Sunday, March 3rd, 1907, Freud and Jung Meeting For The First Time -- And Talking For 13 Hours Straight!
Freud and Jung -- theirs was an all too short and tumultous seven year relationship (1907-1914), passionate and explosive, reverent from each side at the beginning, much more rebellious from Jung's side as things progressed, often compared to a common father/son type relationship with Freud maintaining his authoritative paternal boundaries and Jung challenging these same boundaries -- eventually to the point of separation, and the building of two separate schools of psychology with partly siimilar, partly different philosophies and conceptualizations concerning human psychology.
Freud and Jung both shared a partly Hegelian, partly Nietzschean philosophy. Freud was more a product of the Enlightenment, Jung a product of Romantic Philosophy. Jung seemed a little more willing to integrate the 'darker side' of human nature in a productive manner with the rest of man's personality, whereas Freud seemed more about 'rationally analyzing' this same dark side with the goal 'of bringing it under more rational, conscious, enlightened control -- but control none the less. Jung was willing to give up more of this control with a trust things would eventually integrate in a more healthy direction.
This was one of the main dialectical splits or differences in opinion between Enlightenment and Romantic Philosophy -- just how much reason was man willing to give up and trust that man would still land back on firm ground again -- after some kind of a 'romantic flight' to who knows where.
Jung was more the mythologist, mystic, astrology, occult and para-normal psychologist. Freud didn't seem too comfortable following Jung into these areas. It just happens to be my birthday today -- Jung might be more apt to make a psychological interpretation in this regard, as I try to mediate between Freud and Jung, although I am just speculating here. Besides, if he wouldn't I will.
March 3rd. My birthday. I am a pisces -- often equated with 'two fish swimming towards each other and away from each other at the same time'(or not knowing which way to swim while wanting to swim both ways at the same time). Towards intimacy and committment. And/or away from intimacy and committment and towards more 'individual freedom and self-expression'.
How appropriate that Freud and Jung should meet together for the first time on this 'dualistic-dialectic, thesis-anti-thesis' day. Two very strong-willed and creative men each doing their absolutely very best to 'will to power' their own separate vision and creation while admiring, respecting and learning from each other at the same time.
Or at least in the beginning. Until their respective creative visions came into conflict with each other -- and this conflict became stronger and stronger, reaching more and more of an impasse that just would not go away. And then the anger and resentment started to seriously set in and put a fast ending to what had started out as such a strong and passionate relationship with Freud wanting to pass the leadership of his 'Psychoanalytic Torch' onto to Jung, his heir-in-waiting.
But it was not to be. Psychoanalysis -- at least as Freud defined and described it --was just too tight a 'theoretical box' for Jung to accept and live with. Jung needed a significantly different theoretical box that he could create himself, accept because it was his Romantic-Mystical-Mythological Vision; not Freud's 'Pseudo-Scientific-Anal-Retentive-Enlightenment Vision'.
One of the 'dividing issues' between Freud and Jung was Freud's often stated 'pre-occupation' with sexuality (and certainly in the eyes of Jung).
Jung wanted to define 'libido' as 'life energy'; not just 'sexual energy'. Freud would have nothing to do with this. For Freud, 'life energy' at this point in his career and his theorizing was to be equated with 'sexual energy'; nothing more, nothing less. His message to Jung was basically this: If you don't want to follow the instructions of the Captain, then leave the ship. Jung left the ship -- like Adler before him. There would be a whole list of 'abandoners' by the time Freud was finished theorizing.
Personally, I would say there was a 'transference' issue here with Freud. Probably a part of his 'father-abandonment or rejection-complex'. I'm sure that has been written before, probably more than a few times. I know I could dig up at least one book in this regard. The irony here is that after Jung left -- perhaps mainly because of the 'libido' controversy -- Freud would create a 'life instinct' years later that included but did not only include man's 'sexual instinct'.
Loosely speaking, Freud between about 1915 and 1920 would retain his 'dualistic-dialectic' post-Hegelian style of thinking, But this time, Freud would pit man's 'life instinct' against his 'death instinct'. Similarily, he would even play with the idea of a 'mastery compulsion' which was getting very close to Adler's theorizing that Freud had rejected years earlier based on the twin concepts of 'inferiority complex' and 'superiority striving'. Freud was very keen on Adler's ideas of 'organ inferiority' and 'compensation' when Adler first disclosed these ideas in a meeting of The Vienna Circle. But that would change the further Adler 'flew from the coup'. Still, Freud was obviously paying attention to both Jung and Adler even as either he was abandoning them or they were abandoning him -- or both. In Adler's case, Freud finally turned away from the 'mastery compulsion' and instead created the 'repetition compulsion'. This was a mistake. Adler's theory of a 'superiority and compensation-(mastery) complex was superior to Freud's 'repetition compulsion and death instinct theory'. This we will deal with at another time.
Freud never created a theory in which he was not provocatively controversial in some way or another, and in this regard his later 1915-1920 Life vs. Death Instinct and 'Superego vs. Id with the Ego Mediating' Theory would be no different than any one of his earlier theories in earlier parts of his career.
Let's loosely organize Freud's different theories as follows with me looking up the more precise dates by tomorrow morning:
1. (late 1880s, early 1890s) The Beginning of Freud's Theory of The Unconscious and The Repressed based on his research into hypnosis;
2. Freud's Traumacy Theory; also, the beginning of Transference Theory (1895, 'Studies in Hysteria');
3. Freud's Seduction Theory (1896, The Aetiology of Hysteria, theorizing for the first time about the impact of 'adults seducing and sexually abusing children);
4. Freud's Screen Memory Theory (1899, 'Screen Memories', Freud speculated that 'conscious' memories can and/or do allude to deeper, darker, 'repressed, unconcious memories interwoven with symbolic wishful fantasies'. This theory paved the way for his classic 'Interpretation of Dreams');
5. Freud's Dream Interpretation Theory (1900, 'The Interpretation of Dreams');
6. Freud's Theories of 'Childhood Sexuality' and 'The Oedipal Complex' (1905, 'Three Essays on Sexuality');
7. Freud's Changing Ideas about Transference, 1912, 'The Dynamics of The Transference');
8. Freud's First Clearly Stated Theory about Narcissism (1914, On Narcissism);
9. Freud's 'Life and Death Instinct' Theory (1920, Beyond The Pleasure Principle)
10. Freud's famous 'Hegelian Triad' 'The Id, Superego, and Ego' -- Strachey's translations -- first discussed in 1920, Beyond The Pleasure Principle, later more specifically discussed, 1923, in 'The Ego and The Id').
DGB Philosophy-Psychology -- most importantly for our purposes here -- aims to be a philosphical and psychological dialectical bridge over the abyss between Freud and Jung. But there will be significant time for discussions in this area in the future.
