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...
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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
