Just reconstructed...Aug. 31st, 2009.
Every time I start an essay on this very provocative and controversial subject matter of 'Freud's and Masson's Seduction Theory Controversy', I keep looking for more and more interpretive and evaluative clarity, first in myself, and second in the way I convey my thinking to you -- I start in essentially the same place and end up up traveling to, and finishing up, somewhere completely, or at least partly different.
I'm not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. I think it is a good thing.
It brings us to this essential point:
Every thing is subject to change -- including human thinking, both 'inside and/or outside the box' which is our own particular representation and construction of the millions of different stimuli that life throws at us, both inside and outside our minds and bodies.
I keep going over this whole 'Freud and Classical Psychoanalysis vs. Masson and the 'Psychoanalytic Deconstructionists' relative to this now 113 year old Seduction Theory Controversy' which Masson re-opened very forcefully and dramatically in the early 1980s.
I pound my head with this issue, going back over the clinical facts and the editorial conclusions from both sides, trying to establish for myself where 'right' and 'wrong' is, 'good' and 'bad', 'guilty' and 'innocent'.
One time Freud is wrong but innocent of all moral-ethical charges against him. Another time -- he is not. There is still the 'Emma Ekstein scandal' and what would seem to be Freud's almost 20 year involvement with 'cocaine' (1894-1904) in which Freud was passing out cocaine like it was aspirin to his friends, probably his wife, his patients, probably Fliess and/or visa versa, a patient died to some combination of morphine and cocaine addiction under Freud's watch...even though no one knew at the beginning what the properties of cocaine were, how dangerous it was, how addictive it was, and other doctors were experimenting with it in similar ways, still Freud was involved in some highly risky and dangerous forms of 'medical and surgical treatment' that seemed to fly in the face of (without too much concern on Freud's part) the medical establishment's Hippocratic Oath: 'First, Do the patient no harm!'
But then again, there have always been risky and dangerous forms of 'therapy' in the evolution of medical treatment, and even today, one can quite legitimately ask the question: 'How closely do radiologists and chemo-therapists adhere to The Hippocratic Oath?'
Still, Freud's involvement with cocaine between approximately 1894 and 1904 is a bigger taboo topic than even his abandonment of The Seduction Theory between 1896 and 1899, and someone has to legitimately ask the question -- no different than an athlete who is known to be, or have been, on steroids -- 'To what extent did Freud's cocaine involvement during this time period (1894-1904) affect his theoretical as well as therapeutic work?'
And more specifically, did it have any affect on Freud's abandonment of The Seduction Theory and his evolution into 'Fantasy Theory'?
Doesn't it seem rather strange that no orthodox Psychoanalyst in approximately 110 years has ever professionally touched this question, let alone attempted to answer it, not even to my knowledge, Dr. Masson?
And then there is -- the 'bull in the china shop' -- Dr. Masson. Did Dr. Masson commit any epistemological and/or ethical errors or omissions in this 'Watergate' of a Psychoanalytic controversy/scandal? Such as accusing Freud of 'losing moral courage' when none of us 80 to 100 years later can profess to know for sure what Freud's mindset was back between 1896 and 1900. Did Masson overstep his own ethical boundaries in this respect -- and kill his own career in Psychoanalysis in the process?
And then there is the question of whether Freud's 'Seduction Theory' -- meaning his 'Childhood Sexual Assault Theory' -- was ever fully justified by the clinical evidence in the first place? I have made this point this point before. Freud had a propensity for jumping to fast, provocative generalizations and theoretical conclusions (The Seduction Theory, The Oedipal Theory, The Childhood Sexuality and Sexual Fantasy Theory, The Death Instinct Theory...) that had a tendency of overstepping the boundaries of 'good epistemology' -- 'good rational-empiricism'. It almost seemed like Freud had a propensity throughout his life -- almost as if it was a 'transference repetition compulsion and/or serial behavior pattern' -- to 'shock people first', and then to 'justify' his provocative, controversial, shocking 'scientific conclusions' with 'rhetorical arguments' that were well put together and seemingly tightly argued -- almost like a prosecution or defense lawyer putting together a 'good case' -- even though, when you really delve into the case and get to the bottom of it, you find that the case, is at best, based on very 'flimsy' and 'far-stretched' clinical evidence that could just as well or better support 5 or 10 other completely different clinical theories.
Again and again, I need to impress upon you as a reader, that life offers each and every one of us a myriad of ever changing, connected and unconnected, stimuli that can be interpreted and evaluated in a multitude of different ways depending on our own personal background, our own experiences, our own narcissistic biases and interests...so to create a theory -- any theory -- is to start to 'think inside a box', 'a theoretical box of our own making' which in effect, 'leads the witness', leads the reader, in a particular direction, towards the conclusion and the theory of our own making -- which may be only one of many other possible conclusions and theories that another person could draw from the same 'myriad of connected and/or not connected stimuli'.
Furthermore, as soon as we start to abstract, as soon as we start to 'pick and choose' what evidence we will include and what evidence we will leave out we are once again, leading the witness, leading the reader, on a trip to either 'epistemological and/or ethical clarification' and/or on a trip to 'Never, Never Land' -- a 'boxed theory of our own making', good and/or bad, which for better or for worse, is a 'sound bite' or a 'visual bite' that leaves part of life out and this part of life that is left out may be either non-important to the discussion at hand or it could be critically important and, at the same time, neglected, suppressed, marginalized.
This problem of 'thinking inside a narcissistically biased theoretical box' is just as relevant to Masson and his re-supporting and re-trumpeting the Seduction Theory as it is relative to Freud basically abandoning the Seduction Theory and moving into his replacement theories: 1. 'The Oedipal Theory' and 2. 'Childhood/Adult Fantasy Theory'.
That is why I like, for the most part, to take a combined 'Spinozian-Hegelian' approach and go with the assumption that there is usually a 'combination of truth, distortion, and fantasy in any and every theory' -- not just The Seduction Theory, and not just the Oedipal Theory -- but both as they dialectically engage with each other and potentially come together in integrative theoretical union.
You see my own theory on this whole matter unites a whole host of different theories and theorists: 1. Traumacy Theory; 2. Narcissistic Fixation and Fantasy Theory; 3. Oedipal Theory; 4. 'Transference as an Obsessive-Compulsive Wish for Cathartic Healing and Closure' Theory; 5. Adlerian Early Recollection and Lifestyle Theory.
This idea of uniting seemingly dualistic and paradoxical theories is certainly not foreign to science. In the evolution of physics, 'particle' theory evolved into 'wave' theory which then evolved into a dialectically united 'particle-wave' theory which we now call 'quantum physics'.
I don't pretend to understand quantum physics but I certainly do understand the concept of 'dialectic union' which makes up half the essence and content of my own 'dialectic union and separation (or individuation)' theory of evolution.
Let us see what this particular website below has to say about the seemingly dualistic, paradoxical nature of matter and light.
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http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Physics-Particle-Wave-Duality-Paradox.htm
On Truth & Reality
The Spherical Standing Wave Structure of Matter (WSM) in Space
This website is primarily on the subjects of truth and reality. We get about 300,000 page views each week and are one of the top philosophy / physics sites on the Internet. The central thesis is best stated in three parts;
i) We must know the truth to act wisely, and truth comes from physical reality.
ii) Our present and past societies are not founded on truth and act unwisely (overpopulation, destruction of nature, pollution, climate change, religious and economic wars, etc.).
iii) We now know the correct language for describing physical reality (all matter interactions are wave interactions in space), and this knowledge is critical for our future survival, being the source of truth & wisdom.
So how do we prove that this is true? Everyone will agree that true knowledge of reality must explain and solve the fundamental problems of knowledge in physics, philosophy and metaphysics. This website does exactly that. The above subject pages provide short summaries / simple solutions to these central problems of knowledge. To begin it is useful to read the Introduction & Summary to this Physics Philosophy Metaphysics Website.
Short Summary of Quantum Physics
These Quantum Physics pages (on either side) show how this new understanding of physical reality (that all light and matter interactions are wave interactions in Space) explains and solves the central problems of Quantum Theory.
The mistake was to work from Newton's foundation of particles and instantly acting gravity forces in space and time (many things) and then have to add more things to explain light and electricity, i.e. charged particles, continuous electromagnetic fields and waves (Faraday, Maxwell, Lorentz, Einstein's Special Relativity).
Thus by 1900 the central concepts of Physics were;
Matter as discrete particles with both gravitational mass and electrical charge properties (mass-charge duality).
Light as continuous electromagnetic waves (velocity of light c).
Continuous electromagnetic fields created by discrete charged particles (discrete particle-continuous field duality).
Local charge interactions limited by the velocity of electromagnetic waves (velocity of light c).
Over the next 30 years Quantum Theory destroyed these foundations by showing the exact opposite, that;
Matter has wave properties thus a particle-wave duality (de Broglie Waves, Schrodinger's wave equations).
Light has discrete particle properties thus a particle-wave duality (Light 'quanta', Max Planck, Albert Einstein)
Continuous deterministic fields are replaced by discrete statistical fields e.g. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, Niels Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation, Born's probability waves to predict the location of the particle.
Non-Local matter interactions (instant action-at-distance EPR Bell Aspect)
The solution to this confusion and contradiction is simple once known. Describe reality from One thing existing, Space (that we all commonly experience) and its Properties. i.e. Rather than adding matter particles to space as Newton did, we consider Space with properties of a continuous wave medium for a pure Wave Structure of Matter. This is the Most Simple Science Theory of Physical Reality (despite many claims to the contrary, science does actually work, we just needed the correct foundation of continuous Space rather than discrete matter).
Most importantly, this Dynamic Unity of Reality provides simple solutions to all the 'strangeness' of quantum physics that has resulted from this discrete / disconnected 'particle' conception of matter.
i.e.
Matter is a Wave Structure of Space - the Spherical Wave Center creates the 'particle' effect.
Light is a Wave Phenomena - however, spherical standing waves (matter) act as spherical resonators and only interact (resonantly couple) at discrete frequencies / energies which gives the effect of discrete light 'quanta'.
Reality is both Continuous (Space) and Discrete (Standing Wave Interactions).
Reality is both Local and Non-Local - matter is causally inter-connected in Space by its Spherical In and Out Waves (traveling at velocity c, i.e. Einstein's Locality).
However (and very importantly), with relative motion these matter wave interactions form de Broglie phase waves that travel at high velocities (c2/v), explaining EPR and apparent Non-Locality / Instant-Action-at-a-Distance.
Reality is Causally Connected but Non-Deterministic / Statistical. The waves in quantum theory are real waves (not abstract 'probability waves') but lack of knowledge of the interconnected whole (infinite Space) causes statistical behaviour of matter (as Einstein believed).
I realize this is a pretty abrupt / radical introduction to a new way of seeing things - that it will take some time to adjust. But the Wave Structure of Matter is simple sensible and obvious once known. Each Quantum Physics page has a short summary and important quotes, so it is easy to click around and confirm things for yourself. Enjoy! Think!
In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act. (George Orwell)
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. (Mohandas Gandhi)
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. (Edmund Burke)
Hell is Truth Seen Too Late. (Thomas Hobbes)
A Simple Solution to the Wave Particle Duality of Light and Matter
Represents Spherical In-Wave (our future) flowing In to form the Wave-Center (our present) + Represents Spherical Out-Wave (our past) flowing Out of the Wave-Center (our present) = Combined In-Waves and Out-Waves form a Spherical Standing Wave about the Wave Center (our present). This explains the particle / wave duality of Matter. Matter is a Spherical Standing Wave - the Wave-Center causes the 'particle' effect of matter.
In-Wave + Out-Wave = Standing Wave
Introduction: The 'particle' conception of matter (from ancient Greeks) has caused many problems and paradoxes for modern Physics (as the quotes below make clear). Strangely, it is only in the past 20 years that a pure Wave Structure of Matter (WSM) has been properly examined. We then find (by replacing 'particles' with Spherical Standing Waves) that the natural laws originate from the behaviour of the waves and the properties of space.
It will also become clear that the classic point-particle model of charge and mass substance cannot satisfy either the logic of science or the many puzzles of physics.
The model is only an historical relic and its presence in the 'Standard Model' of physics is an obstacle to progress. This is evident in the quotes below which highlight the problems of modern physics when founded on the discrete and separate particle concept;
The idea that something can be both a wave and a particle defies imagination, but the existence of this wave-particle "duality" is not in doubt. ... It is impossible to visualise a wave-particle, so don't try. ... The notion of a particle being "everywhere at once" is impossible to imagine. (Davies, Superforce)
Wave Particle Duality: Heisenberg - Light and matter are both single entities, and the apparent duality arises in the limitations of our language.Light and matter are both single entities, and the apparent duality arises in the limitations of our language. (Heisenberg)
Wave Particle Duality: Lee Smolin - It can no longer be maintained that the properties of any one thing in the universe are independent of the existence or non-existence of everything else. It is, at last, no longer sensible to speak of a universe with only one thing in it. (Smolin, 1997)It can no longer be maintained that the properties of any one thing in the universe are independent of the existence or non-existence of everything else. It is, at last, no longer sensible to speak of a universe with only one thing in it. (Smolin, 1997)
In the quantum world, subatomic particles lurch about, suddenly disappearing from their starting points and reappearing as if by magic somewhere else. ... In many cases you cannot watch a subatomic particle move from A to B; you can only observe it at point A, and, sometime later, observe it again at point B. Just how it got there is a mystery. In this realm particles sometimes act entirely like waves, and vice versa. This equivalence of particles and waves is related to the equivalence of matter and energy that Einstein discovered. ... How could nature be both things at once? How could both pictures be right? Yet how could either be wrong? (Margaret Wertheim)
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DGB...cont'd..
I am reminded of a movie I recently watched -- a 'crazy' movie that I liked -- called 'Choke'. It was about a sex addict whose mother was locked up in a psychiatric institute and who was looking for some sort of cathartic conflict resolution with his mother while at the same time going around seducing women, having emotionless sex with them.
At one scene in the movie, our main character has successfully managed to seduce a female doctor at the psychiatric institute (who unbeknownst to him is actually a patient disguised as a doctor). However, at the actual point of their sexual engagement, our main character can't get it going. The doctor/patient asks him: 'How is it that you can have sex with pretty well every other female patient and/or nurse in the institute but you can't have sex with me.' And he replies, 'Well, I think it is because I am beginning to like you.' And she replies: 'Well, has it ever occurred to you that maybe the two do not have to be mutually exclusive?'
Well, this is my point here -- and the point of each and every possible or actual dialectical theory: Seemingly opposing, paradoxical theories do not have to necessarily be mutually exclusive. Rather, they may easily -- or with some dialectical creativity -- dialectically merge into each other.
Freud's 'Seduction (Childhood Sexual Assault) Theory' was too reductionistic -- quite simply, it may partly apply to a certain class of people are sexually assaulted as children but childhood sexual assault is not the root of all neurosis because not every person is sexually assaulted as a child. Thus, Freud's early (1893-1895) 'Traumacy-Cathartic Therapeutic Release' theory was a better theory because it applied to a much broader range of people -- probably us all.
However, Freud's opposing, seemingly paradoxical theory -- 'The Oedipal Theory' -- is potentially just as powerful, particularly if we don't take it literally but rather metaphorically/symbolically.
The most important part about the Oedipal Complex is not that we 'unconsciously' wanted to have sex with our mother when we were a child (and/or wanted her all to ourselves) -- or in the young girl's case, the father which was called 'The Electra Complex'.
Rather, the most important point here, is that we all have 'Mother Complexes' and we all have 'Father Complexes', and understanding the essential internal and external psychological and social dynamics of these Mother and Father Complexes makes up a huge part of understanding our psychological selves.
If I find a friend or a lover who is like my mom in some essential qualities, then we can say that I have an 'Active Mother Transference Complex' at work. Or alternatively, if I find a friend or a lover who is like my father, we can say that I have an 'Active Father Transference Complex' at work.
This obviously brings into our discussion here, and into over evolving 'multi-dialectic theory of health and neurosis', the factor of 'transference'.
So here is what we have established so far:
1. Everybody has some sort of 'traumacy' or another in their childhood background that has had a profound effect upon the development of their character and psychological makeup.
2. Everybody has an 'Oedipal Complex'-- meaning a 'Mother Complex' -- regardless of whether one's own particular mother was present or missing, loving or sadistic, accepting and/or rejecting of us as a child.
3. Everybody has similar and/or different, separate and/or united, types of 'Transference Complexes' at work in their personality that start from childhood and evolve in different ways in adulthood -- the connection being certain 'structural and/or process similarities' between a childhood relationship and an adult relationship, and/or the need to 'repeat and/or resolve a childhood scene' looking for some sort of 'narcissistic, emotional purging, often sexual release, and/or therapeutic catharsis'.
4. Everybody has 'narcissistic and/or sexual fixations'. These narcissistic-sexual
fixations may have much to do with something that we 'saw as children' and were 'narcissistically and/or erotically aroused by, either then and/or later (perhaps becoming more acute once puberty and hormonal sexual functioning sets in). And/or paradoxically, many narcissistic-sexual fixations arise out of childhood traumacies through a combination of psychological processes such as introjection, identification, and what I call 'positive and/or negative transference reversal'.
Here is where it starts to get a little complicated. My concept of 'negative transference-reversal' is an extension of Ferenczi's and Anna Freud's concept of 'identification with the aggressor'. Only I often re-label 'identification with the aggressor' as 'identification with the rejector and/or victimizer'.
What this means essentially is that we learn to reject people as adults in a 'signature transference style' that copies the way we remember ourselves being rejected by someone when we were a child. This 'signature negative transference reversal trademark' can become the 'rejecting and/or victimizing trademark' of any 'serial rejector and/or victimizer' -- at the most extreme end, the serial arsonist, the serial rapist, the serial child molester, the serial killer...
Now let us see if we can draw all of these different ideas and theories together into one 'DGB Multi-Dialectic Transference Theory of Narcissistic Neurosis'.
Lately, I have become fascinated by the tv show 'Criminal Minds' -- a show that documents the activities of a group of 'serial profilers' who go hunting after serial criminals. (Privately, I am saying to myself, 'Hey, these guys -- a group of about 8 men and women -- are doing essentially what I do, and although they are more specialized in their particular brand of training, there may actually be some areas of their thinking that I can perhaps do a little better than them on, and take their thinking relative to 'crimes of transference' -- i.e., 'serial crimes' -- one step, or a few steps, further than it is already developed.
In the particular show I was partly watching last night, the profilers were hunting down a serial killer whose 'transference signature' was seducing and then torturing and drowning his female victims.
Later in the show, we find out that the killer's mother had died in a car accident when he was 10 years old. Still later in the show, we find out that the mother had actually drowned in the car accident in a small amount of water in the car (they must have driven into a lake), and that the son was also in the car at the time that she died, and that -- so concluded one of the profilers -- the only way that she could have drowned in the car in this small amount of water that was in the car, was if the son had actually held her head down under the water. So, further concluded the profiler, this was the killer's first -- and most emotionally cathartic -- 'signature drowning kill'.
Now, I don't know how closely this tv show actually follows the real facts of real killers in in real serial cases. But if we were to assume that this data that we have to work with is correct, then 'DGB Serial Transference Proliling' would have a couple of more things to add to the information above.
1. This act of extreme 'transference violence' -- i.e., drowning his mother -- may have been his first act of 'negative transference reversal' -- i.e., identification with the victimizer/rejector/aggressor. But it was not a memory that indicated the actual 'transference source of origin' of the killer's extreme 'transference rage and narcissistic impulse towards wanting to drown his mother'. We could say that perhaps the son had an extreme rage built up towards his mother -- and that the car accident and the water in the car became the opportunity by which he could finally vent his rage towards her. But this would not really explain 'water' and 'drowning' as 'signature, obsessive-compulsive, transference characteristics'.
2. For this, we would probably have to search further back into the killer's childhood relationship with his mother to find the actual 'memory-transference source of origin' of the killer's childhood rage towards his mother -- and to all women afterwords (who became transference-clones of his mother). Indeed, we would expect to find a memory, further back in the killer's childhood, where the mother almost drowned the child. This is the only type of transference memory that would suffice as a transference memory of origin' that would explain such an extremist reaction on the part of the child in terms of his rage towards his mother and his act of 'extreme negative transference reversal and violence towards her -- i.e., drowning her, which would then become the 'transference signature' of all later victims.
I am sorry that I had to use such a morbid example of negative transference reversal here but part of our purpose here is to better understand 'the darker side of human behavior'.
Let me close this paper with an example of a 'transference complex' at work in Freud's own life -- an example I used in an earlier paper I wrote called 'Truth, Narcissism, and Sophistry' (Sept. 2008).
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Freud's Earliest Transference-Traumacy Memory-Scene
Freud's earliest transference scene -- or at least one of them, and undoubtedly in my opinion his main one -- was a situation where he walked into his mom and dad's bedroom while they were having sex together -- one of the most classic, childhood transference scenes. In that instant, Freud took on a 'bi-polar split' between himself as the young child in the memory -- the curious, the investigator, the scientist, the person looking for 'epistemological clarity and truth' in what exactly was happening in this scene that he could not fathom while his dad was crouched over his mom, presumably in all his glory (his dad and his mom independently and integratively providing elements of what Fairbairn called 'The Exciting Object' for the young Sigmund Freud; also, his dad in the memory which would become Freud's 'introjected dad in his personality' -- the narcissist, the sophist, the illusionist, the mesmerizer -- trying to hide from his son 'the epistemological truth' of what exactly was going on in this most uncomfortable of situations relative to what actually was going on...
Twenty or thirty years later we start to see the beginning of 'Freud's repetition compulsion' -- or what I would call his 'transference re-creation compulsion' -- just like in Psycho, just like in Straight-Jacket, just like in 'The Dark Knight', just like what Freud would start to see in the behavior of his clients, starting with Breuer and 'The Anna O' case -- the first case history of Psychoanalysis. Repetition compulsions that started to follow the 'structural and psycho-dynamic format' of the client's -- in this case, Freud's -- earliest memory.
The Psychoanalytic Room starts to take its famous formation. The 'psychoanalytic couch' replaces 'the bed' in Freud's transference scene. The client replaces 'one bi-polar split' in Freud's 'introjected dad' in the form of 'resistance' and 'the defense mechanisms' -- the client doing everything in his or her power to 'hide the narcissistic truth' from 'Freud-the-grown-up-child's scientific-psychoanalytic investigation: The power of 'resistance, defense, narcissism, sophistry and illusion' over the 'power of epistemological truth'.
The client -- usually a woman -- also replaces his mom in his transference memory. And the 'real truths' -- both the clients' childhood (sexual) traumacies and their childhood and/or adult sexual fantasies -- start to 'rise to the top' and 'overflow into the psychoanalytic investigation', thus, giving Freud the type of 'transference cathartic release' (as well as the client) that satisfied Freud's own transference-traumacy reversal complex -- at least the one formulated from this memory.
Here is one of the strongest -- if not the strongest -- bi-polar splits in the human psyche. Freud found it in his parent's bedroom. And now he was going to bring it to the attention of the whole world in what would eventually become 'the id' vs. 'the ego' and/or 'superego'. Sexual and/or narcissisitic impulse -- hidden by 'human sophistry' vs. the 'ethical restraint' and/or 'the pursuit of epistemological truth'.
What kind of human drama and soap opera would we have without this core bi-polar split in the human psyche? Well, we could talk about the 'Liberal/Conservative' bi-polar split; or the 'Capitalist/Socialist' bi-polar split; or the 'Republican/Democrat' bi-polar split. But these discussions we will save for another day.
For now, this is where we will leave our hopefully provocative discussion on 'Truth, Narcissism, and Sophistry' on this fine, Friday morning, 10:11am.
-- dgb, September 5th, 2008.
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And this is where I will leave you on this fine Monday morning, almost a year later.
-- dgb, Aug. 31, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are still in process...
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