Freud Could Have Been a Champion...for Women's Rights...

Freud could have been a champion -- in fact, very briefly in history he was a champion -- for uncovering child abuse, childhood seduction, childhood sexual assault, and for advancing women's rights in this regard. But unfortunately, that moment in history was brief, as Freud reversed his theoretical and clinical tracks shortly thereafter.

The time of Freud's first dramatic, controversial clinical psychology statements unveiling the issue of childhood sexual abuse relative to the aetiology (cause) of hysteria was April 26th, 1896. There would be many more controversial clinical statements to come in the years that followed but none that continued along this same 'childhood sexual abuse' aetiology path.

After 1896, Freud started to write more and more about the aetiological factors of 'childhood sexual wishes and fantasies', 'distorted memories', 'symbolism', 'dreams', 'the Oedipal Complex', 'stages of 'psycho-sexual development, and the like. But there would be no more concerted writing about the factor of childhood sexual abuse -- whether it be 'rape' and/or 'seduction' -- like there was in this mostly succinct and direct paper on April 26th, 1896, read to a very disbelieving and angry medical audience at the time.

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Jeffrey Masson writes on this most dramatic and controversial change of events in his equally controversial book, 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory' (1984, 1985, 1992). From Chapter 1 of Masson's book:


"I had shown them the solution to a more than thousand-year-old problem-- a caput Nili." -- Sigmund Freud, 1896.


On the evening of April 21st, 1896, Sigmund Freud gave a paper before his colleagues at the Society for Psychiatry and Neurology in Vienna, entitled 'The Aetiology of Hysteria'. (The paper has been included below as Appendix B.) Freud realized that in giving this paper he would become "one of those who had disturbed the sleep of the world." The address presented a revolutionary theory of mental illness. Its title refers to Freud's new theory that the origin of neurosis lay in early sexual traumas which Freud called "infantile sexual scenes" or "sexual intercourse in childhood". This is what later came to be called 'the seduction theory' -- namely, the belief that these early experiences were real, not fantasies, and had a damaging and lasting effect on the later lives of the children who suffered them.

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Now there are at least three or four theories of speculatively interpreting what happened back in 1896 -- and thereafter.

Theory 1. Masson's Thesis: Freud basically 'ran out of ethical courage'. He went charging into this 1896 meeting like a lion -- and he came out of it more or less wimpering like a lamb. Maybe not totally. Nor immediately. But still this theory asserts that Freud basically 'chickened out' of his sexual abuse theory because it was met with too much resistance in the (totally male) medical community. These men in the medical community had the power to destroy Freud's young medical career by ceasing to 'refer' patients to him, and in so doing, they had the power to economically destroy Freud as well. According to this Masson theory, Freud knew this, caved in to the medical pressure exerted on him, and eventually 'significantly modified' his theory in such a way that these doctors ceased to exert career and financial controls over him. Freud's various 'modifications in clinical theory' -- his 'Screen Memories' theory, his 'Dream Theory', his 'Wish Theory', his theory of 'forgetting' and 'jokes', his 'Oedipal' theory, his 'Childhood Sexuality' Theory, his 'Psycho-Sexual Stages of Development' Theory, his Libido Theory, his 'Psychic Apparatus' (Id, Ego, and Superego) -- all of these and more accumulated into what became together known as 'Classical Psychoanalysis'. But by this time, Freud's earlier 'Traumacy' and then 'Seduction' Theory had to all extents and purposes -- become dead and buried.

Some Psychoanalysts would argue that Freud still kept these two earlier theories at least partly alive in particular circumstances, but the vast majority of the evidence seems to indicate that the Traumacy and Seduction Theories were 'marginalized' in Classical Psychoanalysis at best, 'suppressed' in Masson's words, and to all extents and purposes -- dead and buried, a product of 'extinction' by earlier 'ethical' and/or unethical', 'right' or 'wrong' forces.

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From the internet...

Classical Psychoanalysis

Theory of Illness

-Three-Stage Compromise Model of Mental Illness:

- Stage 1: Primal repression in the pregenital stages

- Step A: Id prompting (wish)

- Step B: Ego defends (counterwish)

- Stage 2: Return of the repressed content following

pubescence

- Stage 3: Compromise deflection (conversion) to

“symptoms”

Theory of Cure

Freud’s original theory:

1. Understanding of hidden meanings = insight (Freud

tells the secret and patient is obliged to change)

2. Client had to be free and open with therapist – relax

level of censorship (let the patient talk – whatever comes

to him/her = free association -> psychic determinism)

Freud’s final theory:

1. The neurotic is a person with significant primal

repressions, including those surrounding the

unresolved Oedipal complex

2. In therapy, this same acting-out process occurs in

the transference of feelings onto the therapist

a. Transfers affectionate, friendly feelings for the

therapist as a person

b. There are positive transferences of an erotic,

sexually lustful nature that are actually aimed at

the image

c. There are negative transferences of a hostile,

death-wishing variety that are also aimed at the

image rather than the person of the therapist

3. Neuroses stem from a personal dynamic, and it is

only the neurotic who can directly confront his/her

own unconscious and try to end the lack of

communication between the private realms of mind

4. As the neurotic client moves through

psychoanalysis, he/she develops an artificial or

transformed neurosis within the four walls of the

consulting room

5. When we speak of positive or negative feelings

being transferred to the therapist via imagoes, we are

also saying that libidinal or hostile

cathexes are taking place

6. The patient in psychoanalysis comes gradually to

remove libido from object cathexes in the environment

and from the symptoms manifested in the body and to

redirect this free libido onto the relationship with the therapist

Therapy

- A scientific investigation in addition to a curative process

- Rules for dream interpretation/analysis:

1. Do not take the manifest content of a dream

literally, because it never reflects the unconscious

meaning intended.

2. Present various portions of the dream contents to

the client as a prompt for free association, and do not

worry about how far this line of investigation takes

you from the original dream story.

3. Never lead or suggest things about the dream to

the client; wait until several dreams and/or free

associations to dream contents suggest the direction to

be taken in making interpretations.

- Patient lies on sofa, Freud sits behind head of patient - out of sight (Freud did not like being stared at for eight hours a day)

- Met several times/week, for at least a year

- Pay was discussed up front and charge would occur for even missed appointments

- Saw patients for 50 minute hour - took notes between sessions (not during)

- In earliest sessions, Freud turned lead to patient: “Before I can say anything to you I must know a great deal about you; please tell me what you know about yourself.”

- Freud began instructing on basis of psychoanalysis around the 5th or 6th session (very much against independent reading/studying of psychoanalysis by patient)

- Advised patients not to make important decisions during course of treatment - to limit making of errors in life decisions

- Hold out on interpretation until client is one step short of making it himself or herself.

- Psychoanalysis ends when both analyst and analysand decide to stop seeing one another.


To contact the web manager:
E-mail Colin M. Burchfield, Ph.D.
Use the above link (e.g., image) to purchase my favorite textbook on clinical psychology. Use the below (e.g., image) link to purchase the book from which much of the information on this page came.
Links to Resources on Classical Psychoanalysis:

Psychoanalysis Related Organizations

Psychoanalysis Related Journals

Psychoanalysis Related Books

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Theory 2: This thesis is probably held by most orthodox and classically trained Psychoanalysts: That Freud's 'new' theoretical modifications after he slowly 'dropped' his 'Traumacy' and 'Seduction' Theories were warrented by 'new' clinical evidence and were superior theories based on this 'new' and/or 'accumulative' clinical evidence. Freud's biggest argument seemed to be that these 'alledged' incidents of 'childhood sexual abuse/seduction' were just far too common for Freud to believe that they were all 'real'; that conversely, they represented 'distorted memories and real fantasies of unconcsious childhood wishes on the part of his female clients and that these fantasy-wishes were a "normal" part of their evolving childhood and adult sexual process'. In particular, the little girl's evolving 'romantic/sexual fantasies' towards her father became labelled by Freud in Classical Psychoanalysis as 'The Oedipal Complex'.

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Theory 3: The DGB Psychology Theory: That Freud overgeneralized on his Repressed Memory Theory, he overgeneralized on his Repressed Fantasy/Wish/Impulse Theory, he overgeneralized on his Traumacy Theory, he overgeneralized on his Seduction Theory, he overgeneralized when he abandoned both his Traumacy and Seduction Theory, he overgeneralized on his Oedipal Theory, and he overgeneralized on his Sexual-Libido Theory. In effect, both Pre-Psychoanalysis and Classical were/are full of overgeneralizations that to this day have not been fully compensated for except by differing elements of 'Post-Freudian' and 'anti-Freudian' schools of psychology, each of which have their own unique and particular way of focusing on human behavior and human pathology -- and each of which only sees a 'certain element of the whole of human life and human mental pathology' just like Classical Psychoanalysis still does. As theorists, we all play 'The Fitting Game' (Fritz Perls) where we all make 'boxes' and 'generalizations' and 'theories' most of which generally see 'elements of the whole' but never 'the entire whole'. We all come up with these 'generic theories' -- some better or worse than others -- but none ever 'perfect' enough to encompass the whole of 'human life' and 'human pathology'. There are different ways that we -- meaning theorists and/or therapists -- can play the fitting game. Mostly, a therapist is taught one particular theory and sticks with that theory. However, we can also change and/or modify our theories according to the clinical cases and information that we receive.

The worst thing we can do is try to 'force' our generic theory on case information that doesn't fit the theory. This is a Cardinal Sin amongst theorists and therapists -- and when we are dealing with a theory that handles clinical information that is potentially as emotionally volatile and devastating as The Seduction Theory (or its opposite, The Oedipal Theory) -- with potential legal ramifications to boot -- it is imperative for theorists and/or therapists to either get this information 'absolutely right' and/or at the very least to not make any claims of 'absolute rightness' when the clinical information is based on 'subjective, narcissistically biased testimony' -- or even more dangerously -- therapist interpretation (that is potentially based on the therapist's own projections and/or counter-transferences) that could be right or wrong or anywhere in between. If some father's legal, family, and/or social reputation is at stake -- and the consequences involve the very real potential of his life being ruined -- the people who get involved in this type of case better make sure that they have an iron-clad case of what they are talking about. There is absolutely no room for ethical and/or legal error here because the potential consequences to a 'falsely accused and/or convicted man or woman are so great.

One only has to be reminded of the horrific case of Dr. Charles Smith who's 'seemingly expert' testimony helped to convict numerous parents of 'killing their own babies' -- only to find out significantly later that much of this testimony was fraught with errors and 'not expert at all'. The doctor was totally discredited, his medical license was revoked, and numerous cases came back up for re-investigation -- with some people having spent years in jail already -- based on Smith's 'bad' testimony.

While there are some differences in the two professions here -- childhood forensics vs. psychotherapy -- still, there are many similarities in issues, logic vs. illogic, and horrific consequences that deserve to be seriously looked at and analyzed for their potential for error...Here are two articles relative to the 'Dr. Charles Smith' horror show...

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Court lets dad appeal Dr. Smith baby case
Judge waives deadline to challenge conviction
January 7, 2009

Tracey Tyler

LEGAL AFFAIRS REPORTER


The Ontario Court of Appeal is giving Richard Brant a second chance to prove he didn't kill his 2-month-old baby, contrary to highly damaging findings made by disgraced pathologist Dr. Charles Smith.

Brant's deadline for appealing his 1995 conviction expired more than 13 years ago, but the court yesterday agreed to an extension. Lawyers for Brant, 36, have until Friday to file documents formally setting the appeal process in motion.

"The applicant (Brant) has explained the delay and there is obvious merit to the appeal," Justice Marc Rosenberg said in a written endorsement yesterday, after hearing submissions from Brant's lawyer, James Lockyer, and Crown counsel Alison Wheeler.

Wheeler did not oppose Lockyer's request for a time extension. Brant's case was one of nearly two dozen that led to a recent public inquiry into Ontario's pediatric forensic pathology system.

A team of international forensic experts found Smith, described by Brant's trial lawyer as "the king" of child death investigations, made mistake after mistake and reached findings not supported by evidence.

In Brant's case, Smith concluded 2-month-old Dustin Brant's death in Nov. 1992 was a homicide from blunt-force trauma, likely the result of being shaken. In his findings, he contradicted a neuropathologist who performed an autopsy and found Dustin died of respiratory failure and pneumonia.

In an affidavit filed with the court, Brant, who had originally been charged with manslaughter, said he agreed to accept an offer from the Crown and plead guilty to aggravated assault because he felt he stood no chance against Smith, then a powerful and persuasive witness.

Brant served six months in jail.

Speaking with reporters outside court yesterday, Lockyer said his client and many other parents who were convicted of killing their children on the basis of Smith's testimony share another common denominator. Most, like Brant, had little money.

To this day, Brant, who now lives in New Brunswick, doesn't have the money to fight to clear his name.

As a result, Rosenberg ruled yesterday that Lockyer will have his legal fees covered by the province, as allowed by the Criminal Code, at a rate of $225 an hour. His law student will get $35 an hour.


Toronto Star

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the charles smith blog


Monday, June 9, 2008
Extraordinary Article: Dr. James Le Fanu: Why Have Women Been Wrongly Convicted Of Killing Their Children?

My attention was recently drawn to an extraordinary article entitled: "Expert witnesses, suspect science and dead babies: Why have women been wrongly convicted of killing their children?"

The author is Dr. James Le Fanu - a medical columnist for London's Daily and Sunday Telegraph and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for "The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine" published by Diane Publishing Company in 2001;



The article was published in a feisty medical publication called "Spiked Health" on June 27, 2005.

As a practicing physician, Le Fanu saw first hand the emergence of the dubious proposition that there might be a hidden epidemic of abusive injury of children emerged in the 1980s with the description by British paediatricians of two covert forms of child abuse - factitious illness and smothering - and its tragic results.

Le Fanu's insightful article is preceded by the following quotes:

'PLEASE, IF THERE IS ANY WAY YOU COULD HELP WITH OUR SITUATION, BY YOURSELF OR ANYONE YOU KNOW, COULD YOU PLEASE GET IN TOUCH. WE CAN HONESTLY SAY, HAND ON HEART, WE HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING TO HURT OUR BABY. WE ARE NOW BEEN [SIC] ASSESSED AND WE GOT TOLD [SIC] THAT WHEN WE GO TO THE FINDING OF FACTS HEARING AND WE STILL INSIST WE HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING, OUR TWINS WILL GO UP FOR ADOPTION.';

LETTER FROM PARENT

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'FOR ME, THE UNUSUAL FEATURE IS DEATH SO SOON AFTER BEING SEEN WELL, THE FACT THAT THERE HAVE BEEN PREVIOUS DEATHS IN THE FAMILY AND THE FACT THAT HE HAD HAD AN EPISODE OF SOME SORT ONLY NINE DAYS BEFORE HE DIED THAT CAUSED HIM TO BE ASSESSED IN HOSPITAL, BECAUSE THOSE FEATURES ARE ONES THAT ARE FOUND REALLY QUITE COMMONLY IN CHILDREN WHO HAVE BEEN SMOTHERED BY THEIR MOTHERS. SO THE DIAGNOSIS FOR ME, THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS, WOULD BE THIS WAS CHARACTERISTIC OF SMOTHERING.';

TESTIMONY OF PROFESSOR SIR ROY MEADOW, R V CANNINGS, MARCH 2002;
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THE AUTHORITY OF MEDICINE DERIVES FROM ITS SCIENCE BASE, SO IT WOULD BE REASONABLE TO ASSUME THAT DOCTORS WHEN CALLED ON TO GIVE THEIR EXPERT OPINION IN COURT WOULD HAVE A THOROUGH BALANCED GRASP OF THE RELEVANT SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE. THE SUCCESSFUL APPEALS OF SALLY CLARK AND ANGELA CANNINGS AGAINST THEIR CONVICTIONS FOR CHILD MURDER WOULD SUGGEST OTHERWISE, AS DOES THE RECENT RULING OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL THAT A FURTHER 28 CASES OF PARENTS CONVICTED OF SMOTHERING OR SHAKING THEIR CHILDREN ARE 'POTENTIALLY UNSAFE';

NOR CAN THAT BE ALL, FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERAL'S REVIEW WAS RESTRICTED TO THE CRIMINAL COURTS, AND THUS DOES NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE SEVERAL HUNDRED CASES A YEAR HEARD IN THE FAMILY COURTS WHOSE LESS STRINGENT STANDARDS OF PROOF ('BALANCE OF PROBABILITY' RATHER THAN 'BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT') WOULD FURTHER INCREASE THE RISK OF UNSAFE CONVICTIONS. THUS THE MEDICAL ADVOCACY OF CONTENTIOUS THEORIES OF THE MECHANISMS OF CHILD ABUSE IS LIKELY TO HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR A SYSTEMATIC MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE ON A SCALE WITHOUT PRECEDENT IN BRITISH LEGAL HISTORY - WITH DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES FOR THE PARENTS WRONGLY CONVICTED. HERE I OFFER A 'MASTER THEORY' TO EXPLAIN HOW THIS EXTRAORDINARY SITUATION HAS COME ABOUT.

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The article proceeds as follows:

The hidden epidemic of child abuse;

Since Kempe's description of the 'battered-child syndrome' in 1962, paediatricians have become only too familiar with the burns, bruises, fractures and neglect of the child victim of abusive physical assault. The current concerns about the wrongful diagnosis of child abuse, however, centre on a trio of very different clinical situations whose defining characteristic might be described rather as one of uncertainty or ambiguity.

-- Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) - SIDS remains much the commonest cause of unexpected death in childhood, whose primary aetiology, despite much research, has proved elusive.

-- Childhood injuries - children are by nature accident-prone but sometimes the severity of their injuries might seem disproportionate to the explanation provided.

-- Medically unexplained symptoms - all doctors have patients whose signs and symptoms are difficult to explain.

Doctors are no different from anyone else in being reluctant to admit they 'do not know'. Why, for example, might SIDS affect two or more children in the same family, or how might a seemingly trivial accident cause an acute intracranial injury? Some might thus be unduly susceptible to the notion that the uncertainties arise not from their lack of knowledge or clinical skills but from parental concealment - that each of these ambiguous clinical situations is potentially a form of hidden or covert abuse inflicted by parents in such a way as to hide their intentions from external scrutiny. Further, these clinically ambiguous situations are not uncommon, which would suggest that child abuse is both more prevalent than is widely appreciated and perpetrated by even the most apparently respectable of parents. Paediatricians clearly have a major responsibility in identifying these concealed forms of abuse if they are to protect children from further injury or death.

The evidence for a hidden epidemic of child abuse;

The proposition that there might be a hidden epidemic of abusive injury of children emerged in the 1980s with the description by British paediatricians of two covert forms of child abuse - factitious illness and smothering. Roy Meadow, in his pioneering paper on Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, described two cases illustrating a phenomenon, familiar now but puzzling at the time, where mothers sought the sympathy of doctors and nursing staff by fabricating the symptoms of a perplexing illness in their child that warranted repeated hospital admissions and investigative procedures. In the first case the mother contaminated her six-year-old daughter's urine specimens to simulate recurrent urinary tract infections, while in the second the mother fed her six-week-old son high doses of salt, causing him to be admitted to hospital several times with 'unexplained' hypernatraemia. Four years later Meadow reported a further series of 19 cases in which 'fraudulent clinical histories and fabricated signs' encompassed the entire spectrum of paediatric illness - bleeding from every orifice, neurological symptoms of drowsiness, seizures and unsteadiness, rashes, glycosuria, fevers and 'biochemical chaos'.

The implications of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy were twofold: it alerted doctors to the possibility of fabricated illness as a potential differential diagnosis in children with unexplained symptoms. But it also demonstrated how the seemingly most devoted of parents might, in reality, be potential child abusers. Meadow himself, commenting on the mothers in the cases he described, observed how they were 'very pleasant to deal with, cooperative and appreciative of good medical care'.

David Southall's innovative technique of covert video surveillance for investigating apnoeic episodes in children vividly confirmed the sinister reality of hidden abuse. Now paediatricians attending meetings and conferences could see for themselves the blurry black and white images of mothers caught in the act of smothering or choking their babies. Southall's study widened the spectrum of child abuse in two significant directions. It offered, in smothering, a plausible explanation for why a child might experience recurrent acute life-threatening events necessitating urgent admission to hospital. And it emphasised, once again, the possibility that some at least of those children whose deaths were labelled as SIDS might have been the victims of smothering. Southall in a further report of 30 children undergoing covert video surveillance identified 12 siblings who had died unexpectedly, eight of whom the parents subsequently confessed to having smothered. Thus parental smothering must be a clear possibility in any child with recurrent acute life-threatening events where there has been more than one unexplained childhood death in the family;

The hidden epidemic revealed;

There could be no doubt following Meadow and Southall's findings that paediatricians must have been missing a substantial number of cases of child abuse and would in future need to be much more alert to the possibility of parental harm where the diagnosis was not clear. Frequently, however, such suspicions could not be confirmed with the sort of direct evidence provided by techniques such as covert video surveillance. So how could doctors be confident that covert abuse was the cause - and convince others to take the necessary steps to protect the child from further danger?

Significantly, there were certain similarities in the signs and symptoms of children with these clinically ambiguous situations and those recorded in well-authenticated forms of abuse such as smothering, poisoning and abusive head injury. Thus it seemed reasonable to infer, by extrapolation, that these presentations were 'characteristic' of covert forms of abuse which could then be confidently diagnosed - even in the absence of any other circumstantial evidence such as bruises, signs of neglect or parental history of violence. During the 1980s the trio of clinically ambiguous situations would become redesignated as 'child abuse syndromes'. A key influence was 'Meadow's rule' regarding SIDS. While the absence of reliable pathological findings made it difficult to distinguish SIDS from smothering, Meadow argued that two or more childhood deaths in the same family, along with a recognisable 'pattern' of events (such as previous acute life-threatening episodes) was strongly suggestive of infanticide: 'two is suspicious and three murder unless proved otherwise...';

Another was the proposal that two specific presentations of childhood injury were 'characteristic' of abusive assault. Caffey's original description of shaken baby syndrome suggested that the whiplash effect of vigorous shaking offered a 'reasonable explanation' for the presence of subdural and retinal haemorrhages in severely abused children. The imagery of how the violent to-and-fro movement of the baby's head could cause bleeding of the vessels of the eye and brain proved very persuasive, and it seemed logical to infer that any child presenting with retinal and subdural haemorrhages must have been shaken - despite the absence of other circumstantial evidence of abuse;

Similarly, Caffey attributed a radiological 'bucket handle' appearance of the metaphyses of the long bones in severely abused children as being due to a 'twisting and wrenching' of the child's limbs by the parents. Subsequently, it was suggested that those children in whom abuse was suspected should have a skeletal survey for similar 'suspicious' metaphyseal lesions that were interpreted as being characteristic of abusive assault - again, despite the absence of clinical signs of fracture or subsequent radiological evidence of healing. A third was a widened case definition for Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. Meadow, in his initial series, had confirmed the diagnosis either by covert surveillance or by confronting the perpetrator and obtaining a confession. In a widened definition the presence of 'diagnostic pointers' was proposed for use in children with medically unexplained symptoms. They included:

-- Parents unusually calm for the severity of illness;

-- Parents unusually knowledgeable about the illness;

-- Parents fitting in contentedly with ward life and attention from staff;

-- Symptoms and signs inconsistent with known pathophysiology;

-- Treatments ineffective or poorly tolerated;

The hidden epidemic confirmed;

These novel child abuse syndromes, taken together, represented a major conceptual breakthrough in paediatrics. The uncertainty of clinically ambiguous situations had given place to the certainty of the single unifying and plausible diagnosis of covert abuse. The scale of the hidden epidemic then turned out to be substantially greater than had been expected, with a fourfold increase in the number of child abuse cases in the 10 years from 1978 to 1988. This was reflected regionally in an increase from 40 to over 200 cases a year in the City of Leeds while, by the end of the decade, an extra 7,500 children every year were being placed on the child protection register on the grounds of physical abuse;

Nonetheless, the facility with which the syndromes could bring to light covert abuse concealed from view their poor evidential basis. The causal link between the putative mechanism of assault and subsequent injury could be neither independently confirmed nor experimentally investigated. It might seem reasonable to extrapolate from the presence of retinal and subdural haemorrhages in the battered child that these features had the same significance in a child with no other circumstantial evidence of injury. Certainly the powerful imagery of violent shearing forces disrupting the blood vessels was persuasive, but shaking has never been directly observed or proven to cause such injuries; the supposition that they do is based on (contested) theories of biomechanics;

Rather, the legitimacy of the syndromes was predicated on two related and highly improbable assumptions, scientific and legal. The scientific assumption was that there could be no other explanation, either known or that might be discovered at some time in the future, that might explain these 'characteristic' presentations. Meadow's 'rule', for example, precluded the possibility that there might be some unknown genetic explanation for multiple unexpected childhood deaths in the same family, while the 'characteristic' pattern of shaken baby syndrome precluded the possibility of some alternative explanation for the retinal and subdural haemorrhages - such as an acute increase in retinal venous pressure from intracranial bleeding caused by accidental head injury. The legal assumption presupposed that these presentations were so specific for abuse that they were by themselves sufficient to secure a conviction - even in the absence of the sort of circumstantial evidence of violence or neglect that would normally be required to return a guilty verdict in a court of law.

Put another way, the 'characteristic' presentations of the syndromes could not sustain the interpretation placed upon them: they might be 'consistent with' but could not, by themselves, be 'diagnostic of' child abuse. Thus some at least of the parents contributing to the statistics of the fourfold rise in child abuse were likely to be innocent. Three additional factors, in particular, bolstered the credibility of the syndromes in the family and criminal courts.

The authority of the child abuse expert;

By the close of the 1980s, the leading experts in child abuse had acquired an international reputation and were thus called on to instruct and educate not just their fellow paediatricians but also the police, lawyers, social workers and judges in the child abuse syndromes. Their persuasive expert opinion, when expressed in court, was guaranteed a sympathetic hearing, while their confidence in the syndromes they had discovered was virtually unchallengeable. Further, they could scarcely accept the force of contrary evidence since to do so would require them to concede that their expert testimonies might, in similar cases, have resulted in wrongful conviction. Meanwhile the costs of the process of investigating allegations arising out of the child abuse syndromes rose to an estimated £1billion per year, with the more prominent experts receiving fees for the preparation of their reports and appearances in court in excess of £100,000 a year;

The circular argument of successful convictions;

The validity of the child abuse syndromes would appear to be confirmed by the high proportion of successful convictions that followed the courts' careful scrutiny of the allegations against parents. These convictions, however, came to rely increasingly on a circular argument - whereby the main evidence for the child abuse syndrome of which the parents were accused was that parents had been convicted of it in the past. Thus parents whose child presents with subdural and retinal haemorrhages are accused of inflicting shaken baby syndrome because, in the vast majority of cases, parents of children with subdural and retinal haemorrhages are convicted of causing shaken baby syndrome. Similarly, Meadow argued that 'the likelihood that the court verdicts about parental responsibility for [causing their children's death] were correct was very high indeed', without making clear that it was his expert testimony that repetitive SIDS was 'murder unless proved otherwise' that had been a major factor in securing those convictions;

There is a further element of circularity in the presumed pathogenesis of the syndrome of which the parents are accused. The theory of shaken baby syndrome presupposes that violent, abusive force (comparable, it is claimed, to that sustained in a high-speed road traffic accident or a fall from a second storey window) is necessary to cause retinal and subdural haemorrhages. The parents are then caught in the catch-22 of either confessing to the alleged assault (for which they might be offered the inducement 'if you say you did it we will let you have your child back') or denying it, in which case their denial is evidence they must be lying about the events surrounding their child's injury, which is then further evidence of their guilt;

The silencing of parents;

The forces of expertise ranged against the parents were formidable enough, but it is apparent too from their personal accounts that they were subjected to a series of intimidatory tactics to silence their protestations of innocence and deny the validity of their testimony as the only witnesses of the circumstances surrounding their child's injury or death. Thus parents describe how, when summoned to see the consultant to learn (they presume) about their child's progress, they were 'ambushed' with the diagnosis of, for example, shaken baby syndrome, presented to them as irrefutable fact ('your son must have been violently shaken for several minutes to cause these injuries') without any suggestion that there could be some alternative explanation.

The prompt involvement of the police and social workers would lead to further accusatory interrogations that begin from the principle that the parents must be guilty - as the doctors would not have made such serious accusations if they were not convinced they were true. The transcript of these interrogations would subsequently be turned against them in court so that any inconsistencies in their explanations of how their child's injuries might have occurred were then presented as evidence of their efforts to conceal their guilt. Parents describe the same pattern of events where they would only be informed late on a Friday evening that a preliminary court hearing had been arranged for the following Monday morning - thus leaving them the weekend to find a lawyer (who was unlikely to have any expertise in this field) to contest their child being taken into foster care;

These psychological tactics were a prelude to the yet more powerful intimidatory weapon of technical obscurantism - the description of their child's injuries and couching of the charges against them in a language in which the professionals were fluent but the bewildered parents were not. How could they hope to dispute the allegations when they did not know what was being talked about? Parents are of course entitled to seek their own expert opinion, but soon discovered that the overwhelming consensus about the validity of the child abuse syndromes meant it was very difficult to find anyone to argue in their defence; or worse, the expert reports they requested were actively detrimental to their case;

This silencing of parents was made more effective still by the rules of confidentiality that wrap the proceedings of the family courts in a cocoon of secrecy, making parents liable to a charge of contempt of court if they sought advice or support from anyone not directly involved in their case. This secrecy in turn protected the proceedings of the court, and in particular the testimony of expert witnesses, from external scrutiny while concealing from public view the spectacle of so many apparently respectable parents being convicted of inflicting these terrible injuries on their children - without any circumstantial evidence that they had done so.

For parents there was no escaping their fate. From the moment of the initial allegation against them, the alliance of medical experts, police, social workers and an unsympathetic judiciary - well organised, experienced and well financed - meant that their eventual conviction was almost a foregone conclusion. Nonetheless, the two assumptions, scientific and legal, of the specificity of the syndromes as being diagnostic of abuse remained as insecure as ever, with the courts' willingness to convict parents in the absence of circumstantial evidence of abuse resting almost entirely on their faith in the reliability and trustworthiness of medical expert opinion.

The first sign that such faith might be misplaced came in 2003 during Sally Clark's successful appeal, with the revelation of 'fundamental errors' in the testimony of Meadow and other prominent experts that had resulted in her original conviction. Their credibility was further undermined by Justice Judge's Appeal Court ruling exonerating Angela Cannings of murdering her two children. Justice Judge dismissed the central plank of the prosecution case, Meadow's claim that there had been a 'pattern of events' leading up to the deaths of children that was 'characteristic' of smothering: 'We doubt the aptness of the description "pattern"...the history of each child was different from every other child.' Further research would refute Meadow's claim (as reflected in his 'rule') that recurrent SIDS in the same family was 'extremely rare' - in other words, that in such cases the cause was likely to be unnatural. On the contrary, a follow-up study of SIDS families found two or more deaths in the same family to be 'not uncommon' with the overwhelming majority (80-90 per cent) due to natural causes. There are, it has subsequently emerged, several genetic mechanisms that could account for recurrent SIDS including congenital visceroautonomic dysfunction and cardiac dysrhythmias;

Similarly, further research has undermined the validity of retinal and subdural haemorrhages as being characteristic of shaken baby syndrome, with an evidence-based review finding 'serious data gaps, flaws of logic and inconsistency of case definition' in the relevant scientific work. Shaken baby syndrome was not, as its name implied, a 'syndrome', but rather encompassed several different forms of brain injury, with different clinical history and neuropathology, involving some mechanism other than shaking to account for the presence of retinal haemorrhages. Thus a series of independently witnessed accidents confirmed that, as parents had maintained, minor falls could cause an acute subdural bleed with the retinal haemorrhages being due to a sudden rise in retinal venous pressure (44). Further, parental histories of a preceding episode of respiratory collapse were compatible with the very different pathological findings of anoxic brain damage, with disturbance of the microcirculation causing thin subdural and retinal haemorrhages;

Meanwhile, the widened definition of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy based on 'diagnostic pointers' has also resulted in wrongful convictions, with the child's unexplained symptoms proving to be due to some rare or unusual medical condition with which the doctor was not familiar. Subsequently the syndrome would be renamed 'factitious illness' in recognition of the fact that, while some parents may fabricate the symptoms of their child's illness, the combination of unexplained symptoms and the mother's personality profile did not constitute a syndrome of abuse. Finally, radiologists' misinterpretation of normal variants of ossification in the first year of life as being metaphyseal fractures accounts for the obvious discrepancy between the findings of multiple fractures on skeletal survey and the absence of any clinical signs of abusive injury;

This serial collapse of the improbable scientific assumption that there could be no explanation other than abuse for the characteristic presentation of these syndromes has exposed in turn the equally improbable legal assumption that, contrary to sound judicial practice, it is possible to convict parents without there being additional circumstantial evidence or reasonable motive for their abusive intentions. Thus Justice Judge would, in his exoneration of Angela Cannings, draw attention to 'the absence of the slightest evidence of physical interference which might support the allegation she had deliberately harmed them'. And, again, he emphasised how 'the absence of any indication of ill temper or ill treatment of any child at any time' and 'the evidence of both her family and outsiders about the love and care she bestowed on her children' made it extraordinarily unlikely that she might have smothered them. Justice Judge's exoneration of Angela Cannings' character as a loving mother focuses attention on the moral and judgmental dimension of the child abuse syndromes, arising from extrapolation from Meadow's original description of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, that all parents are potential child abusers. Is this extrapolation plausible? The psychological profile of those who unambiguously have harmed their children reveals, as would be expected, them to be psychopaths, criminals, opioid abusers, alcoholics and so on. So when parents such as Angela Cannings, with no blemish on their character, appear as loving, concerned parents, the likelihood must be that it is because they are loving concerned parents - and very powerful evidence is required to argue otherwise.

Meadow and the proponents of the child abuse syndromes necessarily take the contrary view, and in so doing are required to portray parents' protestations of innocence as deceitful. That moral judgment, together with the failure to recognise that medical knowledge may be incomplete, meant that Angela Cannings' wrongful conviction for infanticide was almost inevitable. The question remains how many other parents have similarly been wrongly convicted of the terrible crime of injuring their children, and been robbed of their families, livelihoods and good name.

Next Post: A critique of this article by Dr Michael Fitzpatrick as published in "Spiked Health."

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DGB

In Conclusion:

The best that we can say regarding the whole 'Seduction Theory' vs. 'Oedipal Theory' is that:

1. 'Every case is different and each case needs to be thorough analyzed and judged on its own particular merits and idiosyncrisies';

2. Beware of so-called 'expert testimony' whether it is Classical Freudian (Oedipal) or pre-Classic-Freudian (Seduction) Theory;

3. Let us not lose focus on that most important democratic principle that a man or woman is innocent until proven guilty.

4. If in doubt, remain skeptical -- and don't turn 'subjectively biased testimony' into 'righteous truth or fact'.

5. Both Freud's early 'Traumacy-Seduction' Theory and his later 'Impulse-Restraint' Ideas are deserved of proper recognition and respect -- and should be combined into a more comprehensive Integrative Theory. How tightly -- or whether at all -- one wants to hold onto Freud's Oedipal Theory is a matter for further debate. I accept it 'metaphorically' or 'symbolically' but not literally; similarily, with Freud's 'psycho-sexual stages of development';

6. Adler, Jung, Ferenczi, Klein, Fairbairn, Berne, Kohut, Perls, and others all had legitimately good things to say on much of this inter-related clinical material and all deserve to be properly read and studied for anyone who is a psychotherapist -- or thinking of being one.


-- dgb, Feb. 28th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

Words, Words, Words...DGB Philosophy vs. Ayn Rand...and Milton Friedman...

It doesn't take much for philosophy to disintegrate into a 'soap opera' -- and a 'disaster' of words.

Ayn Rand said this, Ayn Rand said that. We are the 'true' educators of Ayn Rand Philosphy. Don't trust this 'faction' or that 'faction'. Trust only us.

How did Milt Friedman's philosophical ideas connect and/or disconnect with Ayn Rand's ideas? Did the two like each other and their respective ideas? Or not?

What caused the break-up in philosophical 'similarity of approach' between Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden? When I was writing my Honours Thesis in Psychology in 1979, they seemed to be on the 'same page together'. Much of the early part of my thesis was based on Branden's 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem' which in turn was very much influenced by the philosophy of Ayn Rand. What happened that they -- 'disconnected'?

Throw in Noam Chomsky's philosophical ideas -- quite the opposite of both Ayn Rand's and Milton Friedman's -- and the philosophical dialectic becomes even more complicated.

Words, words, words...and the ever elusive search for their 'meaning'...

Who said what? When? Where? Do we have that in writing? Do we have it in an interview?

Who's right? Who's wrong?

Where is that every elusive place of 'homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance'?

Or is that even a goal that some -- or any -- of these philosophers are chasing?

Two of these philosophers -- Milton Friedman and Aynd Rand -- are pretty far right wing.

Chomsky is a known socialist -- although a good one, I believe -- a 'humanistic-socialist'. Similar to Erich Fromm in a lot of respects. Nice to see a man who lists both Adam Smith and Karl Marx amongst his philosophical influences. It seems obvious that Karl Marx has had the greater influence.

I can respect the work of both a 'good Capitalist' and a 'good Socialist'. I list Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Karl Marx, Erich Fromm, Noam Chomsky -- and whatever economic affiliate that Naomi Klein attaches herself to amongst the people I include in this category. Any yet none of them are beyond reproach. Not of them are infallible when it comes to logic, reason, and ethics...We are all too human, too human to try to believe that anyone of us has philosophically and/or politically and/or economically captured 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth' -- about anything.

Everyone is epistemologically and ethically fallible -- including Ayn Rand herself who almost talked and wrote like the 'reincarnation of Apollo' himself -- the God of Light and Reason and Truth.

With all due respect to Ayn Rand -- and I respect her ideas greatly -- I cannot but be amused by the irony I see in the fact that when Rand writes about 'reason' it is almost like she is writing about it with a Capital 'R' -- as in 'Reason'. She wrote about Reason like Plato wrote about 'The Forms' and like Hegel wrote about 'The Absolute' and like Kant wrote about 'The Noumenal World' -- like 'Reason' was some sort of 'Gift From God' and that we all just have to 'turn onto the right channel, the right frequency' -- 'The Frequency From God, The Frequency From Apollo' -- and we will all just magically 'know' what is 'good' vs. 'bad' reasoning.

Or maybe we just have to turn onto 'The Ayn Rand Frequency of Reason' and we will all just somehown magically know how to reason better -- and to live a better life.
A life of 'self-interest'. A life built around 'The Virtue of Selfishness'.

And this she calls 'ethics'. As if anyone would then need to study ethics to know what 'self-interest' and 'selfishness' is all about.

But then, maybe we all need to get a PHD in 'Ayn Rand Philosophy' -- or 'Objectivism' -- to know fully what Ayn Rand meant by 'rational self-interst' and/or 'the virtue of selfishness'.

I would hope that she would not equate it with what just happened on Wall Street last fall before Obama became President -- and that she would not equate it with all of these CEOs and corporate executives on Wall St. pleading for 'Washington Bailout Money' to compensate for their gross financial mistakes -- and greed -- and then turned around on Washington after they did indeed get their first package of bailout money -- and basically said, 'Thank you very much, as they took their golden parachute money and corporate bonuses, and retirement or severance packages -- and thumbed their noses at both the Washington politicians who gave them this money as well as, indirectly, the taxpayers on Main Street -- both those who lost their houses and those who didn't -- who I'm sure did not believe that their excruciatingly hard earned, and lost, tax money was going to be so abusively used, or misused, in this fashion.

I can't see Ayn Rand advocating this type of 'Capitalism' because Capitalism in this fashion -- which I call 'Narcissistic Capitalism' -- espouses the anti-thesis of everything that Ayn Rand I believe stood for in both 'The Fountainhead' and in 'Atlas Shruggged' -- specifically, the one word we might call 'integrity'.

So for Ayn Rand -- and her particular brand of philosophy, 'Objectivism' -- the challenge as I see it is to get 'Capitalism, Self-Interest, Selfishness -- and Integrity' all on the same page together, not an easy feat at all. Indeed, this is where I believe Ayn Rand's brand of Capitalistic Philososphy self-destructs under its own weight. Because inevitably, self-interest collapses into selfishness, which collapses into unbridled greed and narcissism. Which collapses into a world of 'Lord of The Flies' -- of distrust, paranoia, disrespect, and all the 'sophism' that each and every person can get away with. All spirit of 'co-operation' and 'working as a team' collapses under the philosophy that every worker has to 'check to see who's going into the manager's office next' and 'who's stabbing my back to get the proper management networking in place for the next promotion'...

One of the best ways of differentiating between 'Ethical Capitalism' and 'Narcissistic Capitalism' is by noting who works the hardest when the manager isn't around and who works the manager's office the hardest when the manager is around.'

As far as Milton Friedman, I don't think his brand of Capitalism even pretended to be as ethical as Ayn Rand's brand of Capitalism.

With Milton Friedman, it is to be assumed that all stockholders want the highest profits possible for the company they own. And it is the job of the corporate executives to 'deliver the goods'. Everything else is secondary as long as it is legal. A corporate executive has the choice of quitting if he or she doesn't like the particular 'brand of ethics' that is being passed down from the top. Otherwise, he or she does what he or she is told to do -- just like any good 'military man'. Authoritarianism rules. 'Shoot to kill.' Wipe out the people who are getting in the way of the maximum profits of the company. It's the American Way. Or at least the 'Milton Friedman' way. Pushed to the maximum by the applications of Bush and his Friedman brand of Republicans. Now Friedman would argue that America should never have invaded Iraq.

That is one thing we can agree on.

Philosophically, I am looking for a different brand of Capitalism -- different partly from both Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand although probably much closer to the aspired Capitalism of Ayn Rand with a more 'dialectic-democratic, humanistic-existential twist to it -- what I call, 'DGB Dialectic-Democratic, Humanistic-Existential Capitalism'.


Don't ask me what that is completely right now because I don't know.

It is just an abstract vision that needs to be worked out in more concrete detail. And I doubt if I can do it alone.

But incorporated into it will be my usual philosophical mentors: Hegel, Aristotle (the 'middle' path), Bacon, Locke, Adam Smith, Diderot, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Nietzsche, Abraham Lincoln, Eisenhower, Karl Marx, Erich Fromm, Ayn Rand, Foucault, Derrida, Chomsky...

I support 'individualism' -- but individualism in a social and political and economic context of 'Kantian ethics' of 'positive and negative reciprocity' -- 1. treating others like we would want to be treated ourselves; and 2. not treating others like we would not want to be treated ourselves.

That is enough for today.


-- dgb, Feb. 24th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

Freud's Causal Interpretations -- and Generalizations -- about 'The Ateology of Hysteria'

Freud and Joseph Breuer made a good team -- as short-lived as it turned out to be.

Breuer was the older and in some ways the wiser of the two. He was more conservative and cautious with his 'causal interpretations and generalizations'. He was the more 'grounded' of the two. He was the better 'rational-empiricist' in that he was not quite so quick to jump to fast fast conclusions and over-generalizations.

In contrast, Freud was younger and more ambitious. Freud was quicker to jump to new -- and more provocative, controversial, dramatic -- conclusions. Freud was the better 'marketer' and 'seller'. It's just you had to pay a little closer attention to what Freud was marketing and selling because Freud was quicker to 'jump off the deep end' with his conclusions. When this happened, Freud needed someone to 'reel him back to earth again'. Breuer was that man. Unfortunately, Freud was stubborn and would not take 'no' for an answer. It was his way or the highway. So Breuer took the highway leaving Freud to fend for himself and to deal with whatever provocative, controversial issues he got himself into. They were frequent -- and many.

However, Freud was charismatic and always seemed to attract -- and then lose -- male followers. This would be one of the main 'serial, transference patterns' in Freud's life. Freud would attract all these male 'followers', 'co-workers', and/or students. He would teach them his 'Psychoanalytic system'. Then he would 'spit them out' (or they would 'spit him out') when they 'refused to buy completely into the Psychoanalytic program'.

With Freud, there was not too much room for 'variations on a theme' unless these variations came from the mouth of Freud. Between about 1906 and 1926, a whole host of very brilliant pschologists had passed through Freud's very 'tight Vienna circle', made their impression, rebelled against Freud's very 'tight reign over Freudian theory' -- and either quickly or slowly left. We can included amongst this group: Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Sandor Ferenczi, and Otto Rank. (And that is a select list.)

All of this is to say that Psychoanalysis could have offered a much, much richer playing field for understanding human behavior and human neurosis and/or psychopathology. But time and time again, smart men with very smart ideas were turned away by Freud -- to the ongoing and ultimate detriment of Psychoanalysis in terms of its very 'anal-retentive' development which can be viewed as a projection of Freud's very anal-retentive -- and largely 'unemotional' -- character.

Breuer was the first smart man to fall by the way side. He would be far from the last.

Between about 1893 and 1895 Freud and Breuer came up with a 'whole host of partial and interconnected sub-theories' on the various 'causes' and/or 'co-factors' of hysteria which they put together into a more or less integrative theory of hysteria.

Having said this, it could be argued that Breuer's strength was primarily as a scientist and as a doctor -- and his contribution to the 'cause of hysteria' was a more or less 'physio-genic' theory of hysteria that went nowhere. In contrast, Freud's contribution to the 'cause of hysteria' was a psychological one, and a 'theory of resistance or defense' -- that went everywhere. So maybe Breuer had reached the limit of his capabilities even though his greatest contribution to Psychoanalysis was his treatment of 'Anna O' which Freud freely acknowledged as the birthpoint of Psychoanalysis.

Off the top of my head, I will itemize most of the Freudian 'hysterical co-factors' -- and then check them later.

1. Shock: A shocking experience that rattles the personality.

2. Unconscious/Repressed Memory or Memories: The memory of the shocking experience doesn't go through the usual 'conscious memory channel'. Rather it is denied entry into the personality and enters an 'unconscious or repressed memory channel' which is totally different than the usual conscious memory channel.

3. Hysterical Conversion: From its vantage point in the unconcious memory channel, the memory is able to 'cause havoc' in the personality and in the body. 'Repressed emotional energy' gets converted into 'bodily symptoms' that often have an associative and/or symbolic connection with the original shocking experience.

4. There may be something in the 'hysterical personality' that may be 'hyper-sensitive' and prone to 'hysterical conversion pathway'.

5. Unlock the repressed memory -- complete with all emotions locked up with the memory -- and you unlock the hysterical symptom, and 'set the client free' of the particular symptom associated with the particular memory.

6. I am speculating here but I imagine that one of the main problems that a therapist like Breuer or Freud might have had with a hysterical patient is that as fast as you help 'cure' the patient of one symptom, the patient might well 'create one or more new ones'. In doing so, she has the creative capability of keeping you busuy as a therapist for either the rest of her life or the rest of yours.

Here is where the full 'transference relationship' can be seen and diagnosed. It was often the case that these young hysterical women were also 'home nurses' who treated their acutely and chronically sick fathers who, in this regard, were monopolizing all of their time and energy.

How could these women 'break free' of their fathers' constant needs in order to fulfill some of their own 'freedom' and 'womanly' needs? Presto. On a subconscious or unconscious level the women learn how to behave like their fathers were -- i.e., the hysterical young women, in effect, 'identify with their sick fathers'.

Now from a position of previous 'powerlessness', they are 'transferred' into a position of 'power' -- just like their sick father. This is the power of the sick.

The young women go to a doctor with very 'mystifying' symptoms. The doctor is 'stumped' and can't help them. They go to another doctor -- a 'neurological' and/or 'psychological' specialist.

The 'hysterical daughter of a sick father' -- quickly becomes subconsciously very creative in keeping the new doctor 'very busy' just like her father has very creatively kept his daughter busy for the last x number of years.

What goes around comes around. I call this 'transference-reversal'. From an 'underdog' position as 'nurse', the daughter quickly learns the 'power-advantage' of playing the role of 'hysterical patient' -- she gets to control the young doctor just as her sick father controls her. It's more 'fun' 'being in control', 'being in power' and controlling the young doctor.

At least until or unless the young doctor is finally smart enough to figure out what is going on. That is where the therapy really starts. It starts with understanding the full dynamics of the transference complex and the corresponding nature of the therapeutic transference relationship. In 1895, Freud hadn't quite gotten there yet. And I'm not sure he ever fully did.

Transference is not always about 'sex' and/or 'love'. Even more often, it is about 'power' and 'self-esteem' and 'aiming to undo or repair a narcissistic self-esteem injury'. Often, all the factors listed above -- and more (anxiety, guilt, anger, rage, jealousy, possessiveness, hate, revenge...) are 'mixed together' into a whole smorgasboard of different and conflicting emotions and impulses and restraints that make up the entire 'transference package or complex'.

Call this my 'Nietzschean-Adlerian-Jungian' influence when I say this. Freud had part of the transference picture figured out -- more so than anyone else at the time -- but he did not have all of it figured out. Not in 1895. Not when he was treating 'Dora' from 1900-1901. And not when he came to associate transference with 'the repetition compulsion' and 'the death instinct' late in his career.

Freud was constantly hampered in his theorizing about transference by the 'tight constraints of his own very anal-retentive theorizing about Psychoanalysis in general'. Probaby the theorist who could have helped him the most in his understanding of transference -- Alfred Adler with his theories of 'inferiority feeling', 'superiority striving', and 'compensation' -- was not around long enough and/or respected enough for his deviation off the 'main Psychoanalytic path' to have any significant and long-lasting impact on Freud's understanding of transference.

For the briefest moment in history -- specifically, Nov. 7th, 1906, in the minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society -- Freud and Adler seemed fully on the same page together:

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From 'The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society Meetings', Nov. 7th, 1906...



Freud first turns against Hitschmann and his 'rationalistic' point of view.

He (Freud) attributes great importance to Adler's work; it has brought his own work a step further. To judge from the immediate impression, much of what Adler said may be correct. (Notes by the editors, Herman Nunberg and Ernst Federn: It seems that Freud had in mind what was later characterized as overcompensation or counterbalance for a narcissisitic 'injury' although he uses 'anatomical' language here.)

He singled out two leading ideas as significant and fertile: (1) the concept of compensation, according to which an organic inferiority (later to include the idea of 'psychic inferiority') is counterbalanced by a supervalent cerebral activity, and (2) that the repression is accomplished by the formation of a psychic superstructure. A similar formulation had occurred to him. (Notes by the editors, Nunberg and Federn: This may refer to the formulation that repression is accomplished by the ego.)

Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, Volume 1: 1906-1908, Edited by Herman Nunberg and Ernst Federn, New York, International Universities Press, Inc., 1962.

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But this was only a fleeting moment in time -- and the rest is history -- Adler ultimately, like so many others, separating from Freud and developing his own school of psychology -- Adlerian or Individual Psychology.

DGB Philosophy-Psychology goes back to re-integrate some of the separated pieces.

In the case of 'Anna O', one of the distinctions that DGB Psychology wants to make is between a simple case of 'Traumacy Neurosis' -- say, in the form of an 'emotional-to-physical hysterical conversion' symptom (such as Anna O 'refusing to drink) -- and a full-blown 'Father-Complex Transference Neurosis' (such as between Anna O and Joseph Breuer or between Freud and Dora).

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From the internet...see Freud, Anna O, and her 'not drinking water'...

Cathartic Method


Psychoanalysis: Cathartic Method
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The so-called "cathartic method" was a treatment for psychiatric disorders developed during 1881-1882 by Joseph Breuer with his patient "Anna O." The aim was to enable the hypnotized patient to recollect the traumatic event at the root of a particular symptom and thereby eliminate the associated pathogenic memory through "catharsis." The term was derived from Aristotle's use of it to describe the emotionally purgative effect of Greek tragedies.

Reading the case history of Anna O., one sees that the method developed gradually. At first, Breuer limited himself to making use of the patient's self-induced hypnotic states in which she would strive to express what she preferred to avoid talking about when normally conscious. Later on, Anna O. began inventing stories around a word or words she heard, at the conclusion of which she awakened serene and improved. After the death of her father, such stories evoked diurnal fears and hallucinations. The cathartic effect, linked to the emotional state that accompanied these fears, required the doctor to listen without actively seeking etiological clues. Anna O. aptly described this procedure, speaking seriously, as a "talking cure", while she referred to it jokingly as "chimney-sweeping" (1895d, p. 30). At this juncture Breuer began to more systematically employ a technique by which, while Anna O. was in a trance, he repeated to her a few words that she herself had muttered while in a self-induced "absence."

It was probably in August 1881 that the method acquired its definitive form. This was when Anna O., after refusing to drink water and suffering near-hydrophobia during hot weather, remembered the disgust she felt when she happened upon her English lady-companion's dog while it was drinking from a water glass. As soon as she described the event, she asked for water and "thereupon the disturbance vanished, never to return" (p. 35) Other examples provided Breuer with evidence that "in the case of this patient the hysterical phenomena disappeared as soon as the event which had give rise to them was reproduced in her hypnosis" (p. 35), and that systematic application of what she called "chimney sweeping" would put an end to one after another of such morbid phenomena. To move the treatment along faster, Breuer began use hypnosis, which he had not regularly employed previously.

Freud and Breuer filled out the notion of catharsis with the concept of "abreaction"—a quantity of affect that was linked to memory of a traumatic and pathogenic event that could not be evacuated through normal physical and organic processes as required by the "principle of constancy" and so, thus blocked (eingeklemmt), was redirected through somatic channels to become the process at the origin of the pathological symptoms (1893a).

Tired of poor results and of the monotony of hypnotic suggestion, by 1889 Freud appears to have decided, in treating Emmy von N., to employ "the cathartic method of J. Breuer." But failure to regularly induce hypnotic states inclined him by 1892 to give up hypnosis, which his patient Elisabeth von R. disliked. He asked her to lay down and close her eyes but allowed her to move about or open her eyes as she wished, and he experimented with a "pressure technique": "I placed my hand on the patient's forehead or took her head between my hands and said: 'You will think of it [a symptom or its origin] under the pressure of my hand. At the moment at which I relax my pressure you will see something in front of you or something will come into your head. Catch hold of it. It will be what we are looking for.—Well, what have you seen or what has occurred to you?" (Freud 1895d, p. 110). This procedure "has scarcely ever left me in the lurch since then," (p. 111) Freud added, claiming that this was the case to such an extent that he told patients that it could not possibly fail but invariably enabled him to "at last [extract] the information" (p. 111).

Breuer's method little by little thus became an "analysis of the psyche" which prefigured "psychoanalysis," a term that first appeared in print in 1896. The technique would be developed progressively over the course of a dozen years.By 1907, when Freud undertook analysis of the "Rat Man," he no longer actively demanded that patients produce material, but asked only that they verbalize what spontaneously came to mind.

Freud's thesis, according to which trauma at the root of displaced energy towards the soma is invariably sexual in nature, led to a rupture in his relationship with Breuer, but it also determined the future course of psychoanalysis. His explanation of the difficulties that patients experienced during treatment to defend themselves against pathogenic memories would come to be known as "resistance," while the concept of "transference" would emerge from his understanding of Breuer's sudden termination of Anna O., or the time that a patient, upon waking from hypnosis, threw her arms around his neck.

Catharsis and abreaction, even while still observed during psychoanalytic treatment, no longer constitute therapeutic aims as in 1895. However, they remain prominent in several psychotherapeutic techniques, such as in "Primal Scream" therapy and certain types of psychodrama.

Bibliography

Anderson, Ola. (1962). Studies in the prehistory of psychoanalysis. Stockholm: Svenska Bokförlaget.

Chertok Léon; and Saussure, Raymond de. (1973). Naissance du psychanalyste. Paris: Payot.

Freud, Sigmund. (1893a). On the psychical mechanism of hysterical phenomena: Preliminary communication. SE,2.

——. (1895d). Studies on Hysteria. SE, 2: 48-106.

Mijolla Alain de. (1982). Aux origines de la pratique psychanalytique. In R. Jaccart (Ed.), Histoire de la psychanalyse. Paris: Hachette.

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DGB Psychology does not let Freud totally off the hook for abandoning his infamous 'Seduction Theory'. In doing so, Freud put 'the theoretical and therapeutic lid back on child sexual abuse' or 'swept it under the carpet' if you will. However, at the same time, DGB Psychology does not let Freud off the hook for his totally focusing on 'The Seduction Theory' to begin with. Nowhere have I read in the case of 'Anna O' that she was sexually abused by her father. Nor does Anna O's 'refusing to drink water' because 'a dog drank water out of a human glass' constitute anything close to 'The Seduction Theory' in my mind (unless the dog seduced Anna O). Freud had an unfortuante habit of overgeneralizing his theoretical conclusions -- and then 'grandstanding' these conclusions until they collapsed under the weight of his own overgeneralizing. 'One or two robins does not necessarily mean spring.' Any man of Freud's scientific background and training should know that. Sometimes a person's need to 'make scientific or social or political waves' can interfere with, and push into the back seat, the same person's need to 'stay grounded in good, logical, rational-empirical common sense'. Narcissistic bias can easily interfere with scientific, epistemological -- and Psychoanalytic -- evolution.

DGB Psychology mixes and matches elements of Freud's Traumacy, Seduction, Childhood Sexuality, Oedipal, and Life-Death Instinct Theory with elements from other theorists such as Bacon, Nietzsche, Adler, Jung, Fairbairn, Berne, Perls, and Masson.

More on this to come.


-- dgb, Feb. 21st-23rd, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

Freud, Psychoanalysis, Hysteria -- and Childhood Sexual Abuse

I am about to embark on what I view as one of my most difficult tasks as a philosopher and psycho-theorist. I have to go back into Psychoanalytic history -- back to between about 1885 and 1900 and determine for myself what 'right' and 'wrong' turns Freud made when he was learning about -- and treating -- 'hysteria', learning about the connection between hysteria and sexuality, learning about the connection between hysteria and childhood sexuality, and finally learning about the connection between hysteria and childhood sexual traumacy and/or childhood sexual abuse.

Freud was a very provocative and controversial man -- he generally did not run away from provocative and controversial opinions. In fact, he tended to run towards them -- not away from them. Provocative, controversial opinions and theories were 'the name and essence of his character and game' if you will. Psychoanalysis was nothing if it was not provocative and controversial -- particulary about issues of human sexuality.

And yet in the late 1970s, along came another very provocative and controversial man -- trained right here in my area at The University of Toronto as a Freudian Psychoanalyst (1971-1979) while I was finishing up my Honours B.A. in psychology at The University of Waterloo. Jeffrey Masson is one of my few philosophical and psychological mentors (that I know of) who is still very much alive -- and much 'cooking'. Well, back between about 1979 and let us say 1992, Jeffrey Masson sure 'cooked up a storm' in The Freudian Establishment -- kind of like Carl Jung, first viewed as the fastest rising young star in the Freudian World, gaining the trust of Anna Freud at the top of the Freudian hierarchy, gaining access to Freud's most private letters in The Freudian Archives -- and then 'all Hell started to break loose' as Masson obviously didn't like what he was reading...

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

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is a writer who lives with his family in New Zealand. He has a 32-year-old daughter, Simone, who works with animals in California. His wife Leila is a pediatrician (visit her website) and they have two sons: Ilan (10) and Manu (5). They live on a beach in Auckland with three cats and three rats.

Jeff has a Ph.D. in Sanskrit from Harvard University. He was Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Toronto. While at the university he trained as a Freudian analyst (from 1971-1979) graduating as a full member of the International Psycho-Analytical Association. In 1980 he became Project Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives.

Given access to Freud's papers in London and the Library of Congress, his research led him to believe that Freud made a mistake when he stopped believing that the source of much human misery lay in sexual abuse. Masson's view was so controversial within traditional analytic circles that he was fired from the archives and had his membership in the international society taken away. Janet Malcolm has written a book about this episode (In the Freud Archives - the subject of a libel suit by Masson) and Jeff has published a series of books critical of Freud, psychoanalysis, psychiatry and therapy.

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Masson basically accused Freud of running away from the issue of childhood sexual abuse after bumping into this very difficult problem in his clinical practise, first incorporating the issue of childhood sexual abuse in one of his earliest and most provocative essays and theories on 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' -- and then something 'very funny happened on the way to the forum' -- Freud essentially 'abandoned' this theoretical position and started to develop one equally provocative and controversial -- but not as legally provocative and controversial -- specifically, Freud began to develop the idea of 'childhood sexuality' and 'childhood sexual fantasies' as opposed to 'real, live sexual traumacies and abuses'. That was one very, very large turn that basically shook, rattled and completely 'reconstructed' the 'etiological foundations' of Psychoanalysis -- and this theoretical changeover seemed to start happening very shortly after Freud read his most controversial essay -- 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' -- to a very, very shocked and disbelieving audience of medical professionals on April 21st, 1896.

Masson believes that Freud was basically 'intimidated' by these doctors who held the balance of power over his future career as a medical practictioner -- and had the full power to determine whether he got any patients referred to him or not -- and in effect, 'chickened out' of the theoretical he presented to the doctors that night.

Masson could be right. How many of us can say that our ethical values have not been compromised at some point in our lives because we have 'shut up' in order to stay employed by the company who is signing our paycheque. I, for one, can't. I cannot say that I have always stayed 'ethically strong' in the face of the possibility of losing my employment.

So maybe Freud ethically 'caved in'.

However, maybe there were other mitigating factors at work here that deserve at least some if not equal or superior consideration.

Chief amongst these is possibly the fact that Freud was evolving into a 'more clinically experienced practicitioner' and as such, he was bumping into the fact that life is not always about 'clear-cut theoretical categories'. Or maybe Freud thought that life was about 'clear-cut theoretical categories' and the experiences that Freud was bumping into as he moved along in his clinical practise were not 'fitting neatly' into his early Aetiology of Hysteria Seduction-(Sexual Assault) Theory. Maybe he seriously believed that some significant alterations needed to be made to his earlier theory. Freud was certainly not shy about changing or modifying his theories if he thought he had a better one. (He just didn't like his theories being changed or modified by anyone else!).

Freud was a very complicated man. He was certainly vry 'multi-bi-polar' -- and his theories reflected this. Sometimes Freud oversimplified his theories. Other times, he over-complicated them. Sometimes Freud was very 'anal-retentive' and 'conservative'. Other times he was very 'liberal'. Sometimes he was very 'rational-empirical' -- a student of science and of The Enlightenment. Othertimes, Freud was on 'Pluto' or 'Mars' -- exploring the most outrageous, 'out of this world' theories that any man could reasonably or unreasonably explore. Symbolism, fantasy, sexuality, and childhood sexuality were four areas of Freud's thinking that would remain with him the rest of his life -- even after Freud started to basically or seemingly 'abandon' the idea of 'sexual traumacy and childhood abuse' as being central to his psychological theories.

Maybe Freud didn't have the emotional, ethical, and economic fortitude -- in short, the 'courage' -- to continue to stand up to a roomful of doctors who had the power to control -- and/or destroy -- his future. Or maybe Freud's ideas were simply changing in other directions -- towards more 'symbolism' and 'sexual fantasy' -- that gave a different value priority to the direction of his work, even as he may or may not have every completely abandoned his earlier 'traumacy' and 'seduction' (sexual assault) theories.

Probably, in the end, none of us will never know for sure.

However, I will point out one type of clinical and theoretical problem that I do believe Freud was bumping into in his work -- that was in Freud's eyes -- contradicting both his 'Traumacy' and his 'Seduction' Theory. Why? Because he was getting clinical information from his clients that seemed to be violating one of Freud's most basic underlying principles of Psychoanalysis -- and that was/is 'The Pleasure Principle'.

And here I think there was a question that needed to be clinically answered that Freud could not properly answer -- without in effect, abandoning his traumacy-seduction theory. The question ran something like this:

If these early childhood scenes of childhood traumacy and sexual abuse were really as horrifically traumatic and painful as Freud originally believed them to be, then why now, was Freud many years later in his clinical practise with these 'adult women' of allegedly 'childhood sexual traumacy and seduction and/or assault' -- why were these adult women now 're-creating and re-enacting these early scenes of traumacy and abuse' not as 'painful events' but rather as 'sexually exciting events'?

Maybe this wasn't happening all of the time. But maybe it was happening often enough in Freud's clinical practise that Freud couldn't ignore the evidence. It happened to Breuer when Breuer was treating 'Anna O'. And even more frightening to an evolving therapist -- 'Anna O's' sexual excitement was aimed squared at Breuer. Breuer had a wife and a marriage to protect. Breuer ran from 'Anna O' -- and that was basically the last we heard of Breuer as a 'psychotherapist'. Obviously, by 1896 or 1897, Freud was probably running into some of the same clinical complications -- specifically, 'love and sexual transference' -- that Breuer ran into with 'Anna O'. How would Freud handle it differently than Breuer?

So that -- for Breuer, Freud, and for me -- may have been the 50 million dollar clinical and theoretical question that Freud could not answer -- without abandoning his 'traumacy-seduction' theory and moving more and more towards a theory of 'childhood sexual fantasy'. How do you account for women re-creating their supposedly painful childhood sexual assaults as 'adult sexual fantasies' -- and how do you account for the phenomenon of 'love transference' -- without changing Freud's original 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory'? And that is exactly what Freud went ahead and did. I will give DGB's answer to this most complicated clinical and theoretical problem in another essay and/or series of essays to come.


Freud may or may not have been wrong in doing this. But I can see Freud doing this --in a spirit of 'maintaining his ethical and theoretical integrity'; not in a spirit of running away from an unpopular social-psychological theory. Or maybe Freud 'killed two birds with one stone' -- I wasn't there, I don't know.

But I will give Freud the benefit of the doubt on this last theoretical account.

He had a very difficult clinical question to answer -- and he answered it by modifying his psychological theory away from 'childhood sexual abuse' and towards 'childhood sexual fantasy'. The second theory would become almost as unpopular as the first one. But there was one critical difference. Fathers would not be called up on 'the red carpet' to account for possible incidents of 'sexually abusing their children'. That was a very big legal difference that would probably make fathers rest a lot easier at night. And perhaps in the process, Freud's future as a medical practictioner was safeguarded and maintained.

No one will probably ever fully know.


-- dgb, Feb. 20th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

On The Birth of Psychoanalysis From 'The Birth of Tragedy', Apollo, Dionysus, 'Anna O', and The 'Neurotic Clinch or Impasse'

DGB

You have to understand that even as I criticize Freud and Psychoanalysis -- like many, many before me -- I am still trying to make it better. From my little corner of the universe here in Hegel's Hotel, I am still examining -- probably with the beginning of more thoroughness than ever before -- Freud's every move, his every theoretical move, why he did it, and what the eventual outcome of his moves were relative to the ongoing evolution of Psychoanalysis. Again, many, many others have been here before me, some with far greater expertise than me, on the exact historical details relative to the development and changes in direction of Psychoanalysis.

I come into the picture -- let us say about 120 years after Freud started making his first theoretical, clinical, and psychotherapeutic moves towards the birth of Psychoanalysis.

And I have to go back to that first case of 'Anna O' treated by Joseph Breuer -- like thousands and thousands of academics have been here before me -- and I say, 'Herein lies the ultimate simplicity and the ultimate beauty of the birth of Psychoanalysis as a therapeutic intervention even though it basically involved Breuer simply sitting by in awe and listening while 'Anna O' treated and cured herself of some of her various 'neurotic or hysterical symptoms' -- 'physical conversion symptoms' (see below) -- with 'her talking cure' and what she called 'chimney sweeping'.

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From the internet...wikipedia

Anna O. was the pseudonym of a patient of Josef Breuer, who published her case study in his book Studies on Hysteria, written in collaboration with Sigmund Freud.

Anna O was, in fact, Bertha Pappenheim, an Austrian-Jewish feminist, treated by Breuer for severe cough, paralysis of the extremities on the right side of her body, and disturbances of vision, hearing, and speech, as well as hallucination and loss of consciousness. She was diagnosed with hysteria. Freud implies that her illness was a result of the grief felt over her father's real and physical illness that later led to his death[1].

Her treatment is regarded as marking the beginning of psychoanalysis. Breuer observed that whilst she experienced 'absences' (a change of personality accompanied by confusion), she would mutter words or phrases to herself. In inducing her to a state of hypnosis, Breuer found that these words were "profoundly melancholy phantasies...sometimes characterized by poetic beauty". Free Association came into being after Anna/Bertha decided (with Breuer's input) to end her hypnosis sessions and merely talk to Breuer, saying anything that came into her mind. She called this method of communication "chimney sweeping", and this served as the beginning of free association.

Anna's/Bertha's case also shed light for the first time on the phenomenon called transference, where the patient's feelings toward a significant figure in his/her life are redirected onto the therapist. By transference, Anna imagined to be pregnant with the doctor's baby. She experienced nausea and all the pregnancy symptoms. After this incident, Breuer stopped treating her.

Pappenheim under her real name translated the diary of her ancestor Gluckel of Hameln.

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DGB

Now, I want to back up a few steps further in history.

The case of 'Anna O' may have marked the beginning of psychoanalysis from a 'therapeutic treatment' point of view.

However, from an 'academic-philosophical' point of view, I will say again what I have said before -- and not too many -- if any -- academics before me that I know of have made this claim: In juxtaposing the work of Hegel in 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807) with the work of Schopenhauer in 'The World as Will and Representation', Nietzsche's first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy' (BT) marked the true academic-philosophical birth of Psychoanalysis.

In this respect, we might look at the case of 'Anna O' as the first clinical-psycho-therapeutic application of Nietzsche's BT. Let me make my case.

My case is symbolic, metaphorical, metaphysical -- and mythological, a growing tendency in Hegel's Hotel here.

Let us enter a world of 'As If' -- See Hans Vaihinger.


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From the internet...wikipedia


Hans Vaihinger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Hans Vaihinger Western Philosophy
20th-century philosophy

Full name Hans Vaihinger
Birth September 25, 1852 (Nehren)
Death December 18, 1933 (Halle)
School/tradition Neo-Kantianism
Main interests idealism, positivism
Notable ideas fictionalism, instrumentalism, nominalism
Influenced by[show]
Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer[1], Friedrich Nietzsche
Influenced[show]
Alfred Adler
Hans Vaihinger (September 25, 1852 – December 18, 1933) was a German philosopher, best known as a Kant scholar and for his Philosophie des Als Ob (Philosophy of As If), published in 1911, but written more than thirty years earlier.[2]

Vaihinger was born in Nehren, Württemberg, Germany, near Tübingen, and raised in what he himself described as a "very religious milieu". He was educated at Tübingen, Leipzig, and Berlin, became a tutor and later a philosophy professor at Strasbourg before moving to the university at Halle in 1884. From 1892, he was a full professor.

In Philosophie des Als Ob, he argued that human beings can never really know the underlying reality of the world, and that as a result we construct systems of thought and then assume that these match reality: we behave "as if" the world matches our models. In particular, he used examples from the physical sciences, such as protons, electrons, and electromagnetic waves. None of these phenomena have been observed directly, but science pretends that they exist, and uses observations made on these assumptions to create new and better constructs.

This philosophy, though, is wider than just science. One can never be sure that the world will still exist tomorrow, but we usually assume that it does. Alfred Adler, the founder of Individual Psychology, was profoundly influenced by Vaihinger's theory of fictions, incorporating the idea of psychological fictions into his personality construct of a fictional final goal.

Frank Kermode's The Sense of an Ending (1967) was an early mention of Vaihinger as a useful methodologist of narrativity.

Later, James Hillman developed both Vaihinger and Adler's work with psychological fictions into a core theme of his work Healing Fiction in which he makes one of his more accessible cases for identifying the tendency to literalize, rather than "see through our meanings," (HF 110) with neurosis and madness.


[edit] Works
1876 Hartmann, Dühring und Lange (Hartmann, Dühring and Lange)
1897-1922 Kant-Studien, founder and chief editor
1899 Kant — ein Metaphysiker? (Kant — a Metaphysician?)
1902 Nietzsche Als Philosoph (Nietzsche as Philosopher)
1906 Philosophie in der Staatsprüfung. Winke für Examinatoren und Examinanden. (Philosophy in the Degree. Cues for teachers and students.)
1911 Philosophie des Als Ob (Philosophy of "As If", translated by C. K. Ogden, 1924)
1922 Commentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason), edited by Raymund Schmidt

[edit] References
^ "Schopenhauer's love of truth was a revelation to me." The Philosophy of As–If, p. xxix.
^ Loewenberg, J. Untitled Review. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, Vol. 9, No. 26. (Dec. 19, 1912), pp. 717-719.

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DGB

So here is the metaphor, here is the mythology. For our purposes here -- which does not sway far from Nietzsche's purposes in BT -- Apollo represents The God of Self-Restraint and Self-Defense. Juxtaposed against Apollo is -- Dionysus, The God of Self-Expression and Self-Impulse. Put into Classic Psychoanalytic terminology, Apollo is The God of The Superego, while Dionysus is The God of The Id.

Let us now make another metaphorical or symbolic leap into the 'World of As If'.

Apollo is The God of The White Blood Cells.

Dionysus is The God of The Red Blood Cells.

Both are crtical to the life process. One defends, restrains, and deconstructs (Apollo and the white blood cells.) The other surges forward and embraces life and all of life's impulses -- birth, creativity, sensuality, sexuality, pleasure, romance, intimacy...(Dionysus and the red blood cells.)

The two -- Apollo and Dionysus -- are forever locked in 'compromise formations' with each other that express themselves in all elements of human behavior, and stand out particularly in 'neurotic symptoms' -- in 'neurotic clinches or impasses between Apollo and Dionysus, between red and white blood cells'.

What is a 'joke'? A joke is an 'allusion to immediacy'. A joke is a compromise-formation between Dionysus and Apollo, between Superego and Id.

In 'either/or' terminology, there are two different types of 'neruoses'.

For our purposes here, we will define a 'neurosis' as a 'homeostatic imbalance' in the mind and/or body such as between Apollo and Dionysus.

In a 'Narcissistic and/or Dionysian Neurosis', Narcissus and/or Dionysus rules, while Apollo succumbs to Dionysus' and/or Narcissus' greater power.

In an 'Anxiety and/or Distancing Neurosis' Apollo rules while Dionysus and/or Narcissus succumb to Apollo's greater power.

A third type of neurosis might be called a 'Neurotic Clinch or Impasse'. Here, Apollo and Dionysus are locked in a fairly evenly matched power battle where neither one is really winning or losing -- but the health of the mind and/or body as a whole is losing. Too much energy is being locked up in the 'neurotic stalemate'. This can be seen in the case of Anna O.

We probably all have 'hysterical conversions' at one time or another. They may not be as pronounced and as dramatic as Anna O's refusing to talk or eat but still different types of 'clinches in the human body' can be viewed as hysterical conversions.

We may have a 'tightness of jaw' where we are holding back anger or grief or saying something, we might have a 'tightness around our eyes' where we are holding back tears, we might be holding back grief around our chest area or in the pit of our stomach, we may be holding back anger or rage in the 'clinch of a migraine headache', we might be holding back sadness in the back of our neck. A partly clenched fist could obviously involve the holding back of anger...

How about the tragedy just recently involving the little girl whose dentist pulled all her baby teeth? She stopped eating -- and died -- her obvious and dramatically tragic protest against the supremely perceived narcissistic traumacy of all her teeth being pulled. What was the dentist thinking? He obviously was not thinking one iota about the little girl's self-image, her self-esteem. I had to almost cry about that one.

Unravel the pain, unravel the anger or rage, uravel the fantasy or impulse -- let Dionysus 'free' within the safe confines of the therapeutic setting -- and you set in motion 'the talking cure', 'chimney sweeping' and the unclinching of the neurotic sypmtom, the hysterical conversion. 'Talk -- and the truth will set you free.'

Sometimes a 'massage psychotherapist' might get faster and more efficiently to an area of the 'body-psyche' -- the neurotic clinch -- where a psychoanlyst might be having much more trouble -- or take much longer -- to get to.

The 'no touching' rule was/is? quite prohibitive in Psychoanalysis but certain Psychoanalysts broke into new therapeutic ground when they broke this Psychoanalytic rule. (Ferenczi, Wilhelm Reich...) And a long chain of psychotherapists followed...

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Wilhelm Reich
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Wilhelm Reich
Born March 24, 1897(1897-03-24)
Dobrzanica, Galicia, Austria-Hungary
Died November 3, 1957 (aged 60)
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

Residence Orgonon, Rangeley, Maine,
United States
Citizenship Austria, United States
Fields Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis
Alma mater University of Vienna
Known for Freudo-Marxism, body psychotherapy, Orgone
Influences Max Stirner, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx
Influenced Alexander Lowen, Fritz Perls, Ronald Laing, Arthur Janov
Wilhelm Reich (March 24, 1897–November 3, 1957) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

Reich was a respected analyst for much of his life, focusing on character structure, rather than on individual neurotic symptoms.[1] He promoted adolescent sexuality, the availability of contraceptives and abortion, and the importance for women of economic independence. Synthesizing material from psychoanalysis, cultural anthropology, economics, sociology, and ethics, his work influenced writers such as Alexander Lowen, Fritz Perls, Marie Louise Berneri Paul Goodman, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Colin Wilson, Shulamith Firestone, A. S. Neill, and William Burroughs.[2] [3]

He was also a controversial figure, who came to be viewed by the psychoanalytic establishment as having succumbed to mental illness or somehow gone astray. His work on the link between human sexuality and neuroses emphasized "orgastic potency" as the foremost criterion for psycho-physical health. He said he had discovered a form of energy, which he called "orgone," that permeated the atmosphere and all living matter, and he built "orgone accumulators," which his patients sat inside to harness the energy for its reputed health benefits. It was this work, in particular, that cemented the rift between Reich and other prominent psychoanalysts.[4]

He was living in Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power. As a communist of Jewish descent, he was in danger, and he therefore fled to Scandinavia in 1933 and subsequently to the United States in 1939. In 1947, following a series of critical articles about orgone and his political views in The New Republic and Harper's,[5] the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began an investigation into his claims about orgone, winning an injunction against the interstate sale of orgone accumulators. Charged with contempt of court for violating the injunction, Reich conducted his own defense, which involved sending the judge all his books to read, and arguing that a court was no place to decide matters of science. He was sentenced to two years in prison[6], and on 23 August 1956, several tons of his publications were burned by the FDA[7][8]. He died of heart failure in jail just over a year later, days before he was due to apply for parole.[9]

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Sándor Ferenczi
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(Redirected from Sandor Ferenczi)
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The native form of this personal name is Ferenczi Sándor. This article uses the Western name order.
Sándor Ferenczi


Born July 7, 1873(1873-07-07)
Miskolc, Hungary
Died April 22, 1933 (aged 59)
Budapest, Hungary

Fields Psychoanalysis
Institutions International Psychoanalytical Association - (president)
Hungarian Psychoanalytical Society - (founder)
Known for "Budapest School of Psychoanalysis"
Influences Sigmund Freud
Influenced Mihály Bálint, Aliz Bálint, Imre Hermann, Sigmund Freud
Sándor Ferenczi (July 7, 1873, Miskolc, Hungary – April 22, 1933, Budapest, Hungary) was a Hungarian psychoanalyst.

Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 Ferenczi’s main ideas
3 Notes
4 Further reading
5 See also
6 External links



[edit] Biography
Born Sándor Fraenkel to Baruch Fraenkel and Rosa Eibenschütz, both Polish Jews, he later magyarized his surname to Ferenczi.

Over the course of his psychiatric work, he came to believe that his patients' accounts of sexual abuse as children were truthful, having verified those accounts through other patients in the same family. This was a major reason for his eventual break with Sigmund Freud.

Prior to this break he was a member of the inner circle of psychoanalysis and was notable for working with the most difficult of patients and for developing a theory of more active intervention than is usual in psychoanalytic practice. In the early 1920s, criticizing Freud's "classical" method of neutral interpretation, Ferenczi collaborated with Otto Rank to create a "here-and-now" psychotherapy that, through Rank's personal influence, led the American Carl Rogers to conceptualize person-centered therapy (Kramer 1995).

Ferenczi has found some favor in modern times among the followers of Jacques Lacan as well as among relational psychoanalysts in the United States. Relational analysts read Ferenczi as anticipating their own clinical emphasis on mutuality (intimacy), intersubjectivity, and the importance of the analyst's countertransference. Ferenczi's work has strongly influenced theory and praxis within the interpersonal-relational movement in American psychoanalysis, as typified by psychoanalysts at the William Alanson White Institute.

Ferenczi presided over the International Psychoanalytical Association from 1918 to 1919.


Group photo 1909 in front of Clark University. Front row: Sigmund Freud, G. Stanley Hall, Carl Jung; back row: Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sandor Ferenczi.Ernest Jones, a biographer of Freud, termed Ferenczi as "mentally ill" at the end of his life, famously ignoring Ferenczi's battle with pernicious anemia, which killed him in 1933. Though desperately ill with the then-untreatable disease, Ferenczi managed to deliver his most famous paper, "Confusion of Tongues"[1] to the 12th International Psycho-Analytic Congress in Wiesbaden, Germany, on September 4, 1932.[2]

In 2002 Ferenczi's reputation was revived by publication of Disappearing and Reviving: Sandor Ferenczi in the History of Psychoanalysis[3] One of the book's chapters dealt with the tragic nature of the relationship between Freud and Ferenczi.


[edit] Ferenczi’s main ideas
1. Activity in psychoanalytic therapy.

Contrary to Freud’s view of an abstinence therapeutic stance, Ferenczi purposed a more active role for the analyst. For example, instead of the relatively “passive” stance of the listening analyst encouraging the patient to free associate, Ferenczi used to curtail certain responses, verbal and non-verbal alike, on the part of the analysand so as to allow suppressed thoughts and feeling to emerge. Ferenczi (1980) described in a case study how he used a kind of behavioral activation (uncommon in the psychoanalytic therapy at that time) when he asked an opera singer with performance anxiety to “perform” during therapy session and this way to face her fears (Rachman, 2007).

2. Clinical empathy in psychoanalysis.

Ferenczi viewed the empathic response during therapy as the core of clinical interaction. He based his intervention on responding to the subjective experience of the analysand; if more traditional views saw the analyst in the role of the physician, administering a treatment to the patient based upon diagnostic judgment of psychopathology, Ferenczi wanted the analysand to become a co-participant in an encounter created by the therapeutic dyad. This shift to empathic reciprocity during the therapeutic encounter was an important contribution to the evolution of psychoanalysis. Ferenczi also believed that self-disclosure of the analyst is an important therapeutic reparative force. The practice of bringing the therapist’s personality into therapy led to the development of the idea of the mutual encounter: the therapist is allowed to bring to the therapy some content from his own life and from his inner world, as long as it is relevant to the therapy. This is in contrast to the Freudian abstinence therapeutic stance according to which the therapist should not bring to therapy content which relates to his personal life, and should remain neutral (ibid). The mutual encounter is a forerunner of the psychoanalytic theory of two person psychology.

3. The “confusion of tongues” theory of trauma.

Ferenczi believed that the persistent traumatic effect of chronic overstimulation, deprivation, or empathic failure (a term further elaborated by Heinz Kohut) in childhood is what causes neurotic, character, borderline and psychotic disorders (ibid). According to this concept trauma develops as a result of sexual seduction of the child by a parent or authority figure. The confusion of tongues takes place when the child plays, in an infantile way, to be the spouse of the parent. The pathological adult interprets this infantile and innocent game according to his adult “passion tongue” and then forces the child to conform to his “passion tongue”. The adult uses a tongue the child does not know, and interprets the child’s innocent game (his infantile tongue) according to his disturbed perspective. For example, a father is playing with his little girl. During their common game, she offers him the role of her husband and wants him to sleep with her like he sleeps with her mother. The pathological father misinterprets this childish offer, and touches his daughter in an inappropriate way while they are in bed together. Here, the child spoke her innocent childish tongue, and the father interpreted her offer with his passionate adult sexual tongue. The adult abuser also attempts to convince the child that the lust on his part is really the love for which the child yearns. Ferenczi broadened the idea of trauma to emotional neglect, physical maltreatment, and empathic failure. The prominent manifestation of these disturbances would be the sexual abuse.


[edit] Notes
^ Ferenczi, S. (1933). The Confusion of Tongues Between Adults and Children: The Language of Tenderness and of Passion. Sándor Ferenczi Number. M. Balint (Ed.) International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 30: Whole No.4, 1949 [The First English Translation of the paper.]
^ Section V - Continuing Education - Ferenczi
^ Andre E. Haynal (ed.),Disappearing and Reviving: Sandor Ferenczi in the History of Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac Books

[edit] Further reading
Ferenczi's Turn in Psychoanalysis, Peter L. Rudnytsky, New York University Press, 2000, Paperback, 450 pages, ISBN 0814775454
Final Contributions to the Problems & Methods of Psycho-Analysis, Sandor Ferenczi, H. Karnac Books, Limited, Hardback, 1994, ISBN 1855750872.
Development of Psychoanalysis (Classics in Psychoanalysis, Monograph 4), Otto Rank and Sandor Ferenczi, International Universities Press, Inc, 1986, Hardback, ISBN 0823611973.
First Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, Sandor Ferenczi, translated by Ernest Jones, H. Karnac Books, Limited, 1994, Hardback, ISBN 1855750856.
Sandor Ferenczi: Reconsidering Active Intervention, Martin Stanton, Jason Aronson Publishers, 1991, Hardcover, 1991, ISBN 0876685696.
Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality, Sandor Ferenczi, H. Karnac Books, Limited, 1989, Paperback, ISBN 0946439613.
Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi, Edited by Adrienne Harris and Lewis Aron, Analytic Press, 1996, Hardback, ISBN 0881631493.
Antonelli, Giorgio, Il Mare di Ferenczi, Di Renzo Editore, Roma, 1996 ISBN 8886044445
Triad: the physicists, the analysts, the kabbalists, Tom Keve, Rosenberger & Krausz, London, 2000, ISBN 0953621901. (http://www.rosenbergerandkrausz.com/)
Paul Roazen: Elma Laurvik, Ferenczi's Step-Daughter from the pages of PSYCHOMEDIA
The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 1, 1908-1914, Harvard University Press
The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 2, 1914-1919, Harvard University Press
The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 3, 1920-1933, Harvard University Press
The Clinical Diary of Sándor Ferenczi, by Sándor Ferenczi. Edited by Judith Dupont, translated by Michael Balint and Nicola Zarday Jackson, Harvard University Press. ISBN 067413527X
Kramer, Robert (1995). The Birth of Client-Centered Therapy: Carl Rogers, Otto Rank, and 'The Beyond,' an article in Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Volume 35, Number 4, pp. 54-110.
Ferenczi, S. (1980). Technical difficulties in the analysis of a case of hysteria: Including observations of larval forms of onanism and onanistic equivalents (J. I. Suttie, Trans.) In J. Rickman (Ed.), further contributions to the theory and technique of psychoanalysis (pp. 291-294). New York: Bruner/Mazal. (Original work published 1919).
Rachman, A. W. (2007). “Sandor Ferenczi’s contributions to the evolution of psychoanalysis”, Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 74-96.
Wolman, B. B. (1977). International encyclopedia of psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, & neurology, (vol. 5). Aesculapius Publishers, New York.

[edit] See also
Psychoanalysis
Otto Rank

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It is my DGB perspective that much of Psychoanalysis is simply different extensions and applications of the basic formula outlined above.


-- dgb, Feb. 19th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain