holds, including, alas, Freud. At first I thought: Okay, it's me and Freud against the rest of the analytic world, or me and Freud and Anna Freud and Kur[t] Eissler and Vic Calef and Brian Bird and Sam Lipton against the rest of the world. Not so, it's me. it's me alone." Id., at 139.
The tape of this interview also contains the following exchange between petitioner and Malcolm:
Masson: ". . . analysis stands or falls with me now."
Malcolm: "Well that's a very grandiose thing to say."
Masson: "Yeah, but it's got nothing to do with me. It's got to do with the things I discovered." Id., at 137.
(f) "He Had The Wrong Man." In discussing the Archives' board meeting at which petitioner's employment was terminated, Malcolm quotes petitioner as giving the following explanation of Eissler's attempt to extract a promise of confidentiality:
" `[Eissler] was always putting moral pressure on me. "Do you want to poison Anna Freud's last days? Have you no heart? You're going to kill the poor old woman." I said to him, "What have I done? You're doing it. You're firing me. What am I supposed to do — be grateful to you?" "You could be silent about it. You could swallow it. I know it is painful for you. But you could just live with it in silence." "Why should I do that?" "Because it is the honorable thing to do." Well, he had the wrong man.' " In the Freud Archives 67.
From the tape recordings, on the other hand, it appears that Malcolm deleted part of petitioner's explanation (italicized below), and petitioner argues that the "wrong man" sentence relates to something quite different from Eissler's entreaty that silence was "the honorable thing." In the tape recording, petitioner states:
"But it was wrong of Eissler to do that, you know. He was constantly putting various kinds of moral pressure on me and, `Do you want to poison Anna Freud's last days? Have you no heart?' He called me: `Have you no heart? You're going to kill the poor old woman. Have you no heart? Think of what she's done for you and you are now willing to do this to her.' I said, `What have I, what have I done? You did it. You fired me. What am I supposed to do: thank you? be grateful to you?' He said, `Well you could never talk about it. You could be silent about it. You could swallow it. I know it's painful for you but just live with it in silence.' `Fuck you,' I said, `Why should I do that? Why? You know, why should one do that?' `Because it's the honorable thing to do and you will save face. And who knows? If you never speak about it and you quietly and humbly accept our judgment, who knows that in a few years if we don't bring you back?' Well, he had the wrong man." App. 215-216.
Malcolm submitted to the District Court that not all of her discussions with petitioner were recorded on tape, in particular conversations that occurred while the two of them walked together or traveled by car, while petitioner stayed at Malcolm's home in New York, or while her tape recorder was inoperable. She claimed to have taken notes of these unrecorded sessions, which she later typed, then discarding the handwritten originals. Petitioner denied that any discussion relating to the substance of the article occurred during his stay at Malcolm's home in New York, that Malcolm took notes during any of their conversations, or that Malcolm gave any indication that her tape recorder was broken.
Respondents moved for summary judgment. The parties agreed that petitioner was a public figure and so could escape summary judgment only if the evidence in the record would permit a reasonable finder of fact, by clear and convincing evidence, to conclude that respondents published a defamatory statement with actual malice as defined by our cases. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255-256 (1986). The District Court analyzed each of the passages and held that the alleged inaccuracies did not raise a jury question. The court found that the allegedly fabricated quotations were either substantially true, or were " `one of a number of possible rational interpretations' of a conversation or event that `bristled with ambiguities,' " and thus were entitled to constitutional protection. 686 F. Supp. 1396, 1399 (1987) (quoting Bose Corp. v. Consumer's Union of the United States, Inc., 466 U.S. 485, 512 (1984)). The court also ruled that the "he had the wrong man" passage involved an exercise of editorial judgment upon which the courts could not intrude. 686 F. Supp., at 1403-1404.
The Court of Appeals affirmed, with one judge dissenting. 895 F. 2d 1535 (CA9 1989). The court assumed for much of its opinion that Malcolm had deliberately altered each quotation not found on the tape recordings, but nevertheless held that petitioner failed to raise a jury question of actual malice, in large part for the reasons stated by the District Court. In its examination of the "intellectual gigolo" passage, the court agreed with the District Court that petitioner could not demonstrate actual malice because Malcolm had not altered the substantive content of petitioner's self-description, but went on to note that it did not consider the "intellectual gigolo" passage defamatory, as the quotation merely reported Kurt Eissler's and Anna Freud's opinions about petitioner. In any event, concluded the court, the statement would not be actionable under the " `incremental harm branch' of the `libelproof' doctrine," id., at 1541 (quoting Herbert v. Lando, 781 F. 2d 298, 310-311 (CA2 1986)).
The dissent argued that any intentional or reckless alteration would prove actual malice, so long as a passage within quotation marks purports to be a verbatim rendition of what was said, contains material inaccuracies, and is defamatory. 895 F. 2d, at 1562-1570. We granted certiorari, 498 U. S. — (1990), and now reverse.
II
A
Under California law, "[l]ibel is a false and unprivileged publication by writing . . . which exposes any person to hatred, contempt, ridicule, or obloquy, or which causes him to be shunned or avoided, or which has a tendency to injure him in his occupation." Cal. Civ. Code Ann. 45 (West 1982). False attribution of statements to a person may constitute libel, if the falsity exposes that person to an injury comprehended by the statute. See Selleck v. Globe International, Inc., 166 Cal. App. 3d 1123, 1132, 212 Cal. Rptr. 838, 844 (1985); Cameron v. Wernick, 251 Cal. App. 2d 890, 60 Cal. Rptr. 102 (1967); Kerby v. Hal Roach Studios, Inc., 53 Cal. App. 2d 207, 213, 127 P. 2d 577, 581 (1942); cf. Baker v. Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 42 Cal. 3d 254, 260-261, 721 P. 2d 87, 90-91 (1986). It matters not under California law that petitioner alleges only part of the work at issue to be false. "[T]he test of libel is not quantitative; a single sentence may be the basis for an action in libel even though buried in a much longer text," though the California courts recognize that "[w]hile a drop of poison may be lethal, weaker poisons are sometimes diluted to the point of impotency." Washburn v. Wright, 261 Cal. App. 2d 789, 795, 68 Cal. Rptr. 224, 228 (1968).
The First Amendment limits California's libel law in various respects. When, as here, the plaintiff is a public figure, he cannot recover unless he proves by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant published the defamatory statement with actual malice, i. e., with "knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 279-280 (1964). Mere negligence does not suffice. Rather, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the author "in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of his publication," St. Amant v. Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731 (1968), or acted with a "high degree of awareness of . . . probable falsity," Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 74 (1964).
Actual malice under the New York Times standard should not be confused with the concept of malice as an evil intent or a motive arising from spite or ill will. See Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Assn., Inc. v. Bresler, 398 U.S. 6 (1970). We have used the term actual malice as a shorthand to describe the First Amendment protections for speech injurious to reputation and we continue to do so here. But the term can confuse as well as enlighten. In this respect, the phrase may be an unfortunate one. See Harte-Hanks Communications, Inc. v. Connaughton, 491 U.S. 657, 666, n. 7 (1989). In place of the term actual malice, it is better practice that jury instructions refer to publication of a statement with knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard as to truth or falsity. This definitional principle must be remembered in the case before us.
B
In general, quotation marks around a passage indicate to the reader that the passage reproduces the speaker's words verbatim. They inform the reader that he or she is reading the statement of the speaker, not a paraphrase or other indirect interpretation by an author. By providing this information, quotations add authority to the statement and credibility to the author's work. Quotations allow the reader to form his or her own conclusions, and to assess the conclusions of the author, instead of relying entirely upon the author's characterization of her subject.
A fabricated quotation may injure reputation in at least two senses, either giving rise to a conceivable claim of defamation. First, the quotation might injure because it attributes an untrue factual assertion to the speaker. An example would be a fabricated quotation of a public official admitting he had been convicted of a serious crime when in fact he had not.
Second, regardless of the truth or falsity of the factual matters asserted within the quoted statement, the attribution may result in injury to reputation because the manner of expression or even the fact that the statement was made indicates a negative personal trait or an attitude the speaker does not hold. John Lennon once was quoted as saying of the Beatles, "We're more popular than Jesus Christ now." Time, Aug. 12, 1966, p. 38. Supposing the quotation had been a fabrication, it appears California law could permit recovery for defamation because, even without regard to the truth of the underlying assertion, false attribution of the statement could have injured his reputation. Here, in like manner, one need not determine whether petitioner is or is not the greatest analyst who ever lived in order to determine that it might have injured his reputation to be reported as having so proclaimed.
A self-condemnatory quotation may carry more force than criticism by another. It is against self-interest to admit one's own criminal liability, arrogance, or lack of integrity, and so all the more easy to credit when it happens. This principle underlies the elemental rule of evidence which permits the introduction of admissions, despite their hearsay character, because we assume "that persons do not make statements which are damaging to themselves unless satisfied for good reason that they are true." Advisory Committee's Notes on Fed. Rule Evid. 804(b)(3), 28 U. S. C. App., p. 789 (citing Hileman v. Northwest Engineering Co., 346 F. 2d 668 (CA6 1965)).
Of course, quotations do not always convey that the speaker actually said or wrote the quoted material. "Punctuation marks, like words, have many uses. Writers often use quotation marks, yet no reasonable reader would assume that such punctuation automatically implies the truth of the quoted material." Baker v. Los Angeles Examiner, 42 Cal. 3d, at 263, 721 P. 2d, at 92. In Baker, a television reviewer printed a hypothetical conversation between a station vice president and writer/producer, and the court found that no reasonable reader would conclude the plaintiff in fact had made the statement attributed to him. Id., at 267, 721 P. 2d, at 95. Writers often use quotations as in Baker, and a reader will not reasonably understand the quotations to indicate reproduction of a conversation that took place. In other instances, an acknowledgement that the work is so-called docudrama or historical fiction, or that it recreates conversations from memory, not from recordings, might indicate that the quotations should not be interpreted as the actual statements of the speaker to whom they are attributed.
The work at issue here, however, as with much journalistic writing, provides the reader no clue that the quotations are being used as a rhetorical device or to paraphrase the speaker's actual statements. To the contrary, the work purports to be nonfiction, the result of numerous interviews. At least a trier of fact could so conclude. The work contains lengthy quotations attributed to petitioner, and neither Malcolm nor her publishers indicate to the reader that the quotations are anything but the reproduction of actual conversations. Further, the work was published in The New Yorker, a magazine which at the relevant time seemed to enjoy a reputation for scrupulous factual accuracy. These factors would, or at least could, lead a reader to take the quotations at face value. A defendant may be able to argue to the jury that quotations should be viewed by the reader as nonliteral or reconstructions, but we conclude that a trier of fact in this case could find that the reasonable reader would understand the quotations to be nearly verbatim reports of statements made by the subject.
C
The constitutional question we must consider here is whether, in the framework of a summary judgment motion, the evidence suffices to show that respondents acted with the requisite knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard as to truth or falsity. This inquiry in turn requires us to consider the concept of falsity; for we cannot discuss the standards for knowledge or reckless disregard without some understanding of the acts required for liability. We must consider whether the requisite falsity inheres in the attribution of words to the petitioner which he did not speak.
In some sense, any alteration of a verbatim quotation is false. But writers and reporters by necessity alter what people say, at the very least to eliminate grammatical and syntactical infelicities. If every alteration constituted the falsity required to prove actual malice, the practice of journalism, which the First Amendment standard is designed to protect, would require a radical change, one inconsistent with our precedents and First Amendment principles. Petitioner concedes this absolute definition of falsity in the quotation context is too stringent, and acknowledges that "minor changes to correct for grammar or syntax" do not amount to falsity for purposes of proving actual malice. Brief for Petitioner 18, 36-37. We agree, and must determine what, in addition to this technical falsity, proves falsity for purposes of the actual malice inquiry.
Petitioner argues that, excepting correction of grammar or syntax, publication of a quotation with knowledge that it does not contain the words the public figure used demonstrates actual malice. The author will have published the quotation with knowledge of falsity, and no more need be shown. Petitioner suggests that by invoking more forgiving standards the Court of Appeals would permit and encourage the publication of falsehoods. Petitioner believes that the intentional manufacture of quotations does not "represen[t] the sort of inaccuracy that is commonplace in the forum of robust debate to which the New York Times rule applies," Bose Corp., 466 U. S., at 513, and that protection of deliberate falsehoods would hinder the First Amendment values of robust and well-informed public debate by reducing the reliability of information available to the public.
We reject the idea that any alteration beyond correction of grammar or syntax by itself proves falsity in the sense relevant to determining actual malice under the First Amendment. An interviewer who writes from notes often will engage in the task of attempting a reconstruction of the speaker's statement. That author would, we may assume, act with knowledge that at times she has attributed to her subject words other than those actually used. Under petitioner's proposed standard, an author in this situation would lack First Amendment protection if she reported as quotations the substance of a subject's derogatory statements about himself.
Even if a journalist has tape recorded the spoken statement of a public figure, the full and exact statement will be reported in only rare circumstances. The existence of both a speaker and a reporter; the translation between two media, speech and the printed word; the addition of punctuation; and the practical necessity to edit and make intelligible a speaker's perhaps rambling comments, all make it misleading to suggest that a quotation will be reconstructed with complete accuracy. The use or absence of punctuation may distort a speaker's meaning, for example, where that meaning turns upon a speaker's emphasis of a particular word. In other cases, if a speaker makes an obvious misstatement, for example by unconscious substitution of one name for another, a journalist might alter the speaker's words but preserve his intended meaning. And conversely, an exact quotation out of context can distort meaning, although the speaker did use each reported word.
In all events, technical distinctions between correcting grammar and syntax and some greater level of alteration do not appear workable, for we can think of no method by which courts or juries would draw the line between cleaning up and other changes, except by reference to the meaning a statement conveys to a reasonable reader. To attempt narrow distinctions of this type would be an unnecessary departure from First Amendment principles of general applicability, and, just as important, a departure from the underlying purposes of the tort of libel as understood since the latter half of the 16th century. From then until now, the tort action for defamation has existed to redress injury to the plaintiff's reputation by a statement that is defamatory and false. See Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1, — (1990). As we have recognized, "[t]he legitimate state interest underlying the law of libel is the compensation of individuals for the harm inflicted on them by defamatory falsehood." Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 341 (1974). If an author alters a speaker's words but effects no material change in meaning, including any meaning conveyed by the manner or fact of expression, the speaker suffers no injury to reputation that is compensable as a defamation.
These essential principles of defamation law accommodate the special case of inaccurate quotations without the necessity for a discrete body of jurisprudence directed to this subject alone. Last Term, in Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., we refused "to create a wholesale defamation exemption for anything that might be labeled `opinion.' " 497 U. S., at — (slip op., at 16) (citation omitted). We recognized that "expressions of `opinion' may often imply an assertion of objective fact." Ibid. We allowed the defamation action to go forward in that case, holding that a reasonable trier of fact could find that the so-called expressions of opinion could be interpreted as including false assertions as to factual matters. So too in the case before us, we reject any special test of falsity for quotations, including one which would draw the line at correction of grammar or syntax. We conclude, rather, that the exceptions suggested by petitioner for grammatical or syntactical corrections serve to illuminate a broader principle.
The common law of libel takes but one approach to the question of falsity, regardless of the form of the communication. See Restatement (Second) of Torts 563, Comment c (1977); W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Law of Torts 776 (5th ed. 1984). It overlooks minor inaccuracies and concentrates upon substantial truth. As in other jurisdictions, California law permits the defense of substantial truth, and would absolve a defendant even if she cannot "justify every word of the alleged defamatory matter; it is sufficient if the substance of the charge be proved true, irrespective of slight inaccuracy in the details." B. Witkin, Summary of California Law, 495 (9th ed. 1988) (citing cases). In this case, of course, the burden is upon petitioner to prove falsity. See Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. Hepps, 475 U.S. 767, 775 (1986). The essence of that inquiry, however, remains the same whether the burden rests upon plaintiff or defendant. Minor inaccuracies do not amount to falsity so long as "the substance, the gist, the sting, of the libelous charge be justified." Heuer v. Kee, 15 Cal. App. 2d. 710, 714, 59 P. 2d 1063, 1064 (1936); see also Alioto v. Cowles Communications, Inc., 623 F. 2d 616, 619 (CA9 1980); Maheu v. Hughes Tool Co., 569 F. 2d 459, 465-466 (CA9 1978). Put another way, the statement is not considered false unless it "would have a different effect on the mind of the reader from that which the pleaded truth would have produced." R. Sack, Libel, Slander, and Related Problems 138 (1980); see, e. g., Wheling v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 721 F. 2d 506, 509 (CA5 1983); see generally R. Smolla, Law of Defamation 5.08 (1991). Our definition of actual malice relies upon this historical understanding.
We conclude that a deliberate alteration of the words uttered by a plaintiff does not equate with knowledge of falsity for purposes of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S., at 279-280, and Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., supra, at 342, unless the alteration results in a material change in the meaning conveyed by the statement. The use of quotations to attribute words not in fact spoken bears in a most important way on that inquiry, but it is not dispositive in every case.
Deliberate or reckless falsification that comprises actual malice turns upon words and punctuation only because words and punctuation express meaning. Meaning is the life of language. And, for the reasons we have given, quotations may be a devastating instrument for conveying false meaning. In the case under consideration, readers of In the Freud Archives may have found Malcolm's portrait of petitioner especially damning because so much of it appeared to be a self-portrait, told by petitioner in his own words. And if the alterations of petitioner's words gave a different meaning to the statements, bearing upon their defamatory character, then the device of quotations might well be critical in finding the words actionable.
D
The Court of Appeals applied a test of substantial truth which, in exposition if not in application, comports with much of the above discussion. The Court of Appeals, however, went one step beyond protection of quotations that convey the meaning of a speaker's statement with substantial accuracy and concluded that an altered quotation is protected so long as it is a "rational interpretation" of an actual statement, drawing this standard from our decisions in Time, Inc. v. Pape, 401 U.S. 279 (1971), and Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., 466 U.S. 485 (1984). Application of our protection for rational interpretation in this context finds no support in general principles of defamation law or in our First Amendment jurisprudence. Neither Time, Inc. v. Pape, nor Bose Corp., involved the fabrication of quotations, or any analogous claim, and because many of the quotations at issue might reasonably be construed to state or imply factual assertions that are both false and defamatory, we cannot accept the reasoning of the Court of Appeals on this point.
In Time, Inc. v. Pape, we reversed a libel judgment which arose out of a magazine article summarizing a report by the United States Commission on Civil Rights discussing police civil rights abuses. The article quoted the Commission's summary of the facts surrounding an incident of police brutality, but failed to include the Commission's qualification that these were allegations taken from a civil complaint. The Court noted that "the attitude of the Commission toward the factual verity of the episodes recounted was anything but straightforward," and distinguished between a "direct account of events that speak for themselves," 401 U. S., at 285, 286, and an article descriptive of what the Commission had reported. Time, Inc. v. Pape took into account the difficult choices that confront an author who departs from direct quotation and offers his own interpretation of an ambiguous source. A fair reading of our opinion is that the defendant did not publish a falsification sufficient to sustain a finding of actual malice.
In Bose Corp., a Consumer Reports reviewer had attempted to describe in words the experience of listening to music through a pair of loudspeakers, and we concluded that the result was not an assessment of events that speak for themselves, but " `one of a number of possible rational interpretations' of an event `that bristled with ambiguities' and descriptive challenges for the writer." 466 U. S., at 512 (quoting Time, Inc. v. Pape, supra, at 290). We refused to permit recovery for choice of language which, though perhaps reflecting a misconception, represented "the sort of inaccuracy that is commonplace in the forum of robust debate to which the New York Times rule applies." 466 U. S., at 513.
The protection for rational interpretation serves First Amendment principles by allowing an author the interpretive license that is necessary when relying upon ambiguous sources. Where, however, a writer uses a quotation, and where a reasonable reader would conclude that the quotation purports to be a verbatim repetition of a statement by the speaker, the quotation marks indicate that the author is not involved in an interpretation of the speaker's ambiguous statement, but attempting to convey what the speaker said. This orthodox use of a quotation is the quintessential "direct account of events that speak for themselves." Time, Inc. v. Pape, supra, at 285. More accurately, the quotation allows the subject to speak for himself.
The significance of the quotations at issue, absent any qualification, is to inform us that we are reading the statement of petitioner, not Malcolm's rational interpretation of what petitioner has said or thought. Were we to assess quotations under a rational interpretation standard, we would give journalists the freedom to place statements in their subjects' mouths without fear of liability. By eliminating any method of distinguishing between the statements of the subject and the interpretation of the author, we would diminish to a great degree the trustworthiness of the printed word, and eliminate the real meaning of quotations. Not only public figures but the press doubtless would suffer under such a rule. Newsworthy figures might become more wary of journalists, knowing that any comment could be transmuted and attributed to the subject, so long as some bounds of rational interpretation were not exceeded. We would ill serve the values of the First Amendment if we were to grant near absolute, constitutional protection for such a practice. We doubt the suggestion that as a general rule readers will assume that direct quotations are but a rational interpretation of the speaker's words, and we decline to adopt any such presumption in determining the permissible interpretations of the quotations in question here.
III
A
We apply these principles to the case before us. On summary judgment, we must draw all justifiable inferences in favor of the the nonmoving party, including questions of credibility and of the weight to be accorded particular evidence. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U. S., at 255. So we must assume, except where otherwise evidenced by the transcripts of the tape recordings, that petitioner is correct in denying that he made the statements attributed to him by Malcolm, and that Malcolm reported with knowledge or reckless disregard of the differences between what petitioner said and what was quoted.
Respondents argue that, in determining whether petitioner has shown sufficient falsification to survive summary judgment, we should consider not only the tape recorded statements but also Malcolm's typewritten notes. We must decline that suggestion. To begin with, petitioner affirms in an affidavit that he did not make the complained of statements. The record contains substantial additional evidence, moreover, evidence which, in a light most favorable to petitioner, would support a jury determination under a clear and convincing standard that Malcolm deliberately or recklessly altered the quotations.
First, many of the challenged passages resemble quotations that appear on the tapes, except for the addition or alteration of certain phrases, giving rise to a reasonable inference that the statements have been altered. Second, Malcolm had the tapes in her possession and was not working under a tight deadline. Unlike a case involving hot news, Malcolm cannot complain that she lacked the practical ability to compare the tapes with her work in progress. Third, Malcolm represented to the editor-in-chief of The New Yorker that all the quotations were from the tape recordings. Fourth, Malcolm's explanations of the time and place of unrecorded conversations during which petitioner allegedly made some of the quoted statements have not been consistent in all respects. Fifth, petitioner suggests that the progression from typewritten notes, to manuscript, then to galleys provides further evidence of intentional alteration. Malcolm contests petitioner's allegations, and only a trial on the merits will resolve the factual dispute. But at this stage, the evidence creates a jury question whether Malcolm published the statements with knowledge or reckless disregard of the alterations.
B
We must determine whether the published passages differ materially in meaning from the tape recorded statements so as to create an issue of fact for a jury as to falsity.
(a) "Intellectual Gigolo." We agree with the dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals that "[f]airly read, intellectual gigolo suggests someone who forsakes intellectual integrity in exchange for pecuniary or other gain." 895 F. 2d, at 1551. A reasonable jury could find a material difference between the meaning of this passage and petitioner's tape-recorded statement that he was considered "much too junior within the hierarchy of analysis, for these important training analysts to be caught dead with [him]."
The Court of Appeals majority found it difficult to perceive how the "intellectual gigolo" quotation was defamatory, a determination supported not by any citation to California law, but only by the argument that the passage appears to be a report of Eissler's and Anna Freud's opinions of petitioner. Id., at 1541. We agree with the Court of Appeals that the most natural interpretation of this quotation is not an admission that petitioner considers himself an intellectual gigolo but a statement that Eissler and Anna Freud considered him so. It does not follow, though, that the statement is harmless. Petitioner is entitled to argue that the passage should be analyzed as if Malcolm had reported falsely that Eissler had given this assessment (with the added level of complexity that the quotation purports to represent petitioner's understanding of Eissler's view). An admission that two well-respected senior colleagues considered one an "intellectual gigolo" could be as or more damaging than a similar self-appraisal. In all events, whether the "intellectual gigolo" quotation is defamatory is a question of California law. To the extent that the Court of Appeals based its conclusion in the First Amendment, it was mistaken.
The Court of Appeals relied upon the "incremental harm" doctrine as an alternative basis for its decision. As the court explained it, "[t]his doctrine measures the incremental reputational harm inflicted by the challenged statements beyond the harm imposed by the nonactionable remainder of the publication." Ibid.; see generally Note, 98 Harv. L. Rev. 1909 (1985); R. Smolla, Law of Defamation 9.10[4][d] (1991). The court ruled, as a matter of law, that "[g]iven the . . . many provocative, bombastic statements indisputably made by Masson and quoted by Malcolm, the additional harm caused by the `intellectual gigolo' quote was nominal or nonexistent, rendering the defamation claim as to this quote nonactionable." 895 F. 2d, at 1541.
This reasoning requires a court to conclude that, in fact, a plaintiff made the other quoted statements, cf. Liberty Lobby, Inc. v. Anderson, 241 U. S. App. D. C. 246, 251, 746 F. 2d 1563, 1568 (1984), vacated and remanded on other grounds, 477 U.S. 242 (1986), and then to undertake a factual inquiry into the reputational damage caused by the remainder of the publication. As noted by the dissent in the Court of Appeals, the most "provocative, bombastic statements" quoted by Malcolm are those complained of by petitioner, and so this would not seem an appropriate application of the incremental harm doctrine. 895 F. 2d, at 1566.
Furthermore, the Court of Appeals provided no indication whether it considered the incremental harm doctrine to be grounded in California law or the First Amendment. Here, we reject any suggestion that the incremental harm doctrine is compelled as a matter of First Amendment protection for speech. The question of incremental harm does not bear upon whether a defendant has published a statement with knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of whether it was false or not. As a question of state law, on the other hand, we are given no indication that California accepts this doctrine, though it remains free to do so. Of course, state tort law doctrines of injury, causation, and damages calculation might allow a defendant to press the argument that the statements did not result in any incremental harm to a plaintiff's reputation.
(b) "Sex, Women, Fun." This passage presents a closer question. The "sex, women, fun" quotation offers a very different picture of petitioner's plans for Maresfield Gardens than his remark that "Freud's library alone is priceless." See supra, at 5. Petitioner's other tape-recorded remarks did indicate that he and another analyst planned to have great parties at the Freud house and, in a context that may not even refer to Freud house activities, to "pass women on to each other." We cannot conclude as a matter of law that these remarks bear the same substantial meaning as the quoted passage's suggestion that petitioner would make the Freud house a place of "sex, women, fun."
(c) "It Sounded Better." We agree with the District Court and the Court of Appeals that any difference between petitioner's tape-recorded statement that he "just liked" the name Moussaieff, and the quotation that "it sounded better" is, in context, immaterial. Although Malcolm did not include all of petitioner's lengthy explanation of his name change, she did convey the gist of that explanation: Petitioner took his abandoned family name as his middle name. We agree with the Court of Appeals that the words attributed to petitioner did not materially alter the meaning of his statement.
(d) "I Don't Know Why I Put It In." Malcolm quotes petitioner as saying that he "tacked on at the last minute" a "totally gratuitous" remark about the "sterility of psychoanalysis" in an academic paper, and that he did so for no particular reason. In the tape recordings, petitioner does admit that the remark was "possibly [a] gratuitously offensive way to end a paper to a group of analysts," but when asked why he included the remark, he answered "[because] it was true . . . I really believe it." Malcolm's version contains material differences from petitioner's statement, and it is conceivable that the alteration results in a statement that could injure a scholar's reputation.
(e) "Greatest Analyst Who Ever Lived." While petitioner did, on numerous occasions, predict that his theories would do irreparable damage to the practice of psychoanalysis, and did suggest that no other analyst shared his views, no taperecorded statement appears to contain the substance or the arrogant and unprofessional tone apparent in this quotation. A material difference exists between the quotation and the tape-recorded statements, and a jury could find that the difference exposed petitioner to contempt, ridicule or obloquy.
(f) "He Had The Wrong Man." The quoted version makes it appear as if petitioner rejected a plea to remain in stoic silence and do "the honorable thing." The tape-recorded version indicates that petitioner rejected a plea supported by far more varied motives: Eissler told petitioner that not only would silence be "the honorable thing," but petitioner would "save face," and might be rewarded for that silence with eventual reinstatement. Petitioner described himself as willing to undergo a scandal in order to shine the light of publicity upon the actions of the Freud Archives, while Malcolm would have petitioner describe himself as a person who was "the wrong man" to do "the honorable thing." This difference is material, a jury might find it defamatory, and, for the reasons we have given, there is evidence to support a finding of deliberate or reckless falsification.
C
Because of the Court of Appeals' disposition with respect to Malcolm, it did not have occasion to address petitioner's argument that the District Court erred in granting summary judgment to The New Yorker Magazine, Inc., and Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. on the basis of their respective relations with Malcolm or the lack of any independent actual malice. These questions are best addressed in the first instance on remand.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
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I will aim to make this my most definitive, up-to-date DGB editorial essay on the Freud vs. Masson Seduction Theory Controversy -- complete with all its associated moral-ethical and legal issues -- and how this still debated controversy fits into the overall theory, practice, and evolution of Psychoanalysis, real and/or ideal.
For those of you who know little or nothing about this controversy, let me fill you in very quickly.
In 1896, Freud posed a theory -- albeit very briefly (it lasted less than a year) that hysteria was basically caused by the repression of a childhood sexual assault memory (or series of associated memories) -- either a flat out forceful childhood rape or a more manipulative seduction. The main perpetrators of these crimes against children seemed to be fathers, older brothers, uncles, or 'friends' of the family.
Now looking at this from a 2009 perspective, I would say that there was probably a significant grain of truth in what Freud was arguing back in 1896. However, Freud had a strong tendency throughout his career to 'jump to fast conclusions' on the basis of 'overgeneralizations' that tended not to support all of -- but, at best, only part of -- the clinical evidence available to him, and to the rest of the clinical profession and general public.
Certainly, Freud was not, and is not, the only person in the world who has ever been guilty of 'jumping to fast conclusions' and 'overgeneralizing'. We all can be deemed guilty of these charges at different time, and in different contexts, in our lives -- some more often and with more drastic consequences than others.
However, when you are the creator of a brand new school of psychology -- a theory of the functioning of the human mind -- it is extremely important that the conclusions and generalizations you come to as a theorist are 'good conclusions' and based on 'good generalizations' relative to the clinical evidence that is available to you.
Otherwise, the whole foundation of the school of psychology you are building is going to creak at its very foundations -- and if the conclusions and/or overgeneralizations that you have made are faulty and bad enough -- your school of psychology is likely going to come tumbling down at some point like a house of cards.
The only thing that is going to delay this structural collapse from happening is perhaps otherwise intelligent people who are 'too loyal to the status quo, too loyal to the assumed and presumed ideas of The Establishment they work for, and who either do not see, do not want to see, are too 'brainwashed' to see, are too scared to challenge, and/or are too happy with their $100,000 plus salary and lifestyle to want to challenge, an assumption and/or a whole set of assumptions that may be simply wrong, and/or -- worse -- pathological. This is where Erich Fromm's concept of 'the pathology of normalcy' (See 'The Sane Society') comes to life, and needs to be fully examined by those theorists who are still idealistically striving for 'the pursuit of truth, fairness, justice and The Enlightenment Way'.
It is easy to lose touch with these values in a sea of cultural and individual, pathological narcissism. We have another dialectic formula here. Cultural narcissism stimulates and shapes more and more individual narcissism. And individual narcissism, in turn, stimulates and shapes more and more cultural narcissism. The two co-factors -- cultural narcissism and individual narcissism -- are dialectically and often pathologically entwined. Each co-influences the embellishment and exasperation of the other with both individual and cultural narcissism escalating in the process.
However, pathological narcissism -- in and by itself -- is a house of cards that will eventually tumble under its own weight an instability. Historically, we have seen that in The Fall of Rome. We have seen that in the Fall of The Roman Catholic Church. We have seen that in The American Revolution. We have seen that in The French Revolution. We have seen that in The American Civil War. We have seen that in the collapse of 'Masculine Dominated (Narcissistic, Chauvinistic) Western and European Societies'. We have seen that just recently in the American Financial Sector and Housing Market -- Wall Street which in turn is 'dialectically connected' to Main Street and both collapse together as well as other non-American economies around the world. We are seeing the potential collapse of The Government of Iran based on its 'Narcissistic (Self-Serving) Practices'. And we may even see it in the destruction and/or self destruction of North Korea.
Wherever cultural and individual narcissism proliferates in and by itself like weeds in a garden -- these cultures generally collapse under the weight and the toxicology of their own weight and internal poisons.
Ayn Rand's ethics -- the core of her ethical-morality -- 'The Virtue of Selfishness' is fundamentally flawed, fundamentally wrong. Why? Because it promotes individual and cultural narcissism. 'Selfishness' or 'narcissism' in and by itself, is an ethical-moral value that is 'one-sided', it is 'homeostatically out of balance'.
Narcissism absolutely needs its polar, paradoxical, ethical-moral 'alter-ego' in order to be homeostatically balanced properly -- and that alter-ego is 'altruism'.
Please permit me to philosophically meander away from the main thrust of this philosophical essay for a few minutes here. The philosophical connection I am about to make here is an important one that Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida have all dealt with before me...and that is the dialectic interconnection between so-called 'objective theorizing' and 'narcissistic bias'.
The fundamental principle of life is the principle of 'homeostatic balance' (Cannon, 'The Wisdom of The Body', Nietzsche, 'The Birth of Tragedy', Freud, 'The Ego and The Id', Jung, The Persona and The Shadow, Fairbairn, The Exciting Object and The Rejecting Object, Berne, The Nurturing Parent and The Critical Parent, The Co-operative Child and The Rebellious Child, Perls, The Topdog and The Underdog).
In DGB conceptuology and terminology, 'The Constructive Ego' and 'The Deconstructive Ego' are 'alter-egos' that need to be actively and dialectically engaged with each other in order to maintain proper homeostatic balance within the organism.
'The organism' here -- the 'living, breathing organism' -- can be applied to mean any individual, or more metaphorically, it can be applied to mean any organization, any institution, any corporation, any society, any culture...
If an organization, an institution, a corporation, a society, a culture does not contain within it a 'deconstructive element', 'a Deconstructive Ego', then it will 'narcissistically pathologize, toxify, and ultimately self-destruct.
The Deconstructive Ego is the mental, the psychological, the philosophical, the legal, and the political equivalent of 'the liver'. Biologically, the liver removes toxins and pathogens from the body in whatever means it has available to it -- the bowels, the bladder, the immune system, the skin...
The Deconstructive Ego functions in similar fashion on a psychological, philosophical, legal, and political level. It removes pathogens and toxins from the individual's psyche, the organization's psyche, the society's psyche, the culture's psyche.
If there is no Deconstructive Ego, no Deconstructive Element, in a society -- which happens when there is no 'freedom of speech', 'freedom of the press' and 'freedom of philosophical analysis' -- then overwhelmingly narcissistic toxins and pathogens are going to poison the society, the culture, until it self-destructs.
Such is what we have partly seen in the financial sector and housing market in America. Such is what we are also seeing happen in both Iran and North Korea.
Right now, the Iran government is too busy killing and trying to fend off its own people to be able to significantly threaten the rest of the world.
North Korea, on the other hand, is like the national equivalent of a 'suicide bomber' -- ready to take out as much of the rest of the world as it can in the process of self-destructing itself. Particularly dangerous here, is a leader who seems close to dying anyway -- so what does he have to lose.
I digress. Back to Freud and Psychoanalysis.
Freud was a very active 'Creative-Constructive' theorist. He was also a very active Deconstructionist. Freud was constantly changing and modifying his own theories throughout his own lifetime.
However, Freud was not very good at accepting -- or even properly listening too -- the 'deconstructionist criticisms' of other Psychoanalytic and non-Psychoanalytic theorists. He was too righteous, too narcissistic, too authoritarian, too anal-retentive when it came to listening to other theorists criticize -- and modify -- his own Psychoanalytic theories. How many theorists did he lose -- I can't count them all -- Breuer, Adler, Jung, Reik, Rank, Ferenczi, and that is just off the top of my head; indeed, I could also include the 'post-Freudians', the 'neo-Freudians', and the 'anti-Freudians'...Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Leif Erickson, Harry Stack Sullivan, Berne, Perls, and who knows whether Freud would have ever accepted the 'Object Relationists' and all their various deviations from Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis such as: Melanie Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip, Kohut...and many others...
And last of all their was Jeffrey Masson who turned our attention back to Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory in 1896. Why did Freud abandon a theory that seemed to have a strong 'truth element' in it?
Masson's answer to this question was rather harsh and non-forgiving -- coming from his 'Rejecting, Deconstructive Topdog or Underdog' in DGB integrative terminology if you will.
Freud 'lost moral courage' -- according to Masson's interpretation, analysis, and judgment of the situation. (Masson, The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory', 1984, 1985, 1992, preface)
Freud 'lost moral courage' because he did not want to jeopardize his career in medicine, psychiatry, and Psychoanalysis. He succumbed to the external social and economic pressures, forces, leverage applied against him by 'non-believing' Psychiatrists who had the political and economic power to make or break Freud's early Psychiatric and Psychoanalytic career. So argues Masson (The Assault, 1992.)
Masson could be at least partly right. It is quite possible that Freud had legitimate reason to fear the 'greater political and economic power' of other, older Psychiatrists and Doctors in his profession who could have potentially ruined his career.
Indeed, it could be easily argued that what could have happened to Freud in 1896 if he had continued to 'open the social can of worms' of childhood sexual abuse is exactly what did happen to Masson in the 1980s some 85 to 90 years later. Masson's career in Psychoanalysis was destroyed in the 1980s because he ethically persisted in an area where Freud -- for whatever reason -- backed away from, and didn't come back too often to this most controversial of issues, for the remainder of his long career (some 40 years).
Still, I will follow and accept Masson's logical argument about 50 percent of the way -- and no further.
If Freud wanted only to stay clear away from the most controversial issue of childhood sexual abuse, he could have done this much more easily than by 'turning Psychoanalysis upside down to do it'.
Freud didn't need to fully engage in, obsess with, and trumpet his 'new' Psychoanalytic theory of 'Childhood Sexuality, Oedipal and Fantasy Theory' just to escape the 'heat of talking about childhood sexual abuse and its relation to hysteria'.
So why then did Freud turn Psychoanalysis upside down from 'Seduction Theory' to Childhood Sexual Fantasy and Oedipal Theory'?
Freud turned Psychoanalysis upside down between 1896 and let us say 1905 because he thought he was right. Period.
No loss of moral courage. Or maybe some loss of moral courage to the extent that he steered away from the topic of childhood sexual abuse for most of the rest of his career.
However, how many of wouldn't have done the same? Particularly, in that 'highly patriarchal culture'. Knowing that by 'blowing the horn of child sexual abuse' you might be jeopardizing your own career, your own economic stability. It may be a sad statement of human motivation stemming all the way back to the philosophy of 'Sophism' in ancient Greece (who believed basically in the principle of 'subjective ethical relativism' based on 'monetary narcissism'), through Stoicism, Cynicism, Epicureanism, Hobbes, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Marx's 'cynical pessimism' relative to 'Narcissistic Capitalism': 'When money talks, ethics walks.' (my personal philosophical rendition of what Marx believed).
Ethical righteousness supersedes personal narcissism only when the personal narcissism doesn't involve us. (Call this 'the philosophy and psychology of personal and/or group exclusionism and marginalization').
Now, to be sure, this is a generalization as well -- and some might say an overgeneralization. Every generalization carries the seeds of its own self-destruction which is contained in exactly that part of 'life and truth' that lies outside of the boundaries of the generalization. (This is a Hegelian extrapolation.)
Narcissism and ethics are 'dialectic antagonists and war partners' (unless you follow 'The Virtue of Selfishness' Philosophy of Ayn Rand). We all have to walk the plank of personal narcissism vs. personal ethics each and every day. Dionysus and Narcissus vs. Apollo. (Perhaps an unfair fight -- two against one.) We all have to make a 'Kierkegaardian either/or choice' at different points in the day as we walk out onto our existential plank -- the plank and the choices that end up defining us:
Either jump into Dionysus and Narcissus' (non-ethical) pool. Or jump into Apollo's (ethical) pool. Depends partly on our character, partly on the context of the situaiton. Our impulses. Our restraints. Our values. The extent of the social, political and/or economic forces being used against us. And/or on the restraints and forces being used by ourselves, against ourselves.
From Dionysus in the Ancient Greek period arose an even more hedonistically and narcissistically extreme -- and evil -- mythological-religious figure in 'Satan', who, I speculate arose during the Scholastic-Religious-Medieval period of Western philosophy. I am not sure of my facts here. I will have to research this subject-matter and get back to you.
Apollo, Dionysus, Zeus, Hera, Gaia, Approdite, Aries, Cupid, God, Satan, Jesus...are all mythological-relgious projections and extensions of ourselves and our own inner conflicts between good and evil, narcissism and altruism, narcissism and ethics...patriarchy and matriarchy...love and war, love, lust, and reason...
Back to the issue of 'moral courage'...
How many of us don't choose to 'tell people what they don't want to hear' particularly if that person is our boss who could potentially end our job or career with perhaps just a little too much 'honesty', 'bluntness', 'internal congruence and essence' coming out of our mouth?
How many politicians turn their back on the number of ethical transgressions committed in the process of 'government functioning' (and/or dysfunctioning)?
Would Dr. Masson have shown the same 'moral courage' if he had the opportunity to re-live the 1980s all over again? Would he have re-endured a 10 year lawsuit against Janet Malcolm and The New Yorker -- all over again -- if he had the chance to 're-trumpet his moral righteousness and courage'?
Maybe. Maybe not. I take my hat off to you Dr. Masson. I think that your work has been important -- indeed, imperative -- to the proper evolution of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Psychology/Psychotherapy/Psychiatry in general.
I respect your moral courage.
Which is not to say that I think you are completely right about Freud's motivation -- or the validity of The Seduction Theory in general.
The Seduction Theory is a lopsided, one-sided, overly reductionist theory -- just as The Oedipal Theory is on the other side of The Psychoanalytic fence. It remains for a Post-Hegelian philosopher and psychological theorist like myself to integrate or synthesize the differences between Freud's Traumacy Theory, his Seduction Theory, and his Oedipal Theory -- along with any other theories that may be equally relevant. (Adler, Jung, Reich, Fairbairn, Guntrip, Berne, Kohut, Perls...)
And everything that I have read from other biographers and theorists -- other than from you, Dr. Masson -- have stated that Freud did not lack moral courage, in fact, this was a strength, not a weakness, in his character. I will search out some quotes by Erich Fromm in this regard.
No, Freud may have committed some ethical transgressions in his life, knowingly or unknowingly, such as in his 'trumpeting of cocaine usage', such as in the Emma Ekstein medical fiasco, such as in perhaps steering away from the controversial issue of childhood sexual abuse. But not to the tune of turning Psychoanalysis on its ear -- and re-theorizing everything.
This he did because he believed what he was doing was right -- even if it was partly or mainly wrong in the extent of his 'theoretical over-compensations'.
Freud was a 'theoretical extremist'. He would either steer 'hard right' and/or overcompensate and then 'steer hard left'.
It remains for other, clearer heads, and more moderate minds, to creatively integrate Freud's left and right, up and down, theoretical extremism.
That is our intent here -- in Hegel's Hotel.
-- dgb, June 29th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations,
-- Are still in process...
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Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (born March 28, 1941 as Jeffrey Lloyd Masson in Chicago, Illinois) is an American author, residing in New Zealand. Masson is known for his conclusions about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. In his book The Assault on Truth, Masson argued that Freud may have abandoned his seduction theory because he feared that granting the truth of his female patients' claims that they had been sexually abused would hinder the acceptance of his psychoanalytic methods. He has also written about animals and animal rights.
Contents
1 Life and career
2 Views on the Seduction Theory
3 Recent work
4 Personal life
5 Name
6 Writings by Masson
6.1 Reviews of his books
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
Life and career
Masson is the son of Jacques Moussaieff, a French Mizrahi Sephardic Jew of Bukharian ancestry, and Diana (Dina) Zeiger from a Ashkenazi strict Orthodox Jewish family. Both parents were followers of the British Jewish mystic Paul Brunton. During the 1940s and 1950s, Brunton often lived with them, eventually designating Jeffrey as his heir apparent. In 1956, Diana and Jacques Masson moved to Uruguay because Brunton believed that a third world war was imminent. Jeffrey and his sister Linda followed in 1959.
At Brunton's urging, Masson went to Harvard University to study Sanskrit. While at Harvard, Masson became disillusioned with Brunton. Brunton and his influence and the Masson family form the subject of Masson's autobiographical book My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion. Harvard University granted Masson a B.A. in 1964 and a Ph.D. with Honors in 1970. His degrees were in Sanskrit and Indian Studies. While undertaking his Ph.D., Masson also studied, supported by fellowships, at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, the University of Calcutta, and the University of Poona.
He taught Sanskrit and Indian Studies at the University of Toronto, 1969-80, reaching the rank of Professor. He has also held short term appointments at Brown University, the University of California, and the University of Michigan. From 1981 to 1992, he was a Research Associate, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, at the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Views on the Seduction Theory
In 1970, Masson began studying to become a psychoanalyst at the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute, completing a full clinical training course in 1978. During this time, he befriended the psychoanalyst Kurt Eissler and became acquainted with Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna Freud. Eissler designated Masson to succeed him as Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives after his and Anna Freud's death. Masson learned German and studied the history of psychoanalysis. In 1980 Masson was appointed Projects Director of the Freud Archives, with full access to Freud's correspondence and other unpublished papers. While perusing this material, Masson concluded that Freud might have rejected the seduction theory in order to advance the cause of psychoanalysis and to maintain his own place within the psychoanalytic inner circle. [1]
Masson's actions, along with those of Kurt Eissler and Peter Swales, form the subject of In the Freud Archives, an article in the New Yorker by Janet Malcolm, which she later expanded into a book.
In 1981, Masson's controversial conclusions were discussed in a series of New York Times articles by Ralph Blumenthal, to the dismay of the psychoanalytic establishment. Masson was subsequently dismissed from his position as project director of the Freud Archives. and stripped of his membership in psychoanalytic professional societies. Masson was defended by Alice Miller [2] and Muriel Gardiner ("While striving not to take sides," Gardiner said, "I consider him a good and energetic worker and a worthwhile scholar.") [3]
Masson later wrote several books critical of psychoanalysis, including The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. In the introduction to The Assault on Truth, Masson admitted that, "My pessimistic conclusions may possibly be wrong. The documents may in fact allow a very different reading." [4] Janet Malcolm interviewed Masson at length when writing her long New Yorker article on this controversy. Masson sued the New Yorker for defamation, claiming that Malcolm had misquoted him. The ensuing trial drew considerable attention.[5]The decade-long, $US10 million lawsuit came to a close when the court ruled in the New Yorker 's favor.[6]
In 1985, Masson edited and translated the complete correspondence of Freud with Wilhelm Fliess after having convinced Anna Freud to make all of it available. He also looked up the original places and documents in La Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris,[7] where Freud had studied with Charcot. Masson has written that people used to be very interested in himself but as far as the cause was concerned, there is silence from the scientific community. [8]
[edit] Recent work
Since the early 1990s, Masson has written a number of books on the emotional life of animals, one of which, When Elephants Weep, has been translated into 20 languages. He has explained this radical change in the subject of his writings as follows:
“ "I'd written a whole series of books about psychiatry, and nobody bought them. Nobody liked them. Nobody. Psychiatrists hated them, and they were much too abstruse for the general public. It was very hard to make a living, and I thought, 'As long as I'm not making a living, I may as well write about something I really love: animals.'"[9] ”
Masson also wrote a book about his new home country New Zealand, including an interview with Sir Edmund Hillary. [10] Among other things, Masson and Hillary talk about Alexandra David-Neel and the story of her Tulpa, both of them having read her books Magic and Mystery in Tibet, Initiation and Initiates in Tibet and My Journey to Lhasa. Masson says that he met her in 1957 when he was 16, at her country house at Digne in the south of France.
Personal life
Masson is married to Leila Masson, a pediatrician. [11] They have two sons, Ilan and Manu. He also has a daughter, Simone, by a previous marriage. [12] Masson was once engaged to University of Michigan feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, who wrote the preface to his A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality, and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century.
Name
Jeffrey Masson's grandgrandfather Shlomo Moussaieff (rabbi) was a kabbalist and founder of the Bukharian Quarter in Jerusalem. His grandfather Henry Mousaieff changed his familyname from Moussaieff to Masson. Jeffrey Masson changed his middlename from Lloyd to Moussaieff.
Masson's father's first cousin is Shlomo Moussaieff (businessman). Masson's first cousin is pianist James Raphael and his second cousin is First Lady of Iceland Dorrit Moussaieff.
[edit] Writings by Masson
1974. "India and the Unconscious: Erik Erikson on Gandhi," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 55: 519-26. Discussion by T. C. Sinha: 527.
1976. "Perversions-some observations", Israel Ann. Psychiat. rel. Disc., (1976b), 14, 354-61.
1976. (with Terri C. Masson) "The Navel of Neurosis: Trauma, Memory and Denial.", paper presented to the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society [13]
1978 (with Terri C. Masson), "Buried Memories on the Acropolis. Freud's Relation to Mysticism and Anti-Semitism", International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 59: 199-208.
1980. The Oceanic Feeling: The Origins of Religious Sentiment in Ancient India. (Table of contents)
1981. The Peacock's Egg: Love Poems from Ancient India, W. S. Merwin and J. Moussaieff Masson, eds. ISBN 0-86547-059-6
1984. The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. Farrar Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-374-10642-8
1984. "Freud and the Seduction Theory A challenge to the foundations of psychoanalysis," The Atlantic Monthly, February 1984.
1985 (editor). The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904. ISBN 0-674-15420-7
1986. A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century. ISBN 0-374-13501-0, last edition 1988
1988. Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing. ISBN 0-689-11929-1
1990. Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of A Psychoanalyst. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-52368-X, new edition 2003
1993. My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion, Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-56778-4
Dogs Never Lie About Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs.
1995. When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Life of Animals.
The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals.
The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey Into the Feline Heart. ISBN 0345448820
The Cat Who Came in from the Cold. Wheeler. ISBN 1587249146
The Emperors Embrace Reflections on Animal Families and Fatherhood.
The Evolution of Fatherhood: A Celebration of Animal and Human Families.
Raising the Peaceable Kingdom: What Animals Can Teach Us about the Social Origins of Tolerance and Friendship.
Lost Prince : The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. [14]
Sex and Yoga: Psychoanalysis and the Indian Religious Experience in Vishnu on Freud's Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism, T.G. Vaidyanathan & Jeffrey J. Kripal (editors): , Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195658353, Paperback (Edition: 2003)[15]
Slipping into Paradise: Why I live in New Zealand. ISBN 0-345-46634-9
2006. Altruistic Armadillos - Zen-Like Zebras: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals. ISBN 978-0-345-47881-8 (0-345-47881-9)
See Masson's praise of the book by Luna Tarlo, the mother of Andrew Cohen.
1995, "A Note on U.G. Krishnamurti."
[edit] Reviews of his books
The Original Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904: By William McGrath.
Against Therapy:
By Jeanne Stubbs.
By Wray Herbert.
Final Analysis: By Michael Sacks.
Breaking Away From the Cult: By Carol Tavris.
[edit] References
^ "Did Freud's Isolation Lead Him to Reverse Theory on Neurosis?" by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, August 25, 1981
^ PSYCHOLOGIE HEUTE, April 1987, P.21, 22: "Im Gegensatz zu manchen Interpreten, die, wie zum Beispiel Marianne Krüll, Marie Balmary oder Jeffrey Masson, Freuds Abkehr von der Wahrheit als Folge seiner Familiengeschichte deuten, sehe ich diesen Schritt als Folge und Ausdruck unserer jahrtausendealten kinderfeindlichen Tradition, in der wir auch heute noch leben. Die Ergebnisse der oben genannten historischen Forscher können trotzdem korrekt sein, aber ich meine, daß es Freud trotz der persönlichen Familiengeschichte möglich gewesen wäre, seiner Entdeckung treu zu bleiben, wenn die Gesellschaft als Ganzes nicht so kinderfeindlich gewesen wäre, wenn schon damals andere, freiere Erziehungsmuster denkbar gewesen wären. Doch zur Zeit Freuds war es noch absolut unmöglich, die Unschuld der Eltern in Frage zu stellen." Alice Miller in interview entitled Wie Psychotherapien das Kind verraten
^ "Freud Archives Research Chief Removed in Dispute Over Yale Talk" by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times November 9, 1981.
^ Masson, Jeffrey (1992). The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. New York: Harper Perennial. xxxv. ISBN 0-06-097457-5.
^ David Margolick (1994-11-03). "Psychoanalyst Loses Libel Suit Against a New Yorker Reporter". The New York Times.
^ SMH article October 6, 2007
^ History of La Salpêtrière
^ Masson, J., 1990. Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-52368-X.
^ Powells.com Interviews - Jeffrey Masson
^ Masson, J., "A Conversation with a Great Ordinary Kiwi: Sir Edmund Hillary," chpt. 7 in Slipping into Paradise.
^ [1]
^ [2]
^ [3]
^ Review
^ Table of Contents
[edit] Further reading
Kurt R. Eissler, 2001. Freud and the seduction theory: A brief love affair, New York: International Universities Press.
Janet Malcolm, 2002. In the Freud Archives, New York Review of Books. ISBN 159017027X
Sthitaprajna (Perfect Yogi) - Part 2
Luna Tarlo, 1997. The Mother of God. Plover Press. ISBN 9781570270437
[edit] External links
From Jeffrey Masson's Website
Masson's website.
About Jeff (with new Photo of Jeffrey and his family)
Photo
Articles
"Scholars seek the hidden Freud in newly emerging letters." The first of two NYT articles by Ralph Blumenthal, published August 18, 1981.
"Till Press Do Us Part: The Trial of Janet Malcolm and Jeffrey Masson."
Interviews
Transcript of an interview: Jeffrey Masson talking with Kirsten Garrett about Sigmund Freud and Emma Eckstein/ first broadcast on The Science Show in 1986, second broadcast 3 June 2006 presented by Robyn Williams
[4] A conversation about the lives of animals with Susan McCarthy and Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason on Jun 30, 1995, Duration 60 min (Audio)
"Walking on the Beach with Jeffrey Masson's Cats," November 14, 2002
"Conversation between Masson and Richard Fidler. Related Audio, December 14, 2007.
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Moussaieff_Masson"
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Janet Malcolm
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Janet Malcolm (born 1934) is an American writer and journalist on staff at The New Yorker magazine. She is the author of The Journalist and the Murderer, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, and In the Freud Archives.
Malcolm is best known for the 1991 lawsuit triggered by In the Freud Archives, when psychoanalyst Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson sued Malcolm and The New Yorker for $10 million, after claiming that Malcolm had fabricated explosive quotations attributed to him. After several years of proceedings, the court found against Masson.
Craig Seligman wrote of her: "Like Sylvia Plath, whose not-niceness she has laid open with surgical skill, she discovered her vocation in not-niceness ... Malcolm's blade gleams with a razor edge. Her critics tend to go after her with broken bottles."[1] The influential critic Harold Bloom has praised her "wonderful exuberance," writing that Malcolm's books, "transcend what they appear to be: superb reportage."[2]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Background and personal
* 2 Masson case
* 3 The Journalist and the Murderer
* 4 Works
* 5 References
* 6 Sources
* 7 External links
[edit] Background and personal
Malcolm was born in Prague in 1934, one of two daughters--the other is author Marie Winn-- of a psychiatrist father. She has resided in the United States since her family emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1939. Malcolm was educated at the University of Michigan and lives in New York City. Her first husband, Donald Malcolm, reviewed books for The New Yorker in the 1950s and 1960's. Her second husband, whom she wed in 1975, was long-time New Yorker editor Gardner Botsford; Botsford died at age 87 in September, 2004.
Early Malcolm book jackets report her "living in New York with her husband and daughter." Her daughter is also mentioned in the text of The Crime of Sheila McGough.
[edit] Masson case
Publication of the book In The Freud Archives triggered a $10 million legal challenge by Jeffrey Masson, former project director for the Freud Archives, who claimed that Malcolm had libelled him by fabricating quotations attributed to him; these quotes, Masson contended, had brought him into disrepute.
In the disputed quotations, Masson called himself an "intellectual gigolo", who had slept with over 1000 women; said he wanted to turn the Freud estate into a haven of "sex, women and fun"; and claimed that he was, "after Freud, the greatest analyst that ever lived." Malcolm was unable to produce all the disputed material on tape. The case was partially adjudicated before the Supreme Court[3], and after years of proceedings, a jury finally found against Masson in 1994. (See the opinion at Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc. (89-1799), 501 U.S. 496 (1991))
In August, 1995, Malcolm discovered a misplaced notebook containing three of the disputed quotes. As reported in The New York Times[4] the author "declared in an affidavit under penalty of perjury that the notes were genuine."
[edit] The Journalist and the Murderer
The thesis of The Journalist and the Murderer is contained in its first sentence: "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible."[5]
Malcolm's example was popular non-fiction writer Joe McGinniss, author of The Selling of the President, among others; while researching his non-fiction, true crime book Fatal Vision, McGinniss lived with the defense team of former Green Beret doctor Jeffrey MacDonald, then on trial for the 1970 murders of his pregnant wife and two daughters. In the published Fatal Vision, McGinniss concluded that MacDonald was a sociopath and had been unbalanced by amphetamines when he slew his family. McGinniss drew upon the work of social critic Christopher Lasch to construct a portrait of MacDonald as a "pathological narcissist".[6]
Malcolm contended that McGinniss was pressed into this strategy for professional and structural reasons — by MacDonald's "lack of vividness"[7] as a real-life character who would be carrying the book. "As every journalist will confirm," Malcolm writes[8],
"MacDonald's uninterestingness is not unusual at all...When a journalist fetches up against someone like [him], all he can do is flee and hope that a more suitable subject will turn up soon. In the MacDonald-McGinniss case we have an instance of a journalist who apparently found out too late that the subject of his book was not up to scratch — not a member of the wonderful race of auto-fictionalizers, like Joseph Mitchell's Joe Gould and Truman Capote's Perry Smith, on whom the "non-fiction novel" depends for its life...The solution that McGinniss arrived at for dealing with MacDonald's characterlessness was not a satisfactory one, but it had to do."
Per Malcolm, it was to conceal this deficit that McGinniss quoted liberally from Lasch's 1979 study The Culture of Narcissism. This, to her, was a professional sin. McGinniss' moral sin, his "indefensible" act in her view, was to pretend to a belief in MacDonald's innocence, long after he'd become convinced of the man's guilt.
The book created a sensation when in March 1989 it appeared in two parts in The New Yorker magazine.[9] Roundly criticized upon first publication[10], the book is still controversial, though some have since become regarded as a classic[11], and ranks ninety-seventh in The Modern Library's list of the twentieth century's "100 Best Works of Nonfiction".[12] As Douglas McCollum wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review, "In the decade after Malcolm's essay appeared, her once controversial theory became received wisdom."
[edit] Works
* Diana & Nikon: Essays on the Aesthetic of Photography (1980)
* Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (1981)
* In The Freud Archives (1984)
* The Journalist and The Murderer (1990)
* The Purloined Clinic: Selected Writings (1992), which contains the essays "A Girl of the Zeitgeist" and "The Window Washer"
* The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes (1994)
* The Crime of Sheila McGough (1999)
* Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey (2001)
* Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (2007)
[edit] References
1. ^ Seligman, Craig. Salon, "Brilliant Careers: Janet Malcolm". February 2, 2000.
2. ^ Bloom, Harold, The New York Times Book Review, "War Within The Walls", May 27, 1984.
3. ^ / Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., 501 U.S. 496 (1991)
4. ^ Stout, David, The New York Times, "Malcolm's Notes and a Child at Play", August 30, 1995
5. ^ Malcolm, Janet, The Journalist and the Murderer, New York: Knopf, 1990.
6. ^ Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer, pps. 28, 72-3.
7. ^ Malcolm, p.68
8. ^ Malcolm, pps. 71-3.
9. ^ Scardino, Albert, The New York Times. "Ethic, Reporters and The New Yorker", March 21. 1989. "Janet Malcolm, a staff writer for The New Yorker, returned her magazine to the center of the long-running debate over ethics in journalism this month...Her declarations provoked outrage among authors, reporters and editors, who rushed last week to distinguish themselves from the journalists Miss Malcolm was describing."
10. ^ See Friendly, Fred W., The New York Times Book Review, "Was Trust Betrayed?", February 25, 1990, and Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher, The New York Times, "Deception and Journalism: How Far to Go for the Story", February 22, 1990.
11. ^ McCollum, Douglas, Columbia Journalism Review, "You Have The Right to Remain Silent", January, February, 2003.
12. ^ The Modern Library 100 Best
Sources
* Janet Malcolm by Craig Seligman, Salon.com, February 29, 2000
External links
* NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH?
* The Lives They Lived: Kurt Eissler, b. 1908; Keeper of Freud's Secrets, By JANET MALCOLM, Published: January 2, 2000
* Malcolm archive from The New York Review of Books
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Malcolm"
Categories: 1934 births | Living people | American journalists | Czech expatriates | Members of The American Academy of Arts and Letters | People from Prague | New Yorker staff writers | University of Michigan alumni
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Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc. (89-1799), 501 U.S. 496 (1991)
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MASSON v. NEW YORKER MAGAZINE, INC.
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
No. 89-1799
M. MASSON, PETITIONER v. NEW YORKER MAGAZINE, INC., ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. and JANET MALCOLM
[June 20, 1991]
Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this libel case, a public figure claims he was defamed by an author who, with full knowledge of the inaccuracy, used quotation marks to attribute to him comments he had not made. The First Amendment protects authors and journalists who write about public figures by requiring a plaintiff to prove that the defamatory statements were made with what we have called "actual malice," a term of art denoting deliberate or reckless falsification. We consider in this opinion whether the attributed quotations had the degree of falsity required to prove this state of mind, so that the public figure can defeat a motion for summary judgment and proceed to a trial on the merits of the defamation claim.
I
Petitioner Jeffrey Masson trained at Harvard University as a Sanskrit scholar, and in 1970 became a professor of Sanskrit & Indian Studies at the University of Toronto. He spent eight years in psychoanalytic training, and qualified as an analyst in 1978. Through his professional activities, he came to know Dr. Kurt Eissler, head of the Sigmund Freud Archives, and Dr. Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud and a major psychoanalyst in her own right. The Sigmund Freud Archives, located at Maresfield Gardens outside of London, serves as a repository for materials about Freud, including his own writings, letters, and personal library. The materials, and the right of access to them, are of immense value to those who study Freud, his theories, life and work.
In 1980, Eissler and Anna Freud hired petitioner as Projects Director of the Archives. After assuming his post, petitioner became disillusioned with Freudian psychology. In a 1981 lecture before the Western New England Psychoanalytical Society in New Haven, Connecticut, he advanced his theories of Freud. Soon after, the Board of the Archives terminated petitioner as Projects Director.
Respondent Janet Malcolm is an author and a contributor to respondent The New Yorker, a weekly magazine. She contacted petitioner in 1982 regarding the possibility of an article on his relationship with the Archives. He agreed, and the two met in person and spoke by telephone in a series of interviews. Based on the interviews and other sources, Malcolm wrote a lengthy article. One of Malcolm's narrative devices consists of enclosing lengthy passages in quotation marks, reporting statements of Masson, Eissler, and her other subjects.
During the editorial process, Nancy Franklin, a member of the fact-checking department at The New Yorker, called petitioner to confirm some of the facts underlying the article. According to petitioner, he expressed alarm at the number of errors in the few passages Franklin discussed with him. Petitioner contends that he asked permission to review those portions of the article which attributed quotations or information to him, but was brushed off with a never-fulfilled promise to "get back to [him]." App. 67. Franklin disputes petitioner's version of their conversation. App. 246-247.
The New Yorker published Malcolm's piece in December 1983, as a two-part series. In 1984, with knowledge of at least petitioner's general allegation that the article contained defamatory material, respondent Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., published the entire work as a book, entitled In the Freud Archives.
Malcolm's work received complimentary reviews. But this gave little joy to Masson, for the book portrays him in a most unflattering light. According to one reviewer,
"Masson the promising psychoanalytic scholar emerges gradually, as a grandiose egotist — mean-spirited, self-serving, full of braggadocio, impossibly arrogant and, in the end, a self-destructive fool. But it is not Janet Malcolm who calls him such: his own words reveal this psychological profile — a self-portrait offered to us through the efforts of an observer and listener who is, surely, as wise as any in the psychoanalytic profession." Coles, Freudianism Confronts Its Malcontents, Boston Globe, May 27, 1984, pp. 58, 60.
Petitioner wrote a letter to the New York Times Book Review calling the book "distorted." In response, Malcolm stated:
"Many of [the] things Mr. Masson told me (on tape) were discreditable to him, and I felt it best not to include them. Everything I do quote Mr. Masson as saying was said by him, almost word for word. (The `almost' refers to changes made for the sake of correct syntax.) I would be glad to play the tapes of my conversation with Mr. Masson to the editors of The Book Review whenever they have 40 or 50 short hours to spare." App. 222-223.
Petitioner brought an action for libel under California law in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. During extensive discovery and repeated amendments to the complaint, petitioner concentrated on various passages alleged to be defamatory, dropping some and adding others. The tape recordings of the interviews demonstrated that petitioner had, in fact, made statements substantially identical to a number of the passages, and those passages are no longer in the case. We discuss only the passages relied on by petitioner in his briefs to this Court.
Each passage before us purports to quote a statement made by petitioner during the interviews. Yet in each instance no identical statement appears in the more than 40 hours of taped interviews. Petitioner complains that Malcolm fabricated all but one passage; with respect to that passage, he claims Malcolm omitted a crucial portion, rendering the remainder misleading.
(a) "Intellectual Gigolo." Malcolm quoted a description by petitioner of his relationship with Eissler and Anna Freud as follows:
" `Then I met a rather attractive older graduate student and I had an affair with her. One day, she took me to some art event, and she was sorry afterward. She said, "Well, it is very nice sleeping with you in your room, but you're the kind of person who should never leave the room — you're just a social embarrassment anywhere else, though you do fine in your own room." And you know, in their way, if not in so many words, Eissler and Anna Freud told me the same thing. They like me well enough "in my own room." They loved to hear from me what creeps and dolts analysts are. I was like an intellectual gigolo — you get your pleasure from him, but you don't take him out in public. . . .' " In the Freud Archives 38.
The tape recordings contain the substance of petitioner's reference to his graduate student friend, App. 95, but no suggestion that Eissler or Anna Freud considered him, or that he considered himself, an " `intellectual gigolo.' " Instead, petitioner said:
"They felt, in a sense, I was a private asset but a public liability. . . . They liked me when I was alone in their living room, and I could talk and chat and tell them the truth about things and they would tell me. But that I was, in a sense, much too junior within the hierarchy of analysis, for these important training analysts to be caught dead with me." Id., at 104.
(b) "Sex, Women, Fun." Malcolm quoted petitioner as describing his plans for Maresfield Gardens, which he had hoped to occupy after Anna Freud's death:
" `It was a beautiful house, but it was dark and sombre and dead. Nothing ever went on there. I was the only person who ever came. I would have renovated it, opened it up, brought it to life. Maresfield Gardens would have been a center of scholarship, but it would also have been a place of sex, women, fun. It would have been like the change in The Wizard of Oz, from black-and-white into color.' " In the Freud Archives 33.
The tape recordings contain a similar statement, but in place of the reference to "sex, women, fun," and The Wizard of Oz, petitioner commented:
"[I]t is an incredible storehouse. I mean, the library, Freud's library alone is priceless in terms of what it contains: all his books with his annotations in them; the Schreber case annotated, that kind of thing. It's fascinating." App. 127.
Petitioner did talk, earlier in the interview, of his meeting with a London analyst:
"I like him. So, and we got on very well. That was the first time we ever met and you know, it was buddybuddy, and we were to stay with each other and [laughs] we were going to pass women on to each other, and we were going to have a great time together when I lived in the Freud house. We'd have great parties there and we were [laughs] —
. . . . .
". . . going to really, we were going to live it up." Id., at 129.
(c) "It Sounded Better." Petitioner spoke with Malcolm about the history of his family, including the reasons his grandfather changed the family name from Moussaieff to Masson, and why petitioner adopted the abandoned family name as his middle name. The article contains the passage:
" `My father is a gem merchant who doesn't like to stay in any one place too long. His father was a gem merchant, too — a Bessarabian gem merchant, named Moussaieff, who went to Paris in the twenties and adopted the name Masson. My parents named me Jeffrey Lloyd Masson, but in 1975 I decided to change my middle name to Moussaieff — it sounded better.' " In the Freud Archives 36.
In the most similar tape recorded statement, Masson explained at considerable length that his grandfather had changed the family name from Moussaieff to Masson when living in France, "[j]ust to hide his Jewishness." Petitioner had changed his last name back to Moussaieff, but his thenwife Terry objected that "nobody could pronounce it and nobody knew how to spell it, and it wasn't the name that she knew me by." Petitioner had changed his name to Mous saieff because he "just liked it." "[I]t was sort of part of analysis: a return to the roots, and your family tradition and so on." In the end, he had agreed with Terry that "it wasn't her name after all," and used Moussaieff as a middle instead of a last name. App. 87-89.
(d) "I Don't Know Why I Put It In." The article recounts part of a conversation between Malcolm and petitioner about the paper petitioner presented at his 1981 New Haven lecture:
"[I] asked him what had happened between the time of the lecture and the present to change him from a Freudian psychoanalyst with somewhat outre views into the bitter and belligerent anti-Freudian he had become.
"Masson sidestepped my question. `You're right, there was nothing disrespectful of analysis in that paper,' he said. `That remark about the sterility of psychoanalysis was something I tacked on at the last minute, and it was totally gratuitous. I don't know why I put it in.' " In the Freud Archives 53.
The tape recordings instead contain the following discussion of the New Haven lecture:
Masson: "So they really couldn't judge the material. And, in fact, until the last sentence I think they were quite fascinated. I think the last sentence was an in, [sic] possibly, gratuitously offensive way to end a paper to a group of analysts. Uh, — "
Malcolm: "What were the circumstances under which you put it [in]? . . ."
Masson: "That it was, was true.
. . . . .
". . . I really believe it. I didn't believe anybody would agree with me.
. . . . .
". . . But I felt I should say something because the paper's still well within the analytic tradition in a sense. . . .
. . . . .
". . . It's really not a deep criticism of Freud. It contains all the material that would allow one to criticize Freud but I didn't really do it. And then I thought, I really must say one thing that I really believe, that's not going to appeal to anybody and that was the very last sentence. Because I really do believe psychoanalysis is entirely sterile . . . ." App. 176.
(e) "Greatest Analyst Who Ever Lived." The article contains the following self-explanatory passage:
"A few days after my return to New York, Masson, in a state of elation, telephoned me to say that Farrar, Straus & Giroux has taken The Assault on Truth [Masson's book]. `Wait till it reaches the best-seller list, and watch how the analysts will crawl,' he crowed. `They move whichever way the wind blows. They will want me back, they will say that Masson is a great scholar, a major analyst — after Freud, he's the greatest analyst who ever lived. Suddenly they'll be calling, begging, cajoling: "Please take back what you've said about our profession; our patients are quitting." They'll try a short smear campaign, then they'll try to buy me, and ultimately they'll have to shut up. Judgment will be passed by history. There is no possible refutation of this book. It's going to cause a revolution in psychoanalysis. Analysis stands or falls with me now.' " In the Freud Archives 162.
This material does not appear in the tape recordings. Petitioner did make the following statements on related topics in one of the taped interviews with Malcolm:
". . . I assure you when that book comes out, which I honestly believe is an honest book, there is nothing, you know, mean-minded about it. It's the honest fruit of research and intellectual toil. And there is not an analyst in the country who will say a single word in favor of it." App. 136.
"Talk to enough analysts and get them right down to these concrete issues and you watch how different it is from my position. It's utterly the opposite and that's finally what I realized, that I hold a position that no other analyst holds, including, alas, Freud. At first I thought: Okay, it's me and Freud against the rest of the analytic world, or me and Freud and Anna Freud and Kur[t] Eissler and Vic Calef and Brian Bird and Sam Lipton against the rest of the world. Not so, it's me. it's me alone." Id., at 139.
The tape of this interview also contains the following exchange between petitioner and Malcolm:
Masson: ". . . analysis stands or falls with me now."
Malcolm: "Well that's a very grandiose thing to say."
Masson: "Yeah, but it's got nothing to do with me. It's got to do with the things I discovered." Id., at 137.
(f) "He Had The Wrong Man." In discussing the Archives' board meeting at which petitioner's employment was terminated, Malcolm quotes petitioner as giving the following explanation of Eissler's attempt to extract a promise of confidentiality:
" `[Eissler] was always putting moral pressure on me. "Do you want to poison Anna Freud's last days? Have you no heart? You're going to kill the poor old woman." I said to him, "What have I done? You're doing it. You're firing me. What am I supposed to do — be grateful to you?" "You could be silent about it. You could swallow it. I know it is painful for you. But you could just live with it in silence." "Why should I do that?" "Because it is the honorable thing to do." Well, he had the wrong man.' " In the Freud Archives 67.
From the tape recordings, on the other hand, it appears that Malcolm deleted part of petitioner's explanation (italicized below), and petitioner argues that the "wrong man" sentence relates to something quite different from Eissler's entreaty that silence was "the honorable thing." In the tape recording, petitioner states:
"But it was wrong of Eissler to do that, you know. He was constantly putting various kinds of moral pressure on me and, `Do you want to poison Anna Freud's last days? Have you no heart?' He called me: `Have you no heart? You're going to kill the poor old woman. Have you no heart? Think of what she's done for you and you are now willing to do this to her.' I said, `What have I, what have I done? You did it. You fired me. What am I supposed to do: thank you? be grateful to you?' He said, `Well you could never talk about it. You could be silent about it. You could swallow it. I know it's painful for you but just live with it in silence.' `Fuck you,' I said, `Why should I do that? Why? You know, why should one do that?' `Because it's the honorable thing to do and you will save face. And who knows? If you never speak about it and you quietly and humbly accept our judgment, who knows that in a few years if we don't bring you back?' Well, he had the wrong man." App. 215-216.
Malcolm submitted to the District Court that not all of her discussions with petitioner were recorded on tape, in particular conversations that occurred while the two of them walked together or traveled by car, while petitioner stayed at Malcolm's home in New York, or while her tape recorder was inoperable. She claimed to have taken notes of these unrecorded sessions, which she later typed, then discarding the handwritten originals. Petitioner denied that any discussion relating to the substance of the article occurred during his stay at Malcolm's home in New York, that Malcolm took notes during any of their conversations, or that Malcolm gave any indication that her tape recorder was broken.
Respondents moved for summary judgment. The parties agreed that petitioner was a public figure and so could escape summary judgment only if the evidence in the record would permit a reasonable finder of fact, by clear and convincing evidence, to conclude that respondents published a defamatory statement with actual malice as defined by our cases. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255-256 (1986). The District Court analyzed each of the passages and held that the alleged inaccuracies did not raise a jury question. The court found that the allegedly fabricated quotations were either substantially true, or were " `one of a number of possible rational interpretations' of a conversation or event that `bristled with ambiguities,' " and thus were entitled to constitutional protection. 686 F. Supp. 1396, 1399 (1987) (quoting Bose Corp. v. Consumer's Union of the United States, Inc., 466 U.S. 485, 512 (1984)). The court also ruled that the "he had the wrong man" passage involved an exercise of editorial judgment upon which the courts could not intrude. 686 F. Supp., at 1403-1404.
The Court of Appeals affirmed, with one judge dissenting. 895 F. 2d 1535 (CA9 1989). The court assumed for much of its opinion that Malcolm had deliberately altered each quotation not found on the tape recordings, but nevertheless held that petitioner failed to raise a jury question of actual malice, in large part for the reasons stated by the District Court. In its examination of the "intellectual gigolo" passage, the court agreed with the District Court that petitioner could not demonstrate actual malice because Malcolm had not altered the substantive content of petitioner's self-description, but went on to note that it did not consider the "intellectual gigolo" passage defamatory, as the quotation merely reported Kurt Eissler's and Anna Freud's opinions about petitioner. In any event, concluded the court, the statement would not be actionable under the " `incremental harm branch' of the `libelproof' doctrine," id., at 1541 (quoting Herbert v. Lando, 781 F. 2d 298, 310-311 (CA2 1986)).
The dissent argued that any intentional or reckless alteration would prove actual malice, so long as a passage within quotation marks purports to be a verbatim rendition of what was said, contains material inaccuracies, and is defamatory. 895 F. 2d, at 1562-1570. We granted certiorari, 498 U. S. — (1990), and now reverse.
II
A
Under California law, "[l]ibel is a false and unprivileged publication by writing . . . which exposes any person to hatred, contempt, ridicule, or obloquy, or which causes him to be shunned or avoided, or which has a tendency to injure him in his occupation." Cal. Civ. Code Ann. 45 (West 1982). False attribution of statements to a person may constitute libel, if the falsity exposes that person to an injury comprehended by the statute. See Selleck v. Globe International, Inc., 166 Cal. App. 3d 1123, 1132, 212 Cal. Rptr. 838, 844 (1985); Cameron v. Wernick, 251 Cal. App. 2d 890, 60 Cal. Rptr. 102 (1967); Kerby v. Hal Roach Studios, Inc., 53 Cal. App. 2d 207, 213, 127 P. 2d 577, 581 (1942); cf. Baker v. Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 42 Cal. 3d 254, 260-261, 721 P. 2d 87, 90-91 (1986). It matters not under California law that petitioner alleges only part of the work at issue to be false. "[T]he test of libel is not quantitative; a single sentence may be the basis for an action in libel even though buried in a much longer text," though the California courts recognize that "[w]hile a drop of poison may be lethal, weaker poisons are sometimes diluted to the point of impotency." Washburn v. Wright, 261 Cal. App. 2d 789, 795, 68 Cal. Rptr. 224, 228 (1968).
The First Amendment limits California's libel law in various respects. When, as here, the plaintiff is a public figure, he cannot recover unless he proves by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant published the defamatory statement with actual malice, i. e., with "knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 279-280 (1964). Mere negligence does not suffice. Rather, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the author "in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of his publication," St. Amant v. Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731 (1968), or acted with a "high degree of awareness of . . . probable falsity," Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 74 (1964).
Actual malice under the New York Times standard should not be confused with the concept of malice as an evil intent or a motive arising from spite or ill will. See Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Assn., Inc. v. Bresler, 398 U.S. 6 (1970). We have used the term actual malice as a shorthand to describe the First Amendment protections for speech injurious to reputation and we continue to do so here. But the term can confuse as well as enlighten. In this respect, the phrase may be an unfortunate one. See Harte-Hanks Communications, Inc. v. Connaughton, 491 U.S. 657, 666, n. 7 (1989). In place of the term actual malice, it is better practice that jury instructions refer to publication of a statement with knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard as to truth or falsity. This definitional principle must be remembered in the case before us.
B
In general, quotation marks around a passage indicate to the reader that the passage reproduces the speaker's words verbatim. They inform the reader that he or she is reading the statement of the speaker, not a paraphrase or other indirect interpretation by an author. By providing this information, quotations add authority to the statement and credibility to the author's work. Quotations allow the reader to form his or her own conclusions, and to assess the conclusions of the author, instead of relying entirely upon the author's characterization of her subject.
A fabricated quotation may injure reputation in at least two senses, either giving rise to a conceivable claim of defamation. First, the quotation might injure because it attributes an untrue factual assertion to the speaker. An example would be a fabricated quotation of a public official admitting he had been convicted of a serious crime when in fact he had not.
Second, regardless of the truth or falsity of the factual matters asserted within the quoted statement, the attribution may result in injury to reputation because the manner of expression or even the fact that the statement was made indicates a negative personal trait or an attitude the speaker does not hold. John Lennon once was quoted as saying of the Beatles, "We're more popular than Jesus Christ now." Time, Aug. 12, 1966, p. 38. Supposing the quotation had been a fabrication, it appears California law could permit recovery for defamation because, even without regard to the truth of the underlying assertion, false attribution of the statement could have injured his reputation. Here, in like manner, one need not determine whether petitioner is or is not the greatest analyst who ever lived in order to determine that it might have injured his reputation to be reported as having so proclaimed.
A self-condemnatory quotation may carry more force than criticism by another. It is against self-interest to admit one's own criminal liability, arrogance, or lack of integrity, and so all the more easy to credit when it happens. This principle underlies the elemental rule of evidence which permits the introduction of admissions, despite their hearsay character, because we assume "that persons do not make statements which are damaging to themselves unless satisfied for good reason that they are true." Advisory Committee's Notes on Fed. Rule Evid. 804(b)(3), 28 U. S. C. App., p. 789 (citing Hileman v. Northwest Engineering Co., 346 F. 2d 668 (CA6 1965)).
Of course, quotations do not always convey that the speaker actually said or wrote the quoted material. "Punctuation marks, like words, have many uses. Writers often use quotation marks, yet no reasonable reader would assume that such punctuation automatically implies the truth of the quoted material." Baker v. Los Angeles Examiner, 42 Cal. 3d, at 263, 721 P. 2d, at 92. In Baker, a television reviewer printed a hypothetical conversation between a station vice president and writer/producer, and the court found that no reasonable reader would conclude the plaintiff in fact had made the statement attributed to him. Id., at 267, 721 P. 2d, at 95. Writers often use quotations as in Baker, and a reader will not reasonably understand the quotations to indicate reproduction of a conversation that took place. In other instances, an acknowledgement that the work is so-called docudrama or historical fiction, or that it recreates conversations from memory, not from recordings, might indicate that the quotations should not be interpreted as the actual statements of the speaker to whom they are attributed.
The work at issue here, however, as with much journalistic writing, provides the reader no clue that the quotations are being used as a rhetorical device or to paraphrase the speaker's actual statements. To the contrary, the work purports to be nonfiction, the result of numerous interviews. At least a trier of fact could so conclude. The work contains lengthy quotations attributed to petitioner, and neither Malcolm nor her publishers indicate to the reader that the quotations are anything but the reproduction of actual conversations. Further, the work was published in The New Yorker, a magazine which at the relevant time seemed to enjoy a reputation for scrupulous factual accuracy. These factors would, or at least could, lead a reader to take the quotations at face value. A defendant may be able to argue to the jury that quotations should be viewed by the reader as nonliteral or reconstructions, but we conclude that a trier of fact in this case could find that the reasonable reader would understand the quotations to be nearly verbatim reports of statements made by the subject.
C
The constitutional question we must consider here is whether, in the framework of a summary judgment motion, the evidence suffices to show that respondents acted with the requisite knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard as to truth or falsity. This inquiry in turn requires us to consider the concept of falsity; for we cannot discuss the standards for knowledge or reckless disregard without some understanding of the acts required for liability. We must consider whether the requisite falsity inheres in the attribution of words to the petitioner which he did not speak.
In some sense, any alteration of a verbatim quotation is false. But writers and reporters by necessity alter what people say, at the very least to eliminate grammatical and syntactical infelicities. If every alteration constituted the falsity required to prove actual malice, the practice of journalism, which the First Amendment standard is designed to protect, would require a radical change, one inconsistent with our precedents and First Amendment principles. Petitioner concedes this absolute definition of falsity in the quotation context is too stringent, and acknowledges that "minor changes to correct for grammar or syntax" do not amount to falsity for purposes of proving actual malice. Brief for Petitioner 18, 36-37. We agree, and must determine what, in addition to this technical falsity, proves falsity for purposes of the actual malice inquiry.
Petitioner argues that, excepting correction of grammar or syntax, publication of a quotation with knowledge that it does not contain the words the public figure used demonstrates actual malice. The author will have published the quotation with knowledge of falsity, and no more need be shown. Petitioner suggests that by invoking more forgiving standards the Court of Appeals would permit and encourage the publication of falsehoods. Petitioner believes that the intentional manufacture of quotations does not "represen[t] the sort of inaccuracy that is commonplace in the forum of robust debate to which the New York Times rule applies," Bose Corp., 466 U. S., at 513, and that protection of deliberate falsehoods would hinder the First Amendment values of robust and well-informed public debate by reducing the reliability of information available to the public.
We reject the idea that any alteration beyond correction of grammar or syntax by itself proves falsity in the sense relevant to determining actual malice under the First Amendment. An interviewer who writes from notes often will engage in the task of attempting a reconstruction of the speaker's statement. That author would, we may assume, act with knowledge that at times she has attributed to her subject words other than those actually used. Under petitioner's proposed standard, an author in this situation would lack First Amendment protection if she reported as quotations the substance of a subject's derogatory statements about himself.
Even if a journalist has tape recorded the spoken statement of a public figure, the full and exact statement will be reported in only rare circumstances. The existence of both a speaker and a reporter; the translation between two media, speech and the printed word; the addition of punctuation; and the practical necessity to edit and make intelligible a speaker's perhaps rambling comments, all make it misleading to suggest that a quotation will be reconstructed with complete accuracy. The use or absence of punctuation may distort a speaker's meaning, for example, where that meaning turns upon a speaker's emphasis of a particular word. In other cases, if a speaker makes an obvious misstatement, for example by unconscious substitution of one name for another, a journalist might alter the speaker's words but preserve his intended meaning. And conversely, an exact quotation out of context can distort meaning, although the speaker did use each reported word.
In all events, technical distinctions between correcting grammar and syntax and some greater level of alteration do not appear workable, for we can think of no method by which courts or juries would draw the line between cleaning up and other changes, except by reference to the meaning a statement conveys to a reasonable reader. To attempt narrow distinctions of this type would be an unnecessary departure from First Amendment principles of general applicability, and, just as important, a departure from the underlying purposes of the tort of libel as understood since the latter half of the 16th century. From then until now, the tort action for defamation has existed to redress injury to the plaintiff's reputation by a statement that is defamatory and false. See Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1, — (1990). As we have recognized, "[t]he legitimate state interest underlying the law of libel is the compensation of individuals for the harm inflicted on them by defamatory falsehood." Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 341 (1974). If an author alters a speaker's words but effects no material change in meaning, including any meaning conveyed by the manner or fact of expression, the speaker suffers no injury to reputation that is compensable as a defamation.
These essential principles of defamation law accommodate the special case of inaccurate quotations without the necessity for a discrete body of jurisprudence directed to this subject alone. Last Term, in Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., we refused "to create a wholesale defamation exemption for anything that might be labeled `opinion.' " 497 U. S., at — (slip op., at 16) (citation omitted). We recognized that "expressions of `opinion' may often imply an assertion of objective fact." Ibid. We allowed the defamation action to go forward in that case, holding that a reasonable trier of fact could find that the so-called expressions of opinion could be interpreted as including false assertions as to factual matters. So too in the case before us, we reject any special test of falsity for quotations, including one which would draw the line at correction of grammar or syntax. We conclude, rather, that the exceptions suggested by petitioner for grammatical or syntactical corrections serve to illuminate a broader principle.
The common law of libel takes but one approach to the question of falsity, regardless of the form of the communication. See Restatement (Second) of Torts 563, Comment c (1977); W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Law of Torts 776 (5th ed. 1984). It overlooks minor inaccuracies and concentrates upon substantial truth. As in other jurisdictions, California law permits the defense of substantial truth, and would absolve a defendant even if she cannot "justify every word of the alleged defamatory matter; it is sufficient if the substance of the charge be proved true, irrespective of slight inaccuracy in the details." B. Witkin, Summary of California Law, 495 (9th ed. 1988) (citing cases). In this case, of course, the burden is upon petitioner to prove falsity. See Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. Hepps, 475 U.S. 767, 775 (1986). The essence of that inquiry, however, remains the same whether the burden rests upon plaintiff or defendant. Minor inaccuracies do not amount to falsity so long as "the substance, the gist, the sting, of the libelous charge be justified." Heuer v. Kee, 15 Cal. App. 2d. 710, 714, 59 P. 2d 1063, 1064 (1936); see also Alioto v. Cowles Communications, Inc., 623 F. 2d 616, 619 (CA9 1980); Maheu v. Hughes Tool Co., 569 F. 2d 459, 465-466 (CA9 1978). Put another way, the statement is not considered false unless it "would have a different effect on the mind of the reader from that which the pleaded truth would have produced." R. Sack, Libel, Slander, and Related Problems 138 (1980); see, e. g., Wheling v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 721 F. 2d 506, 509 (CA5 1983); see generally R. Smolla, Law of Defamation 5.08 (1991). Our definition of actual malice relies upon this historical understanding.
We conclude that a deliberate alteration of the words uttered by a plaintiff does not equate with knowledge of falsity for purposes of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S., at 279-280, and Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., supra, at 342, unless the alteration results in a material change in the meaning conveyed by the statement. The use of quotations to attribute words not in fact spoken bears in a most important way on that inquiry, but it is not dispositive in every case.
Deliberate or reckless falsification that comprises actual malice turns upon words and punctuation only because words and punctuation express meaning. Meaning is the life of language. And, for the reasons we have given, quotations may be a devastating instrument for conveying false meaning. In the case under consideration, readers of In the Freud Archives may have found Malcolm's portrait of petitioner especially damning because so much of it appeared to be a self-portrait, told by petitioner in his own words. And if the alterations of petitioner's words gave a different meaning to the statements, bearing upon their defamatory character, then the device of quotations might well be critical in finding the words actionable.
D
The Court of Appeals applied a test of substantial truth which, in exposition if not in application, comports with much of the above discussion. The Court of Appeals, however, went one step beyond protection of quotations that convey the meaning of a speaker's statement with substantial accuracy and concluded that an altered quotation is protected so long as it is a "rational interpretation" of an actual statement, drawing this standard from our decisions in Time, Inc. v. Pape, 401 U.S. 279 (1971), and Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., 466 U.S. 485 (1984). Application of our protection for rational interpretation in this context finds no support in general principles of defamation law or in our First Amendment jurisprudence. Neither Time, Inc. v. Pape, nor Bose Corp., involved the fabrication of quotations, or any analogous claim, and because many of the quotations at issue might reasonably be construed to state or imply factual assertions that are both false and defamatory, we cannot accept the reasoning of the Court of Appeals on this point.
In Time, Inc. v. Pape, we reversed a libel judgment which arose out of a magazine article summarizing a report by the United States Commission on Civil Rights discussing police civil rights abuses. The article quoted the Commission's summary of the facts surrounding an incident of police brutality, but failed to include the Commission's qualification that these were allegations taken from a civil complaint. The Court noted that "the attitude of the Commission toward the factual verity of the episodes recounted was anything but straightforward," and distinguished between a "direct account of events that speak for themselves," 401 U. S., at 285, 286, and an article descriptive of what the Commission had reported. Time, Inc. v. Pape took into account the difficult choices that confront an author who departs from direct quotation and offers his own interpretation of an ambiguous source. A fair reading of our opinion is that the defendant did not publish a falsification sufficient to sustain a finding of actual malice.
In Bose Corp., a Consumer Reports reviewer had attempted to describe in words the experience of listening to music through a pair of loudspeakers, and we concluded that the result was not an assessment of events that speak for themselves, but " `one of a number of possible rational interpretations' of an event `that bristled with ambiguities' and descriptive challenges for the writer." 466 U. S., at 512 (quoting Time, Inc. v. Pape, supra, at 290). We refused to permit recovery for choice of language which, though perhaps reflecting a misconception, represented "the sort of inaccuracy that is commonplace in the forum of robust debate to which the New York Times rule applies." 466 U. S., at 513.
The protection for rational interpretation serves First Amendment principles by allowing an author the interpretive license that is necessary when relying upon ambiguous sources. Where, however, a writer uses a quotation, and where a reasonable reader would conclude that the quotation purports to be a verbatim repetition of a statement by the speaker, the quotation marks indicate that the author is not involved in an interpretation of the speaker's ambiguous statement, but attempting to convey what the speaker said. This orthodox use of a quotation is the quintessential "direct account of events that speak for themselves." Time, Inc. v. Pape, supra, at 285. More accurately, the quotation allows the subject to speak for himself.
The significance of the quotations at issue, absent any qualification, is to inform us that we are reading the statement of petitioner, not Malcolm's rational interpretation of what petitioner has said or thought. Were we to assess quotations under a rational interpretation standard, we would give journalists the freedom to place statements in their subjects' mouths without fear of liability. By eliminating any method of distinguishing between the statements of the subject and the interpretation of the author, we would diminish to a great degree the trustworthiness of the printed word, and eliminate the real meaning of quotations. Not only public figures but the press doubtless would suffer under such a rule. Newsworthy figures might become more wary of journalists, knowing that any comment could be transmuted and attributed to the subject, so long as some bounds of rational interpretation were not exceeded. We would ill serve the values of the First Amendment if we were to grant near absolute, constitutional protection for such a practice. We doubt the suggestion that as a general rule readers will assume that direct quotations are but a rational interpretation of the speaker's words, and we decline to adopt any such presumption in determining the permissible interpretations of the quotations in question here.
III
A
We apply these principles to the case before us. On summary judgment, we must draw all justifiable inferences in favor of the the nonmoving party, including questions of credibility and of the weight to be accorded particular evidence. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U. S., at 255. So we must assume, except where otherwise evidenced by the transcripts of the tape recordings, that petitioner is correct in denying that he made the statements attributed to him by Malcolm, and that Malcolm reported with knowledge or reckless disregard of the differences between what petitioner said and what was quoted.
Respondents argue that, in determining whether petitioner has shown sufficient falsification to survive summary judgment, we should consider not only the tape recorded statements but also Malcolm's typewritten notes. We must decline that suggestion. To begin with, petitioner affirms in an affidavit that he did not make the complained of statements. The record contains substantial additional evidence, moreover, evidence which, in a light most favorable to petitioner, would support a jury determination under a clear and convincing standard that Malcolm deliberately or recklessly altered the quotations.
First, many of the challenged passages resemble quotations that appear on the tapes, except for the addition or alteration of certain phrases, giving rise to a reasonable inference that the statements have been altered. Second, Malcolm had the tapes in her possession and was not working under a tight deadline. Unlike a case involving hot news, Malcolm cannot complain that she lacked the practical ability to compare the tapes with her work in progress. Third, Malcolm represented to the editor-in-chief of The New Yorker that all the quotations were from the tape recordings. Fourth, Malcolm's explanations of the time and place of unrecorded conversations during which petitioner allegedly made some of the quoted statements have not been consistent in all respects. Fifth, petitioner suggests that the progression from typewritten notes, to manuscript, then to galleys provides further evidence of intentional alteration. Malcolm contests petitioner's allegations, and only a trial on the merits will resolve the factual dispute. But at this stage, the evidence creates a jury question whether Malcolm published the statements with knowledge or reckless disregard of the alterations.
B
We must determine whether the published passages differ materially in meaning from the tape recorded statements so as to create an issue of fact for a jury as to falsity.
(a) "Intellectual Gigolo." We agree with the dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals that "[f]airly read, intellectual gigolo suggests someone who forsakes intellectual integrity in exchange for pecuniary or other gain." 895 F. 2d, at 1551. A reasonable jury could find a material difference between the meaning of this passage and petitioner's tape-recorded statement that he was considered "much too junior within the hierarchy of analysis, for these important training analysts to be caught dead with [him]."
The Court of Appeals majority found it difficult to perceive how the "intellectual gigolo" quotation was defamatory, a determination supported not by any citation to California law, but only by the argument that the passage appears to be a report of Eissler's and Anna Freud's opinions of petitioner. Id., at 1541. We agree with the Court of Appeals that the most natural interpretation of this quotation is not an admission that petitioner considers himself an intellectual gigolo but a statement that Eissler and Anna Freud considered him so. It does not follow, though, that the statement is harmless. Petitioner is entitled to argue that the passage should be analyzed as if Malcolm had reported falsely that Eissler had given this assessment (with the added level of complexity that the quotation purports to represent petitioner's understanding of Eissler's view). An admission that two well-respected senior colleagues considered one an "intellectual gigolo" could be as or more damaging than a similar self-appraisal. In all events, whether the "intellectual gigolo" quotation is defamatory is a question of California law. To the extent that the Court of Appeals based its conclusion in the First Amendment, it was mistaken.
The Court of Appeals relied upon the "incremental harm" doctrine as an alternative basis for its decision. As the court explained it, "[t]his doctrine measures the incremental reputational harm inflicted by the challenged statements beyond the harm imposed by the nonactionable remainder of the publication." Ibid.; see generally Note, 98 Harv. L. Rev. 1909 (1985); R. Smolla, Law of Defamation 9.10[4][d] (1991). The court ruled, as a matter of law, that "[g]iven the . . . many provocative, bombastic statements indisputably made by Masson and quoted by Malcolm, the additional harm caused by the `intellectual gigolo' quote was nominal or nonexistent, rendering the defamation claim as to this quote nonactionable." 895 F. 2d, at 1541.
This reasoning requires a court to conclude that, in fact, a plaintiff made the other quoted statements, cf. Liberty Lobby, Inc. v. Anderson, 241 U. S. App. D. C. 246, 251, 746 F. 2d 1563, 1568 (1984), vacated and remanded on other grounds, 477 U.S. 242 (1986), and then to undertake a factual inquiry into the reputational damage caused by the remainder of the publication. As noted by the dissent in the Court of Appeals, the most "provocative, bombastic statements" quoted by Malcolm are those complained of by petitioner, and so this would not seem an appropriate application of the incremental harm doctrine. 895 F. 2d, at 1566.
Furthermore, the Court of Appeals provided no indication whether it considered the incremental harm doctrine to be grounded in California law or the First Amendment. Here, we reject any suggestion that the incremental harm doctrine is compelled as a matter of First Amendment protection for speech. The question of incremental harm does not bear upon whether a defendant has published a statement with knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of whether it was false or not. As a question of state law, on the other hand, we are given no indication that California accepts this doctrine, though it remains free to do so. Of course, state tort law doctrines of injury, causation, and damages calculation might allow a defendant to press the argument that the statements did not result in any incremental harm to a plaintiff's reputation.
(b) "Sex, Women, Fun." This passage presents a closer question. The "sex, women, fun" quotation offers a very different picture of petitioner's plans for Maresfield Gardens than his remark that "Freud's library alone is priceless." See supra, at 5. Petitioner's other tape-recorded remarks did indicate that he and another analyst planned to have great parties at the Freud house and, in a context that may not even refer to Freud house activities, to "pass women on to each other." We cannot conclude as a matter of law that these remarks bear the same substantial meaning as the quoted passage's suggestion that petitioner would make the Freud house a place of "sex, women, fun."
(c) "It Sounded Better." We agree with the District Court and the Court of Appeals that any difference between petitioner's tape-recorded statement that he "just liked" the name Moussaieff, and the quotation that "it sounded better" is, in context, immaterial. Although Malcolm did not include all of petitioner's lengthy explanation of his name change, she did convey the gist of that explanation: Petitioner took his abandoned family name as his middle name. We agree with the Court of Appeals that the words attributed to petitioner did not materially alter the meaning of his statement.
(d) "I Don't Know Why I Put It In." Malcolm quotes petitioner as saying that he "tacked on at the last minute" a "totally gratuitous" remark about the "sterility of psychoanalysis" in an academic paper, and that he did so for no particular reason. In the tape recordings, petitioner does admit that the remark was "possibly [a] gratuitously offensive way to end a paper to a group of analysts," but when asked why he included the remark, he answered "[because] it was true . . . I really believe it." Malcolm's version contains material differences from petitioner's statement, and it is conceivable that the alteration results in a statement that could injure a scholar's reputation.
(e) "Greatest Analyst Who Ever Lived." While petitioner did, on numerous occasions, predict that his theories would do irreparable damage to the practice of psychoanalysis, and did suggest that no other analyst shared his views, no taperecorded statement appears to contain the substance or the arrogant and unprofessional tone apparent in this quotation. A material difference exists between the quotation and the tape-recorded statements, and a jury could find that the difference exposed petitioner to contempt, ridicule or obloquy.
(f) "He Had The Wrong Man." The quoted version makes it appear as if petitioner rejected a plea to remain in stoic silence and do "the honorable thing." The tape-recorded version indicates that petitioner rejected a plea supported by far more varied motives: Eissler told petitioner that not only would silence be "the honorable thing," but petitioner would "save face," and might be rewarded for that silence with eventual reinstatement. Petitioner described himself as willing to undergo a scandal in order to shine the light of publicity upon the actions of the Freud Archives, while Malcolm would have petitioner describe himself as a person who was "the wrong man" to do "the honorable thing." This difference is material, a jury might find it defamatory, and, for the reasons we have given, there is evidence to support a finding of deliberate or reckless falsification.
C
Because of the Court of Appeals' disposition with respect to Malcolm, it did not have occasion to address petitioner's argument that the District Court erred in granting summary judgment to The New Yorker Magazine, Inc., and Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. on the basis of their respective relations with Malcolm or the lack of any independent actual malice. These questions are best addressed in the first instance on remand.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
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Wednesday, June 24, 2009
November 7th, 1906, The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society: Freud and Adler Were On The Same Page -- Conceptually, Theoretically....
One of the few times that I have found in the Psychoanalytic literature where Freud and Adler were actually on the same page together was Nov. 7th, 1906 during a meeting of The Psychoanalytic Society.
Adler had just deliver a presentation to the Society on 'psychic compensation' -- probably one of the most important concepts to come out of Adlerian thinking, next to his concept of 'lifestyle' and his 'interpretation of conscious early memories'.
Here Freudian and Adlerian thinking -- if only for one or two brief moments in history came together in a way that was actually 'integrative'.
DGB Philosophy-Psychology 'fixates' on this moment in Psychoanalytic history because it is one of the starting points and focal points for the beginning of what I will call 'DGB-GAP' Integrative Transference Theory'. I use the name 'GAP' as part of my 'DGB-GAP' name here because it actually represents my first 'theoretical-integrative project' back in the 1980s, after I finished my Honours Thesis in Psychology in 1979 (Evaluation and Health') which I still plan to re-write.
'GAP' when I first used it represented 'Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic (GAP)' which is where we return to right now from the mid 1980s when I was working in this area.
Nine concepts are critical here -- we will introduce others later -- but right now, two from Psychoanalysis, five from Adlerian Psychology, and two from Gestalt Therapy. They are respectively: Freudian: 1. 'narcissistic injury', 2. 'narcissistic fixation'; Adlerian: 3. 'inferiority feeling', 4. a) 'masculine protest' to b) 'superiority striving', 'compensation', 5. 'lifestyle', and 6. 'conscious early memories'; Gestalt: 7. 'figural gestalt', 8. 'unfinished situation'.
On November 7th, 1906 Adler was just starting to get his theoretical legs under him.
Indeed, this session can actually be marked as the beginning of Adlerian Psychology as it basically started to focus on three or four things: 1. 'inferiority feelings' and 2. 'compensation' 3. 'superiority striving', and 'conscious early recollections'.
Stated another way, Adler was starting to formulate his own alternative theory to Freud's at least partly to mainly abandoned 'traumacy' theory.
And yet things were again starting to change for Freud in a number of different ways. He was both looking 'backwards' in time to his and Breuer's old traumacy theory. And yet he was starting to move away from 'Sexual Fantasy Theory' in a partly different direction to his old Traumacy Theory and his present Sexual Fantasy Theory. (Freud had just published 'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality' in 1905.)
Freud was moving towards a theory of 'Narcissism', a concept that he didn't use in The Vienna Psychoanalytic Circle til November, 1909 -- three years later than this session here -- and then he would use it again in December 1909 (in an updated preface to 'Three Essays'), and again in 1910 in his essay, 'Leonardo Da Vinci'.
The concept of 'Narcissism' which is attributed partly to Havelock Ellis in 1898 and partly to Paul Nacke in 1899 (which Havelock Ellis, himself, insisted on sharing with Nacke) was not fully introduced by Freud himself to the public until his 1914 paper 'On Narcissism' -- which to me is one of the most important papers in the history of Psychoanalysis. Another critically important Psychoanalytic paper, 'The Dynamics of Transference' was published in 1912.
Thus, two critically important Freudian Psychoanalytic papers were published two years apart from each other -- 'The Dynamics of The Transference' in 1912, and 'On Narcissism' in 1914. And yet here was the 'kicker': for Freud the two concepts were 'mutually exclusive' -- never, according to Freud, would the two concepts meet in clinical practice. For Freud, the more narcissism ('egotism' and 'auto-eroticism') you had/have in a clinical case, the less transference you have -- and visa versa.
For example, the 'schizophrenic person' according to Freud is extremely 'narcissistic' -- meaning 'self-fixated' and 'self-fantasy-fixated'. This eliminates the possibility of the schizophrenic 'falling in love' and exhibiting the characteristics of 'transference love' because again, the schizophrenic is too 'self-fixated' and too 'self-fantasy-fixated'. The schizophrenic is too fixated on 'internal memory-fantasy objects' inside his or her own head to pay enough attention to the therapist's 'external characteristics' -- to consequently, 'fall in love'. Worded otherwise, the schizophrenic person is too 'narcissistic' to exhibit 'transference features' in Psychoanalytic psychotherapy -- thus, Psychoanalysis cannot help schizophrenic clients. So was Freud's thinking in 1914 -- and for the duration of his Psychoanalytic career.
This all changed with the work of Heinz Kohut in 1971:
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Narcissistic Transference
Narcissistic transference is a post-Freudian term introduced by Heinz Kohut, in the context of his theory of narcissism, to refer to a group of clinical phenomena observed during analytic treatment.
For Freud himself, transference concerned the transposition of object relationships; transference and narcissism were such contrary ideas for him that the expression narcissistic transference would have been meaningless in his eyes: "Observation shows that sufferers from narcissistic neuroses have no capacity for transference or only insufficient residues of it" (1916-17a [1915-17], p. 447).
One of the first authors to take narcissism into account in the evolution of the treatment was Béla Grunberger, in 1956. Grunberger deemed narcissism one of the motors of the analytic cure, and this even among neurotics. Out of fidelity to Freud's thinking, he nevertheless refrained from using the term "narcissistic transference," and spoke only of a "narcissistic analytic relationship." In this context he described certain ploys on the part of the patient, as for example "using the analyst to create a double [or mirror] image of himself" or projecting his ideal ego onto the analyst, which would later be evoked by Heinz Kohut.
Kohut brought narcissism into relation not with the ego but with a broader and less limited entity, the self. At the same time he introduced the idea of a line of development of narcissism paralleling the development of object-cathexes and interacting with it. Narcissism and object-love were thus no longer in contradiction with each other, but complementary, and it became possible to speak meaningfully of narcissistic transferences.
In The Analysis of the Self (1971), Kohut describes several aspects of such transferences. "Mirror transferences" correspond to a remobilization of the idealized "grandiose self" and imply the following demand with respect to the other person: "I am perfect and need you to confirm it." A mirror transference easily gives rise to a feeling of boredom or impatience in the analyst, whose otherness it does not acknowledge. Such transferences are of three types (pp. 114-16). The most archaic is "merger transference," in which the patient strives for an omnipotent and tyrannical control over the analyst, who is experienced as an extension of the self. In an "alter-ego transference," the other is experienced as very similar to the grandiose self. Lastly, in the case of mirror transference "in the narrower sense," the analyst is experienced as a function serving the patient's needs. If the patient feels recognized, he will experience sensations of well-being associated with the restoration of his narcissism. An "idealizing transference" is defined by Kohut as the mobilization of an idealized and all-powerful parent imago (p. 37), and it is encapsulated in the sentence "You are perfect, but I am part of you"; it is correlated with a struggle against feelings of emptiness and powerlessness. Kohut's notion that certain people are cathected as parts of the self, integrated into the mental functioning of the patient himself, led him to speak of "self-objects" and to describe narcissistic transference as based on an idealized self-object.
Kohut's approach has been criticized on the grounds that it first relegated the instincts and the Oedipus complex to the background and then eliminated them completely.
PAUL DENIS
See also: Bipolar self; Self; Self-object; Self psychology; Sexualization.
Bibliography
Dessuant, Pierre. (1999). Béla Grunberger. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Freud, Sigmund. (1916-17a [1915-17]). Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. SE, 15-16.
Grunberger, Béla. (1979 [1971]). Narcissism: Psychoanalytic essays (Joyce S. Diamanti, Trans.). New York: International Universities Press.
Kohut, Heinz. (1971). The analysis of the self. New York: International Universities Press.
Oppenheimer, Agnès. (1998). Heinz Kohut. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Further Reading
Cohen, D. W. (2002). Transference and countertransference in analysis of narcissism. Psychoanalytic Review, 89, 631-652.
Schwaber, Evelyn (1977). Understanding unfolding "narcissistic transference." International Review of Psychoanalysis, 4, 493-502.
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Back in the mid 1980s -- without knowing anything about the work of Heinz Kohut at the time -- I was playing around with a mixture of Freudian, Adlerian, and Gestalt ideas. You can probably even add the work of Eric Berne and Transactional Analysis as well as Ronald Fairbairn (through Harry Guntrip's book, 'Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and The Self', 1971,73) and Fairbairn's polar-paradoxical ideas of 'rejecting and exciting object' which I was just starting to learn as I started reading about 'Object Relations' for the first time.
Critical to all this theoretical work that I was integrating -- and I do not really have a clue when this integration actually came together (some time between the mid 1980s and early 1990s, I believe) was the concept of 'narcissistic injury' which was basically the Freudian and/or post-Freudian equivalent of Adler's concept of 'inferiority feeling'.
Clinically -- and theoretically speaking -- we can say that out of a 'childhood narcissistic (self-esteem) injury' -- often captured in the 'narcissistic fixation' or 'figural gestalt' of a consciously remembered early childhood memory, often develops a more clinically and experientially prolonged and neurotically relevant sense of 'physical and/or psychological inferiority feeling'.
In my own paraphrase of Adler's words, this more prolonged sense of 'inferiority feeling' happens to all of us in differing degrees of 'lifestyle' 'uniqueness' and 'specificity', 'quality' and 'quantity' relative to our own unique 'genetic characteristics' as well as our own unique 'subjective experiences' and 'learned lessons and personality characteristics' from these unique, subjectively perceived childhood experiences -- all captured in our consciously remembered early memories of these experiences.
Note, that it is at this specific juncture --not to fully develop til years later -- that Freud and Adler theoretically and therapeutically separate and go in opposite directions: 1. Freud and Psychoanalysis continued to remain focused and 'fixated' on their theoretical paradigm of 'unconscious, repressed memories' and 'repressed, sexual fantasies of distorted 'false' memories'; while Adler was entering into an entirely different domain, a different theoretical paradigm -- the domain and paradigm of 'consciously or (subconsciously) remembered early childhood memories'.
For an Adlerian Psychologist -- 'ask and you shall receive' -- you simply ask a client for a 'consciously remembered one-time, specific event in his or her early childhood (usually before the age of 7 or 8 years old) and, as a clinical diagnostician and therapist, you will get what you want: a 'lifestyle' memory that when combined with 3 or 4 other memories of this type and when taken together with information about the client's 'family constellation' will give the therapist the type of diagnostic and therapeutic information that he or she needs to work with you in the same basic way that a Psychoanalytic Therapist would would work with a 'client-therapist transference relationship'.
Which basically begs the question: How much different is what we will call here (with a little 'DGB theoretical embellishment') an 'Adlerian Lifestyle Complex and/or Script' to a 'Freudian or post-Freudian 'Transference Complex or Script'?
The answer from this DGB theoretical perspective right here is -- at least after you 'fill in some theoretical gaps within and between the two respective schools of psychology -- 'not too different'.
One primary difference is that Psychoanalysis believes in the assumption-principle of 'conflict and division in the personality' whereas Adlerian Psychology believes in the assumption-principle of 'unity -- as in no conflict -- in the personality.
A second major difference occurs within Psychoanalysis itself: specifically, Freud never connected his 'Traumacy and/or Seduction Theory' with his 'Transference Theory' -- although he definitely should have. Consequently, because of this failure on Freud's part to make a 'Traumacy-Transference' connection, therefore there was no resulting principle or concept in Psychoanalysis that reflected this concept here: a 'transference memory'. Nor a 'transference complex'. Nor a 'transference script'. Nor a 'transference game'. Nor a 'compensatory-transference-reversal' (similar with Ferenczi's and Anna Freud's concept of 'identification with the aggressor').
These ideas would all demand 'stepping outside of orthodox Psychoanalytic Theory Paradigm and integrating other ideas inherent in other schools of psychology such as by 1. Jung (complex); 2. Adler ('lifestyle memory', 'inferiority feeling', 'compensation', and 'superiority striving'); 3. Fairbairn ('rejecting' and 'exciting' object); 4. Berne ('scripts', 'games', 'payoffs', 'ego-states'...); and 5. Perls ('figural Gestalt', 'unfinished situation', 'symbolically repeating unfinished situations in order to finish them'...).
Two more ideas that I was playing around with in the mid 1980s were: 'topdog transferences' and 'topdog transference ego-states' vs. 'underdog transferences' and 'underdog transference ego-states'.
A 'narcissistic topdog transference complex, script, and game' involves playing out the role of a childhood idealized, idolized 'ego ideal' in what comes across in the manner of an adult 'superiority complex'.
In contrast, a 'narcissistic underdog transference complex, script, and game involves playing out usually a childhood version of oneself -- either an 'approval-seeking', a 'schizoid/distancing', and/or a 'rebellious' 'complex', 'script', 'game' in what can also be viewed as three different but often overlapping versions of an 'inferiority complex' involving either: 1. trying to 'please'; 2. trying to 'distance and avoid'; 3. trying to 'narcissistically and/or righteously 'get one's own way' and/or 'confront and/or overpower'; and 4. trying to 'manipulatively seduce'...
From these evolving integrative ideas, DGB-GAP Psychology gets 'four underdog transference ego-states: 1. The Rebellious (Rejected) Underdog Ego; 2. The Seductive-Manipulative (Narcissistic-Hedonistic) Underdog Ego; 3. The Distancing-Schizoid Underdog Ego; and 4. The Approval-Seeking (Pleasing) Underdog Ego.
These are mirrored by: 5. The Nurturing Topdog Ego; 6. The Seductive-Manipulative Topdog (Narcissistic-Hedonistic) Ego; 7. The Righteous-Rejecting Topdog Ego; and 8. The Distancing-Schizoid Topdog Ego. (I thank Harry Guntrip for the new addition of 'The Distancing-Schizoid Topdog and Underdog Ego' concepts. I forgot about this aspect of his work.)
Nestled in the 'middle and mediating zone' of these 8 topdog and underdog dialectic ego-states, I add 9. 'The Central Mediating, Executive (DGB Post-Hegelian, Rational-Empirical, Humanistic-Existential) Ego'.
And just to make life a little more complicated but interesting in 'The Multi-Dialectic-Wholistic Ego', I add a number of other 'middle-zone' dialectic-democratic ego-states that you can choose to either explore and utilize -- or ignore and not use -- as you see fit.
I like them -- this is like how 'The Senate' should function in Canadian Parliament as an 'overseeing consortium of 'dialectic-democratic specialist agents': 10. The Narcissistic-Altruistic Ego; 11. The Rational-Empirical Ego; 12. The Capitalist-Socialist Ego' 13. The Liberal-Conservative Ego; 14. The Creative-Destructive (Constructive-Deconstructive) Ego; 15. The Security-Excitement Ego; 16. The Enlightenment-Romantic Ego; 17. The Apollonian-Dionysian Ego...
That leaves us with room for three more 'Unconscious-Subconscious-Conscious Compartments of The Personality, of The Wholistic Self:
18. The Symbolic, Dynamic, Creative-Destructive Dream and Transference Fantasy Maker;
19. The Structural Transference Experience-Memory Template;
20. The Genetic, Potential Self.
And that, I believe, might be my final 'model of the personality or self'
I like the magic number '20' -- and I like all the different elements that comprise this model.
And it all starts/started with the concept of 'narcissism' and 'narcissistic injury'.
The DGB Post-Freudian, post-Kohutian Concept and Theory of 'narcissism' and 'narcissistic transference theory' holds a huge theoretical and clinical advantage over all other Freudian concepts and theories in that it is 'all encompassing' in a way that all of Freud's other theories were not:
1. Freudian Repression Theory was too reductionistic;
2. Freudian Traumacy Theory was too reductionistic;
3. Freudian Seduction Theory was too reductionistic;
4. Freudian Childhood Sexuality was too reductionistic;
5. Freudian Oedipal Theory was too reductionistic;
6. Freudian Transference Theory was too reductionistic;
7. Freudian Dream Interpretation Theory was too reductionistic;
8. Freudian Death Instinct Theory was too reductionistic (if not flat out wrong);
9. Freudian Ego, Id, and Superego Theory was too reductionistic;
That leaves two Freudian theories left (I probably missed a couple) that had 'all encompassing' value. These were, and still are:
10. Freud's Theory of Narcissism which had the distinct advantage over any of his previous or all but one of his later theories to be 'all encompassing'.
For this reason: Narcissism encompasses the three ideas of: 1. 'neuroticism'; 2. 'eroticism'; and 3. egotism' (self-esteem).
Perhaps Alfred Adler's most important legacy to the study and practice of clinical psychology is that he opened up the door to the 'study of self-esteem'.
The main essence of Adler's Theory -- couch partly in DGB Post-Freudian, Post-Adlerian Terminology -- runs something like this:
1. A 'childhood narcissistic (self-esteem) injury becomes 'fixated' on in the form of a 'conscious early memory' that reflects the subjective perception of the event. The narcissistic injury becomes 'crystallized' in the personality in the form of a more generalized 'self-esteem problem' or what Adler called an 'inferiority feeling' that 'propels an upward motivating, compensatory force' aimed at attempting to 'solve or resolve' the generalized inferiority feeling or 'transferred narcissistic injury'. The self-esteem injury -- and the memory of the event that crystallized it -- become the focus -- the fixation -- of 'obsessive-compulsive attention'. This 'fixated, obsessive-compulsive attention' is firstly organized in 'The Transference Template', and often integrated with elements of 'The Potential, Genetic Self' which may include 'Archetypal, Mythological Figures' that come from deep in our distant, ancient, genetic, Darwinian-Evolutionary past...
Our 'Dynamic, Creative Transference, Dream, and Fantasy (TDF) Maker grabs a hold of all of the material coming from deeper in our unconscious -- from our Transference Experience, Memory, and Fantasy Template; and from our Genetic, Potential Self -- and is integrated together in the form of: 1. a 'transference projection'; 2. a 'creative and/or destructive piece of fantasy-impulse, work, art, and/or 'Essence-Wall behavior'; 3. a 'creatively reconstructed symbolic Transference-Scene' that combines childhood and adult elements to it. Generally, there is a mixture of 'neuroticism, eroticism, and egotism' which together -- or separately -- we can call combined and/or separated elements of -- narcissism: 'transference memory', 'narcissistic injury', 'narcissistic fantasy-impulse', and 'mastery compulsion'.
I have a feeling this little essay here may become my signature psychological work -- my most complete and concise rendition of transference in relation to personality theory (splitting of the ego into ego-states that behave like 'lobbyists' walking down government halls, conflict and dissociation in the ego, divisions into 'dominant ego states' vs. 'marginalized, suppressed ego-states'...)
Some -- many -- may accuse me of creating a model that is too big and cumbersome -- it looks like an 'embellished' Transactional Analysis model with elements of Jungian psychology, Freudian Psychology, Object Relations, Adlerian Psychology, and Gestalt Therapy thrown into it. Critics may say that it fails the 'Okham's Razor' test -- it fails the 'simplicity' test. Having 20 different 'Ego or Sub-Ego States or 'Unconscious Self-Compartments' as opposed to Freud's three (Ego, Superego, and Id) or Gestalt Therapy's two (Topdog vs. Underdog) or Adlerian's Psycholgy's one ('lifestyle') is obviously going to raise some eyebrows and/or generate some quick 'rejection judgments'.
My counterargument is that all 20 'Self-Compartments' are relevant and significant to human behavior whether we want to label them the way I have chosen to or not. The model can easily be broken down into smaller, more workable, 'dialectic pieces' in a therapeutic setting. A 'Multi-Dialectic Model' can be broken down to simply a 'Dialectic Model' that focuses on two different ego-states wrestling with each other and each seeking dominance. And if I am 'over-objectifying' the self here, we can easily change our language from 'objectified language' to more 'subjectified, humanistic-existential language.
There is practically a lifetime -- 37 years (1972-2009) -- of research, analysis, integration, and theoretical reconstructionism that is locked up into this little paper here. The key to it is in the successful application of it.
The fact that I have worked this long and this hard on the evolution of the model is a statement and a reflection in itself of a 'narcissistic transference obsessive-compulsion-complex' of the first order! There is definitely an interconnection between 'transference-lifestyle complexes' on the one hand and 'any type of work-sublimation-obsesive-compulsion that may structurally fit into -- or interconnect with -- this transference-lifestyle complex...
Are you listening Dr. Brian Bird? (I can't find any recent biographical material on you but I think you are still alive, I hope you are still alive. You are one of my 'transference gurus'.)
Are you listening Dr. Jeffrey Masson? (I know you are alive -- you have an active website...)
We all have something to prove at some stage or another in our lives. If people didn't have some element of 'perceived marginalization and/or rejection kicking around in our heads, disturbing our peace and equillibrium, half the the things that have been accomplished in this world would never have been accomplished. The 'neurotic drive' -- for better and/or for worse -- is one of the most powerful drives in the human psyche...
'Personal narcissism' that can be broken down into numerous areas of 'sub-areas' of human motivation: 'Survival, safety, and security'...'contact excitement'....'money', 'greed, 'moral/ethical righteousness', 'romanticism', 'eroticism'...'reason and logic', 'healthy and/or neurotic egotism'...all of these motivational factors can play a crucial role in the foundational base of man's individual and collective motivation...
Fully recognizing the central part played by 'neurotic egotism' was Alfred Adler's greatest contribution to the study of the psychology of man.
Where did the boundary between Freud's healthy and neurotic egotism lie?
Where did the boundary between Masson's healthy and neurotic egotism lie?
Where did the boundary between Janet Malcolm' healthy and neurotic egotism lie?
Where does the boundary between my 'healthy' and 'neurotic' egotism lie?
At what point does a writer risk stepping over a line of 'professional conduct relative to good writing work' by perhaps sharing too much of his or her own personal 'Essence' and not maintaining enough 'Personal-Private Wall'...
Alternatvively, at what point does a writer risk reaching over -- and judging -- too deeply into another person's/writer's Personal-Private Wall, and in so doing, again, compromise his or her own professional writing work.
To be sure, I have a mitful of 'neurotic and/or transference sensitivities' but behind anyone's neurotic-transference senstivities can be a message that is still existentially real -- and important...
Such as perhaps...
1. You don't have to be a 'Dr.' to write a good psychology paper; nor do you have to live and die inside an 'Psychoanalytic Institute' to know something significant about the 'ins' an 'outs' of Psychoanalysis -- indeed, as Dr. Masson has boldly asserted (or so Janet Malcolm claims), what really might be best for Psychoanalysis is to open up some doors and windows at Anna Freud's house (metaphorically and/or literally) -- and, indeed, in every Psychoanalytic Institute and 'Secret Society' everywhere in the world -- , and 'get some fresh air' into all these buildings, 'breathe some new life in them', yes, even let some women into these buildings, let them behave as women -- and not teach them to masquerade around as 'stuffy, anal-retentive, Oedipal Complex fixated, old men'.
And yes, if I had my way or say in this massive 'Secret Society', Dr. Masson, if you wanted, I would let you back into The Psychoanalytic Institute -- and you could even be the reigning Psychoanalytic 'Intellectual Gigolo' -- metaphporically speaking of course. There are probably millions of men who would wear this mantle -- this title and label -- with egotistic pride. I can't believe you wasted 10 years of your life in a court of life trying to argue that this label 'defamed you'. I shake my head on that one. Try accepting and being accountable -- for better and/or for worse, for right and/or for wrong -- for the line that really destroyed your Psychoanalytic career -- 'Freud lost moral courage'. Personally, I do not believe that Freud turned Psychoanalysis upside down and inside out to protect his own medical career and a certain percentage of possible medical-father child abusers. There are much easier ways in which he could have accomplished this same goal -- such as simply sticking more abstractly to his previous 'traumacy theory'.
Lifestyle-Transference-Sensitivity #2:
Dr. Masson, you are not the only good mind -- and/or 'untainted' mind -- in the history of Psychoanalysis. Generally speaking, there is 'pathology at the extremities of life' -- there is just as much danger in utilizing 'The Seduction Theory out of control' as there is in utilizing 'The Oedipal Theory out of Control'.
Wherever there is a hardline rebel, you can usually find a hardline control freak -- in the same person. (Hardline Righteous Topdog vs. Hardline Rebellious Underdog).
Dr. Masson, you were like an anarchist -- or better still, The Anti-Christ (Freud being the symbolic Christ here) -- you were like Nietzsche on the warpath taking his/your 'hammer philosophy' to everything inside The Psychoanalytic Institute. Isn't that a part of your 'transference pattern' -- first idolizing someone or something, and then taking a 'rhetorical hammer' to your 'Idol' when you one find out that your so-called Idol is not a 'real one' but a 'false one'.
Or am I reading too much into your character just like you might have been when you said/say that 'Freud lost moral courage' as if God gave you the sole right to know what was going on inside Freud's mind back in 1896...Instead, in 1992, in the preface of 'Assault', you wrote that you don't profess to know why Freud 'lost moral courage' (you just know that he did...psychic telepathy again...a direct line into Freud's 1896 brain...)
For you, the 1980s were like -- 'it's my way or the highway', the rebellious-anarchist meets the 'righteous control freak' -- inside your own head, and then projected out into the world. The Psychoanalytic World.
It was like -- 'Okay, you guys, you don't want to play my way, you don't want to believe me, you don't want to play my game, that is fine with me, I will just 'take my net and go home'. (You lived in Toronto -- walked down the same halls as Ernest Jones -- and close to Maple Leaf Gardens -- I think you can appreciate that metaphor.) At the same time, I guess The Psychoanalytic Institute partly threw your net back at you -- and said, 'Go home!'
California wasn't far enough away from The Psychoanalytic Institute -- not far enough away from the 'madding crowd'...You can't get much further away than New Zealand...
And as far as your turn to the study and teaching of 'animal psychology' -- we all have different passions in life, some better actualized than others, depending on which path we choose to turn down in life -- but perhaps you said it best yourself as you turned away from Psychoanalyis and into the study of animal psychology: 'Dogs Never Lie About Love'...
Perhaps a little more transference-projection here?
Dr. Masson, I respect the courage it took for you to confront Psychoanalysis the way you did but as I believe I have said once before, I am here to give your work a fair shake in its own right -- that is your re-trumpeting of Freud's abandoned Seduction Theory -- but at the same time, I am not here to give you a free ride.
As writers -- you, Janet Malcolm, myself included -- we all have choices to make as 'to how far we can and will 'push the humanistic-existential drama' in our writing without compromising the 'factual, historical, and/or character reality' of who and/or what we are writing about.
You took liberties with what you said about Freud's character -- his 'alleged loss of moral courage and integrity' -- and you got a lot of public backlash and heat for what you wrote.
Janet Malcolm took certain liberties with 'alleged quotes about your character' that, if they involved 'fabricated quotes', 'conflated or amalgamated partial quotes from different contexts, times, and settings -- and all thrust together in one context, one time, one place, and/or coming from people who they didn't come from (Anna Freud, Kurt Eisler) -- if this all happened like it seems from what I have read from your court transcripts, it did happen -- then Janet Malcolm, her fact checker, and/or her editor/husband should all be held accountable for that -- in the end, Janet Malcolm's work, at least from this corner, takes at least a partial hit in terms of the 'fact credibility and integrity of her work'.
This having been said, it is also is not too hard to see certain similarities between what you did to Freud's character and what Janet Malcolm did to yours. Malcolm played around with 'quotes' and 'facts'; you played around with your own personal interpretations of quotes and alleged historical facts -- and in the end -- treated Freud's 'loss of moral courage and integrity' as if it was/is a given fact.
It isn't.
Thus, perhaps you got a piece of your own medicine: What goes around comes around.
Back to your re-trumpeting of Freud's Seduction Theory.
Dr. Masson -- your 'clone repetition' of Freud's Seduction Theory is too reductionistic -- let me repeat -- too reductionistic! It sinks when you try to make it sound as 'all encompassing' as you do.
Dr. Masson, you are just as guilty of over-generalizing as Freud was back in 1896.
Freud was very often in his career guilty of over-generalizing -- it was arguably his worst 'serial offence' as a theorist. That is why Breuer left him (Freud's pansexualism), that is why Jung left him (Freud's pansexualism again)...that is why many of his best therapists and theorists left him in one way or another: because Freud was just too 'anal-retentive' in treating 'his latest, greatest theory like a God-given fact' (even though he notoriously changed them himself faster than people could understand the implications and the applications -- of the theory he was leaving behind)!
Freud's 'Oedipal Theory' was too reductionistic -- in fact, it was probably even more reductionistic and extreme than his aforementioned Seduction Theory.
In fact, The Oedipal Theory -- and I am in full agreement with you, Dr. Masson here -- was easily capable of being 'pathologically wrong'. Freud's Oedipal Theory in its most extreme form created a 'Pathology of Normalcy' in Psychoanalysis -- that could be applied pathologically in thousands of different, individual clinical settings.
But so too can or could the 'unbridled Seduction Theory out of control'...
A therapist's office is not a court of law. It is not a therapist's job to be a 'prosecutor' or a 'council for the defence' or a 'judge or jury'....
'Subjective truths' in therapy -- and 'alleged objective truths' -- should not be confused with 'objective epistemological reality' and 'swallowed whole -- hook, line, and sinker' -- on the basis of a client's subjective testimony that can often be 'manipulatively seductive' -- and turn out to be flat out 'epistemologically wrong' -- or worse, 'a blatant manipulative fantasy and/or lie'.
Funny things can happen in a therapist's office -- just as they can happen in a court of law. No one is immune to the influence and 'distorting reality' of 'narcissistic bias'. Is a client in therapy because he or she was 'traumatized by a brutual reality'? And/or is he or she in therapy because he or she has a serial behavior pattern of 'distorting epistemological and/or ethical reality'?
Both possibilities -- separately or mixed -- can greatly 'muddle the picture of theoretical and/or therapeutic clarity'. Oftentimes, a theorist/therapist is best to remain 'epistemologically agnostic' -- to oneself, as convincing as this story may sound, I just do not know. Empirical and/or circumstantial validation, confirmation, support is needed from outside of the client's often very convincing 'words'.
'Words that are not structurally connected to reality' - that is oftentimes why a client is in therapy in the first place. People can be wrong. And oftentimes, people -- for whatever lighter or darker motivation -- can blatantly lie.
No iron clad theory -- Traumacy, Seduction, or Oedipal Theory -- can be expected to fit every clinical case, every clinical fact. That is why a broader, more open-minded perspective is often to be preferred.
Anyway, here is my 'DGB Integrative Narcissistic-Fixation/Traumacy-Transference Theory'.
No extreme Seduction Theory.
No extreme Oedipal Theory.
Both are too reductionistic in themselves.
But rather, at least a partly Hegelian dialectic-democratic collision and integration of both -- mediated by such concepts of 'narcissism', 'narcissistic injury', 'narcissistic transference neurosis', 'inferiority feeling', 'compensation', 'superiority striving', 'rejecting' and 'exciting' object, 'transference projection', 're-creation compulsion', 'introjection', 'identification', 'identification with the aggressor' (rejector, abandoner, betrayer...), 'mastery compulsion', 'compensatory transference reversal', 'complexes', 'scripts', 'games', 'payoffs', 'conscious early memories', 'neuroticism', 'transference eroticism', 'transference egotism'...
I've exhausted all my narcissistic egotism at this sitting. Tomorrow I may retract it all. If you had it all over again, Dr. Masson, would you have retracted your assertion of Freud 'having lost moral courage'?
Tomorrow or the next day, I will add a case example involving a 'transference-lifestyle memory' involving Freud himself, which I have already analyzed elsewhere (in one of my Wittgenstein essays) but will examine again.
We will look at this hugely important 'transference memory' stemming from Freud's early childhood in the context of Freud's later creation of Psychoanalysis.
For what it is worth, Dr. Masson...
With or without you...
-- dgb, June 24th-27th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic-Democratic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are still in process....
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Adler had just deliver a presentation to the Society on 'psychic compensation' -- probably one of the most important concepts to come out of Adlerian thinking, next to his concept of 'lifestyle' and his 'interpretation of conscious early memories'.
Here Freudian and Adlerian thinking -- if only for one or two brief moments in history came together in a way that was actually 'integrative'.
DGB Philosophy-Psychology 'fixates' on this moment in Psychoanalytic history because it is one of the starting points and focal points for the beginning of what I will call 'DGB-GAP' Integrative Transference Theory'. I use the name 'GAP' as part of my 'DGB-GAP' name here because it actually represents my first 'theoretical-integrative project' back in the 1980s, after I finished my Honours Thesis in Psychology in 1979 (Evaluation and Health') which I still plan to re-write.
'GAP' when I first used it represented 'Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic (GAP)' which is where we return to right now from the mid 1980s when I was working in this area.
Nine concepts are critical here -- we will introduce others later -- but right now, two from Psychoanalysis, five from Adlerian Psychology, and two from Gestalt Therapy. They are respectively: Freudian: 1. 'narcissistic injury', 2. 'narcissistic fixation'; Adlerian: 3. 'inferiority feeling', 4. a) 'masculine protest' to b) 'superiority striving', 'compensation', 5. 'lifestyle', and 6. 'conscious early memories'; Gestalt: 7. 'figural gestalt', 8. 'unfinished situation'.
On November 7th, 1906 Adler was just starting to get his theoretical legs under him.
Indeed, this session can actually be marked as the beginning of Adlerian Psychology as it basically started to focus on three or four things: 1. 'inferiority feelings' and 2. 'compensation' 3. 'superiority striving', and 'conscious early recollections'.
Stated another way, Adler was starting to formulate his own alternative theory to Freud's at least partly to mainly abandoned 'traumacy' theory.
And yet things were again starting to change for Freud in a number of different ways. He was both looking 'backwards' in time to his and Breuer's old traumacy theory. And yet he was starting to move away from 'Sexual Fantasy Theory' in a partly different direction to his old Traumacy Theory and his present Sexual Fantasy Theory. (Freud had just published 'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality' in 1905.)
Freud was moving towards a theory of 'Narcissism', a concept that he didn't use in The Vienna Psychoanalytic Circle til November, 1909 -- three years later than this session here -- and then he would use it again in December 1909 (in an updated preface to 'Three Essays'), and again in 1910 in his essay, 'Leonardo Da Vinci'.
The concept of 'Narcissism' which is attributed partly to Havelock Ellis in 1898 and partly to Paul Nacke in 1899 (which Havelock Ellis, himself, insisted on sharing with Nacke) was not fully introduced by Freud himself to the public until his 1914 paper 'On Narcissism' -- which to me is one of the most important papers in the history of Psychoanalysis. Another critically important Psychoanalytic paper, 'The Dynamics of Transference' was published in 1912.
Thus, two critically important Freudian Psychoanalytic papers were published two years apart from each other -- 'The Dynamics of The Transference' in 1912, and 'On Narcissism' in 1914. And yet here was the 'kicker': for Freud the two concepts were 'mutually exclusive' -- never, according to Freud, would the two concepts meet in clinical practice. For Freud, the more narcissism ('egotism' and 'auto-eroticism') you had/have in a clinical case, the less transference you have -- and visa versa.
For example, the 'schizophrenic person' according to Freud is extremely 'narcissistic' -- meaning 'self-fixated' and 'self-fantasy-fixated'. This eliminates the possibility of the schizophrenic 'falling in love' and exhibiting the characteristics of 'transference love' because again, the schizophrenic is too 'self-fixated' and too 'self-fantasy-fixated'. The schizophrenic is too fixated on 'internal memory-fantasy objects' inside his or her own head to pay enough attention to the therapist's 'external characteristics' -- to consequently, 'fall in love'. Worded otherwise, the schizophrenic person is too 'narcissistic' to exhibit 'transference features' in Psychoanalytic psychotherapy -- thus, Psychoanalysis cannot help schizophrenic clients. So was Freud's thinking in 1914 -- and for the duration of his Psychoanalytic career.
This all changed with the work of Heinz Kohut in 1971:
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Narcissistic Transference
Narcissistic transference is a post-Freudian term introduced by Heinz Kohut, in the context of his theory of narcissism, to refer to a group of clinical phenomena observed during analytic treatment.
For Freud himself, transference concerned the transposition of object relationships; transference and narcissism were such contrary ideas for him that the expression narcissistic transference would have been meaningless in his eyes: "Observation shows that sufferers from narcissistic neuroses have no capacity for transference or only insufficient residues of it" (1916-17a [1915-17], p. 447).
One of the first authors to take narcissism into account in the evolution of the treatment was Béla Grunberger, in 1956. Grunberger deemed narcissism one of the motors of the analytic cure, and this even among neurotics. Out of fidelity to Freud's thinking, he nevertheless refrained from using the term "narcissistic transference," and spoke only of a "narcissistic analytic relationship." In this context he described certain ploys on the part of the patient, as for example "using the analyst to create a double [or mirror] image of himself" or projecting his ideal ego onto the analyst, which would later be evoked by Heinz Kohut.
Kohut brought narcissism into relation not with the ego but with a broader and less limited entity, the self. At the same time he introduced the idea of a line of development of narcissism paralleling the development of object-cathexes and interacting with it. Narcissism and object-love were thus no longer in contradiction with each other, but complementary, and it became possible to speak meaningfully of narcissistic transferences.
In The Analysis of the Self (1971), Kohut describes several aspects of such transferences. "Mirror transferences" correspond to a remobilization of the idealized "grandiose self" and imply the following demand with respect to the other person: "I am perfect and need you to confirm it." A mirror transference easily gives rise to a feeling of boredom or impatience in the analyst, whose otherness it does not acknowledge. Such transferences are of three types (pp. 114-16). The most archaic is "merger transference," in which the patient strives for an omnipotent and tyrannical control over the analyst, who is experienced as an extension of the self. In an "alter-ego transference," the other is experienced as very similar to the grandiose self. Lastly, in the case of mirror transference "in the narrower sense," the analyst is experienced as a function serving the patient's needs. If the patient feels recognized, he will experience sensations of well-being associated with the restoration of his narcissism. An "idealizing transference" is defined by Kohut as the mobilization of an idealized and all-powerful parent imago (p. 37), and it is encapsulated in the sentence "You are perfect, but I am part of you"; it is correlated with a struggle against feelings of emptiness and powerlessness. Kohut's notion that certain people are cathected as parts of the self, integrated into the mental functioning of the patient himself, led him to speak of "self-objects" and to describe narcissistic transference as based on an idealized self-object.
Kohut's approach has been criticized on the grounds that it first relegated the instincts and the Oedipus complex to the background and then eliminated them completely.
PAUL DENIS
See also: Bipolar self; Self; Self-object; Self psychology; Sexualization.
Bibliography
Dessuant, Pierre. (1999). Béla Grunberger. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Freud, Sigmund. (1916-17a [1915-17]). Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. SE, 15-16.
Grunberger, Béla. (1979 [1971]). Narcissism: Psychoanalytic essays (Joyce S. Diamanti, Trans.). New York: International Universities Press.
Kohut, Heinz. (1971). The analysis of the self. New York: International Universities Press.
Oppenheimer, Agnès. (1998). Heinz Kohut. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Further Reading
Cohen, D. W. (2002). Transference and countertransference in analysis of narcissism. Psychoanalytic Review, 89, 631-652.
Schwaber, Evelyn (1977). Understanding unfolding "narcissistic transference." International Review of Psychoanalysis, 4, 493-502.
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Back in the mid 1980s -- without knowing anything about the work of Heinz Kohut at the time -- I was playing around with a mixture of Freudian, Adlerian, and Gestalt ideas. You can probably even add the work of Eric Berne and Transactional Analysis as well as Ronald Fairbairn (through Harry Guntrip's book, 'Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and The Self', 1971,73) and Fairbairn's polar-paradoxical ideas of 'rejecting and exciting object' which I was just starting to learn as I started reading about 'Object Relations' for the first time.
Critical to all this theoretical work that I was integrating -- and I do not really have a clue when this integration actually came together (some time between the mid 1980s and early 1990s, I believe) was the concept of 'narcissistic injury' which was basically the Freudian and/or post-Freudian equivalent of Adler's concept of 'inferiority feeling'.
Clinically -- and theoretically speaking -- we can say that out of a 'childhood narcissistic (self-esteem) injury' -- often captured in the 'narcissistic fixation' or 'figural gestalt' of a consciously remembered early childhood memory, often develops a more clinically and experientially prolonged and neurotically relevant sense of 'physical and/or psychological inferiority feeling'.
In my own paraphrase of Adler's words, this more prolonged sense of 'inferiority feeling' happens to all of us in differing degrees of 'lifestyle' 'uniqueness' and 'specificity', 'quality' and 'quantity' relative to our own unique 'genetic characteristics' as well as our own unique 'subjective experiences' and 'learned lessons and personality characteristics' from these unique, subjectively perceived childhood experiences -- all captured in our consciously remembered early memories of these experiences.
Note, that it is at this specific juncture --not to fully develop til years later -- that Freud and Adler theoretically and therapeutically separate and go in opposite directions: 1. Freud and Psychoanalysis continued to remain focused and 'fixated' on their theoretical paradigm of 'unconscious, repressed memories' and 'repressed, sexual fantasies of distorted 'false' memories'; while Adler was entering into an entirely different domain, a different theoretical paradigm -- the domain and paradigm of 'consciously or (subconsciously) remembered early childhood memories'.
For an Adlerian Psychologist -- 'ask and you shall receive' -- you simply ask a client for a 'consciously remembered one-time, specific event in his or her early childhood (usually before the age of 7 or 8 years old) and, as a clinical diagnostician and therapist, you will get what you want: a 'lifestyle' memory that when combined with 3 or 4 other memories of this type and when taken together with information about the client's 'family constellation' will give the therapist the type of diagnostic and therapeutic information that he or she needs to work with you in the same basic way that a Psychoanalytic Therapist would would work with a 'client-therapist transference relationship'.
Which basically begs the question: How much different is what we will call here (with a little 'DGB theoretical embellishment') an 'Adlerian Lifestyle Complex and/or Script' to a 'Freudian or post-Freudian 'Transference Complex or Script'?
The answer from this DGB theoretical perspective right here is -- at least after you 'fill in some theoretical gaps within and between the two respective schools of psychology -- 'not too different'.
One primary difference is that Psychoanalysis believes in the assumption-principle of 'conflict and division in the personality' whereas Adlerian Psychology believes in the assumption-principle of 'unity -- as in no conflict -- in the personality.
A second major difference occurs within Psychoanalysis itself: specifically, Freud never connected his 'Traumacy and/or Seduction Theory' with his 'Transference Theory' -- although he definitely should have. Consequently, because of this failure on Freud's part to make a 'Traumacy-Transference' connection, therefore there was no resulting principle or concept in Psychoanalysis that reflected this concept here: a 'transference memory'. Nor a 'transference complex'. Nor a 'transference script'. Nor a 'transference game'. Nor a 'compensatory-transference-reversal' (similar with Ferenczi's and Anna Freud's concept of 'identification with the aggressor').
These ideas would all demand 'stepping outside of orthodox Psychoanalytic Theory Paradigm and integrating other ideas inherent in other schools of psychology such as by 1. Jung (complex); 2. Adler ('lifestyle memory', 'inferiority feeling', 'compensation', and 'superiority striving'); 3. Fairbairn ('rejecting' and 'exciting' object); 4. Berne ('scripts', 'games', 'payoffs', 'ego-states'...); and 5. Perls ('figural Gestalt', 'unfinished situation', 'symbolically repeating unfinished situations in order to finish them'...).
Two more ideas that I was playing around with in the mid 1980s were: 'topdog transferences' and 'topdog transference ego-states' vs. 'underdog transferences' and 'underdog transference ego-states'.
A 'narcissistic topdog transference complex, script, and game' involves playing out the role of a childhood idealized, idolized 'ego ideal' in what comes across in the manner of an adult 'superiority complex'.
In contrast, a 'narcissistic underdog transference complex, script, and game involves playing out usually a childhood version of oneself -- either an 'approval-seeking', a 'schizoid/distancing', and/or a 'rebellious' 'complex', 'script', 'game' in what can also be viewed as three different but often overlapping versions of an 'inferiority complex' involving either: 1. trying to 'please'; 2. trying to 'distance and avoid'; 3. trying to 'narcissistically and/or righteously 'get one's own way' and/or 'confront and/or overpower'; and 4. trying to 'manipulatively seduce'...
From these evolving integrative ideas, DGB-GAP Psychology gets 'four underdog transference ego-states: 1. The Rebellious (Rejected) Underdog Ego; 2. The Seductive-Manipulative (Narcissistic-Hedonistic) Underdog Ego; 3. The Distancing-Schizoid Underdog Ego; and 4. The Approval-Seeking (Pleasing) Underdog Ego.
These are mirrored by: 5. The Nurturing Topdog Ego; 6. The Seductive-Manipulative Topdog (Narcissistic-Hedonistic) Ego; 7. The Righteous-Rejecting Topdog Ego; and 8. The Distancing-Schizoid Topdog Ego. (I thank Harry Guntrip for the new addition of 'The Distancing-Schizoid Topdog and Underdog Ego' concepts. I forgot about this aspect of his work.)
Nestled in the 'middle and mediating zone' of these 8 topdog and underdog dialectic ego-states, I add 9. 'The Central Mediating, Executive (DGB Post-Hegelian, Rational-Empirical, Humanistic-Existential) Ego'.
And just to make life a little more complicated but interesting in 'The Multi-Dialectic-Wholistic Ego', I add a number of other 'middle-zone' dialectic-democratic ego-states that you can choose to either explore and utilize -- or ignore and not use -- as you see fit.
I like them -- this is like how 'The Senate' should function in Canadian Parliament as an 'overseeing consortium of 'dialectic-democratic specialist agents': 10. The Narcissistic-Altruistic Ego; 11. The Rational-Empirical Ego; 12. The Capitalist-Socialist Ego' 13. The Liberal-Conservative Ego; 14. The Creative-Destructive (Constructive-Deconstructive) Ego; 15. The Security-Excitement Ego; 16. The Enlightenment-Romantic Ego; 17. The Apollonian-Dionysian Ego...
That leaves us with room for three more 'Unconscious-Subconscious-Conscious Compartments of The Personality, of The Wholistic Self:
18. The Symbolic, Dynamic, Creative-Destructive Dream and Transference Fantasy Maker;
19. The Structural Transference Experience-Memory Template;
20. The Genetic, Potential Self.
And that, I believe, might be my final 'model of the personality or self'
I like the magic number '20' -- and I like all the different elements that comprise this model.
And it all starts/started with the concept of 'narcissism' and 'narcissistic injury'.
The DGB Post-Freudian, post-Kohutian Concept and Theory of 'narcissism' and 'narcissistic transference theory' holds a huge theoretical and clinical advantage over all other Freudian concepts and theories in that it is 'all encompassing' in a way that all of Freud's other theories were not:
1. Freudian Repression Theory was too reductionistic;
2. Freudian Traumacy Theory was too reductionistic;
3. Freudian Seduction Theory was too reductionistic;
4. Freudian Childhood Sexuality was too reductionistic;
5. Freudian Oedipal Theory was too reductionistic;
6. Freudian Transference Theory was too reductionistic;
7. Freudian Dream Interpretation Theory was too reductionistic;
8. Freudian Death Instinct Theory was too reductionistic (if not flat out wrong);
9. Freudian Ego, Id, and Superego Theory was too reductionistic;
That leaves two Freudian theories left (I probably missed a couple) that had 'all encompassing' value. These were, and still are:
10. Freud's Theory of Narcissism which had the distinct advantage over any of his previous or all but one of his later theories to be 'all encompassing'.
For this reason: Narcissism encompasses the three ideas of: 1. 'neuroticism'; 2. 'eroticism'; and 3. egotism' (self-esteem).
Perhaps Alfred Adler's most important legacy to the study and practice of clinical psychology is that he opened up the door to the 'study of self-esteem'.
The main essence of Adler's Theory -- couch partly in DGB Post-Freudian, Post-Adlerian Terminology -- runs something like this:
1. A 'childhood narcissistic (self-esteem) injury becomes 'fixated' on in the form of a 'conscious early memory' that reflects the subjective perception of the event. The narcissistic injury becomes 'crystallized' in the personality in the form of a more generalized 'self-esteem problem' or what Adler called an 'inferiority feeling' that 'propels an upward motivating, compensatory force' aimed at attempting to 'solve or resolve' the generalized inferiority feeling or 'transferred narcissistic injury'. The self-esteem injury -- and the memory of the event that crystallized it -- become the focus -- the fixation -- of 'obsessive-compulsive attention'. This 'fixated, obsessive-compulsive attention' is firstly organized in 'The Transference Template', and often integrated with elements of 'The Potential, Genetic Self' which may include 'Archetypal, Mythological Figures' that come from deep in our distant, ancient, genetic, Darwinian-Evolutionary past...
Our 'Dynamic, Creative Transference, Dream, and Fantasy (TDF) Maker grabs a hold of all of the material coming from deeper in our unconscious -- from our Transference Experience, Memory, and Fantasy Template; and from our Genetic, Potential Self -- and is integrated together in the form of: 1. a 'transference projection'; 2. a 'creative and/or destructive piece of fantasy-impulse, work, art, and/or 'Essence-Wall behavior'; 3. a 'creatively reconstructed symbolic Transference-Scene' that combines childhood and adult elements to it. Generally, there is a mixture of 'neuroticism, eroticism, and egotism' which together -- or separately -- we can call combined and/or separated elements of -- narcissism: 'transference memory', 'narcissistic injury', 'narcissistic fantasy-impulse', and 'mastery compulsion'.
I have a feeling this little essay here may become my signature psychological work -- my most complete and concise rendition of transference in relation to personality theory (splitting of the ego into ego-states that behave like 'lobbyists' walking down government halls, conflict and dissociation in the ego, divisions into 'dominant ego states' vs. 'marginalized, suppressed ego-states'...)
Some -- many -- may accuse me of creating a model that is too big and cumbersome -- it looks like an 'embellished' Transactional Analysis model with elements of Jungian psychology, Freudian Psychology, Object Relations, Adlerian Psychology, and Gestalt Therapy thrown into it. Critics may say that it fails the 'Okham's Razor' test -- it fails the 'simplicity' test. Having 20 different 'Ego or Sub-Ego States or 'Unconscious Self-Compartments' as opposed to Freud's three (Ego, Superego, and Id) or Gestalt Therapy's two (Topdog vs. Underdog) or Adlerian's Psycholgy's one ('lifestyle') is obviously going to raise some eyebrows and/or generate some quick 'rejection judgments'.
My counterargument is that all 20 'Self-Compartments' are relevant and significant to human behavior whether we want to label them the way I have chosen to or not. The model can easily be broken down into smaller, more workable, 'dialectic pieces' in a therapeutic setting. A 'Multi-Dialectic Model' can be broken down to simply a 'Dialectic Model' that focuses on two different ego-states wrestling with each other and each seeking dominance. And if I am 'over-objectifying' the self here, we can easily change our language from 'objectified language' to more 'subjectified, humanistic-existential language.
There is practically a lifetime -- 37 years (1972-2009) -- of research, analysis, integration, and theoretical reconstructionism that is locked up into this little paper here. The key to it is in the successful application of it.
The fact that I have worked this long and this hard on the evolution of the model is a statement and a reflection in itself of a 'narcissistic transference obsessive-compulsion-complex' of the first order! There is definitely an interconnection between 'transference-lifestyle complexes' on the one hand and 'any type of work-sublimation-obsesive-compulsion that may structurally fit into -- or interconnect with -- this transference-lifestyle complex...
Are you listening Dr. Brian Bird? (I can't find any recent biographical material on you but I think you are still alive, I hope you are still alive. You are one of my 'transference gurus'.)
Are you listening Dr. Jeffrey Masson? (I know you are alive -- you have an active website...)
We all have something to prove at some stage or another in our lives. If people didn't have some element of 'perceived marginalization and/or rejection kicking around in our heads, disturbing our peace and equillibrium, half the the things that have been accomplished in this world would never have been accomplished. The 'neurotic drive' -- for better and/or for worse -- is one of the most powerful drives in the human psyche...
'Personal narcissism' that can be broken down into numerous areas of 'sub-areas' of human motivation: 'Survival, safety, and security'...'contact excitement'....'money', 'greed, 'moral/ethical righteousness', 'romanticism', 'eroticism'...'reason and logic', 'healthy and/or neurotic egotism'...all of these motivational factors can play a crucial role in the foundational base of man's individual and collective motivation...
Fully recognizing the central part played by 'neurotic egotism' was Alfred Adler's greatest contribution to the study of the psychology of man.
Where did the boundary between Freud's healthy and neurotic egotism lie?
Where did the boundary between Masson's healthy and neurotic egotism lie?
Where did the boundary between Janet Malcolm' healthy and neurotic egotism lie?
Where does the boundary between my 'healthy' and 'neurotic' egotism lie?
At what point does a writer risk stepping over a line of 'professional conduct relative to good writing work' by perhaps sharing too much of his or her own personal 'Essence' and not maintaining enough 'Personal-Private Wall'...
Alternatvively, at what point does a writer risk reaching over -- and judging -- too deeply into another person's/writer's Personal-Private Wall, and in so doing, again, compromise his or her own professional writing work.
To be sure, I have a mitful of 'neurotic and/or transference sensitivities' but behind anyone's neurotic-transference senstivities can be a message that is still existentially real -- and important...
Such as perhaps...
1. You don't have to be a 'Dr.' to write a good psychology paper; nor do you have to live and die inside an 'Psychoanalytic Institute' to know something significant about the 'ins' an 'outs' of Psychoanalysis -- indeed, as Dr. Masson has boldly asserted (or so Janet Malcolm claims), what really might be best for Psychoanalysis is to open up some doors and windows at Anna Freud's house (metaphorically and/or literally) -- and, indeed, in every Psychoanalytic Institute and 'Secret Society' everywhere in the world -- , and 'get some fresh air' into all these buildings, 'breathe some new life in them', yes, even let some women into these buildings, let them behave as women -- and not teach them to masquerade around as 'stuffy, anal-retentive, Oedipal Complex fixated, old men'.
And yes, if I had my way or say in this massive 'Secret Society', Dr. Masson, if you wanted, I would let you back into The Psychoanalytic Institute -- and you could even be the reigning Psychoanalytic 'Intellectual Gigolo' -- metaphporically speaking of course. There are probably millions of men who would wear this mantle -- this title and label -- with egotistic pride. I can't believe you wasted 10 years of your life in a court of life trying to argue that this label 'defamed you'. I shake my head on that one. Try accepting and being accountable -- for better and/or for worse, for right and/or for wrong -- for the line that really destroyed your Psychoanalytic career -- 'Freud lost moral courage'. Personally, I do not believe that Freud turned Psychoanalysis upside down and inside out to protect his own medical career and a certain percentage of possible medical-father child abusers. There are much easier ways in which he could have accomplished this same goal -- such as simply sticking more abstractly to his previous 'traumacy theory'.
Lifestyle-Transference-Sensitivity #2:
Dr. Masson, you are not the only good mind -- and/or 'untainted' mind -- in the history of Psychoanalysis. Generally speaking, there is 'pathology at the extremities of life' -- there is just as much danger in utilizing 'The Seduction Theory out of control' as there is in utilizing 'The Oedipal Theory out of Control'.
Wherever there is a hardline rebel, you can usually find a hardline control freak -- in the same person. (Hardline Righteous Topdog vs. Hardline Rebellious Underdog).
Dr. Masson, you were like an anarchist -- or better still, The Anti-Christ (Freud being the symbolic Christ here) -- you were like Nietzsche on the warpath taking his/your 'hammer philosophy' to everything inside The Psychoanalytic Institute. Isn't that a part of your 'transference pattern' -- first idolizing someone or something, and then taking a 'rhetorical hammer' to your 'Idol' when you one find out that your so-called Idol is not a 'real one' but a 'false one'.
Or am I reading too much into your character just like you might have been when you said/say that 'Freud lost moral courage' as if God gave you the sole right to know what was going on inside Freud's mind back in 1896...Instead, in 1992, in the preface of 'Assault', you wrote that you don't profess to know why Freud 'lost moral courage' (you just know that he did...psychic telepathy again...a direct line into Freud's 1896 brain...)
For you, the 1980s were like -- 'it's my way or the highway', the rebellious-anarchist meets the 'righteous control freak' -- inside your own head, and then projected out into the world. The Psychoanalytic World.
It was like -- 'Okay, you guys, you don't want to play my way, you don't want to believe me, you don't want to play my game, that is fine with me, I will just 'take my net and go home'. (You lived in Toronto -- walked down the same halls as Ernest Jones -- and close to Maple Leaf Gardens -- I think you can appreciate that metaphor.) At the same time, I guess The Psychoanalytic Institute partly threw your net back at you -- and said, 'Go home!'
California wasn't far enough away from The Psychoanalytic Institute -- not far enough away from the 'madding crowd'...You can't get much further away than New Zealand...
And as far as your turn to the study and teaching of 'animal psychology' -- we all have different passions in life, some better actualized than others, depending on which path we choose to turn down in life -- but perhaps you said it best yourself as you turned away from Psychoanalyis and into the study of animal psychology: 'Dogs Never Lie About Love'...
Perhaps a little more transference-projection here?
Dr. Masson, I respect the courage it took for you to confront Psychoanalysis the way you did but as I believe I have said once before, I am here to give your work a fair shake in its own right -- that is your re-trumpeting of Freud's abandoned Seduction Theory -- but at the same time, I am not here to give you a free ride.
As writers -- you, Janet Malcolm, myself included -- we all have choices to make as 'to how far we can and will 'push the humanistic-existential drama' in our writing without compromising the 'factual, historical, and/or character reality' of who and/or what we are writing about.
You took liberties with what you said about Freud's character -- his 'alleged loss of moral courage and integrity' -- and you got a lot of public backlash and heat for what you wrote.
Janet Malcolm took certain liberties with 'alleged quotes about your character' that, if they involved 'fabricated quotes', 'conflated or amalgamated partial quotes from different contexts, times, and settings -- and all thrust together in one context, one time, one place, and/or coming from people who they didn't come from (Anna Freud, Kurt Eisler) -- if this all happened like it seems from what I have read from your court transcripts, it did happen -- then Janet Malcolm, her fact checker, and/or her editor/husband should all be held accountable for that -- in the end, Janet Malcolm's work, at least from this corner, takes at least a partial hit in terms of the 'fact credibility and integrity of her work'.
This having been said, it is also is not too hard to see certain similarities between what you did to Freud's character and what Janet Malcolm did to yours. Malcolm played around with 'quotes' and 'facts'; you played around with your own personal interpretations of quotes and alleged historical facts -- and in the end -- treated Freud's 'loss of moral courage and integrity' as if it was/is a given fact.
It isn't.
Thus, perhaps you got a piece of your own medicine: What goes around comes around.
Back to your re-trumpeting of Freud's Seduction Theory.
Dr. Masson -- your 'clone repetition' of Freud's Seduction Theory is too reductionistic -- let me repeat -- too reductionistic! It sinks when you try to make it sound as 'all encompassing' as you do.
Dr. Masson, you are just as guilty of over-generalizing as Freud was back in 1896.
Freud was very often in his career guilty of over-generalizing -- it was arguably his worst 'serial offence' as a theorist. That is why Breuer left him (Freud's pansexualism), that is why Jung left him (Freud's pansexualism again)...that is why many of his best therapists and theorists left him in one way or another: because Freud was just too 'anal-retentive' in treating 'his latest, greatest theory like a God-given fact' (even though he notoriously changed them himself faster than people could understand the implications and the applications -- of the theory he was leaving behind)!
Freud's 'Oedipal Theory' was too reductionistic -- in fact, it was probably even more reductionistic and extreme than his aforementioned Seduction Theory.
In fact, The Oedipal Theory -- and I am in full agreement with you, Dr. Masson here -- was easily capable of being 'pathologically wrong'. Freud's Oedipal Theory in its most extreme form created a 'Pathology of Normalcy' in Psychoanalysis -- that could be applied pathologically in thousands of different, individual clinical settings.
But so too can or could the 'unbridled Seduction Theory out of control'...
A therapist's office is not a court of law. It is not a therapist's job to be a 'prosecutor' or a 'council for the defence' or a 'judge or jury'....
'Subjective truths' in therapy -- and 'alleged objective truths' -- should not be confused with 'objective epistemological reality' and 'swallowed whole -- hook, line, and sinker' -- on the basis of a client's subjective testimony that can often be 'manipulatively seductive' -- and turn out to be flat out 'epistemologically wrong' -- or worse, 'a blatant manipulative fantasy and/or lie'.
Funny things can happen in a therapist's office -- just as they can happen in a court of law. No one is immune to the influence and 'distorting reality' of 'narcissistic bias'. Is a client in therapy because he or she was 'traumatized by a brutual reality'? And/or is he or she in therapy because he or she has a serial behavior pattern of 'distorting epistemological and/or ethical reality'?
Both possibilities -- separately or mixed -- can greatly 'muddle the picture of theoretical and/or therapeutic clarity'. Oftentimes, a theorist/therapist is best to remain 'epistemologically agnostic' -- to oneself, as convincing as this story may sound, I just do not know. Empirical and/or circumstantial validation, confirmation, support is needed from outside of the client's often very convincing 'words'.
'Words that are not structurally connected to reality' - that is oftentimes why a client is in therapy in the first place. People can be wrong. And oftentimes, people -- for whatever lighter or darker motivation -- can blatantly lie.
No iron clad theory -- Traumacy, Seduction, or Oedipal Theory -- can be expected to fit every clinical case, every clinical fact. That is why a broader, more open-minded perspective is often to be preferred.
Anyway, here is my 'DGB Integrative Narcissistic-Fixation/Traumacy-Transference Theory'.
No extreme Seduction Theory.
No extreme Oedipal Theory.
Both are too reductionistic in themselves.
But rather, at least a partly Hegelian dialectic-democratic collision and integration of both -- mediated by such concepts of 'narcissism', 'narcissistic injury', 'narcissistic transference neurosis', 'inferiority feeling', 'compensation', 'superiority striving', 'rejecting' and 'exciting' object, 'transference projection', 're-creation compulsion', 'introjection', 'identification', 'identification with the aggressor' (rejector, abandoner, betrayer...), 'mastery compulsion', 'compensatory transference reversal', 'complexes', 'scripts', 'games', 'payoffs', 'conscious early memories', 'neuroticism', 'transference eroticism', 'transference egotism'...
I've exhausted all my narcissistic egotism at this sitting. Tomorrow I may retract it all. If you had it all over again, Dr. Masson, would you have retracted your assertion of Freud 'having lost moral courage'?
Tomorrow or the next day, I will add a case example involving a 'transference-lifestyle memory' involving Freud himself, which I have already analyzed elsewhere (in one of my Wittgenstein essays) but will examine again.
We will look at this hugely important 'transference memory' stemming from Freud's early childhood in the context of Freud's later creation of Psychoanalysis.
For what it is worth, Dr. Masson...
With or without you...
-- dgb, June 24th-27th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic-Democratic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are still in process....
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Tuesday, June 23, 2009
DGB Philosophy Secures the Foundation of Western and Eastern Dialectic Philosophy And Builds Upwards -- and Beyond -- Hegel
Updated June 23rd, 2009.
In previous essays I have criticized Nietzsche for separating from Hegel's 'Dualistic-Dialectic Philosophy' after Nietzsche's creatively brilliant first book -- 'The Birth of Tragedy (BT)' -- took 'Hegelian Dialectic Thinking' to a higher evolutionary plateau, combining Hegel's dialectic philosophy with the human drama, passion, and the beginning of 'dialectic-humanistic-existentialism' which Nietzsche traced back to the pre-Socratic writings of Homer, Greek theatre, and other ancient renditions of Greek Tragedy -- brought up to date and 'dialectically analyzed' by Nietzsche.
The ripeness of Nietzsche's combined 'old and new philosophical fruit' -- the product of a cross fertilization of early Greek dualistic-dialectic philosophy (Apollo vs. Dionysus) and later Hegelian dualistic-dialectic thinking (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis) was so 'nutritional' that the 'intellectual and humanistic-existential value' of this cross-fertilized fruit is still exploding off the BT fruit tree some 200 years later, first through the work of Freud and Jung in the early 1900s, then in the therapeutic work of Perls and Gestalt Therapy, and Berne and Transactional Analysis in the 1960s and onward, and finally, right up into the 21st century through the work of DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics-Religion-Science-Medicine...which is still evolving in 2009.
Indeed, it is partly too bad that Nietzsche ventured away from BT or he could have almost 'created' Psychoanalysis himself. Indeed, in this one little book -- BT -- Nietzsche almost did create Psychoanalysis. The details just needed to be filled out a bit more through Freud and Jung in their clinical and theoretical work to soon come...BT, in my opinion, remains a much overlooked piece of work in terms of its mega-influence on Freud, Jung, and eventually Perls and Gestalt Therapy. BT was the 'integrative bridge' between Greek Tragedy, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Freud.
But what happened is what happened -- a matter of Nietzsche's own personal and philosophical evolutionary development -- and Nietzsche had other 'fruits he wanted to grow off of other philosophical trees...'.
Nietsche's later 'Will to Power' Theory, his 'Cliff, Abyss, and Tightrope' Theory relative to 'Being and Becoming', and his 'Superman' Theory would do much to lay the groundwork for Heidegger, Sartre, and 20th Century Humanistic-Existentialism.
In this regard, Hegel once again led the way in the evolution of 19th and 20th century Humanistic-Existentialism with his theories of 'The Master-Slave Relationship' and 'Alienation' (to be jumped on by Marx) and then Kierkegaard in his rebellion against 'Hegel's 'Absolute' Abstactionism and Universalism' with his own counter-philosophy of 'Existential Concretism' (albeit Kierkegaard could and did write very abstractly as well).
Schopenhauer, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche all had a hugely important impact on the growth of 19th, 20th, and even 21st century philosophy -- and all of their ideas sprang from arguably the most important philosophical work in Western history -- Hegel's 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807). Even Darwin's later 19th century work in biology and evolutionary theory can be seen -- directly or indirectly -- to have a Hegelian foundation.
And if we really want to fully understand that Hegel's dualistic-dialectic philosophy did not just 'spring out of nowhere', then we must give proper credit to the previous German Idealistic philosophical work of all three of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling -- and furthermore, we need to go right back to the very philosophical roots that Nietzsche did -- back to the roots of Greek -- and all -- mythology, back to the mythological 'dualism' of 'Apollo' vs. 'Dionysus', back to the second oldest philosopher in Western history -- Anaxamander -- and his patriarchal 'power and conquest dialectic theory'; and also back to Anaxamander's indirect student -- Heraclitus -- and the latter's more 'matriarchal philosophy' -- a philosophy of 'opposite things, opposite processes, opposite ideas all coming together 'for the good of the whole dialectic-democratic harmony'.
However, perhaps the most important 'dialectic connection' to be made in the history of dialectic philosophy is the one I am just about to make now. I have been searching on the internet for an answer to a question that needed to take me into the deepest depths of Chinese philosophy -- or at least as deep as anyone else on the internet could take me.
The question that I started asking myself about 2006-2007 in one of my first introductory essays in Hegel's Hotel ran something like this:
Where did the Chinese philosophical concepts and symbols of 'yin' and 'yang' originate from?
I had the symbols traced back to 'The Han Philosophers' -- a group of very important Chinese philosophers who were trying to 'integrate China' back in The Han Dynasty' by 'integrating a number of different important philosophies and philosophers' who had greatly influenced the evolution of China -- before and until 'The Ch'in Dynasty, a totalitarian Chinese government that existed from 221-207BC -- did much to start tearing the philosophical foundations, and the spirit, of the Chinese people apart through their totalitarian, anti-humanistic, anti-democratic measures.
Even this following piece from the internet on 'The Han Synthesis' I am reading this morning for the first time. Sometimes -- like now -- I shake my head to realize that not only is my own philosophical work constantly evolving, but so too is the work of other philosophers and writers on the internet, and information that was just not available to me two or three years ago is clearly available now. These following two pieces greatly help the evolution of my own work in Hegel's Hotel here:
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From the internet....
Ancient China: The Han Synthesis
After the disastrous period of totalitarian government during the Ch'in dynasty (221-207 B. C.), the early Han dynasty (207 B.C.-9 A.D.) returned to older forms of imperial government. However, they adopted from the Ch'in the idea of an absolutely central government and spent most of their period in power trying to regain the same level of centrality that the Ch'in and the Legalists had so ruthlessly accomplished. This ideology of central government, along with the Legalists' attempts to standardize Chinese culture and Chinese philosophy, led thinkers of the Han to attempt to unify all the rival schools of Chinese thought and philosophy that had developed over the previous three hundred years. This unification of Chinese into a single coherent system is the most lasting legacy of the Han dynasty. Earlier, the Legalists attempted to standardize Chinese thought by burning the books of rival schools and by making it a capital crime to speak of Confucius, Lao Tzu, or Mo Tzu. The Han thinkers, who thoroughly despised the Legalists and their methods while adopting many of their goals, took a different approach. Rather than reject alternate ways of thinking, they took a syncretic approach and attempted to fuse all the rival schools of thought into a single system. This syncretic project of the early Han is known as the Han synthesis. In many ways it was similar to the larger project of unifying Chinese government.
Chinese Philosophy
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Confucius
Legalism
Mo Tzu
Taoism
The Han philosophers concentrated specifically on the Five Classics, attempting to derive from them, particularly the I ching , or Book of Changes, the principle of the workings of the universe, or Tao. This new theory of the universe they appended to the I ching ; this appendix explains the metaphysical workings of the entire universe. Once the overall workings of the unverse were understood, then every form of thought could be directly related to each other by appealing to the basic principles of the universe.
Chinese Philosophy
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Pre-Confucian China and the Five Classics
The essentials of the Han synthesis are as follows: the universe is run by a single principle, the Tao, or Great Ultimate. This principle is divided into two opposite principles, or two principles which oppose one another in their actions, yin and yang. All the opposites one perceives in the universe can be reduced to one of the opposite forces. In general, these forces are distinguished by their role in producing creation and producing degeneration: yang is the force of creation and yin the force of completion and degeneration. The yin and yang are further differentiated into five material agents, or wu hsing , which both produce one another and overcome one another. All change in the universe can be explained by the workings of yin and yang and the progress of the five material agents as they either produce one another or overcome one another. This is a universal explanatory principle. All phenomena can be understood using yin-yang and the five agents: the movements of the stars, the workings of the body, the nature of foods, the qualities of music, the ethical qualities of humans, the progress of time, the operations of government, and even the nature of historical change. All things follow this order so that all things can be related to one another in some way: one can use the stars to determine what kind of policy to pursue in government, for instance.
Chinese Philosophy
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Wu-hsing
Yin/Yang
Since the Han thinkers had come up with a tool to explain historical and political events, the writing of history took off exponentially during the early Han and later. History became more than a repository of good and bad examples of government, as it had for the ancient Chinese, it became the working out of the yin-yang or five agents system as it applied to human affairs. This meant that the writing of history demanded accuracy, that the facts be laid out with great precision and indifference so that the workings of yin-yang could be followed precisely. The Han, then, developed a rigorously factual approach to history at a very early time in Chinese history. In government, the Han thinkers essentially adopted the Legalist attitude that human beings fundamentally behave badly, but they changed the doctrine significantly. The Han thinkers believed that people behaved in a depraved way because they had no choice; economic and social conditions forced them to behave badly. For at heart, all human beings desire only material well-being; in order to make people behave virtuously, the government should make it possible that the ends of virtue (the well-being of others) and the pursuit of individual well-being should be coterminous, that is, material benefits should accrue to virtuous acts (that's one-half of the Legalist formula). The emperor would bring this about through two means. First, the emperor and the government is responsible for setting up conditions in which people can derive material benefit from productive labor; the stress on productivity, of course, is derived from the Legalists and Mo Tzu. Second, the emperor can provide an example. It is the job of the emperor to care for the welfare of his people (Confucianism), yet at the same time, the Emperor should withdraw from active rule (Taoism). How did the Emperor rule then? By providing a living example of benevolence. This model of Chinese government would remain dominant well into the twentieth century.
Chinese Philosophy
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Mo Tzu
China Glossary
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DGB Philosophy...cont'd...
So the final name that I have been looking for in the past two or three years turns out to be not who I thought it was afterall -- Confucious -- but rather a man of equally or even greater real or perhaps mythological importance: Lao Tse, one of the chief philosophical architects of Taoism or Daoism.
Let's read a bit about Lao Tse -- again, information that was not available to me on the internet about 2 or 3 years ago (or at least I couldn't find the complete 'answer to the puzzle' I was looking for back then. It's not that the information wasn't out there -- somewhere. After all, there are millions and millions of 'Taoists' out there who were practicing this philosophy thousands of years ago, with ancestors who are still studying and practicing it now.
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From the internet...yin and yang...Taoism (Daoism)...Lao Tse....
Taoism (a.k.a. Daoism)
Western traditions
The Taoist Ying Yang symbol:
Quotations:
"Be still like a mountain and flow like a great river." Lao Tse.
"Without going out of your door, You can know the ways of the world. Without peeping through your window, you can see the Way of Heaven. The farther you go, The less you know. Thus, the Sage knows without traveling, Sees without looking, And achieves without struggle." Lao Tse.
"Different Chinese philosophers, writing probably in 5-4 centuries B.C., presented some major ideas and a way of life that are nowadays known under the name of Taoism, the way of correspondence between man and the tendency or the course of natural world." Alan Watts, from his book: "Tao: The Watercourse Way."
"We believe in the formless and eternal Tao, and we recognize all personified deities as being mere human constructs. We reject hatred, intolerance, and unnecessary violence, and embrace harmony, love and learning, as we are taught by Nature. We place our trust and our lives in the Tao, that we may live in peace and balance with the Universe, both in this mortal life and beyond." Creed of the Reform Taoist Congregation 1
"For more than two thousand years, Daoism has evolved in close interaction with the other major traditions of China--Confucianism, Buddhism, ethnic creeds, and popular religion--and adapted many of their features. To the present day, Daoism consists of a multiplicity of beliefs and practices, and continues to develop, as it has for the past millennia, through the interaction between differentiation and integration--the move to change in accordance with political, cultural, and economic developments versus the urge to create stability through belief systems, lineage lines, rituals, and myths." From the Amazon.com review of the book "Daoist Identity: History, lineage and ritual.
History of Taoism:
Tao (pronounced "Dow") can be roughly translated into English as path, or the way. It is basically indefinable. It has to be experienced. It "refers to a power which envelops, surrounds and flows through all things, living and non-living. The Tao regulates natural processes and nourishes balance in the Universe. It embodies the harmony of opposites (i.e. there would be no love without hate, no light without dark, no male without female.)" 2
The founder of Taoism is believed by many to be Lao-Tse (604-531 BCE), a contemporary of Confucius. (Alternative spellings: Lao Tze, Lao Tsu, Lao Tzu, Laozi, Laotze, etc.). He was searching for a way that would avoid the constant feudal warfare and other conflicts that disrupted society during his lifetime. The result was his book: Tao-te-Ching (a.k.a. Daodejing). Others believe that he is a mythical character.
Taoism started as a combination of psychology and philosophy but evolved into a religious faith in 440 CE when it was adopted as a state religion. At that time Lao-Tse became popularly venerated as a deity. Taoism, along with Buddhism and Confucianism, became one of the three great religions of China. With the end of the Ch'ing Dynasty in 1911, state support for Taoism ended. Much of the Taoist heritage was destroyed during the next period of warlordism. After the Communist victory in 1949, religious freedom was severely restricted. "The new government put monks to manual labor, confiscated temples, and plundered treasures. Several million monks were reduced to fewer than 50,000" by 1960. 3 During the cultural revolution in China from 1966 to 1976, much of the remaining Taoist heritage was destroyed. Some religious tolerance has been restored under Deng Xiao-ping from 1982 to the present time.
Taoism currently has about 20 million followers, and is primarily centered in Taiwan. About 30,000 Taoists live in North America; 1,720 in Canada (1991 census). Taoism has had a significant impact on North American culture in areas of "acupuncture, herbalism, holistic medicine, meditation and martial arts..." 3
Taoist concepts, beliefs and practices:
Tao is the first-cause of the universe. It is a force that flows through all life.
"The Tao surrounds everyone and therefore everyone must listen to find enlightenment." 4
Each believer's goal is to harmonize themselves with the Tao.
Taoism has provided an alternative to the Confucian tradition in China. The two traditions have coexisted in the country, region, and generally within the same individual.
The priesthood views the many gods as manifestations of the one Dao, "which could not be represented as an image or a particular thing." The concept of a personified deity is foreign to them, as is the concept of the creation of the universe. Thus, they do not pray as Christians do; there is no God to hear the prayers or to act upon them. They seek answers to life's problems through inner meditation and outer observation.
In contrast with the beliefs and practices of the priesthood, most of the laity have "believed that spirits pervaded nature...The gods in heaven acted like and were treated like the officials in the world of men; worshipping the gods was a kind of rehearsal of attitudes toward secular authorities. On the other hand, the demons and ghosts of hell acted like and were treated like the bullies, outlaws, and threatening strangers in the real world; they were bribed by the people and were ritually arrested by the martial forces of the spirit officials." 3
Time is cyclical, not linear as in Western thinking.
Taoists strongly promote health and vitality.
Five main organs and orifices of the body correspond to the five parts of the sky: water, fire, wood, metal and earth.
Each person must nurture the Ch'i (air, breath) that has been given to them.
Development of virtue is one's chief task. The Three Jewels to be sought are compassion, moderation and humility.
Taoists follow the art of "wu wei," which is to let nature take its course. For example, one should allow a river to flow towards the sea unimpeded; do not erect a dam which would interfere with its natural flow.
One should plan in advance and consider carefully each action before making it.
A Taoists is kind to other individuals, in part because such an action tends to be reciprocated.
Taoists believe that "people are compassionate by nature...left to their own devices [they] will show this compassion without expecting a reward." 5
The Yin Yang symbol:
This is a well known Taoist symbol. "It represents the balance of opposites in the universe. When they are equally present, all is calm. When one is outweighed by the other, there is confusion and disarray." 4 One source explains that it was derived from astronomical observations which recorded the shadow of the sun throughout a full year. 5 The two swirling shapes inside the symbol give the impression of change -- the only constant factor in the universe. One tradition states that Yin (or Ying; the dark side) represents the breath that formed the earth. Yang (the light side) symbolizes the breath that formed the heavens.
One source states: "The most traditional view is that 'yin' represents aspects of the feminine: being soft, cool, calm, introspective, and healing... and "yang" the masculine: being hard, hot, energetic, moving, and sometimes aggressive. Another view has the 'yin' representing night and 'yang' day. 5
Another source offers a different definition: A common misconception in the west is that "...yin is soft and passive and yang is hard and energetic. Really it is yang that is soft and yin that is hard, this is because yang is energetic and yin is passive. Yin is like a rock and yang is like water or air, rock is heavy and hard and air is soft and energetic." 8
Allan Watts, describes the yin and yang as negative and positive energy poles: "The ideograms indicate the sunny and shady sides of a hill....They are associated with the masculine and the feminine, the firm and the yielding, the strong and the weak, the light and the dark, the rising and the falling, heaven and earth, and they are even recognized in such everyday matters as cooking as the spicy and the bland." 9,10
However, since nothing in nature is purely black or purely white, the symbol includes a small black spot in the white swirl, and a corresponding white spot in the black swirl.
Ultimately, the 'yin' and 'yang' can symbolize any two polarized forces in nature. Taosts believe that humans often intervene in nature and upset the balance of Yin and Yang.
About the name: Taoism or Daoism:
There are two commonly used systems for translating the Mandarin Chinese language into Roman letters:
Wade-Giles: This system is commonly used in Taiwan and the U.S. The Chinese character for "Way" becomes "Tao," which leads to the English word "Taoism."
Hanyu pinyin or Pinyin: This system was developed by the Chinese people and is now finding increased use worldwide. The "Way" becomes "Dao," which leads to the English word "Daoism." The "Dao" is pronounced like the "Dow" in "Dow-Jones Index."
We have chosen to emphasize the "Taoism" spelling. A Google search for "Taoism" returned 245,000 hits, whereas a search for "Daoism" returned only 35,000.
Tai Chi:
There is a long history of involvement by Taoists in various exercise and movement techniques. 6 Tai chi in particular works on all parts of the body. It "stimulates the central nervous system, lowers blood pressure, relieves stress and gently tones muscles without strain. It also enhances digestion, elimination of wastes and the circulation of blood. Moreover, tai chi's rhythmic movements massage the internal organs and improve their functionality." Traditional Chinese medicine teaches that illness is caused by blockages or lack of balance in the body's "chi" (intrinsic energy). Tai Chi is believed to balance this energy flow.
Taoist Texts:
These include:
Tao-te-Ching ("The Way of Power," or "The Book of the Way") is believed to have been written by Lao-Tse. It describes the nature of life, the way to peace and how a ruler should lead his life.
Chuang-tzu (named after its author) contains additional teachings.
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Now -- to use a Freudian metaphor -- 'We have reached the source of The Nile.' relative to the origin of Eastern Dialectic Philosophy.
As of this moment -- Hegel's Hotel -- has finally become firmly entrenched in its structure from The Eastern (Chinese) side of things giving a 'double base': pre-Socratic Greek Philosophy (Anaxamander and Heraclitus) on the Western side of things; and, at the same time, ancient Chinese Daoist Philosophy (Lao Tse, 'yin' and 'yang') on the Eastern (Chinese) side of things.
So the question remains how best to represent the rest of the structure of Hegel's Hotel on top of these two foundational pieces.
Incidentally, 'Western' and 'Eastern' is not the only way of classifying these two -- or actually three (Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse) -- foundational pieces. In a different sense, these three philosophers can be classified differently: Anaxamander reflects a 'paternalistic, competitive, will-to-power' dialectic philosopher whereas Heraclitus and Lao Tse reflect more of a 'co-operative, democratic, maternalistic, differential unity and wholistic' approach to dialectic philosophy.
Either way of classifying these three ancient foundational pieces -- you can even throw in the Confucius and/or the Han Philophers to add a second Eastern foundational piece and fourth East-West foundational piece to balance things out -- works for Hegel's Hotel and DGB Philosophy.
Let us move on in Western history (my Eastern knowledge of philosophical history goes no further) to Socrates and beyond.
Let us say that the combination of Plato and Aristotle (Plato's 'rational idealism' vs. Aristotle's 'empirical realism') holds up the next segment of Hegel's Hotel.
Now at this point in time, we have not discussed in any significant detail any or many aspects of Roman (Skepticism, Stoicism, Cynicism, Epicureanism...) or Scholastic Philosophy (Aquinas, St. Augustine, Ockham's Razor...) or Early Scientific (Galileo, Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon) so I will simply say that we need to do significant work at a later point in time in these time periods of Western Philosophy.
We haven't discussed Descartes 'subjective rationalism' to any significant degree. Later to come.
Spinoza holds a special spot in the evolution and structure of Hegel's Hotel. Although Spinoza was a 'mono-theorist' meaning that he believed in the principle of 'wholism' and 'unity' which partly contradicts Hegelian dualistic and dialectic philosophy, still Schelling probably represents the best 'synthesis' between Spinoza and Hegel with Schelling's romantic idea of 'dialectic unity and wholism'. In this regard, both Spinoza and Schelling remain important philosophers in Hegel's Hotel, and in DGB Philosophy's version of 'Multi-Dialectic-Democratic (Multi-Cultural) Evolution, Wholism, Unity and Spiritual Pantheism'.
Then there are the 'Rational-Empiricists' and the 'Enlightenment Political-Economic Philosophers: Epictetus, Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Adam Smith, Diderot, Voltaire, Montesque, Tom Paine, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, let's even include Lincoln...and right up to Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, S.I. Hawakawa, Aaron Beck, Albert Ellis, Ayn Rand...
Then there are the Romantic Philosophers and the German Idealists who probably represent the central focus of Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy. These include: Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, and Marx (although Marx requires his Scottish 'polar-brother' -- Adam Smith -- to work through the Capitalist-Socialist Democratic-Dialectic to its best evolutionary potential).
Then there is Darwin who needs to be integrated with Hegel, Schelling, Spinoza, Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Einstein...in DGB fashion...to make up a 21st century rendition of post-Hegelian, post-Darwinian Evolution Theory.
Then there are the 'Competitive Narcissistic-Power Philosophers' who more or less follow the path started by Anaxamander who need to be properly respected and taken into account for their work: Hobbes, Machiavelli, Schopenhauer...
Then there are the post-Hegelian 'Humanistic-Existentialists': Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Kafka, Camus, Sartre, Erich Fromm...who hold up another important part of Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy.
Then there are the 'dialectic' clinical psychologists: Freud, Adler, Jung, Reich, Ferenczi, Fairbairn, Kohut, Berne, Perls
And finally, there are 'The Post-Modernists and Power-Deconstructionists' which I will go back through all of Western History to include in this group: Socrates, Hume, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida...
No, let us mention one more contemporary 'natural philosopher' in the Spinozian-Schelling-Einstein' mold: David Suzuki.
I've missed out on a number of different layers of Western Philosophical History including: Utilitarianism, Pragmatism, Structuralism...
These we may or may not attend to in the distant future...
Without as much overlap, let us count up the different 'levels' of Hegel's Hotel that we are working on here:
1. Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse (Daoism, yin/yang);
2. Plato and Aristotle
3. Roman Philosophy (Skepticism, Stoicism, Cynicism, Epirureanism...)
4. Scholastic Philosophy (Aquinas, St. Augustine, Okham's Razor...)
5. Early Scientific Philosophy (Galileo, Copernicus, Bacon...)
6. Rational Idealism (Descartes, Spinoza)
7. Empirical Philosophy (Locke, Berkeley, Hume)
8. Narcissistic Power Philosophy (Hobbes, Machiavelli, Schopenhauer)
9. Darwinian Evolution Theory and its Post-Hegelian, Post-Darwinian Integration
10. Enlightenment Philosophy (Smith, Diderot, Voltaire, Monteque, Tom Paine, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin...)
11. Utilitarianism (John Stuart Mill...)
12. Romantic Philosophy and German Idealism (Rousseau, Goethe, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Marx...)
13. Humanistic-Existentialism (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Kafka, Camus, Sartre, Fromm...)
14. American Pragmatism (William James, John Dewey...)
15. Linguistic-Semantic-Epistemological Philosophy (Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, S.I. Hayakawa, Beck, Ellis, Kelly, Ayn Rand...)
16. Post-Modernism, Power Philosophy and Marginalization, and Deconstruction(ism) (Foucault, Derrida...)
17. The Dialectic Psychologists (Freud, Jung, Klein, Fairbairn, Berne, Kohut, Perls...)
18. 21st Century Environmental Romanticism (David Suzuki...)
19. Communitarianism
20. DGB Dialectic-Democratic, Humanistic-Existential Philosophy
We leave Hegel's Hotel for today.
Have a good 'dialectic-democratic-humanistic-existential' day!
Live the life of a 'Apollonian-Dionysian Superman(woman)'!
Balance your 'yin' and 'yang'!
Cheers!
-- dgb, April 1st, 2009, modified June 23rd, 2009.
In previous essays I have criticized Nietzsche for separating from Hegel's 'Dualistic-Dialectic Philosophy' after Nietzsche's creatively brilliant first book -- 'The Birth of Tragedy (BT)' -- took 'Hegelian Dialectic Thinking' to a higher evolutionary plateau, combining Hegel's dialectic philosophy with the human drama, passion, and the beginning of 'dialectic-humanistic-existentialism' which Nietzsche traced back to the pre-Socratic writings of Homer, Greek theatre, and other ancient renditions of Greek Tragedy -- brought up to date and 'dialectically analyzed' by Nietzsche.
The ripeness of Nietzsche's combined 'old and new philosophical fruit' -- the product of a cross fertilization of early Greek dualistic-dialectic philosophy (Apollo vs. Dionysus) and later Hegelian dualistic-dialectic thinking (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis) was so 'nutritional' that the 'intellectual and humanistic-existential value' of this cross-fertilized fruit is still exploding off the BT fruit tree some 200 years later, first through the work of Freud and Jung in the early 1900s, then in the therapeutic work of Perls and Gestalt Therapy, and Berne and Transactional Analysis in the 1960s and onward, and finally, right up into the 21st century through the work of DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics-Religion-Science-Medicine...which is still evolving in 2009.
Indeed, it is partly too bad that Nietzsche ventured away from BT or he could have almost 'created' Psychoanalysis himself. Indeed, in this one little book -- BT -- Nietzsche almost did create Psychoanalysis. The details just needed to be filled out a bit more through Freud and Jung in their clinical and theoretical work to soon come...BT, in my opinion, remains a much overlooked piece of work in terms of its mega-influence on Freud, Jung, and eventually Perls and Gestalt Therapy. BT was the 'integrative bridge' between Greek Tragedy, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Freud.
But what happened is what happened -- a matter of Nietzsche's own personal and philosophical evolutionary development -- and Nietzsche had other 'fruits he wanted to grow off of other philosophical trees...'.
Nietsche's later 'Will to Power' Theory, his 'Cliff, Abyss, and Tightrope' Theory relative to 'Being and Becoming', and his 'Superman' Theory would do much to lay the groundwork for Heidegger, Sartre, and 20th Century Humanistic-Existentialism.
In this regard, Hegel once again led the way in the evolution of 19th and 20th century Humanistic-Existentialism with his theories of 'The Master-Slave Relationship' and 'Alienation' (to be jumped on by Marx) and then Kierkegaard in his rebellion against 'Hegel's 'Absolute' Abstactionism and Universalism' with his own counter-philosophy of 'Existential Concretism' (albeit Kierkegaard could and did write very abstractly as well).
Schopenhauer, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche all had a hugely important impact on the growth of 19th, 20th, and even 21st century philosophy -- and all of their ideas sprang from arguably the most important philosophical work in Western history -- Hegel's 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807). Even Darwin's later 19th century work in biology and evolutionary theory can be seen -- directly or indirectly -- to have a Hegelian foundation.
And if we really want to fully understand that Hegel's dualistic-dialectic philosophy did not just 'spring out of nowhere', then we must give proper credit to the previous German Idealistic philosophical work of all three of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling -- and furthermore, we need to go right back to the very philosophical roots that Nietzsche did -- back to the roots of Greek -- and all -- mythology, back to the mythological 'dualism' of 'Apollo' vs. 'Dionysus', back to the second oldest philosopher in Western history -- Anaxamander -- and his patriarchal 'power and conquest dialectic theory'; and also back to Anaxamander's indirect student -- Heraclitus -- and the latter's more 'matriarchal philosophy' -- a philosophy of 'opposite things, opposite processes, opposite ideas all coming together 'for the good of the whole dialectic-democratic harmony'.
However, perhaps the most important 'dialectic connection' to be made in the history of dialectic philosophy is the one I am just about to make now. I have been searching on the internet for an answer to a question that needed to take me into the deepest depths of Chinese philosophy -- or at least as deep as anyone else on the internet could take me.
The question that I started asking myself about 2006-2007 in one of my first introductory essays in Hegel's Hotel ran something like this:
Where did the Chinese philosophical concepts and symbols of 'yin' and 'yang' originate from?
I had the symbols traced back to 'The Han Philosophers' -- a group of very important Chinese philosophers who were trying to 'integrate China' back in The Han Dynasty' by 'integrating a number of different important philosophies and philosophers' who had greatly influenced the evolution of China -- before and until 'The Ch'in Dynasty, a totalitarian Chinese government that existed from 221-207BC -- did much to start tearing the philosophical foundations, and the spirit, of the Chinese people apart through their totalitarian, anti-humanistic, anti-democratic measures.
Even this following piece from the internet on 'The Han Synthesis' I am reading this morning for the first time. Sometimes -- like now -- I shake my head to realize that not only is my own philosophical work constantly evolving, but so too is the work of other philosophers and writers on the internet, and information that was just not available to me two or three years ago is clearly available now. These following two pieces greatly help the evolution of my own work in Hegel's Hotel here:
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From the internet....
Ancient China: The Han Synthesis
After the disastrous period of totalitarian government during the Ch'in dynasty (221-207 B. C.), the early Han dynasty (207 B.C.-9 A.D.) returned to older forms of imperial government. However, they adopted from the Ch'in the idea of an absolutely central government and spent most of their period in power trying to regain the same level of centrality that the Ch'in and the Legalists had so ruthlessly accomplished. This ideology of central government, along with the Legalists' attempts to standardize Chinese culture and Chinese philosophy, led thinkers of the Han to attempt to unify all the rival schools of Chinese thought and philosophy that had developed over the previous three hundred years. This unification of Chinese into a single coherent system is the most lasting legacy of the Han dynasty. Earlier, the Legalists attempted to standardize Chinese thought by burning the books of rival schools and by making it a capital crime to speak of Confucius, Lao Tzu, or Mo Tzu. The Han thinkers, who thoroughly despised the Legalists and their methods while adopting many of their goals, took a different approach. Rather than reject alternate ways of thinking, they took a syncretic approach and attempted to fuse all the rival schools of thought into a single system. This syncretic project of the early Han is known as the Han synthesis. In many ways it was similar to the larger project of unifying Chinese government.
Chinese Philosophy
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Confucius
Legalism
Mo Tzu
Taoism
The Han philosophers concentrated specifically on the Five Classics, attempting to derive from them, particularly the I ching , or Book of Changes, the principle of the workings of the universe, or Tao. This new theory of the universe they appended to the I ching ; this appendix explains the metaphysical workings of the entire universe. Once the overall workings of the unverse were understood, then every form of thought could be directly related to each other by appealing to the basic principles of the universe.
Chinese Philosophy
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Pre-Confucian China and the Five Classics
The essentials of the Han synthesis are as follows: the universe is run by a single principle, the Tao, or Great Ultimate. This principle is divided into two opposite principles, or two principles which oppose one another in their actions, yin and yang. All the opposites one perceives in the universe can be reduced to one of the opposite forces. In general, these forces are distinguished by their role in producing creation and producing degeneration: yang is the force of creation and yin the force of completion and degeneration. The yin and yang are further differentiated into five material agents, or wu hsing , which both produce one another and overcome one another. All change in the universe can be explained by the workings of yin and yang and the progress of the five material agents as they either produce one another or overcome one another. This is a universal explanatory principle. All phenomena can be understood using yin-yang and the five agents: the movements of the stars, the workings of the body, the nature of foods, the qualities of music, the ethical qualities of humans, the progress of time, the operations of government, and even the nature of historical change. All things follow this order so that all things can be related to one another in some way: one can use the stars to determine what kind of policy to pursue in government, for instance.
Chinese Philosophy
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Wu-hsing
Yin/Yang
Since the Han thinkers had come up with a tool to explain historical and political events, the writing of history took off exponentially during the early Han and later. History became more than a repository of good and bad examples of government, as it had for the ancient Chinese, it became the working out of the yin-yang or five agents system as it applied to human affairs. This meant that the writing of history demanded accuracy, that the facts be laid out with great precision and indifference so that the workings of yin-yang could be followed precisely. The Han, then, developed a rigorously factual approach to history at a very early time in Chinese history. In government, the Han thinkers essentially adopted the Legalist attitude that human beings fundamentally behave badly, but they changed the doctrine significantly. The Han thinkers believed that people behaved in a depraved way because they had no choice; economic and social conditions forced them to behave badly. For at heart, all human beings desire only material well-being; in order to make people behave virtuously, the government should make it possible that the ends of virtue (the well-being of others) and the pursuit of individual well-being should be coterminous, that is, material benefits should accrue to virtuous acts (that's one-half of the Legalist formula). The emperor would bring this about through two means. First, the emperor and the government is responsible for setting up conditions in which people can derive material benefit from productive labor; the stress on productivity, of course, is derived from the Legalists and Mo Tzu. Second, the emperor can provide an example. It is the job of the emperor to care for the welfare of his people (Confucianism), yet at the same time, the Emperor should withdraw from active rule (Taoism). How did the Emperor rule then? By providing a living example of benevolence. This model of Chinese government would remain dominant well into the twentieth century.
Chinese Philosophy
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Mo Tzu
China Glossary
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DGB Philosophy...cont'd...
So the final name that I have been looking for in the past two or three years turns out to be not who I thought it was afterall -- Confucious -- but rather a man of equally or even greater real or perhaps mythological importance: Lao Tse, one of the chief philosophical architects of Taoism or Daoism.
Let's read a bit about Lao Tse -- again, information that was not available to me on the internet about 2 or 3 years ago (or at least I couldn't find the complete 'answer to the puzzle' I was looking for back then. It's not that the information wasn't out there -- somewhere. After all, there are millions and millions of 'Taoists' out there who were practicing this philosophy thousands of years ago, with ancestors who are still studying and practicing it now.
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From the internet...yin and yang...Taoism (Daoism)...Lao Tse....
Taoism (a.k.a. Daoism)
Western traditions
The Taoist Ying Yang symbol:
Quotations:
"Be still like a mountain and flow like a great river." Lao Tse.
"Without going out of your door, You can know the ways of the world. Without peeping through your window, you can see the Way of Heaven. The farther you go, The less you know. Thus, the Sage knows without traveling, Sees without looking, And achieves without struggle." Lao Tse.
"Different Chinese philosophers, writing probably in 5-4 centuries B.C., presented some major ideas and a way of life that are nowadays known under the name of Taoism, the way of correspondence between man and the tendency or the course of natural world." Alan Watts, from his book: "Tao: The Watercourse Way."
"We believe in the formless and eternal Tao, and we recognize all personified deities as being mere human constructs. We reject hatred, intolerance, and unnecessary violence, and embrace harmony, love and learning, as we are taught by Nature. We place our trust and our lives in the Tao, that we may live in peace and balance with the Universe, both in this mortal life and beyond." Creed of the Reform Taoist Congregation 1
"For more than two thousand years, Daoism has evolved in close interaction with the other major traditions of China--Confucianism, Buddhism, ethnic creeds, and popular religion--and adapted many of their features. To the present day, Daoism consists of a multiplicity of beliefs and practices, and continues to develop, as it has for the past millennia, through the interaction between differentiation and integration--the move to change in accordance with political, cultural, and economic developments versus the urge to create stability through belief systems, lineage lines, rituals, and myths." From the Amazon.com review of the book "Daoist Identity: History, lineage and ritual.
History of Taoism:
Tao (pronounced "Dow") can be roughly translated into English as path, or the way. It is basically indefinable. It has to be experienced. It "refers to a power which envelops, surrounds and flows through all things, living and non-living. The Tao regulates natural processes and nourishes balance in the Universe. It embodies the harmony of opposites (i.e. there would be no love without hate, no light without dark, no male without female.)" 2
The founder of Taoism is believed by many to be Lao-Tse (604-531 BCE), a contemporary of Confucius. (Alternative spellings: Lao Tze, Lao Tsu, Lao Tzu, Laozi, Laotze, etc.). He was searching for a way that would avoid the constant feudal warfare and other conflicts that disrupted society during his lifetime. The result was his book: Tao-te-Ching (a.k.a. Daodejing). Others believe that he is a mythical character.
Taoism started as a combination of psychology and philosophy but evolved into a religious faith in 440 CE when it was adopted as a state religion. At that time Lao-Tse became popularly venerated as a deity. Taoism, along with Buddhism and Confucianism, became one of the three great religions of China. With the end of the Ch'ing Dynasty in 1911, state support for Taoism ended. Much of the Taoist heritage was destroyed during the next period of warlordism. After the Communist victory in 1949, religious freedom was severely restricted. "The new government put monks to manual labor, confiscated temples, and plundered treasures. Several million monks were reduced to fewer than 50,000" by 1960. 3 During the cultural revolution in China from 1966 to 1976, much of the remaining Taoist heritage was destroyed. Some religious tolerance has been restored under Deng Xiao-ping from 1982 to the present time.
Taoism currently has about 20 million followers, and is primarily centered in Taiwan. About 30,000 Taoists live in North America; 1,720 in Canada (1991 census). Taoism has had a significant impact on North American culture in areas of "acupuncture, herbalism, holistic medicine, meditation and martial arts..." 3
Taoist concepts, beliefs and practices:
Tao is the first-cause of the universe. It is a force that flows through all life.
"The Tao surrounds everyone and therefore everyone must listen to find enlightenment." 4
Each believer's goal is to harmonize themselves with the Tao.
Taoism has provided an alternative to the Confucian tradition in China. The two traditions have coexisted in the country, region, and generally within the same individual.
The priesthood views the many gods as manifestations of the one Dao, "which could not be represented as an image or a particular thing." The concept of a personified deity is foreign to them, as is the concept of the creation of the universe. Thus, they do not pray as Christians do; there is no God to hear the prayers or to act upon them. They seek answers to life's problems through inner meditation and outer observation.
In contrast with the beliefs and practices of the priesthood, most of the laity have "believed that spirits pervaded nature...The gods in heaven acted like and were treated like the officials in the world of men; worshipping the gods was a kind of rehearsal of attitudes toward secular authorities. On the other hand, the demons and ghosts of hell acted like and were treated like the bullies, outlaws, and threatening strangers in the real world; they were bribed by the people and were ritually arrested by the martial forces of the spirit officials." 3
Time is cyclical, not linear as in Western thinking.
Taoists strongly promote health and vitality.
Five main organs and orifices of the body correspond to the five parts of the sky: water, fire, wood, metal and earth.
Each person must nurture the Ch'i (air, breath) that has been given to them.
Development of virtue is one's chief task. The Three Jewels to be sought are compassion, moderation and humility.
Taoists follow the art of "wu wei," which is to let nature take its course. For example, one should allow a river to flow towards the sea unimpeded; do not erect a dam which would interfere with its natural flow.
One should plan in advance and consider carefully each action before making it.
A Taoists is kind to other individuals, in part because such an action tends to be reciprocated.
Taoists believe that "people are compassionate by nature...left to their own devices [they] will show this compassion without expecting a reward." 5
The Yin Yang symbol:
This is a well known Taoist symbol. "It represents the balance of opposites in the universe. When they are equally present, all is calm. When one is outweighed by the other, there is confusion and disarray." 4 One source explains that it was derived from astronomical observations which recorded the shadow of the sun throughout a full year. 5 The two swirling shapes inside the symbol give the impression of change -- the only constant factor in the universe. One tradition states that Yin (or Ying; the dark side) represents the breath that formed the earth. Yang (the light side) symbolizes the breath that formed the heavens.
One source states: "The most traditional view is that 'yin' represents aspects of the feminine: being soft, cool, calm, introspective, and healing... and "yang" the masculine: being hard, hot, energetic, moving, and sometimes aggressive. Another view has the 'yin' representing night and 'yang' day. 5
Another source offers a different definition: A common misconception in the west is that "...yin is soft and passive and yang is hard and energetic. Really it is yang that is soft and yin that is hard, this is because yang is energetic and yin is passive. Yin is like a rock and yang is like water or air, rock is heavy and hard and air is soft and energetic." 8
Allan Watts, describes the yin and yang as negative and positive energy poles: "The ideograms indicate the sunny and shady sides of a hill....They are associated with the masculine and the feminine, the firm and the yielding, the strong and the weak, the light and the dark, the rising and the falling, heaven and earth, and they are even recognized in such everyday matters as cooking as the spicy and the bland." 9,10
However, since nothing in nature is purely black or purely white, the symbol includes a small black spot in the white swirl, and a corresponding white spot in the black swirl.
Ultimately, the 'yin' and 'yang' can symbolize any two polarized forces in nature. Taosts believe that humans often intervene in nature and upset the balance of Yin and Yang.
About the name: Taoism or Daoism:
There are two commonly used systems for translating the Mandarin Chinese language into Roman letters:
Wade-Giles: This system is commonly used in Taiwan and the U.S. The Chinese character for "Way" becomes "Tao," which leads to the English word "Taoism."
Hanyu pinyin or Pinyin: This system was developed by the Chinese people and is now finding increased use worldwide. The "Way" becomes "Dao," which leads to the English word "Daoism." The "Dao" is pronounced like the "Dow" in "Dow-Jones Index."
We have chosen to emphasize the "Taoism" spelling. A Google search for "Taoism" returned 245,000 hits, whereas a search for "Daoism" returned only 35,000.
Tai Chi:
There is a long history of involvement by Taoists in various exercise and movement techniques. 6 Tai chi in particular works on all parts of the body. It "stimulates the central nervous system, lowers blood pressure, relieves stress and gently tones muscles without strain. It also enhances digestion, elimination of wastes and the circulation of blood. Moreover, tai chi's rhythmic movements massage the internal organs and improve their functionality." Traditional Chinese medicine teaches that illness is caused by blockages or lack of balance in the body's "chi" (intrinsic energy). Tai Chi is believed to balance this energy flow.
Taoist Texts:
These include:
Tao-te-Ching ("The Way of Power," or "The Book of the Way") is believed to have been written by Lao-Tse. It describes the nature of life, the way to peace and how a ruler should lead his life.
Chuang-tzu (named after its author) contains additional teachings.
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Now -- to use a Freudian metaphor -- 'We have reached the source of The Nile.' relative to the origin of Eastern Dialectic Philosophy.
As of this moment -- Hegel's Hotel -- has finally become firmly entrenched in its structure from The Eastern (Chinese) side of things giving a 'double base': pre-Socratic Greek Philosophy (Anaxamander and Heraclitus) on the Western side of things; and, at the same time, ancient Chinese Daoist Philosophy (Lao Tse, 'yin' and 'yang') on the Eastern (Chinese) side of things.
So the question remains how best to represent the rest of the structure of Hegel's Hotel on top of these two foundational pieces.
Incidentally, 'Western' and 'Eastern' is not the only way of classifying these two -- or actually three (Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse) -- foundational pieces. In a different sense, these three philosophers can be classified differently: Anaxamander reflects a 'paternalistic, competitive, will-to-power' dialectic philosopher whereas Heraclitus and Lao Tse reflect more of a 'co-operative, democratic, maternalistic, differential unity and wholistic' approach to dialectic philosophy.
Either way of classifying these three ancient foundational pieces -- you can even throw in the Confucius and/or the Han Philophers to add a second Eastern foundational piece and fourth East-West foundational piece to balance things out -- works for Hegel's Hotel and DGB Philosophy.
Let us move on in Western history (my Eastern knowledge of philosophical history goes no further) to Socrates and beyond.
Let us say that the combination of Plato and Aristotle (Plato's 'rational idealism' vs. Aristotle's 'empirical realism') holds up the next segment of Hegel's Hotel.
Now at this point in time, we have not discussed in any significant detail any or many aspects of Roman (Skepticism, Stoicism, Cynicism, Epicureanism...) or Scholastic Philosophy (Aquinas, St. Augustine, Ockham's Razor...) or Early Scientific (Galileo, Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon) so I will simply say that we need to do significant work at a later point in time in these time periods of Western Philosophy.
We haven't discussed Descartes 'subjective rationalism' to any significant degree. Later to come.
Spinoza holds a special spot in the evolution and structure of Hegel's Hotel. Although Spinoza was a 'mono-theorist' meaning that he believed in the principle of 'wholism' and 'unity' which partly contradicts Hegelian dualistic and dialectic philosophy, still Schelling probably represents the best 'synthesis' between Spinoza and Hegel with Schelling's romantic idea of 'dialectic unity and wholism'. In this regard, both Spinoza and Schelling remain important philosophers in Hegel's Hotel, and in DGB Philosophy's version of 'Multi-Dialectic-Democratic (Multi-Cultural) Evolution, Wholism, Unity and Spiritual Pantheism'.
Then there are the 'Rational-Empiricists' and the 'Enlightenment Political-Economic Philosophers: Epictetus, Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Adam Smith, Diderot, Voltaire, Montesque, Tom Paine, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, let's even include Lincoln...and right up to Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, S.I. Hawakawa, Aaron Beck, Albert Ellis, Ayn Rand...
Then there are the Romantic Philosophers and the German Idealists who probably represent the central focus of Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy. These include: Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, and Marx (although Marx requires his Scottish 'polar-brother' -- Adam Smith -- to work through the Capitalist-Socialist Democratic-Dialectic to its best evolutionary potential).
Then there is Darwin who needs to be integrated with Hegel, Schelling, Spinoza, Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Einstein...in DGB fashion...to make up a 21st century rendition of post-Hegelian, post-Darwinian Evolution Theory.
Then there are the 'Competitive Narcissistic-Power Philosophers' who more or less follow the path started by Anaxamander who need to be properly respected and taken into account for their work: Hobbes, Machiavelli, Schopenhauer...
Then there are the post-Hegelian 'Humanistic-Existentialists': Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Kafka, Camus, Sartre, Erich Fromm...who hold up another important part of Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy.
Then there are the 'dialectic' clinical psychologists: Freud, Adler, Jung, Reich, Ferenczi, Fairbairn, Kohut, Berne, Perls
And finally, there are 'The Post-Modernists and Power-Deconstructionists' which I will go back through all of Western History to include in this group: Socrates, Hume, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida...
No, let us mention one more contemporary 'natural philosopher' in the Spinozian-Schelling-Einstein' mold: David Suzuki.
I've missed out on a number of different layers of Western Philosophical History including: Utilitarianism, Pragmatism, Structuralism...
These we may or may not attend to in the distant future...
Without as much overlap, let us count up the different 'levels' of Hegel's Hotel that we are working on here:
1. Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse (Daoism, yin/yang);
2. Plato and Aristotle
3. Roman Philosophy (Skepticism, Stoicism, Cynicism, Epirureanism...)
4. Scholastic Philosophy (Aquinas, St. Augustine, Okham's Razor...)
5. Early Scientific Philosophy (Galileo, Copernicus, Bacon...)
6. Rational Idealism (Descartes, Spinoza)
7. Empirical Philosophy (Locke, Berkeley, Hume)
8. Narcissistic Power Philosophy (Hobbes, Machiavelli, Schopenhauer)
9. Darwinian Evolution Theory and its Post-Hegelian, Post-Darwinian Integration
10. Enlightenment Philosophy (Smith, Diderot, Voltaire, Monteque, Tom Paine, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin...)
11. Utilitarianism (John Stuart Mill...)
12. Romantic Philosophy and German Idealism (Rousseau, Goethe, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Marx...)
13. Humanistic-Existentialism (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Kafka, Camus, Sartre, Fromm...)
14. American Pragmatism (William James, John Dewey...)
15. Linguistic-Semantic-Epistemological Philosophy (Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, S.I. Hayakawa, Beck, Ellis, Kelly, Ayn Rand...)
16. Post-Modernism, Power Philosophy and Marginalization, and Deconstruction(ism) (Foucault, Derrida...)
17. The Dialectic Psychologists (Freud, Jung, Klein, Fairbairn, Berne, Kohut, Perls...)
18. 21st Century Environmental Romanticism (David Suzuki...)
19. Communitarianism
20. DGB Dialectic-Democratic, Humanistic-Existential Philosophy
We leave Hegel's Hotel for today.
Have a good 'dialectic-democratic-humanistic-existential' day!
Live the life of a 'Apollonian-Dionysian Superman(woman)'!
Balance your 'yin' and 'yang'!
Cheers!
-- dgb, April 1st, 2009, modified June 23rd, 2009.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Prelude to DGB Integrative, Narcissistic Transference Theory
If you accept the assumption that every 'separated piece and/or spin off' of Psychoanalysis remains at least a partly 'dissociated' piece of the whole of what could have been a much larger and perhaps better Psychoanalysis -- and you are not tied down by the 'political-narcissistic-righteous partisanship boundary games' (I call this 'conceptual narcissism') that comes from belonging to one particular brand of clinical psychology/psychotherapy -- and not another -- witness Freud vs. Adler, Freud vs. Jung, Freud vs. Ferenczi, Freud vs. Theodor Reik, Classical Psychoanalysis vs. Wilhelm Reik, Anna Freud vs. Melanie Klein, Classical Psychoanalysis vs. Fritz Perls, Classical Psychoanalysis vs. Jeffery Masson...and on and on we could go -- then this frees both you and I up to do a lot more 'cross-school theorizing and integrating of ideas' which dismisses 'one-school boundaries' in favor of 'all schools basically being mixed together into one big theoretical stewpot or chemistry/alchemy test tube -- and seeing what happens'.
This is why DGB Philosophy-Psychology used to be called 'Gap' or 'GAP' Psychology -- it philosophizes between the gaps of other philosophies and psychologies, and the first three integrations were: Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, and Psychoanalysis -- which is how I got 'GAP' Psychology. But that was in the 1980s.
For DGB Philosophy-Psychology today, it doesn't matter whether an idea came/comes from any of Freud's following Psychoanalytic sub-theories: 1. Traumacy Theory; 2. Repression Theory; 3. Seduction Theory; 4. Screen Memory Theory; 5. Dream Interpretation Theory; 6. Oedipal Theory; 7. Childhood Sexuality Theory; 8. Transference Theory; 9. Narcissistic Theory; 10. Death-Instinct Theory; 11. Ego-Id-Superego Theory; 12. Ego-Splitting and Dissociation Theory; or 13. Object Relations Theory.
Furthermore, it doesn't matter if an idea comes from: 1. Adler; 2. Jung. 3. Rank; 4. Ferenczi; 5. Wilhelm Reik; 6. Theodor Reik; 7. Melanie Klein; 8. Sullivan; 9. Erickson; 10. Karen Horney, 11. Fairbairn; 12. Winnicott; 13. Guntrip; 14. Berne; 15. Erich Fromm; 16. Fritz Perls; 17. Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, and Cognitive Therapy; 18. Kohut; 19. Rollo May, Victor Frankl, Abraham Maslow, and the whole 'third force' of Humanistic-Existentialism...and I have really only started...Add another one here: 20. The Primal Scream by Arthur Janov.
Everything I have listed above is more or less fair game for one massive integration project. It is just a matter of getting it done -- and finding logical coherence and functional benefit from doing so.
As long as proper academic acknowledgment of the origin of the idea in its historical and biographical context (as best as that can be ascertained), is respected and adhered to, then integrating new and old ideas is what both academic and pragmatic evolution is all about -- or at least should be all about; not anal-retentively holding on to old, stagnant, out-dated boundaries and/or paradigms that no longer work, if they ever did. Call this latter habit 'conceptual bondage' under the roof and 'creaking construction' of 'conceptual narcissism'.
Life is alive and moving until it dies. So too should the concepts be that try to mimic and represent life until these concept -- and theories -- also die. Concepts and theories need to be flexible and moving in order to properly follow the life processes that they are trying to follow. Otherwise these concepts are likely to be 'rotting' -- and 'rotten' -- concepts and theories.
Freud's 'repression theory' was too rigid. So too was his 'traumacy theory'. So too was his 'seduction theory'. His 'screen memory' theory was probably the worst theory he ever invented. That one 'hit the garbage' with me the first time I read it. Freud's 'Oedipal Theory' was too rigid. So too was his 'Childhood Sexuality and Fantasy' Theory.
Freud's 'Dream Interpretation Theory' was too rigid; Erich Fromm's Dream Interpretation Theory was better in his book, 'The Forgotten Language'. Jung and Perls also made good additions to Dream Analysis and Dream Work.
Freud's 'Narcissistic Theory' is basically the starting point of all DGB Psycho-Theory. Combined with Freud's 'Transference Theory' -- re-worked with some serious Adlerian Theory thrown in to boot, also some Jungian Theory, some Fairbairnian Theory, some Kohutian Theory, some Bernean Theory and some Gestalt Theory. Call me the 'mad theoretical chemist or alchemist' in the middle of all these historical figures doing all the 'mad' -- and/or not so mad -- integrating. And let us not forget all the historical philosophers behind the psychologists who have also had their influence -- Spinoza, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida...
Once we have a decent working knowledge of some or many of the different brands of clinical psychology/psychotherapy listed above, then this frees us up to become much more creative in our theorizing about any particular topic such as the one we will extrapolate on here -- 'DGB Narcissistic-Transference Theory'.
It is kind of like learning a whole host of different languages -- say 5 to 10 main ones -- in order to more intelligently discuss language theory in general, and/or invent a new language that perhaps borrows from the (admittedly subjectively interpreted and evaluated) best 'pieces' of each particular language. Perhaps the deficiencies in one particular language could be/can be compensated for by one of the strengths in another particular language. Likewise with different schools of philosophy and/or psychology.
No longer do we need to feel imprisoned by what may be more or less called arbitrary parameters, boundaries, assumptions that limit us in our thinking and that could stop us from progressing onwards to 'the next Post-Hegelian humanistic-existential evolutionary level of development'. (Call this 'DGB Historical Existentialism and Evolutionary Theory' if you will) of whatever it is we are theorizing about -- in this case, transference theory.
Of course, this assumes that you buy into the dialectic assumptions of DGB Post-Hegelian Evolutionary Theory and Historical Existentialism -- which I am sure that not all of you will buy into this anymore than everyone after Hegel bought in completely (or at all) to his Dialectic Idealism and Historical Determinism.
Personally, I didn't/don't buy into all of Classical Hegelian Idealism and Dialectic Theory -- which is why I made the modifications I did to Hegelian Theory (less dialectic idealism and more dialectic realism).
Thus, I intend to run more or less roughshod over 'school-boundaries that lack existential, rational-empirical, and/or functional significance' in order to get to where I creatively and theoretically want to get to in the name of building the best conceptual/theoretical model of human psychological functioning that I can possibly put together.
Mathematically speaking, what I am doing here is similar to a game of combinations and permutations -- for every theoretical assumption and/or boundary that I/you/we change takes us down a new path, a new line of thinking. New conceptual structure takes us to new conceptual process and visa versa -- and both conceptual structure and conceptual process affect human existential structure and process -- i.e., the actual process and structure of living (such as in the therapeutic process).
For me -- and DGB Narcissistic Transference Theory -- everything starts with a single meeting in the Vienna Circle where Freud and Adler were actually in agreement with each other -- and Freud was impressed with Adler's work. The topic was 'narcissistic injury'.
I am going to start chopping up these longer essays that I have started writing here lately to make them more readable and comprehensible in one sitting.
Thus, we will stop here...and start with the topic of 'narcissistic (self-esteem) injury' in our next blog-meeting here together.
Good night,
-- dgb, June 22nd, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
This is why DGB Philosophy-Psychology used to be called 'Gap' or 'GAP' Psychology -- it philosophizes between the gaps of other philosophies and psychologies, and the first three integrations were: Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, and Psychoanalysis -- which is how I got 'GAP' Psychology. But that was in the 1980s.
For DGB Philosophy-Psychology today, it doesn't matter whether an idea came/comes from any of Freud's following Psychoanalytic sub-theories: 1. Traumacy Theory; 2. Repression Theory; 3. Seduction Theory; 4. Screen Memory Theory; 5. Dream Interpretation Theory; 6. Oedipal Theory; 7. Childhood Sexuality Theory; 8. Transference Theory; 9. Narcissistic Theory; 10. Death-Instinct Theory; 11. Ego-Id-Superego Theory; 12. Ego-Splitting and Dissociation Theory; or 13. Object Relations Theory.
Furthermore, it doesn't matter if an idea comes from: 1. Adler; 2. Jung. 3. Rank; 4. Ferenczi; 5. Wilhelm Reik; 6. Theodor Reik; 7. Melanie Klein; 8. Sullivan; 9. Erickson; 10. Karen Horney, 11. Fairbairn; 12. Winnicott; 13. Guntrip; 14. Berne; 15. Erich Fromm; 16. Fritz Perls; 17. Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, and Cognitive Therapy; 18. Kohut; 19. Rollo May, Victor Frankl, Abraham Maslow, and the whole 'third force' of Humanistic-Existentialism...and I have really only started...Add another one here: 20. The Primal Scream by Arthur Janov.
Everything I have listed above is more or less fair game for one massive integration project. It is just a matter of getting it done -- and finding logical coherence and functional benefit from doing so.
As long as proper academic acknowledgment of the origin of the idea in its historical and biographical context (as best as that can be ascertained), is respected and adhered to, then integrating new and old ideas is what both academic and pragmatic evolution is all about -- or at least should be all about; not anal-retentively holding on to old, stagnant, out-dated boundaries and/or paradigms that no longer work, if they ever did. Call this latter habit 'conceptual bondage' under the roof and 'creaking construction' of 'conceptual narcissism'.
Life is alive and moving until it dies. So too should the concepts be that try to mimic and represent life until these concept -- and theories -- also die. Concepts and theories need to be flexible and moving in order to properly follow the life processes that they are trying to follow. Otherwise these concepts are likely to be 'rotting' -- and 'rotten' -- concepts and theories.
Freud's 'repression theory' was too rigid. So too was his 'traumacy theory'. So too was his 'seduction theory'. His 'screen memory' theory was probably the worst theory he ever invented. That one 'hit the garbage' with me the first time I read it. Freud's 'Oedipal Theory' was too rigid. So too was his 'Childhood Sexuality and Fantasy' Theory.
Freud's 'Dream Interpretation Theory' was too rigid; Erich Fromm's Dream Interpretation Theory was better in his book, 'The Forgotten Language'. Jung and Perls also made good additions to Dream Analysis and Dream Work.
Freud's 'Narcissistic Theory' is basically the starting point of all DGB Psycho-Theory. Combined with Freud's 'Transference Theory' -- re-worked with some serious Adlerian Theory thrown in to boot, also some Jungian Theory, some Fairbairnian Theory, some Kohutian Theory, some Bernean Theory and some Gestalt Theory. Call me the 'mad theoretical chemist or alchemist' in the middle of all these historical figures doing all the 'mad' -- and/or not so mad -- integrating. And let us not forget all the historical philosophers behind the psychologists who have also had their influence -- Spinoza, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida...
Once we have a decent working knowledge of some or many of the different brands of clinical psychology/psychotherapy listed above, then this frees us up to become much more creative in our theorizing about any particular topic such as the one we will extrapolate on here -- 'DGB Narcissistic-Transference Theory'.
It is kind of like learning a whole host of different languages -- say 5 to 10 main ones -- in order to more intelligently discuss language theory in general, and/or invent a new language that perhaps borrows from the (admittedly subjectively interpreted and evaluated) best 'pieces' of each particular language. Perhaps the deficiencies in one particular language could be/can be compensated for by one of the strengths in another particular language. Likewise with different schools of philosophy and/or psychology.
No longer do we need to feel imprisoned by what may be more or less called arbitrary parameters, boundaries, assumptions that limit us in our thinking and that could stop us from progressing onwards to 'the next Post-Hegelian humanistic-existential evolutionary level of development'. (Call this 'DGB Historical Existentialism and Evolutionary Theory' if you will) of whatever it is we are theorizing about -- in this case, transference theory.
Of course, this assumes that you buy into the dialectic assumptions of DGB Post-Hegelian Evolutionary Theory and Historical Existentialism -- which I am sure that not all of you will buy into this anymore than everyone after Hegel bought in completely (or at all) to his Dialectic Idealism and Historical Determinism.
Personally, I didn't/don't buy into all of Classical Hegelian Idealism and Dialectic Theory -- which is why I made the modifications I did to Hegelian Theory (less dialectic idealism and more dialectic realism).
Thus, I intend to run more or less roughshod over 'school-boundaries that lack existential, rational-empirical, and/or functional significance' in order to get to where I creatively and theoretically want to get to in the name of building the best conceptual/theoretical model of human psychological functioning that I can possibly put together.
Mathematically speaking, what I am doing here is similar to a game of combinations and permutations -- for every theoretical assumption and/or boundary that I/you/we change takes us down a new path, a new line of thinking. New conceptual structure takes us to new conceptual process and visa versa -- and both conceptual structure and conceptual process affect human existential structure and process -- i.e., the actual process and structure of living (such as in the therapeutic process).
For me -- and DGB Narcissistic Transference Theory -- everything starts with a single meeting in the Vienna Circle where Freud and Adler were actually in agreement with each other -- and Freud was impressed with Adler's work. The topic was 'narcissistic injury'.
I am going to start chopping up these longer essays that I have started writing here lately to make them more readable and comprehensible in one sitting.
Thus, we will stop here...and start with the topic of 'narcissistic (self-esteem) injury' in our next blog-meeting here together.
Good night,
-- dgb, June 22nd, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
Thursday, June 18, 2009
On Conscious Early Transference Memories, Complexes, Scripts, Games, and 'Payoffs' -- and/or 'Clone Repetitions' of Childhood Narcissistic Injuries
If you integrate elements of Freudian, Adlerian, Jungian, and Bernean Theory, a whole host of new concepts and ideas become available to us such as: 'transference complexes', 'transference scripts', and 'transference games', 'transference-projection', 'transference-identification', 'transference-introjection', 'transference compensation', 'the re-creation compulsion', 'the mastery compulsion', and the 'repetition compulsion'.
Perhaps most important in this whole 'egotistical-existential playoff' is the 'narcissistic payoff' of what might be called a 'transference-reversal-of-fortune' which involves the 'subconscious transference game' of turning of a 'childhood one down rejection situation'(either an encounter and/or a more sustained relationship) into an 'adult one up acceptance and/or rejecting situation' (meaning again, either an encounter and/or a more sustained relationship). This has been called elsewhere by the author of 'Kant's Dove' (also acknowledging an Adlerian influence) as 'The Handicap Challenge'.
This whole DGB theoretical explanation of transference integrates fairly well both with: 1. Ronald Fairbairn's dual concepts of: a) 'the rejecting object'; and b) 'the exciting object' which in my way of looking at things are essentially one and the same concept; and 2. Ferenczi's/Anna Freud's concept of 'identification with the aggressor' which in DGBN Tranference Terminololgy becomes 'identification with the rejector' (abandoner, betrayer, victimizer, distancer, seducer...etc.)
Let us back up a bit and start with 'transference-projection' -- a 'conflation' of two concepts that are usually kept apart in traditional Psychoanalysis.
Transference-Projection: A form of interpretive perception that may be distorted but it doesn't have to be. Sometimes transference-projection as interpretive-perception may show an extra amount of interpretive intuition and/or awareness. These are cases where the pot can see that the kettle is also black, or worded otherwise, we can see that someone outside of ourselves shares some portion of our inner 'transference complex and chemistry'.
It usually (but not always) takes two to tango (although this can vary depending on a person's particular transference script/complex/game).
Everything starts generally with either some kind of childhood event that stimulates a 'childhood narcissistic fixation' and/or a childhood 'narcissistic injury' which is usually the quickest way to becoming a childhood narcissistic fixation.
Childhood narcissistic (self esteem) injuries become narcissistic (self-esteem) fixations although not every narcissistic fixation necessarily revolves around a narcissistic injury -- for example, a narcissistic fixation can revolve around a childhood accomplishment and/or seeing, hearing, tasting, doing something that we find personally intriguing -- enough so, that the narcissistic fixation -- whatever it is -- becomes a lifelong obsession/compulsion/addiction.
Narcissistic fixations -- whether in the form of self-esteem injuries or the opposite -- areas of prideful self-confidence and/or areas of 'particularly focused attention and interest' -- become fixated in the mind in the form of memories, usually consciously remembered memories as far as this theorist here is concerned (with a background in Adlerian training) which in Adlerian Theory would probably be called 'lifestyle memories' but since we are working here in a 'conflict in the personality' paradigm as opposed to a 'unity in the personality' paradigm, we will call them here 'transference memories'. Classic Psychoanalysis would be more prone to either dismiss these types of memories as 'conscious memories with no diagnostic theoretical and/or therapeutic value' or alternatively as 'screen memories' with 'allusions to some other, deeper, more important and repressed, unconscious memory.
But here we give them full 'theoretical and therapeutic value' even if they are 'only' conscious early memories. To paraphrase Adler, they are clinically important precisely because in a sea of other possible conscious early memories, these and only these were remembered. They were remembered for a reason -- and that reason is what gives them full clinical, diagnostic, theoretical, and therapeutic value.
These conscious early transference memories we carry around with us subconsciously as adults -- almost like the 'script of a movie' -- and subjectively perceived as needing to be 'acted out again' (our 're-creation/repetition compulsion') for 'egotistical purposes' -- where we also need one or more actors to play in this script with us.
This whole script may become highly eroticized as a 'transference game', thus becoming a 'sexual transference game'. A 'neurotic' element of our distant past becomes both a neurotic and an erotic sexual transference game in our adult present. Furthermore, this game becomes 'serialized' as we come back to it again and again and again in similar and different encounters, in similar and different relationships.
This is how 'sex' and 'ego' often get 'married together' in our same movie-memory-fantasy script, the same transference script. There is definitely an Adlerian spin to this movie script. 'Inferiority feelings' or 'low self-esteem' (from an egotistically traumatic memory) stimulate 'an upward movement' which Adler called 'superiority striving' with a strong drive towards what might also be called a 'mastery compulsion'. (Here I am mixing Freudian and Adlerian language.)
Or if the 'egotistic success and mastery feeling ' is existent in the original childhood memory, we may just want to keep repeating this feeling of success, superiority, and mastery over and over again. Call this a 'mastery fixation' -- or a return to doing over and over again in different renditions/editions as an adult what we once also did extremely well as a child.
To give you an example from my own life (you can perhaps fill in an example from your own life), I am told by my dad that when I was a small child of 5 or 6, I stood up in front of a Church congregation and when someone -- probably my dad -- pointed to country after country on a globe, I named them all and got them all right -- a feat I could not come close to doing today without some significant practice. However, I have taken the same skill -- knowing the geographical names and relationships between different places -- and turned it into a decent middle class career of scheduling and dispatching taxis and wheelchair vehicles throughout the Greater Toronto Area. One could further argue that what I am doing here -- 'mapping out the different areas of the mind with all of their different inter-relationships with each other' is only a further extrapolation of what I was doing when I was 5 or 6 years old.
Let the drama -- the same essential drama and/or soap opera that we bring with us from our childhood into our adulthood --
replay itself again -- and again, and again, and again.
Only this time -- at least in those cases involving 'negative' (confidence shattering as opposed to confidence-enhancing childhood memories -- generally we are looking for a much better ending, a more 'ego-satisfying' ending to our usually much less satisfying neurotic childhood memory-movie.
The question then might be asked: 'Why is love, lust, passion, and sex often so 'neurotic'? Or alternatively -- why is the neurotically compulsive often so erotically compulsive as well?
For one simple reason. We are trying to 'undo' and/or 're-do' our childhood neurotic transference scripts and resulting 'low self-esteem complex' based on the ego-traumatizing memory(or memories) that led to these partly deterministic, partly existential scripts -- and turn them into something much more ego-satisfying, a 'transference will to power and/or self-empowerment' if you wish.
Sometimes we end up with a more 'satisfying adult movie' -- or worded otherwise -- a more satisfying ending to our unsatisfying and therefore 'perpetually unfinished and unsatisfied' childhood script movie.
Often we don't.
As stated earlier, it often depends if we are starting from a position of a low or high childhood self-esteem movie -- which creates a type of 'transference self-fulfilling prophecy' for us as adults.
In low self-esteem memory movies, our 'transference game' is to move from a position of low self-esteem to a position of much higher self-esteem as we hopefully begin to 'master the movie-fantasy-memory-fixation' -- with 'constant repetition' (which still can bring the same bad ending).
Worst case scenario: The 'transference-villain or culprit' who 'traumatized our ego' in childhood comes back to life again in another associated
'projective-form', and traumatizes us all over again in adulthood too!' We metaphorically return to the scene of our own childhood self-esteem victimization.
Our transference self-fulfilling prophecy at its worst often results in a complete crash into emotional/egotistic despair. A nightmarish return to the scene of our childhood crime and to a replaying of an egotistical and emotional disaster scene!
If you want to play with 'transference-fire', then you risk the very real possibility of getting severely burnt again -- particularly if you take on a very strong projective rendition of your childhood transference rejector (and exciter at the same time). See the Object Relations work of Ronald Fairbairn.
This is how the neurotic becomes the erotic -- like silly fools we often take on formidable adult lover-renditions of our childhood rejector only to end up right back at square one again. Looking up from the mat at this newest edition of our oldest significant rejector, still we often get up off the mat and want more. We both 'idolize' and 'idealize' our projected transference rejector, sometimes even more so, the more they reject us! As long as they at least seem to 'love' us a little too!
Such folly in the minds of men and women!! Transference rejection becomes our biggest sexual aphrodisiac! As long as we eventually think that we can win him or her over. And/or eventually come out on top. Reject our rejector.
Our transference scripts and games can have a number of different endings -- including our doing a 'complete role reversal' and rejecting our 'clone imagined transference rejector-exciter before he or she can potentially reject us'!!! Transference neuroses usually come with a certain amount of paranoia which paradoxically adds some of the relationship excitement we are often looking for.
This is what Freud called the 'repetition compulsion' which he connected with the 'death instinct' or sometimes worded differently as a 'death wish'.
When things go wrong -- so very wrong -- in the deepest, darkest throes of of 'the return of our worst childhood ego nightmare', the return of the suppressed or the repressed, the return of our deepest, darkest childhood transference neurosis, it may feel indeed, very much like we are in an 'egotistic-existential death spiral'.
This may result in a spiral into self-destruction.
And/or a trip to the psychotherapist.
Or our best friend.
Or our family.
Or jail.
Or the hospital.
Or the morgue.
One never really knows which way our transference neurosis is going to take us -- to the gates of heaven, or the gates of hell -- and beyond. Or both.
Indeed, usually it is both.
That is what a 'transference-complex-script-and-game' is.
Sometimes -- oftentimes -- it is simply better to get off the merry-go-round, off the transference-ride before we do ourselves in -- again.
The biggest problem is that it is highly addictive, highly obsessive-compulsive -- and worst of all perhaps, highly emotionally, romantically, and sexually exciting.
Who wants to get off that type of ride?
This is equally true for the 'normal neurotics' amongst us and for the more 'extreme neurotics' that may or may not make the newspapers for greater or lesser reasons, from different types of manipulations and 'control fetishes', sado-masochism, voyeurism, exhibitionism, pedophilia, to all of the different 'serial crimes': serial fraud, serial assaults, serial arson, serial rape, serial killings...
These are all generally fantasy and/or behavioral demonstrations of extremely serious and pathological underlying transference complexes.
However, on the other side of things, so too are all 'creative projections' of the most individually and culturally brilliant types. The longer and more persistently a person is working on a creative project, the more likely there is to be the underlying 'drive' of a transference complex at work.
Freud called these types of creative and/or work transferences -- 'sublimation' -- which may or may not contain underlying subconscious sexual components.
Freud, Adler, Jung, Fairbairn, Kohut, Berne, Perls -- they all captured essential elements of the underlying dynamics of the transference, even as they sometimes gave them other names such as 'lifestyle', 'projection', 'complexes', 'scripts', 'games'...
The creatively brilliant and/or the devastatingly destructive elements of transference complexes at work cannot be understated by anyone who has seriously studied this phenomenon.
Quite simply put, transference by whatever name we choose to use to study and describe this phenomenon -- for example, 'transference' (Freud), 'lifestyle' (Adler), 'complex' (Jung), 'script' (Berne), 'projection' (Gestalt Therapy) -- is the most important motivational force -- or network of forces -- in the study and the understanding of human behavior.
Here is a quote from the highly esteemed psychoanalyst, Brian Bird from his classic 1972 essay on transference -- Notes on Transference: Universal Phenomenon and Hardest Part of Analysis:
'Transference, in my view, is a very special mental quality that has never been satisfactorily explained. I am not satisfied, for instance, either with what has been written about it or with its use in analysis. To me, our knowledge seems slight, and our use limited. This view, admittedly extreme, is possible only because transference is such a very remarkable phenomenon, with a great and largely undeveloped potential. I am particularly taken with the as yet unexplored idea that transference is a universal mental function which may well be the basis of all human relationships. I even suspect it of being one of the mind's main agencies for giving birth to new ideas, and new life to old ones. In these several respects, transference would seem to me to assume characteristics of a major ego function.'
Quoted from the book, 'Classics in Psychoanalytic Technique, Robert Langs, Editor, 1981, 1990.
I would like to think that my work from the 'shadows of academia' through the 1980s, the 1990s, and now the 2000s, will add some new light to the phenomenon of transference with an 'integrative, cross-school' approach.
One can see just from my short essay above, that I have both re-emphasized Bird's comments and taken them a few steps further with:
1. My statement regarding the inter-relationship between creativity, transference and sublimation;
2. My statement regarding the inter-relationship between projection and transference;
3. My statement -- only lightly hinted at here -- regarding the inter-relationship between 'identification with the aggressor', identification with the rejector', 'identification with the abandoner', 'identification with the victimizer', 'identification with the violent and the violator' -- and transference.
This, in my own terminology, I started calling 'transference-reversal' in my unpublished writing in the 1980s;
4. My statement -- only lightly hinted at here -- regarding the inter-relationship between 'ego-splitting', 'ego-states', and transference. That goes back to my studies in Object Relations in the 1980s (Fairbairn, Guntrip), as well as Transactional Analysis (Eric Berne, 'The Games People Play');
5. My statement -- to be developed later -- on the inter-relationship between 'conscious early memories' (Adler), 'lifestyle' (Adler), and 'transference. (That goes back to my studies at The Adlerian Institute in 1980,81, and my general influence from Adlerian psychology ('ego-traumacy' from Freud's traumacy-seduction theory; 'inferiority-feelings', 'superiority striving' from Adler, and the 'mastery compulsion', Freud, 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle');
6. My statement -- to be developed later and showing my influence by Perls and Gestalt Therapy, including my involvement at The Gestalt Institute in Toronto from 1979-1991 -- on the inter-relationship between transference, projection, and 'the unfinished situation'. Also, on the inter-connection between 'ego-splitting' and 'topdog-righteousness' vs. 'underdog approval-seeking' or 'underdog-rebelliosness', all as products of transference-serial behavior patterns;
7. My statement -- just hinted at here -- on the inter-relationship between 'narcissistic transference complexes, scripts, and games' -- and 'serial crimes' of every type that can be seen to have 'an individual memory signature' that is metaphorically and/or symbolically similar to the 'essence' and/or 'nature' -- the 'Method of Operation or MO' if you will -- of the 'serial crimes'. In particular, much more can be said about the inter-connection between 'serial rapes', 'serial killings' -- and transference -- usually through a process of either 'identification with the paternal or maternal aggressor, victimizer, rejector, abandoner... from the internalized 'narcissistic-violent topdog ego-state' and/or through a process of 'compensatory, narcissistic rage' (transference-reversal) from the internalized 'narcissistic-violent underdog' ego-state position. While I was working in this particular direction in the 1980s and/or early 1990s, I found the Psychoanalytic work of Heinz Kohut and saw that I was simply developing his idea of 'narcissistic transference' -- in contra-distinction to Freud who believed basically that narcissistic personalities could not develop transference relationships because they were too absorbed in themselves. I preferred Kohut's way of looking at things when he argued essentially -- and I am paraphrasing from the commonality in our perspectives -- that 'narcissistic transferences' and 'narcissistic transference relationships' do indeed exist and can essentially be described and defined by their 'narcissistic' -- meaning 'self-infatuated' or 'self-absorbed' (and lack of social empathy, lack of social sensitivity, lack of social conscience, lack of moral-ethics) component.
8. Freud once wrote something to the extent that 'we are all psychotic (or schizophrenic) when we dream. In a similar fashion, we are all walking, talking 'serial rejectors' in a clone-like fashion to the way that we can remember our earliest rejections...our earliest self-esteem injuries.
Such is transference -- probably Freud's most important discovery in human behavior.
-- dgb, revised, updated, modified, June 22nd, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
Perhaps most important in this whole 'egotistical-existential playoff' is the 'narcissistic payoff' of what might be called a 'transference-reversal-of-fortune' which involves the 'subconscious transference game' of turning of a 'childhood one down rejection situation'(either an encounter and/or a more sustained relationship) into an 'adult one up acceptance and/or rejecting situation' (meaning again, either an encounter and/or a more sustained relationship). This has been called elsewhere by the author of 'Kant's Dove' (also acknowledging an Adlerian influence) as 'The Handicap Challenge'.
This whole DGB theoretical explanation of transference integrates fairly well both with: 1. Ronald Fairbairn's dual concepts of: a) 'the rejecting object'; and b) 'the exciting object' which in my way of looking at things are essentially one and the same concept; and 2. Ferenczi's/Anna Freud's concept of 'identification with the aggressor' which in DGBN Tranference Terminololgy becomes 'identification with the rejector' (abandoner, betrayer, victimizer, distancer, seducer...etc.)
Let us back up a bit and start with 'transference-projection' -- a 'conflation' of two concepts that are usually kept apart in traditional Psychoanalysis.
Transference-Projection: A form of interpretive perception that may be distorted but it doesn't have to be. Sometimes transference-projection as interpretive-perception may show an extra amount of interpretive intuition and/or awareness. These are cases where the pot can see that the kettle is also black, or worded otherwise, we can see that someone outside of ourselves shares some portion of our inner 'transference complex and chemistry'.
It usually (but not always) takes two to tango (although this can vary depending on a person's particular transference script/complex/game).
Everything starts generally with either some kind of childhood event that stimulates a 'childhood narcissistic fixation' and/or a childhood 'narcissistic injury' which is usually the quickest way to becoming a childhood narcissistic fixation.
Childhood narcissistic (self esteem) injuries become narcissistic (self-esteem) fixations although not every narcissistic fixation necessarily revolves around a narcissistic injury -- for example, a narcissistic fixation can revolve around a childhood accomplishment and/or seeing, hearing, tasting, doing something that we find personally intriguing -- enough so, that the narcissistic fixation -- whatever it is -- becomes a lifelong obsession/compulsion/addiction.
Narcissistic fixations -- whether in the form of self-esteem injuries or the opposite -- areas of prideful self-confidence and/or areas of 'particularly focused attention and interest' -- become fixated in the mind in the form of memories, usually consciously remembered memories as far as this theorist here is concerned (with a background in Adlerian training) which in Adlerian Theory would probably be called 'lifestyle memories' but since we are working here in a 'conflict in the personality' paradigm as opposed to a 'unity in the personality' paradigm, we will call them here 'transference memories'. Classic Psychoanalysis would be more prone to either dismiss these types of memories as 'conscious memories with no diagnostic theoretical and/or therapeutic value' or alternatively as 'screen memories' with 'allusions to some other, deeper, more important and repressed, unconscious memory.
But here we give them full 'theoretical and therapeutic value' even if they are 'only' conscious early memories. To paraphrase Adler, they are clinically important precisely because in a sea of other possible conscious early memories, these and only these were remembered. They were remembered for a reason -- and that reason is what gives them full clinical, diagnostic, theoretical, and therapeutic value.
These conscious early transference memories we carry around with us subconsciously as adults -- almost like the 'script of a movie' -- and subjectively perceived as needing to be 'acted out again' (our 're-creation/repetition compulsion') for 'egotistical purposes' -- where we also need one or more actors to play in this script with us.
This whole script may become highly eroticized as a 'transference game', thus becoming a 'sexual transference game'. A 'neurotic' element of our distant past becomes both a neurotic and an erotic sexual transference game in our adult present. Furthermore, this game becomes 'serialized' as we come back to it again and again and again in similar and different encounters, in similar and different relationships.
This is how 'sex' and 'ego' often get 'married together' in our same movie-memory-fantasy script, the same transference script. There is definitely an Adlerian spin to this movie script. 'Inferiority feelings' or 'low self-esteem' (from an egotistically traumatic memory) stimulate 'an upward movement' which Adler called 'superiority striving' with a strong drive towards what might also be called a 'mastery compulsion'. (Here I am mixing Freudian and Adlerian language.)
Or if the 'egotistic success and mastery feeling ' is existent in the original childhood memory, we may just want to keep repeating this feeling of success, superiority, and mastery over and over again. Call this a 'mastery fixation' -- or a return to doing over and over again in different renditions/editions as an adult what we once also did extremely well as a child.
To give you an example from my own life (you can perhaps fill in an example from your own life), I am told by my dad that when I was a small child of 5 or 6, I stood up in front of a Church congregation and when someone -- probably my dad -- pointed to country after country on a globe, I named them all and got them all right -- a feat I could not come close to doing today without some significant practice. However, I have taken the same skill -- knowing the geographical names and relationships between different places -- and turned it into a decent middle class career of scheduling and dispatching taxis and wheelchair vehicles throughout the Greater Toronto Area. One could further argue that what I am doing here -- 'mapping out the different areas of the mind with all of their different inter-relationships with each other' is only a further extrapolation of what I was doing when I was 5 or 6 years old.
Let the drama -- the same essential drama and/or soap opera that we bring with us from our childhood into our adulthood --
replay itself again -- and again, and again, and again.
Only this time -- at least in those cases involving 'negative' (confidence shattering as opposed to confidence-enhancing childhood memories -- generally we are looking for a much better ending, a more 'ego-satisfying' ending to our usually much less satisfying neurotic childhood memory-movie.
The question then might be asked: 'Why is love, lust, passion, and sex often so 'neurotic'? Or alternatively -- why is the neurotically compulsive often so erotically compulsive as well?
For one simple reason. We are trying to 'undo' and/or 're-do' our childhood neurotic transference scripts and resulting 'low self-esteem complex' based on the ego-traumatizing memory(or memories) that led to these partly deterministic, partly existential scripts -- and turn them into something much more ego-satisfying, a 'transference will to power and/or self-empowerment' if you wish.
Sometimes we end up with a more 'satisfying adult movie' -- or worded otherwise -- a more satisfying ending to our unsatisfying and therefore 'perpetually unfinished and unsatisfied' childhood script movie.
Often we don't.
As stated earlier, it often depends if we are starting from a position of a low or high childhood self-esteem movie -- which creates a type of 'transference self-fulfilling prophecy' for us as adults.
In low self-esteem memory movies, our 'transference game' is to move from a position of low self-esteem to a position of much higher self-esteem as we hopefully begin to 'master the movie-fantasy-memory-fixation' -- with 'constant repetition' (which still can bring the same bad ending).
Worst case scenario: The 'transference-villain or culprit' who 'traumatized our ego' in childhood comes back to life again in another associated
'projective-form', and traumatizes us all over again in adulthood too!' We metaphorically return to the scene of our own childhood self-esteem victimization.
Our transference self-fulfilling prophecy at its worst often results in a complete crash into emotional/egotistic despair. A nightmarish return to the scene of our childhood crime and to a replaying of an egotistical and emotional disaster scene!
If you want to play with 'transference-fire', then you risk the very real possibility of getting severely burnt again -- particularly if you take on a very strong projective rendition of your childhood transference rejector (and exciter at the same time). See the Object Relations work of Ronald Fairbairn.
This is how the neurotic becomes the erotic -- like silly fools we often take on formidable adult lover-renditions of our childhood rejector only to end up right back at square one again. Looking up from the mat at this newest edition of our oldest significant rejector, still we often get up off the mat and want more. We both 'idolize' and 'idealize' our projected transference rejector, sometimes even more so, the more they reject us! As long as they at least seem to 'love' us a little too!
Such folly in the minds of men and women!! Transference rejection becomes our biggest sexual aphrodisiac! As long as we eventually think that we can win him or her over. And/or eventually come out on top. Reject our rejector.
Our transference scripts and games can have a number of different endings -- including our doing a 'complete role reversal' and rejecting our 'clone imagined transference rejector-exciter before he or she can potentially reject us'!!! Transference neuroses usually come with a certain amount of paranoia which paradoxically adds some of the relationship excitement we are often looking for.
This is what Freud called the 'repetition compulsion' which he connected with the 'death instinct' or sometimes worded differently as a 'death wish'.
When things go wrong -- so very wrong -- in the deepest, darkest throes of of 'the return of our worst childhood ego nightmare', the return of the suppressed or the repressed, the return of our deepest, darkest childhood transference neurosis, it may feel indeed, very much like we are in an 'egotistic-existential death spiral'.
This may result in a spiral into self-destruction.
And/or a trip to the psychotherapist.
Or our best friend.
Or our family.
Or jail.
Or the hospital.
Or the morgue.
One never really knows which way our transference neurosis is going to take us -- to the gates of heaven, or the gates of hell -- and beyond. Or both.
Indeed, usually it is both.
That is what a 'transference-complex-script-and-game' is.
Sometimes -- oftentimes -- it is simply better to get off the merry-go-round, off the transference-ride before we do ourselves in -- again.
The biggest problem is that it is highly addictive, highly obsessive-compulsive -- and worst of all perhaps, highly emotionally, romantically, and sexually exciting.
Who wants to get off that type of ride?
This is equally true for the 'normal neurotics' amongst us and for the more 'extreme neurotics' that may or may not make the newspapers for greater or lesser reasons, from different types of manipulations and 'control fetishes', sado-masochism, voyeurism, exhibitionism, pedophilia, to all of the different 'serial crimes': serial fraud, serial assaults, serial arson, serial rape, serial killings...
These are all generally fantasy and/or behavioral demonstrations of extremely serious and pathological underlying transference complexes.
However, on the other side of things, so too are all 'creative projections' of the most individually and culturally brilliant types. The longer and more persistently a person is working on a creative project, the more likely there is to be the underlying 'drive' of a transference complex at work.
Freud called these types of creative and/or work transferences -- 'sublimation' -- which may or may not contain underlying subconscious sexual components.
Freud, Adler, Jung, Fairbairn, Kohut, Berne, Perls -- they all captured essential elements of the underlying dynamics of the transference, even as they sometimes gave them other names such as 'lifestyle', 'projection', 'complexes', 'scripts', 'games'...
The creatively brilliant and/or the devastatingly destructive elements of transference complexes at work cannot be understated by anyone who has seriously studied this phenomenon.
Quite simply put, transference by whatever name we choose to use to study and describe this phenomenon -- for example, 'transference' (Freud), 'lifestyle' (Adler), 'complex' (Jung), 'script' (Berne), 'projection' (Gestalt Therapy) -- is the most important motivational force -- or network of forces -- in the study and the understanding of human behavior.
Here is a quote from the highly esteemed psychoanalyst, Brian Bird from his classic 1972 essay on transference -- Notes on Transference: Universal Phenomenon and Hardest Part of Analysis:
'Transference, in my view, is a very special mental quality that has never been satisfactorily explained. I am not satisfied, for instance, either with what has been written about it or with its use in analysis. To me, our knowledge seems slight, and our use limited. This view, admittedly extreme, is possible only because transference is such a very remarkable phenomenon, with a great and largely undeveloped potential. I am particularly taken with the as yet unexplored idea that transference is a universal mental function which may well be the basis of all human relationships. I even suspect it of being one of the mind's main agencies for giving birth to new ideas, and new life to old ones. In these several respects, transference would seem to me to assume characteristics of a major ego function.'
Quoted from the book, 'Classics in Psychoanalytic Technique, Robert Langs, Editor, 1981, 1990.
I would like to think that my work from the 'shadows of academia' through the 1980s, the 1990s, and now the 2000s, will add some new light to the phenomenon of transference with an 'integrative, cross-school' approach.
One can see just from my short essay above, that I have both re-emphasized Bird's comments and taken them a few steps further with:
1. My statement regarding the inter-relationship between creativity, transference and sublimation;
2. My statement regarding the inter-relationship between projection and transference;
3. My statement -- only lightly hinted at here -- regarding the inter-relationship between 'identification with the aggressor', identification with the rejector', 'identification with the abandoner', 'identification with the victimizer', 'identification with the violent and the violator' -- and transference.
This, in my own terminology, I started calling 'transference-reversal' in my unpublished writing in the 1980s;
4. My statement -- only lightly hinted at here -- regarding the inter-relationship between 'ego-splitting', 'ego-states', and transference. That goes back to my studies in Object Relations in the 1980s (Fairbairn, Guntrip), as well as Transactional Analysis (Eric Berne, 'The Games People Play');
5. My statement -- to be developed later -- on the inter-relationship between 'conscious early memories' (Adler), 'lifestyle' (Adler), and 'transference. (That goes back to my studies at The Adlerian Institute in 1980,81, and my general influence from Adlerian psychology ('ego-traumacy' from Freud's traumacy-seduction theory; 'inferiority-feelings', 'superiority striving' from Adler, and the 'mastery compulsion', Freud, 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle');
6. My statement -- to be developed later and showing my influence by Perls and Gestalt Therapy, including my involvement at The Gestalt Institute in Toronto from 1979-1991 -- on the inter-relationship between transference, projection, and 'the unfinished situation'. Also, on the inter-connection between 'ego-splitting' and 'topdog-righteousness' vs. 'underdog approval-seeking' or 'underdog-rebelliosness', all as products of transference-serial behavior patterns;
7. My statement -- just hinted at here -- on the inter-relationship between 'narcissistic transference complexes, scripts, and games' -- and 'serial crimes' of every type that can be seen to have 'an individual memory signature' that is metaphorically and/or symbolically similar to the 'essence' and/or 'nature' -- the 'Method of Operation or MO' if you will -- of the 'serial crimes'. In particular, much more can be said about the inter-connection between 'serial rapes', 'serial killings' -- and transference -- usually through a process of either 'identification with the paternal or maternal aggressor, victimizer, rejector, abandoner... from the internalized 'narcissistic-violent topdog ego-state' and/or through a process of 'compensatory, narcissistic rage' (transference-reversal) from the internalized 'narcissistic-violent underdog' ego-state position. While I was working in this particular direction in the 1980s and/or early 1990s, I found the Psychoanalytic work of Heinz Kohut and saw that I was simply developing his idea of 'narcissistic transference' -- in contra-distinction to Freud who believed basically that narcissistic personalities could not develop transference relationships because they were too absorbed in themselves. I preferred Kohut's way of looking at things when he argued essentially -- and I am paraphrasing from the commonality in our perspectives -- that 'narcissistic transferences' and 'narcissistic transference relationships' do indeed exist and can essentially be described and defined by their 'narcissistic' -- meaning 'self-infatuated' or 'self-absorbed' (and lack of social empathy, lack of social sensitivity, lack of social conscience, lack of moral-ethics) component.
8. Freud once wrote something to the extent that 'we are all psychotic (or schizophrenic) when we dream. In a similar fashion, we are all walking, talking 'serial rejectors' in a clone-like fashion to the way that we can remember our earliest rejections...our earliest self-esteem injuries.
Such is transference -- probably Freud's most important discovery in human behavior.
-- dgb, revised, updated, modified, June 22nd, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
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