On Ethics...

Ethics should be the middle ground and the meeting ground between narcissism and altruism with no one being pampered, and given special treatment -- or conversely, marginalized, discriminated against, exploited, victimized, used...Ethics should be about fairness...and 'win-win negotiations, solutions, resolutions, rules, laws, encounters, and relationships'.  We are not always going to get there but we should never stop trying...Ethics starts with an individual, spreads to a partnership and a group, and can be viewed in all dialectic-democratic relationships, from the relationship between a parent and his or her child, a boyfriend and a girlfriend, a husband and a wife, a corporation and the public, an employer and his or her employees, a salesman or woman and his or her customer, a politician and the civilians he or she represents...

-- dgb, Dec. 31st, 2009,

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process....

Hegel Without Nietzsche...

Hegel without Nietzsche is like The Enlightenment without Romanticism -- all philosophy, from the neck up.

That is why three of the best dialectic psychologists all integrated Hegel and Nietzsche -- specifically, Freud, Jung, and Perls. The blending of Hegel and Nieztsche -- as well as Hegel and Schelling, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Humanism and Existentialism --  gave a better, overall balanced picture of what it means to be human, and what type of human idealism we all need to strive for in our own unique, particular way.

-- dgb, December 31st, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...

Ego Traumacies, Fantasies, Splits, Positions and States: Thinking Inside and Outside The Classical Psychoanalytic Box (Part 5): The 'Fitting Game'

We have come to the point where it is time to start talking about 'The Fitting Game' . (This is a term that I picked up from Fritz Perls, the main founder of Gestalt Therapy.)

The concept of The Fitting Game can also be applied to Psychoanalysis, to Adlerian Psychology, to Object Relations, and to Transactional Analysis. Or all of them put together in DGB Transference-Lifestyle Analysis.

Let us imagine two different clusters of  'points on a graph'.

The first cluster of points occurs in 'early childhood', let us say arbitrarily for the time being up until the age of about 7 years old.

The second cluster of points occurs in 'adulthood'.

What we are going to do here is to 'connect these two clusters or sets of points with lines'.

Now for our purpose here, we are going to define 'narcissism' as either 'self-esteem', 'the lack of self-esteem', and/or 'the (often obsessive-compulsive) striving for self-esteem.

Thus, for our purpose here, an 'ego traumacy' can also be called a 'narcissistic traumacy' -- or worded otherwise, a 'traumacy in self-esteem'.

This brings us to one of the first paradoxes in the human personality -- a paradox that Alfred Adler mainly figured out, Carl Jung mainly figured out, Fritz Perls mainly figured out, Eric Berne mainly figured out -- but it gave Sigmund Freud a lot of trouble. The closest Sigmund Freud came to figuring this 'transference paradox' out was in 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' where he started talking about 'The Mastery Compulsion'. But then Freud left the idea of the mastery compulsion -- which perhaps he deemed to be too close to Adler's ideas of 'inferiority feeling' and 'superiority striving' -- and Freud went on to create the dualism of the 'life and death instinct' competing against each other.  And the rest was history.

If you change the ideas of 'life and death instinct' to 'life and death forces', then there is something to work with here. But that is a topic for a different day in a different context.

Relative to the idea of 'transference' and 'transference complex' and 'transference neurosis' and 'transference obsessive-compulsion', Freud was basically right on the money when he started talking about the mastery compulsion before -- like the Seduction Theory -- he abandoned it.

Many schools of psychology and psychotherapy have made a very good living off of the ideas that Freud abandoned. 

Indeed, we could talk about -- and will talk about right now -- Freud's own 'seduction-abandonment transference-lifestyle complex' which very much affected the evolution and history of Psychoanalysis, Freud's 'counter-transferences' with his patients, Freud's counter-transferences with his own Psychoanalytic, Psychiatric, and Medical colleagues, and undoubtedly his relationship with his wife. That is the 'adult cluster of points' that we were talking about above. 

Now let us turn to the childhood 'cluster of points'.

And this is where we have to start to step outside 'the assumptive Classical Psychoanalytic Box'.

Because if we all follow Classical Psychoanalytic thinking any further, then we will be no better than thousands of 'lemmings', each of which follows their 'esteemed leader' over the 'assumptive cliff'. Bad move!

Firstly, Classical Psychoanalysis does not link 'transference' and 'childhood memories'. Bad move! Bad assumption! Because this was the link on which all three ideas were born!: 1. childhood memories; 2. 'transference'; and 3. Psychoanalysis.

Let us go back to the first case of Psychoanalysis: Anna O.

Before we do, let me distinguish the difference between an 'encounter and/or memory' transference complex, and a 'relationship transference complex'.

A. Here is an example of an 'encounter-memory' transference complex: 1. Anna O. (generally viewed as the first 'Psychoanalytic patient') sees a dog drinking from her cup or a bowl when she is a young girl; 2. supposedly she 'represses' (or suppresses) the memory; 3. she no longer will drink and must get all her liquids from fruits; 4. Breuer puts her into a 'hypnotic trance' or just lets her indulge in 'the talking cure' until she 'recovers' the dog memory; 5. she goes through a huge negative emotional reaction (abreaction, catharsis); 6. for the first time since the memory, she starts to drink again. 'Psychoanalysis' is essentially born -- even though it isn't named this yet. And this case happened before Freud entered the picture. Charcot and Janet were doing similar work in France.

B. Now, here is an example of a 'relationship transference complex' -- again involving Anna O. 'undiagnosed' as such by anyone other than yours truly in Hegel's Hotel. Anna O. had a very sick father -- perhaps tuberculosis or something of that order -- and consequently, Anna O. was constantly nursing over him, even as, and/or starting as, a young adult woman (which precipitated her arrival into Dr. Breuer's new 'form of therapy' which had yet to be called 'Psychoanalysis'. The Anna O. case took place in the early 1880s and the term 'Psycho-analysis' wasn't created til 'Studies on Hysteria', 1893-1895, at which point Freud had already seen how Charcot and Janet worked in Paris, as well as hearing Breuer's stories about his Anna O. case).

So in effect, Anna O. had no adult life of her own other than nursing over her sick father. This undoubtedly created an internal conflict inside her. Other young women were dating and getting married -- and here Anna O. was -- essentially locked in a 'master-slave' relationship (to use one of Hegel's most famous 'bi-polar concepts' and 'interpretive dialectical analyses') with her father where her father was essentially 'the master' controlling her daughter's 'every move' which essentially turned his daughter into a 'slave' constantly attending to her father's every need. (One wonders where Anna O.s seemingly continually absent mother was during this whole process?)   

So, Anna O. starts demonstrating these 'crazy hysterical symptoms' and 'psychotic hallucinations'...and some modern day theorists have 'historically diagnosed' Anna O. with having some sort of a 'brain disorder', perhaps a 'tumor' or 'epilepsy' or 'schizophrenia'. Most modern day theorists and therapists to my knowedge don't use the 'diagnostic category' of 'hysteria' any more although to be sure 'psychological symptoms' can be turned into 'bodily symptoms' although probably not usually in the 'bizarre fashion' that some of Freud's and Charcot's and Breuer's earliest patients did. There remains significant controversy over the issue of whether or not the diagnostic category of 'hysteria' is a legitimate 'psychological and/or medical category or not' -- or whether it is, or was, a 'symptom in itself' of a 'masculine dominated  society where some women were in effect 'stereotyped'  and 'classified as hysterics' when they went to rather bizarre extremes to demonstrate in effect that they didn't like their 'feminine slave' role in Victorian society. (Speaking from personal experience, -- and speaking metaphorically -- I have had more than a couple of girlfriends who have 'gone hysterical' on me. But 'dialectically speaking', one has to look at the whole 'context' of the relationship the 'supposedly hysterical person' is coming from, which, yes, means my role in these relationships, as well as, both then and now, the woman's 'serial behavior background'  which is the key to understanding the woman's particular 'transference-lifestyle complex and neurosis' -- as well as the man's 'serial behavior background' and his particular 'transference-lifestyle complex-neurosis.

It is from here that you can start to determine the particular types of 'transference-lifestyle games' that adults (and children) can play with each other. (See Eric Berne, 'Games People Play', and 'Transactional Analysis').

Back to Anna O. Enter Dr. Breuer. At this point, Anna O. did something very, very sneaky -- she may not have even known she was doing it. Or maybe she did. She 'turned the tables' on Dr. Breuer. She instigated what might be called a 'reverse father-transference relationship'. In effect, she took over the 'role model' of her sick father and became 'the sick daughter'. And once she started to take over the 'sick role', she started to see that she had 'power' over Dr. Breuer. And she liked that. She had become the 'master'. And Dr. Breuer had become the 'slave'. For every new 'hysterical symtom' that Anna O. created, she could enjoy the experience of making Dr. Breuer 'jump through a new hoop'.  For he would have to 'track down the etiology of the new hysterical symptom in order to help Anna O. get rid of it'. But here is where the 'transference relationship game' just got started. For every 'hysterical symptom' that Breuer helped Anna O. 'remove', she created a bunch more. It became a 'never ending therapeutic process'. Pretty soon, Dr. Breuer was starting to get exhausted from all the 'hypnotic work' he had to do with Anna O to keep trying to get rid of every new hysterical symptom that she created. While subconsciously, let me suggest that Anna O. was getting her 'transference fix' out of this whole process. This is what I call 'the mastery compulsion'. In her relationship with her father, Anna O. played the 'slave' and her father played the 'sick master'. Now, with Dr. Breuer, the whole 'father transference relationship' was reversed. Anna O. played the 'sick puppeteer'. And Breuer played 'Pinnochio'.  Anna O. subconsciously or consciously, according to my 'transference-interpretation',  liked playing the role of her 'sick father' much, much better than she liked playing the role of the 'slave-therapist'.  Introduce a 'romantic-erotic' component to the 'transference game' and now she had almost everything she wanted. It was a lot more fun being with Dr. Breuer than it was being with her father. (Even if there was guilt created by 'being away from her father'. But she could rationalize and justify this guilt because she was 'sick'.  And have fun with Dr. Breuer in the process. Dr. Breuer was 'working like a mad man to help clear away all her symptoms'.  Poor Dr. Breuer -- or maybe not so poor -- had hardly any time and energy left over for his wife and family. The icing on the cake came when Anna O. introduced her 'pregnancy and baby fantasy'.

Please excuse my sometimes morbid sense of humor because I find this 'hysterically funny':

'Dr. Breuer', I can imagine Anna O. saying in some fashion or another, 'I'm pregnant. I'm having your baby.'  It has been a while since I have read this whole case but I think there may have even been some 'hysterical-fantasized birth contractions' involved in one or more of the therapeutic sessions. I will include an excerpt of the case history after this essay is over.

Well, you can imagine the look of panic on Dr. Breuer's face. Who knows? Maybe there was some 'erotic hanky panky' and some 'therapeutic ethical violations' that we don't know about that made this whole development more than only fantasy. Sometimes -- oftentimes -- memories and fantasies get objectively and/or subjectively intertwined with each other making this more than an Aristotelean 'either/or' situation. Either 'reality'. Or 'fantasy'. Maybe it was a combination of both. Probably it was a combination of both but we do not know some 115 years later to what extent. Maybe there was a 'therapeutic cover-up or white-washing' of the case. We don't know.

What we do know is that Breuer 'exited stage left'. Perhaps in 'mid birth contraction'. Or perhaps he finished the session. But one way or the other, he decided that he needed to see more of his wife and family. And more tragically, to my knowledge, Anna O. spent part or most of the rest of her life in and out of  a 'sanatorium'. But she was a smart woman who became a social worker too. Let me re-copy two different renditions of the whole case for you to read, interpret, and judge yourself.

We have covered enough for this morning.

-- dgb, Dec. 30th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still In Process...

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

Sigmund Freud on Anna O. Case ]




Dr. Breuer's patient was a girl of twenty-one, of high intellectual gifts. Her illness lasted for over two years, and in the course of it she developed a series of physical and psychological disturbances which decidedly deserved to be taken seriously. She suffered from a rigid paralysis, accompanied by loss of sensation, of both extremities on the right side of her body; and the same trouble from time to time affected her on her left side. Her eye movements were disturbed and her power of vision was subject to numerous restrictions. She had difficulties over the posture of





Bertha Pappenheim

alias Anna O. the famous patient who inspired the psychoanalytic talking cure while in treatment with Dr. Breuer

her head; she had a severe nervous cough. She had an aversion to taking nourishment, and on one occasion she was for several weeks unable to drink in spite of a tormenting thirst. Her powers of speech were reduced, even to the point of her being unable to speak or understand her native language. Finally, she was subject to conditions of 'absence',(1) of confusion, of delirium, and of alteration of her whole personality, to which we shall have presently to turn our attention.



When you hear such an enumeration of symptoms, you will be inclined to think it safe to assume, even though you are not doctors, that what we have before us is a severe illness, probably affecting the brain, that it offers small prospect of recovery and will probably lead to the patient's early decease. You must be prepared to learn from the doctors, however, that, in a number of cases which display severe symptoms such as these, it is justifiable to take a different and a far more favourable view. If a picture of this kind is presented by a young patient of the female sex, whose vital internal organs (heart, kidneys, etc.) are shown on objective examination to be normal, but who has been subjected to violent emotional shocks - if, moreover, her various symptoms differ in certain matters of detail from what would have been expected - then doctors are not inclined to take the case too seriously. They decide that what they have before them is not an organic disease of the brain, but the enigmatic condition which, from the time of ancient Greek medicine, has been known as 'hysteria' and which has the power of producing illusory pictures of a whole number of serious diseases. They consider that there is then no risk to life but that a return to health - even a complete one - is probable. It is not always quite easy to distinguish a hysteria like this from a severe organic illness. There is no need for us to know, however, how a differential diagnosis of that kind is made; it will suffice to have an assurance that the case of Breuer's patient was precisely of a kind in which no competent physician could fail to make a diagnosis of hysteria. And here we may quote from the report of the patient's illness the further fact that it made its appearance at a time when she was nursing her father, of whom she was devotedly fond, through the grave illness which led to his death, and that, as a result of her own illness, she was obliged to give up nursing him.



[...] Dr. Breuer's attitude towards his patient deserved no such reproach. He gave her both sympathy and interest, even though, to begin with, he did not know how to help her. It seems likely that she herself made his task easier by the admirable qualities of intellect and character to which he has testified in her case history. Soon, moreover, his benevolent scrutiny showed him the means of bringing her a first instalment of help.



It was observed that, while the patient was in her states of 'absence (altered personality accompanied by confusion), she was in the habit of muttering a few words to herself which seemed as though they arose from some train of thought that was occupying her mind. The doctor, after getting a report of these words, used to put her into a kind of hypnosis and then repeat them to her so as to induce her to use them as a starting point. The patient complied with the plan, and in this way reproduced in his presence the mental creations which had been occupying her mind during the 'absences' and which had betrayed their existence by the fragmentary words which she had uttered. They were profoundly melancholy phantasies - 'day dreams' we should call them - sometimes characterized by poetic beauty, and their starting-point was as a rule the position of a girl at her father's sick-bed. When she had related a number of these phantasies, she was as if set free, and she was brought back to normal mental life. The improvement in her condition, which would last for several hours, would be succeeded next day by a further attack of 'absence'; and this in turn would be removed in the same way by getting her to put into words her freshly constructed phantasies. It was impossible to escape the conclusion that the alteration in her mental state which was expressed in the 'absences' was a result of the stimulus proceeding from these highly emotional phantasies. The patient herself, who, strange to say, could at this time only speak and understand English, christened this novel kind of treatment the 'talking cure'(2) or used to refer to it jokingly as 'chimney sweeping'.(2)



It soon emerged, as though by chance, that this process of sweeping the mind clean could accomplish more than the merely temporary relief of her ever-recurring mental confusion. It was actually possible to bring about the disappearance of the painful symptoms of her illness, if she could be brought to remember under hypnosis, with an accompanying expression of affect, on what occasion and in what connection the symptom had first appeared. 'It was in the summer during a period of extreme heat, and the patient was suffering very badly from thirst; for, without being able to account for it in any way, she suddenly found it impossible to drink. She would take up the glass of water that she longed for, but as soon as it touched her lips she would push it away like someone suffering from hydrophobia. As she did this, she was obviously in an absence for a couple of seconds. She lived only on fruit, such as melons, etc., so as to lessen her tormenting thirst. This had lasted for some six weeks, when one day during hypnosis she grumbled about her English "lady-companion", whom she did not care for, and went on to describe, with every sign of disgust, how she had once gone into this lady's room and how her little dog - horrid creature! - had drunk out of a glass there. The patient had said nothing, as she had wanted to be polite. After giving further energetic expression to the anger she had held back, she asked for something to drink, drank a large quantity of water without any difficulty, and awoke from her hypnosis with the glass at her lips; and thereupon the disturbance vanished, never to return.'(3)



[...] No doubt you will now ask me for some further instances of the causation of hysterical symptoms besides the one I have already given you of a fear of water produced by disgust at a dog drinking out of a glass. But if I am to keep to my programme I shall have to restrict myself to very few examples. In regard to the patient's disturbances of vision, for instance, Breuer describes how they were traced back to occasions such as one on which, 'when she was sitting by her father's bedside with tears in her eyes, he suddenly asked her what time it was. She could not see clearly; she made a great effort, and brought her watch near to her eyes. The face of the watch now seemed very big - thus accounting for her macropsia and convergent squint. Or again, she tried hard to suppress her tears so that the sick man should not see them.'¥ Moreover, all of the pathogenic impressions came from the period during which she was helping to nurse her sick father. 'She once woke up during the night in great anxiety about the patient, who was in a high fever; and she was under the strain of expecting the arrival of a surgeon from Vienna who was to operate. Her mother had gone away for a short time and Anna was sitting at the bedside with her right arm over the back of her chair. She fell into a waking dream and saw a black snake coming towards the sick man from the wall to bite him. (It is most likely that there were in fact snakes in the field behind the house and that these had previously given the girl a fright; they would thus have provided the material for her hallucination.) She tried to keep the snake off, but it was as though she was paralysed. Her right arm, over the back of the chair, had gone to sleep, and had become anaesthetic and paretic; and when she looked at it the fingers turned into little snakes with death's heads (the nails). (It seems probable that she had tried to use her paralysed right hand to drive off the snake and that its anaesthesia and paralysis has consequently become associated with the hallucination of the snake.) When the snake vanished, in her terror she tried to pray. But language failed her: she could find no tongue in which to speak, till at last she thought of some children's verses in English and then found herself able to think and pray in that language.'(4) When the patient had recollected this scene in hypnosis, the rigid paralysis of her left arm, which had persisted since the beginning of her illness, disappeared, and the treatment was brought to an end.



When, some years later, I began to employ Breuer's method of examination and treatment on patients of my own, my experiences agreed entirely with his. A lady, aged about forty, suffered from a tic consisting of a peculiar 'clacking' sound which she produced whenever she was excited, or sometimes for no visible reason. It had its origin in two experiences, whose common element lay in the fact that at the moment of their occurrence she had formed a determination not to make any noise, and in the fact that on both these occasions a kind of counter-will led her to break the silence with this same sound. On the first of these occasions one of her children had been ill, and, when she had at last with great difficulty succeeded in getting it off to sleep, she had said to herself that she must keep absolutely still so as not to wake it. On the other occasion, while she was driving with her two children in a thunderstorm, the horses had bolted and she had carefully tried to avoid making any noise for fear of frightening them even more.(5) I give you this one example out of a number of others which are reported in the Studies on Hysteria.(6)



[...] Ladies and Gentlemen, if I may be allowed to generalize - which is unavoidable in so condensed an account as this - I should like to formulate what we have learned so far as follows: our hysterical patients suffer from reminiscences. Their symptoms are residues and mnemic symbols of particular (traumatic) experiences.



Notes:

1. The French term.

2. In English in the original.

3. Studies on Hysteria.

4. Studies on Hysteria.

5. Studies on Hysteria.

6. Extracts from that volume, together with some later writings of mine on hysteria, are now to be had in an English translation prepared by Dr. A. A. Brill of New York.

From Sigmund Freud: Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis.



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


Anna O.


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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. Note: This article is concerned with Bertha Pappenheim as the patient Anna O. Her youth and her life from the time her treatment ceased in 1882 until her death, including her extensive literary and social work, is covered in the Wikipedia entry Bertha Pappenheim.



Anna O was, in fact, Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936), an Austrian-Jewish feminist and the founder of the Jüdischer Frauenbund (League of Jewish Women), who was 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.



Historical records since showed that when Breuer stopped treating Anna O. she was not becoming better but progressively worse[2]. In fact she was ultimately institutionalised: "Breuer told Freud that she was deranged; he hoped she would die to end her suffering"[3].



She later recovered over time and led a productive life. The West German government issued a postage stamp in honour of her contributions to the field of social work[4].



According to current research, "examination of the neurological details suggests that Anna suffered from complex partial seizures exacerbated by drug dependence."[5] In other words, her illness was not, as Freud suggested, psychological, but neurological. Many believe that Freud misdiagnosed her, and she in fact suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, and many of her symptoms, including imagined smells, are common symptoms of types of epilepsy.[6]





German postage stamp (1954) in the series Benefactors of MankindContents [hide]

1 Illness

2 Death of her father

3 Bellevue Sanatorium

4 Anna O.

5 Sources

6 Treatment

7 Conclusion of treatment

8 Success of treatment

9 See also

10 Further reading

11 References





[edit] Illness

Bertha’s father fell seriously ill of pleurisy in summer 1880 during a family holiday in Ischl. This event was a turning point in her life. While sitting up at night at his sickbed she was suddenly tormented by hallucinations and a state of anxiety.[7] Her illness later developed a wide spectrum of symptoms:



Language disorders (aphasia): On some occasions she could not speak at all, sometimes she spoke only English, or only French, or Italian. She could however always understand German. The periods of aphasia could last for days, and sometimes varied with the time of day.

Neuralgia: She suffered from facial pain which was treated with morphine and chloral and led to addiction. The pain was so severe that surgical severance of the trigeminus nerve was considered.

Paralysis (paresis): Signs of paralysis and numbness occurred in her limbs, primarily on only one side. Although she was right-handed, she had to learn to write with her left hand because of this condition.

Visual disorders: She had temporary motor disturbances in her eyes. She perceived objects as being greatly enlarged and she squinted.

Mood changes: Over long periods she had daily swings between conditions of anxiety and depression, followed by relaxed states.

Amnesia: When she was in one of these states she could not remember events or any of her own actions which took place when she was in the other state.

Eating disorders: In crisis situations she refused to eat. During one hot summer she rejected liquids for weeks and lived only on fruit.

At first the family did not react to these symptoms, but in November a friend of the family, the physician Josef Breuer, began to treat her. He encouraged her, sometimes under light hypnosis, to narrate stories, which led to partial improvement of the clinical picture, although her overall condition continued to deteriorate. Starting on 11 December Bertha Pappenheim was bedridden for several months.



[edit] Death of her father

Bertha Pappenheim‘s father died on 5 April 1881. As a result she became fully rigid and did not eat for days. Her symptoms continued to get worse and on 7 June she was admitted against her will to the Inzersdorf sanatorium, where she remained until November. After returning she continued to be treated by Breuer. She returned to this sanatorium several times over the course of the following years (sometimes at her own wish).



According to Breuer, the slow and laborious progress of her “remembering work” in which she recalled individual symptoms after they had occurred, thus “dissolving” them, came to a conclusion on 7 June 1882 after she had reconstructed the first night of hallucinations in Ischl. “She has fully recovered since that time” were the words with which Breuer concluded his case report.[8]



[edit] Bellevue Sanatorium

Already on 12 July 1882 Breuer referred Bertha Pappenheim to the private Bellevue Clinic in Kreuzlingen on Lake Constance, which was headed by Robert Binswanger. After treatment in Bellevue she was no longer personally treated by Breuer.



While in Kreuzlingen she visited her cousins Fritz Homburger and Anna Ettlinger in Karlsruhe. The latter was one of the founders of the Karlsruhe High School for Girls (Mädchengymnasium), which was also attended by the young Rahel Straus. Anna Ettlinger engaged in literary work. In an article which appeared in 1870 entitled "A Discussion of Women’s Rights" (Ein Gespräch über die Frauenfrage) she demanded equal education rights for women. She also gave private lessons, and organized "ladies’ literature courses".





Bertha Pappenheim during her stay at Bellevue Sanatorium in 1882Bertha Pappenheim read aloud to her some of the stories she had written, and her cousin, 14 years her senior, encouraged her to continue her literary activities.[9] During this visit toward the end of 1882 Bertha Pappenheim also participated in a training course for nurses which was offered by the Women’s Association of Baden (Badischer Frauenverein). The purpose of this training was to qualify young ladies to head nursing institutions. She could not finish the course before her visit came to an end.



On 29 October 1882 her condition improved and she was released from treatment in Kreuzlingen. In the following years, about which little is known, she lived a quiet life with her mother in Vienna. There is evidence of three stays at Inzersdorf during this time; her sickness was not conquered.



Despite her illness, Bertha Pappenheim was a strong personality. Breuer describes her as a women „of considerable intelligence, astonishingly astute reasoning and sharp-sighted intuition [...]”.[10]



[edit] Anna O.

Bertha Pappenheim became known to the general public under the pseudonym of Miss "Anna O.", a patient of Josef Breuer. Her case history was described in Studies on Hysteria (Studien über Hysterie) (1895), which Breuer published together with Sigmund Freud. She is presented as the first case in which it was possible to "thoroughly investigate" hysteria and cause its symptoms to disappear. Her statement that being able to verbalize her problem helped her to unburden herself is in accordance with the treatment later denoted in psychoanalysis as the "catharsis theory". Accordingly, Freud described her as the "actual founder of the psychoanalytic approach". Based on this case study the assertion that "those with hysteria suffer for the most part from their reminiscences", in other words from traumatic memories which can be "processed" by relating them, was formulated for the first time.[11]



Freud himself wrote:



Breuer’s findings are still today the foundation of psychoanalytic therapy. The statement that symptoms disappear with awareness of their unconscious preconditions has been confirmed by all subsequent research […].[12]



[edit] Sources

Aspects of the Anna O. case were first published by Freud and Breuer in 1893 as preliminary communications in two Viennese medical journals. The detailed case history appeared in 1895 in Studies on Hysteria.



The name Anna O. was constructed by shifting her initials "B.P." one letter back in the alphabet to "A.O."



When the first volume of Ernest Jones’ Freud biography appeared in 1953, in which the Anna O. of the studies was identified as being Bertha Pappenheim, her friends and admirers were outraged; they only knew her from her time in Frankfurt. One of the reasons for Dora Edinger's biography was to contrast her identification as being "mentally ill", which at the time was considered defamatory, with a depiction of Pappenheim as a philanthropist and advocate of womens’ rights.



Jones' portrayal contained further details, especially legends about the conclusion of Breuer’s treatment, but except for the information contained in the studies nothing was known about the further course of her illness. New facts only became known based on research by Henri Ellenberger and subsequently by Albrecht Hirschmüller, who were able to find Breuer’s case history of Pappenheim and other documents in the archives of the Bellevue Clinic in Kreuzlingen.[13]



Those of Freud’s letters to his fianceé Martha Bernays which have been published contain a few hints about the course of Pappenheim’s therapy and Freud’s relationship to Breuer, but until all of Freud’s letters are published there is room for all kinds of speculation.[14]



[edit] Treatment

Breuer began the therapy without a clear method or theoretical basis. The treatment of her symptoms ranged from feeding her when she rejected food to dosages of chloral when she was agitated.



He described his observations as follows:



She had two completely separate states of consciousness which alternated quite often and suddenly, and in the course of her illness became more and more distinct. In the one state she was sad and apprehensive, but relatively normal. In the other state she had hallucinations and "misbehaved", that is, she swore, threw pillows at people, […] etc.[15]



He noted that when in one conditions she could not remember events or situations that had occurred in the other condition. His conclusion:



It is difficult to avoid saying that she dissolved into two personalities, one of which was psychically normal and the other mentally ill.[16] Symptoms of this type are associated with the clinical picture of dissociative identity disorder; at the time the term "split personality" was used. In Breuer’s time the existence and frequency of such an illness was controversial, as it remains today. A first therapy approach was suggested by the observation that the patient calmed down and her speech disorder improved whenever she was asked to tell stories that had presumably arisen from her daydreams. About these daydreams Breuer remarked: "Although everyone thought she was present, she was living in a fantasy, but as she was always present when addressed, nobody suspected it.[17] He also encouraged and prompted her to calmly "reel off" these stories, for example by supplying a first sentence. The formula he used was always the same, "There was a boy…." At times Pappenheim could only express herself in English, but usually understood the German spoken around her. About her descriptions Breuer said, "The stories, always sad, were sometimes quite nice, similar to Andersen’s 'Picture Book Without Pictures'".[18]



The patient was aware of the relief that "rattling off" brought her , and she described the process using the terms "chimney-sweeping" and "talking cure". The latter formulation subsequently became part of psychoanalytic terminology.



Soon other levels of story telling came up which were combined with and penetrated each other:



Stories from a "private theater"

Hallucinatory experiences

Temporal relocation of episodes: during one phase her experience of the illness was shifted by one year

Episodes of occurrence of hysterical symptoms

Systematic remembering and "reeling off" the occasions when hysterical symptoms first occurred was developed by Breuer into a therapeutic method first applied to Pappenheim. To his surprise he noticed that a symptom disappeared after the first occurrence was remembered, or after the cause was "excavated".



Breuer described his final methodology as follows: In the morning he asked Pappenheim under light hypnosis about the occasions and circumstances under which a particular symptom occurred. When he saw her in the evening, these episodes—there were sometimes over 100—were systematically "reeled off" by Pappenheim in reverse temporal order. When she got to the first occurrence and thus to the "cause", the symptoms appeared in an intensified form and then disappeared "forever".



This therapy came to a conclusion when they had worked their way back to a "black snake" hallucination which Pappenheim experienced one night in Ischl when she was at her father's sickbed. Breuer describes this finish as follows:



In this way all the hysteria came to an end. The patient herself had made a firm resolution to finish the business on the anniversary of her transfer to the countryside. For that reason she pursued the "talking cure" with great energy and animation. On the final day she reproduced the anxiety hallucination which was the root of all her illness and in which she could only think and pray in English, helped along by rearranging the room to resemble her father's sickroom. Immediately thereafter she spoke German and was then free of all the innumerable individual disorders which she had formerly shown.[19]



[edit] Conclusion of treatment

A legend arose about the conclusion of Pappenheim‘s treatment by Josef Breuer. It was handed down in slightly different versions by various people; one version is contained in a letter from Freud to Stefan Zweig:



I was in a position to guess what really happened with Br’s patient long after we parted company when I recalled a communication from Br dating from the time before our joint work and relating to another context, and which he never repeated. That evening, after all her symptoms were overcome, he was again called to her, and found her confused and writhing with abdominal cramps. When asked what was the matter she responded, "Now the child I have from Dr. Br. is coming". At that moment he had in his hand the key which would open the way to the Mothers, but he dropped it. With all his intellectual talents he was devoid of anything Faustian. He took flight in conventional horror and passed on the patient to a colleague. She struggled for months in a sanatorium to regain her health./ I was so sure of my reconsruction that I published it somewhere. Br’s younger daughter (who was born shortly after the conclusion of that therapy, which is not irrelevant as to a meaningful connection) read my portrayal and asked her father about it (this was shortly before his death). He confirmed my analysis, which she later relayed to me.[20]



As nothing is known of such a publication by Freud, it is not clear where Breuer’s daughter could have read it. In the version by Ernest Jones, after his flight Breuer quickly goes on a second honeymoon to Vienna with his wife Mathilda, who actually conceives a child there—in contrast to the imaginary child of Bertha Pappenheim. There is no evidence for any of this, and most of it has been proved false. Breuer did not flee but rather referred his patient to Kreuzlingen. He did not go to Venice but with his family on a summer vacation to Gmunden, and he did not conceive a child (either in Venice or in Gmunden), since his youngest child—Dora Breuer—was born on 11 März 1882, three months before the alleged conception.



Freud’s purpose in describing the conclusion of treatment in a way that contradicts some of the verifiable facts is unclear. The assumption that he wanted to make himself the sole discoverer of psychoanalysis at Breuer’s expense is contradicted by the description of the discovery in Freud’s writings, in which he does not minimize Breuer’s role , but rather emphasizes it. Freud’s behavior is compared by some authors with his conduct in the so-called "cocaine affair". There, too, he gave false representations not only privately, but also several times in published form, without there being any advantage to offset the risk of lasting damage to his scientific reputation.



Breuer later described the therapy as "a trial by ordeal", probably in the sense of an examination. It claimed of him over 1,000 hours in the course of two years.



 Success of treatment

After Breuer ceased treating her, both he and Freud continued to follow the course of Pappenheim‘s illness.[21] Among Freud‘s disciples the dubiousness of the assertion of “treatment success” was discussed. In a private seminar Carl Gustav Jung said in 1925:



So the famous first case he treated together with Breuer and which was vastly praised as an outstanding therapeutic success was nothing of the sort.[22]



And Charles Aldrich reports:



But in this famous case the patient was not healed. Freud told Jung that all her old symptoms returned after he had given up the case.[23]



Opponents of pyschoanalysis use this statement as an argument against this therapeutic approach.



How Pappenheim herself assessed the success of her treatment is not documented.[24] She never spoke about this episode of her life and vehemently opposed any attempts at psychoanalytic treatment of people in her care.[25]


Aspects of Bertha Pappenheim‘s biography(especially her role as Breuer’s patient) were treated in the film Freud by John Huston (along with elements of other early psychoanalytic case histories). The film is based on a screenplay by Jean-Paul Sartre, who however distanced himself from the film version.

From Monster Jobs and Careers....

"The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects
it to change. The leader adjusts the sails."

-- John Maxwell

Ten Career Resolutions

By Dan Miller
Monster Staff Writer
Like the old saying, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life," it's

never abad time to start moving your career in a better direction.
Here are 10 New Year's resolutions to inspire you to great success
 in 2010.

Pay Attention in Class

Treat every workday like a school day. Be sure you learn something and
use it to make yourself more productive. It doesn't have to relate to your
skills set. It may be as simple as understanding how to work with specific
peers or emotional intelligence. Take mental notes. Don't sleepwalk
through the day.

Look for the Next Rung

You need to excel at your job. This is how you gain credibility.
But understanding your next step is key to career happiness.
Career pathing is critical to remaining engaged on the job. Schedule
discussions with your manager to get clarity on the next challenge.
If you don't get it on your team or in your company, it may be time to
look elsewhere.

Understand Company Goals

Make sure you understand how your job contributes to your company's
 business objectives. Are you in a revenue-generating role? A brand-
awareness role? Is your mission to delight the customer? Knowing how
your job fits into the big picture will give you inspiration and a sense of
accomplishment -- and will help you understand your job's impact.

Be Ethical

Bring integrity to your job. Whether you're running the company or cleaning
its bathrooms, be honest in all you do. Don't call in sick just to get a day off --
that's stealing. Put in an honest day's work. Be accountable. If you're working
remotely, be sure you are. Do what you say you're going to do. Honesty and
reliability mean a lot to your manager.

Stay Fit

OK, this was probably on your last New Year's resolutions list, but that's
because it's so important. Try to break a sweat for 20 minutes, three days
a week. Go for a walk at lunch. Join a gym. Lift weights. A healthy body
makes a healthy mind. Exercising increases blood flow to the brain and gives
you ideas. You'll be more productive at work, and best of all, you'll feel better.

Stretch Your Role

Occasionally think how you can go above and beyond. Are there projects
outside your defined role you could help with? Be proactive; ask to join.
Come up with your own ideas, and work with your manager to implement
them. If you're a hamster, step off the wheel and poke your head out of the
cage. Stretch a little. This won't go unnoticed.

Manage Up

Make sure you and your manager are in firm agreement on what you're
doing. Be proactive and get on his calendar to ensure you're meeting or
exceeding expectations. Don't assume he's paying close attention. There
are bad managers. If there's a disconnect between what you're doing and
what your manager wants, you're partly to blame. Don't wait until review
time.

Manage Across

Even if you work primarily alone, be sure to make time to understand your
peers' roles and how they go about their jobs. Show an interest. Don't just
choose a few friends and become part of a clique. High school is over.
You never know when you may need people -- or be reporting to them.

Communicate

Don't leave people waiting for answers. If you're in an email environment,
return emails promptly. Let people know what you're doing. If you're
working on a project, always ask yourself who needs to know about it, then
tell them. Talk to people; give them a heads up. And when someone helps
you out, be sure to thank him. It's amazing this even needs to be on a list,
but bad communicators abound. Don't be one of them.

Make Time for Play

Have fun. Work hard, but smile while you're doing it. No one likes a grump.
Approach each day with a positive spirit and stay loose. Enjoy your family
and friends as well. Make time for them -- and you. It's called work/life
balance. All work and no play makes life a chore.

A General, Evolving Table of Contents For Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology...

Updated, Dec. 28th, 2009


Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology...For The Mind, Body, and Soul...(As Well As For The Motivated Layperson, Academic, and Professional...)


Table of Contents

Blog (Floor) Number:

Part 1: General Introductions

Floor 01: First Introductions
Floor 02: More on The Dialectic Perspective

Part 2: The History, Evolution, and Integration of Western Philosophy

Floor 03: The Pre-Socratics (Anaxamander and Heraclitus)
Floor 04: Comparisons To Ancient Chinese Philosophy
Floor 05: Parmenides, The Sophists, and Socrates
Floor 06: Plato and Aristotle
Floor 07: Post-Aristotlean Roman Philosophy
Floor 08: Scholastic (Early Religious) Philosophy
Floor 09: Early Scientific Philosophy
Floor 10: Rationalism: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz
Floor 11: British Empiricism: Locke, Berkeley, and Hume
Floor 12: Enlightenment Philosophy, Part 1: Adam Smith: Free Market Capitalism
Floor 14: Enlightenment Philosophy, Part 2: Diderot, Voltaire, Montesque, Paine, Jefferson...
Floor 15: German Idealism: Kant, Fichte, Schelling
Floor 16: German Idealism: Hegel
Floor 17: 19th Century Romanticism: Rousseau, Goethe...
Floor 18: Marx: Dialectic-Materialism, Socialism, Communism
Floor 19: Schopenhauer: Irrationalism
Floor 20: Existentialism: Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre
Floor 21: American Pragmatism: James, Dewey
Floor 22: Russell, Wittgenstein,
Floor 23: Korzybski, Hayakawa, and General Semantics
Floor 24: Hegel, Darwin, and The Evolution of Evolution Theory
Floor 25: The Philosophy of Science: Kuhn vs. Popper
Floor 26: The Philosophy of Power and Deconstruction: Foucault and Derrida
Floor 27: Ayn Rand: From Rational-Empiricism to Objectivism

Part 3: The History, Evolution, and Integration of Western Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy

Floor 28: Hypnosis to Clinical Psychology: Charcot, Janet, Freud
Floor 29: Freud and Breuer: Early Unconscious Traumacy Theory
Floor 30: Freud: The Seduction Theory
Floor 31: Freud: Fantasy Theory and Screen Memories
Floor 32: Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams
Floor 33: Freud: The Childhood Sexual Stages of Development and The Oedipal Theory
Floor 34: Freud: Sexual Instincts and Objects
Floor 35: Freud: The Evolution of Transference Theory
Floor 36: Freud: On Narcissism
Floor 37: Freud: The Repetition Compulsion, Mastery Compulsion, and Life-Death Instinct Theory
Floor 38: Freud: The Id, Superego, and Ego
Floor 39: Freud: Ego-Splitting and Object Relations
Floor 40: Ferenczi, Rank, and Wilhelm Reich
Floor 41: Adler
Floor 42: Jung
Floor 43: Object Relations: Klein, Fairbairn, Guntrip
Floor 44: Narcissistic Transferences and Self-Psychology: Kohut
Floor 45: Berne: Transactional Analysis and Games People Play
Floor 46: Erich Fromm: Humanism and Neo-Freudianism
Floor 47: Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy
Floor 48: Integrating Humanism and Existentialism
Floor 49: Nathaniel Branden and The Psychology of Self-Esteem
Floor 50: Cognitive Therapy: Ellis, Kelley, Beck...
Floor 51: Psycho-Cybernetics
Floor 52: Jeffrey Masson: Countering Freud's Abandonment of The Seduction Theory

Part 4: Current DGB Philosophy-Psychology

Floor 53: DGB Learning and Lifestyle-Transference-Mastery Compulsion Theory
Floor 54: Traumacy, Narcissistic Fixation, Ego-Splitting, Ego-Positions, and Ego-States
Floor 55: The Nurturing Superego, The Narcissistic Superego, and The Righteous-Rejecting Superego
Floor 56: The Approval-Seeking UnderEgo, The Narcissistic Underego, and The Rebellious-Rejecting Underego
Floor 57: The Central (Mediating and Executive) Ego
Floor 58: DGB Language Theory and Epistemology
Floor 59: DGB Narcissistic and Altruistic Theory
Floor 60: DGB Ethics
Floor 61: The Psycho-Dynamics of Multi-Dialectic (Multi-Bi-Polar) Personality Theory
Floor 62: A DGB Theory of One-Dimensional Functioning, Extremism, 'Neurosis' and Psychopathology
Floor 63: DGB (Multi-Dialectic,Wholistic, Integrative, Humanistic-Existential) Psychotherapy


Part 5: DGB Business, Economics, Politics and Law

Floor 64: Towards A More Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential Approach to Better Business Ethics and 'Win-Win Strategies'
Floor 65: Canadian Politics/Economics
Floor 66: American Politics/Economics
Floor 67: Equal Rights/Equal Responsibilities
Floor 68: The Battle of The Sexes: Egalitarian Masculinism and Feminism vs. Narcissistic Masculinism and Feminism
Floor 69: Canadian Family Law
Floor 70: Domestic Assault and Canadian Law
Floor 71: Sexual Assault and Canadian Law
Floor 72: Unequal Lobbyism and The Process of Government Law-Making
Floor 73: Towards Better (More) Egalitarian Government Laws -- and Their Enforcement -- Between The Sexes

Part 6: DGB Romanticism, Spirituality, Pantheism, and Humanistic-Existentialism

Floor 74: Gods, Myths, Religion, Philosophers, and Psychologists
Floor 75: Gods, Myths, Spirituality, Pantheism, Humanism
Floor 76: 21st Century Romantic Philosophy, Poetry, Literature, and The Arts
Floor 77: Family and Community Work
Floor 78: Concluding Essays
Floor 79: Contact, Awarenesses, Aphorisms, Short Opinions...
Floor 80: Most Recent Essays...

It has taken me about 3 and a half years to write the number of papers that can now be found on the various blogsites of Hegel's Hotel. I am predicting that it will take me another 3 full years of writing ahead of me to finish Hegel's Hotel to my satisfaction.

To be sure, the style and technicality of my writing is far from perfect -- both in its grammatical aspects and in its degree of subjectivity and sharing of my own personal experiences as examples, both good and bad, positive and negative, constructive and self-destructive.

However, first and foremost, mainly I am trying to get my ideas out on the internet for people to read -- academics, professionals and laypersons alike. There may or may not be time to organize and professionalize some of my essays later once Hegel's Hotel is more or less fully constructed.

I don't want to run out of time, energy and/or health before it is finished.

Also, I wish to bridge the dialectic gap between an academic standard of proficiency and historical accuracy on the one side of things vs. a more 'subjective blogsite approach' with -- as I said above --my own personal experiences scattered through many or most of my essays.

Most of my essays are aimed to be 'therapeutic' at least on one level or another as I weave my way through my own myriad of life experiencs and how I react to them, again, both good and bad.

I hope that my readers can find some value in what I write, even when you disagree with some of my arguments and opinions. Again, 'feedback' and 'freedom of speech' is always welcome here as long as it is done tastefully and respectfully, and doesn't amount to 'trash-talking'. The more concrete the feedback, the better. Even essays not written by me will be published if they are deemed to be good enough to add to the overall realism, idealism, and 'multi-dialectic' vision of Hegel's Hotel. Writers don't need to agree with me -- just put together a clear and well-stated argument on what you believe and value.

I do not really value Hegel's concept of 'Absolute Knowledge' in the way that he presented it. However, I certainly do value the concept of 'Multi-Dialectic and Integrative Knowledge Aimed Towards a More Unified and Well-Balanced Enlightenment-Romantic, Humanistic-Existential, Wholistic Existence'.

This is the vision, the methodology -- and the reason for the construction -- of Hegel's Hotel.

(To be sure, there are probably underlying obsessive-compulsive, tranference-lifestyle related reasons as well...but these will have to wait for their appropriate time of self-disclosure -- i.e. when we are discussing the particular makeup of 'transference-lifestyle complexes' in concrete detail as it pertains to my obsession with the construction of Hegel's Hotel.)


-- DGB, updated, Nov. 3rd, Contents updated Dec. 28th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still In Progress...

Different Suggestions For How To Cure A Depression....

Here is one good way to 'work your way out of a depression'....Rage and/or cry your way out of it. Depression is a 'hanging on bite'. Rage and grief can both help to cut the umbilical cord of depression. Strong, passionate emotions (abreaction, catharsis from the oldest Freudian days) can 'close or finish an unclosed or unfinished gestalt' and help you to 'cut loose a hanging on resentment bite'... (See Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy...)

Depression is based on a mellowed, watered-down, sometimes medicated complex of hotter, stronger, driving emotions that are pushing, pushing from the bottom of the depression to be strongly heard and given significant airplay...

Depression is the presenting set of symptoms for stronger, more forceful emotions that are lurking in the 'shadows of our personality' below. 


Depression is a 'compromise formation' that both hides, and alludes to, stronger underlying emotions such as rage, guilt, hate, anxiety, and/or grief...  


 If you do not feel comfortable with dealing with what could rise from below, it would obviously be in your best interest, and perhaps those around you, to face this potential dragon in the company of a qualified therapist...


Other lesser alternatives include: reading, writing, music, poetry, hitting a pillow, hitting a punching bag...preferably not hitting your husband or wife's automobile windshield with a golf club...and having to explain yourself later...


One more decent alternative using a combination of Kierkgaardian, Satchel Paige, and DGB advice:


Don't look back, life needs to be lived forward. Embrace the present and the future. Get caught up in the past and you may find ghosts and goblins and skeletons and antagonists all will start to catch you.

"Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition,
there are still untapped possibilities within us and new
beauty waiting to be born." -- Dr. Dale Turner




Here is a bad 'cure' to depression, generally with side effects and no long term solutions.


Take a 'happy pill'. 


-- dgb, Dec. 27th, 2009. 


-- David Gordon Bain

Ego Traumacies, Fantasies, Splits, Positions, and States: Thinking Inside and Outside The Classical Psychoanalytic Box (Part 4)

Today's Inspirational Quotes:

"When we all relate to each other as we would like to receive
if our roles are reversed, we move closer to utopia. Every one
of us can bring this closer, starting now. This includes how
we relate to our own family, our neighbors and how we use our
wealth and opportunities to help entire nations that lack our
advantages."

-- Bill Blackman


Imagination was given to us to compensate for what we are not; a sense of humor was given to us to console us for what we are.

- Mark McGinnis

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

Can Classical Psychoanalysis and Object Relations be brought under the same theoretical roof and the same theoretical jurisdiction?

Yes they can.

Can Freud's Traumacy, Seduction, Fantasy, Oedipal, Transference, and Narcissistic Theories all be brought under the same theoretical roof and jurisdiction?

Yes, they can.

Can Freud and Masson seemingly 'bi-polar and opposing ideas' be brought together under one theoretical roof and one jurisdiction?

Yes, they can.

Can Freud, Adler, Jung, Ferenczi, Rank, Reich (Wilhelm and Theodor), Klein, Fairbairn, Kohut, Berne, Perls, and Masson all be brought under the same theoretical roof and jurisdiction?

Yes, they can.

What is required?

Research -- lots of research, imagination, and supreme multi-dialectic integrative powers, my friends...

Plus perhaps as much or more than anything, an open mind, a democratic-dialectic approach, and a willingness and stubborness not to get stuck in the mud of other people's and other schools of philosophy-psychology's 'conceptual narcissism' and 'arbitrary conceptual boundaries'.

In the world of people's minds, people make arbitrary conceptual and theoretical boundaries -- not nature,  not evolution, and not God whatever your conception of God is, to the extent that 'God'  conceptually and/or phenomenologically represents the driving, creative-destructive force behind all of nature and all of evolution.

If you can stay away from the mental pitfalls I have listed above, and if you can exemplify the mental qualities that I have listed above, then perhaps you too could do -- for better or for worse -- what I am about to do below.

Which is essentially to re-build the house that Freud built. Psychoanalysis.

And to re-involve practically everybody who was theoretically and therapeutically involved with Freud at the time he was building Psychoanalysis. To re-involve everyone who I have read who has left a theoretical and therapeuctic impact on me. And basically, to re-integrate almost everything, every idea, and everyone who both influenced Freud and was influenced by him. And then driven apart by 'masculine narcissism and egotism' and in at least one case 'feminine narcissism and egotism' (Anna Freud vs. Melanie Klein).

Or maybe I am -- in my abilities, my motivation, and what I want to do, for better or for worse, and in strength and in weakness  -- simply one of a kind.

Because you won't find my ideas anywhere else on the internet except maybe in isolated, unintegrated pieces.

And you won't find a 'Grander Narrative' in the history of Western Philosophy and Clinical Psychology than you will right here, as it is still evolving...being written in front of your eyes...

Hegel's Hotel is basically intended to be a modernized, existentialized, humanized, 21st century version of Hegel's classic work: 'The Phenomenology of Spirit'.

And there is a paradox here -- probably a couple of them coming into my immediate awareness-- just like there are paradoxes (and contradictions, and incongruities, and hypocrisies, and impasses...) written all across man's psyche.

On the one hand, there is no one else in the world who could write Hegel's Hotel in the way that it is being written -- in its massive integrative scope -- other than me. And yet I could take the combined work of writers, philosophers, psychologists, theorists, all across the world, both today and throughout world history, and make Hegel's Hotel a much, much bigger, and more integrative-comprehensive, place to be, than anything I will ever be able to accomplish by myself.

There are two other men, and two other massive pieces of work, that come to my mind as I write this.

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


1. Denis Diderot (October 5, 1713 – July 31, 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as chief editor of and contributor to the creation of the Encyclopédie.


'The Encyclopedie' was a massive intellectual project of the French Enlightenment period and Denis Diderot was the main driving force and integrative power behind this project. His aim was basically to capture all of available intellectual knowledge available at his time.

In 1745 Diderot became the editor of the Encyclopédie with mathematician Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, who resigned later because he believed that mathematics was a more fundamental science than biology. Diderot himself was fascinated by discoveries in the biological sciences. Originally the work was planned to be a translation of Ephraim Chambers's, a Scottish globemaker, two-volume Cyclopaedia. Diderot enlarged its scope and made it an organ for radical and revolutionary opinions, which he managed to slip into seemingly minor articles. The Encyclopédie was published between 1751 and 1772 in 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of engravings. Many of the contributors were priests, but Diderot's companions in the enterprise were also Voltaire, Chevalier de Jaucourt, a tireless reseacher, and Marmontel. The Encyclopédie arose much controversy and the publisher was jailed, then released, and his licence canceled. However, the censor, M. de Malesherbes, was a believer in freedom of the press, and warned beforehand Diderot when his agents were sent to seize manuscripts.
Denis Diderot was the most prominent of the French Encyclopedists. He was educated by the Jesuits, and, refusing to enter one of the learned professions, was turned adrift by his father and came to Paris, where he lived from hand to mouth for a time. Gradually, however, he became recognized as one of the most powerful writers of the day. His first independent work was the Essai sur le merite et la vertu (1745). As one of the editors of the Dictionnaire de medecine (6 vols., Paris, 1746), he gained valuable experience in encyclopedic system. His Pensees philosophiques (The Hague, 1746), in which he attacked both atheism and the received Christianity, was burned by order of the Parliament of Paris.


In the circle of the leaders of the Enlightenment, Diderot's name became known especially by his Lettre sur les aveugles (London, 1749), which supported Locke's theory of knowledge. He attacked the conventional morality of the day, with the result (to which possibly an allusion to the mistress of a minister contributed) that he was imprisoned at Vincennes for three months. He was released by the influence of Voltaire's friend Mme. du Chatelet, and thenceforth was in close relation with the leaders of revolutionary thought. He had made very little pecuniary profit out of the Encyclopedie, and Grimm appealed on his behalf to Catherine of Russia, who in 1765 bought his library, allowing him the use of the books as long as he lived, and assigning him a yearly salary which a little later she paid him for fifty years in advance.

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

The second man -- and project -- on my list here is a man until very recently, I didn't even know existed. However, he can be viewed as being a modern-day 'Denis Diderot'.  This is Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, and, although I don't normally do this kind of thing, below he is appealing for donations to keep Wikipedia up and running...I would like to acknowledge him for the many times his his massive work project -- Wikipedia -- has helped me, and, seeing as Wikipedia seems to have run into some financial problems, I will let him appeal his case below. See Wikipedia...

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

2. Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia

Jimmy Wales


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born Jimmy Donal Wales

August 7, 1966 (age 43)

Huntsville, Alabama, U.S.

Residence St. Petersburg, Florida

Nationality American

Other names Jimbo (online nickname)[1]

Alma mater Auburn University

University of Alabama

Indiana University Bloomington

Occupation Internet entrepreneur

Known for Co-founding Wikipedia

Title President of Wikia, Inc. (2004–present)

Chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation

Term June 2003 – October 2006

Successor Florence Devouard

Board member of Wikimedia Foundation, Creative Commons, Socialtext, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (advisory board)

Awards EFF Pioneer Award (2006), The Economist's Business Process Award (2008), The Global Brand Icon of the Year Award (2008)

Website

Personal weblog

English Wikipedia userpage

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (pronounced /ˈdoʊnəl weɪlz/; born August 7, 1966)[2] is an American Internet entrepreneur and a co-founder and promoter of Wikipedia.[3][4][5]

Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama. He attended a small private school, a university preparatory school, and then earned bachelor's and master's degrees in finance. While in graduate school, he taught at two universities.[1][6] Wales later took a job in finance, and worked as the research director of a Chicago futures and options firm for several years.[1] In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis, a web portal that targeted males, and which hosted, and provided the initial funding for, the peer-reviewed encyclopedia Nupedia (2000–2003) and for its successor, Wikipedia.[4][6]

In 2001, together with Larry Sanger and others, Wales helped launch Wikipedia, a free, open-content encyclopedia which enjoyed rapid growth and popularity.[7][8] As Wikipedia's public profile grew, Wales became the project's promoter and spokesman.[9] Wales is historically cited as the co-founder of Wikipedia, though he has disputed the "co-" designation in declaring himself the sole founder.[10][11] He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit charitable organization which operates Wikipedia. He holds its board-appointed "community founder" seat.[12] In 2004, he co-founded Wikia, a privately-owned, free Web-hosting service, with fellow Wikimedia trustee Angela Beesley.[13]

Wales has been married twice and has a daughter with Christine, his second wife, from whom he is separated. He describes himself as an Objectivist and, with reservations, a libertarian.[1] His role in creating Wikipedia, which has become the world's largest encyclopedia, prompted Time magazine to name him in its 2006 list of the world's most influential people.[14] Wales is the de facto leader of Wikipedia;[4][15] his exact position on the project is a matter of public and press debate.[16]

.....................
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge." — Jimmy Wales

An appeal from Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales

Today, I am asking you to make a donation to support Wikipedia.

I started Wikipedia in 2001, and over the past eight years, I've been amazed and humbled to see hundreds of thousands of volunteers join with me to build the largest encyclopedia in human history.

Wikipedia isn't a commercial website. It's a community creation, entirely written and funded by people like you. More than 340 million people use Wikipedia every month - almost a third of the Internet-connected world. You are part of our community.

I believe in us. I believe that Wikipedia keeps getting better. That's the whole idea. One person writes something, somebody improves it a little, and it keeps getting better, over time. If you find it useful today, imagine how much we can achieve together in 5, 10, 20 years.

Wikipedia is about the power of people like us to do extraordinary things. People like us write Wikipedia, one word at a time. People like us fund it. It's proof of our collective potential to change the world.

We need to protect the space where this important work happens. We need to protect Wikipedia. We want to keep it free of charge and free of advertising. We want to keep it open – you can use the information in Wikipedia any way you want. We want to keep it growing – spreading knowledge everywhere, and inviting participation from everyone.

The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization I created in 2003 to operate, grow, nurture, and protect Wikipedia. For ten million US dollars a year and with a staff of fewer than 35 people, it runs the fifth most-read website in the entire world. I'm asking for your help so we can continue our work.

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s where we’re headed. And with your help, we will get there.

Jimmy Wales
Founder, Wikipedia


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

-- dgb, cont'd...
Back to Hegel's Hotel.

One last note before we move back into 'Ego Traumacies and Fantasies'.

I have given both Plato and Hegel a hard, critical ride for their respective but similar ideas about 'Absolute Knowledge' -- Plato for being 'overly idealistic' and 'non-empirical'...and Hegel for being 'overly deterministic', believing that the dialectic can and will solve anything and everything, regardless of how many tragedies and traumacies mankind has to endure, both personally and collectively, to 'get back to God again' and to find that ultimate 'Godly place of Absolute Knowledge'...

I have tried to be more pragmatic, less 'absolutely idealistic', less historically deterministic, more rational-empirical, more Enlightenment oriented, more humanistic and existential, more 'egalitarian and democratic'...than Hegel...

But in the end, I have my 'Forms' just like Plato. The Forms are in my head and they are the internal vision I have of Hegel's Hotel. What you see on paper here is the 'externalized, projected, evolving, changing'... version of the Hegel's Hotel Form or Visualized Template that I carry around in my head..and that is constantly evolving and changing as well...

But in the end, I guess you could say that my evolving 'Grand Narrative' here is also about an unrelenting search for 'Absolute Integrative Knowledge (AIK)' even if I be so bold and egotistical as to make myself the main 'architect' behind this search for the Hegelian Holy Grail...this search for 'AIK'...

Perhaps the main difference between Hegel and I in this regard is that I do not profess to make any lofty, idealistic predictions that either I or even the 'whole of mankind' is ever going to 'get back to God's epistemological, ethical, phenomenological, ontological, and/or humanistic-existential perfection'...indeed, I would say that this is much more likely to have been Hegel's lofty ambition and goal than God's....If I was God, like Freud and Schopenhauer and Scrooge before me, I would have bailed on any 'happy prognosis' for the future of mankind...In fact, if I was God at this point in time, I would not even want to take 'accountability' for having created mankind...

I think God has abandoned man, and man has abandoned God.

In the extrapolated words of Nietzsche,

God is dead in Iraq.

God is dead in Afghanastan.

God dies partly with every fallen soldier,

Regardless of his or her particular race, nationality, religion, sex, or colour.

God dies in the silent rage and despair of every individual person who carries it,

And in the end, there is only man unto himself.

Left to pick up all the death-strewn, morbid, pieces of another blown-apart corpse...

And his own 'existential corpse'...

This is not God's work....

This is man's work,

Man at his worst,

Man, in his darkest hour...

And in the end, it is only man...

Who can dig himself back out of  his self-created hell-hole...

With or without social or family or friendship or political or economic or religious support...

Or not.

This is what I call 'existential free-will'.

And on one very basic level,

It simply comes down to the existential free-will,

To either keep stabbing, shooting, blowing up, and killing each other,

Or not.

Forgive me for not being optimistic. But right now I just don't see much cause for optimism. Like Freud coming out of World War 1 and 2. Like Shopenhauer trying to absorb and digest his father's suicide.

Let us move back into the realm of childhood 'ego traumacies and ego fantasies'...

And maybe we can get a better handle on where and when 'much of this dark side of man' all starts...which is not to say that things cannot get completely exasperated, embellished, and out of control based on where we are right now both individually and collectively in the present...Darkness outside fuels darkness inside...and visa versa...Alternatively, hope, encouragement, and compassion outside fuel hope, encouragement, and compassion inside...Whatever comes around, goes around, and visa versa...We can play down to the 'meaner parts' of the human spirit...or we can rise above this strategy...looking towards healing the pain that smolders and burns both inside and outside of us, the pain that lies below these same 'mean spirits' both inside and outside of us...Which strategy do we want to be our legacy? Which direction do we want to move our inner spirit in? And the world's outer spirit? Towards belittling others? Hurting others? Or offering them our warmest smile of encouragement, compassion, and hope? 


We all have to choose. 


Choose wisely. 


Choose compassionately. 




-- dgb, Dec. 27th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still In Progress...



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

'Death don't have no mercy in this land.'  -- Hot Tuna

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


Hot Tuna


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Hot Tuna at MerleFest, 2006. Left to right, Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen and Barry Mitterhof.

Background information

Origin San Francisco, USA

Genres Rock, blues

Years active 1969 – 1977

1983

1986 – present

Labels RCA

Relix Records

Eagle Records

Associated acts Jefferson Airplane

Website hottuna.com

Members

Jack Casady

Jorma Kaukonen

Barry Mitterhoff

Skoota Warner

Former members

Paul Kantner

Marty Balin

Joey Covington

Will Scarlett

Papa John Creach

Paul Ziegler

Sammy Piazza

Bob Steeler

Greg Douglass

Nick Buck

Shigemi Komiyama

Michael Falzarano

Joey Balin

Joey Stefko

Peter Kaukonen

Harvey Sorgen

Galen Underwood

Pete Sears

Erik Diaz

Hot Tuna is an American blues-rock band, formed by bassist Jack Casady and guitarist Jorma Kaukonen as a spin-off of Jefferson Airplane. They play acoustic and electric versions of original and traditional blues songs.[1][2]


Jefferson Airplane Side Project

Hot Tuna began during a hiatus in Jefferson Airplane's touring schedule in early 1969 while Grace Slick was undergoing recovery from throat node surgery that had left her unable to perform. Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, Paul Kantner, and new drummer Joey Covington played several shows around San Francisco including the Airplane's original club, The Matrix before Jefferson Airplane returned to performing in April to support the album Volunteers. Although Covington had been hired as Jefferson Airplane's drummer, Spencer Dryden continued to perform with the Airplane and Covington was only called when needed.[3] Their early repertoire was derived mainly from Airplane material that Jorma played and covers of American country blues artists such as Rev. Gary Davis, Jelly Roll Morton, Bo Carter and Arthur Blake (Blind Blake). In addition to these shows, Jack & Jorma would play as a duo with Jorma on acoustic guitar. In September, 1969, the week of concerts performed at New Orleans House in Berkeley was recorded and released as a live album in 1970, Hot Tuna. This album is affectionately known by Tunaphiles as the "breaking glass album", because of the sound of breaking beer glasses during the recording of "Uncle Sam Blues".[4] Jorma's brother Peter Kaukonen soon replaced Paul on rhythm guitar and Marty Balin joined on vocals for the electric songs. Starting in October 1969, Hot Tuna would perform as opening act to Jefferson Airplane with a combination of both electric and acoustic sets, giving Kaukonen and Casady an opportunity to explore their love of traditional blues music, and also giving Balin and Covington a chance to explore soul-rock compositions. In 1970, RCA paid for the band to go to Jamaica to record their next album, now with Paul Ziegler taking over Peter's spot, but the album was never finished.[3] Papa John Creach was brought in to the band in late 1970 (Creach also joined Jefferson Airplane at the same time) and Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna finished their co-tour in November 1970 with shows at the Fillmore East.

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


Death Don't Have No Mercy


by rev. Gary Davis

recording of 19

from Splashdown Two (Relix 2080), copyright notice



Well now death don't have no mercy in this land

Well now death don't have no mercy in this land

He'll come to your house and he won't stay long

Look 'round the room one of your family will be gone

Death don't have no mercy in this land



Death will leave you standin' and cryin' in this land

Death will leave you standin' and cryin' in this land

He'll come to your house and he won't stay long

Look 'round the room one of your family will be gone

Death don't have no mercy in this land



Well death don't give you time to get ready in this land

Well death don't give you time to get ready in this land

He'll come to your house and he won't stay long

Look 'round the room one of your mama will be gone

Death don't have no mercy in this land



Well now death don't have no mercy in this land

Well now death don't have no mercy in this land

He'll come to your house and he won't stay long

Look 'round the room one of your family will be gone

Death don't have no mercy in this land
 
........................................................................................
 
"More than three decades after his death, the influence of Reverend Gary Davis can still be felt.


As each new generation is introduced to blues, folk, and other forms of traditional American music,

Davis' signature guitar stylings and heartfelt vocals continue to move, entertain, and educate." - Paul Andersen



"He was the most fantastic guitarist I'd ever seen." -Dave Van Ronk



"Rev. Davis taught me, by example, to completely throw out my preconceptions of what can or can't be done on the guitar."

-Bob Weir (of the Grateful Dead)



"Gary Davis took you out of playing baby guitar and made you play it like a grown man." -Taj Mahal



"In Davis we encounter a complete musician, a composer aware of all musical details, exploring new possibilities. Davis has not been acclaimed as Robert Johnson, yet he alone brought many traditions to culmination through an artistry which surpassed nearly all others during his lifetime." -Allan Evans



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

Ego Traumacies, Fantasies, Splits, Positions, and States: Thinking Inside and Outside The Classical Psychoanalytic Box (Part 3)

Just finished...Dec. 23rd, 2009. -- dgb

'Man is not disturbed by things but by the view which he takes of them.' -- Epictetus (55 AD - 135 AD) Roman (Greek-born) slave & Stoic philosopher 

Ego traumacies can be big or small, viewed from either a 'subjective' and/or 'objective' perspective. A couple of well-known philosophers -- Schopenhauer and Nietzsche -- lost their fathers during their teenage years. Schopenhauer's father's death was a suicide which I am sure has much to do with the fact that Schopenhauer's philosophy is probably the most morbid and negative -- 'narcissistic, pessimistic, cynical' -- philosophy in the history of Western Philosophy. It as if Schopenhauer 'projected' the whole of his own most morbid, pessimistic, cynical, negative, narcissistic psyche 'out into the world' and this he called basically --- 'The Unconscious Will of The Cosmos' which, according to his philosophy, moves through all of us .

Maybe there is a scary, uncomfortable feeling in some of us who read and/or are familiar with Schopenhauer's particular brand of 'pessimistic, narcissistic' philosophy, that maybe Schopenhauer came closer to something at least important enough to give him his due credit for, and some of that influence moved on to the work of Freud...perhaps partly through Nietzsche, although Nietzsche wasn't nearly as pessimistic and deterministic in his brand of thinking thinking as Schophenhauer. Nietzsche's brand of philosophy was more 'the sky's the limit for those of us who dare to stretch for the sky, and to persevere until we get there...'

However, back in a more Schopenhauerian philosophical template, there are times in each of our lives when life is simply not nice to us (and/or we are not nice to life). But we do not have to take what may seem to be the worst scenario that life can give us -- and add even more fuel onto a raging Schopenhauer fire  -- by turning to some rendition of his  'stereotyped negative, pessimistic, cynical philosophy' and fossilizing it, as well as ourselves in the process. Like Epictetus, quoted at the beginning of this essay, who at least found a way to endure his slavery by turning to the 'capability of freedom within his own mind to control how external events are perceived, interpreted, and judged, and to not let these external events disturb him unnecessarily' -- we all have the capability for this same internal freedom.

This having been said, I am sure that not many of us have had to endure the type of 'slavery' that Epictetus had to endure. In North America, I am writing to at least two partly democratic countries (although 'narcissistic authoritarianism' still underlies much of this 'pseudo-democracy').  Thus, most of us have two courses of potential action (or an integrative combination of both) that we can take if we are not happy with our present situation: 1. Change our internal philosophy; and/or 2. change whatever aspect of our external environment that needs to changed in order for us to feel good about ourselves and our life again. Everything else is bogus. Everything else is the 'forest hiding the trees'.

It is hard to believe that Freud wasn't at least partly (or significantly) influenced into creating his own concept of 'The Id' from Schopenhauer's idea of the 'Narcissistic Will of The Cosmos'.  The world is -- for the most part, although not entirely -- a very narcissistic place to be these days. You see political and corporate narcissism completely out of control at the top -- and the people 'running the show at the top' not being held accountable for their unethical, and often illegal, actions. 

And for the people down further in the political and/or corporate hierarchy, it is hard not to 'change one's attitude, one's philosophy, and one's action in an attempt to compensate'.  'If you can't beat them, join them.' Learn their game and either play it with them (the safer route if you want to keep your job), or play it against them (which can, and likely will, either get you suspended and/or fired.) Third alternative -- leave -- which is probably the best of the three plans providing you have a good back-up plan. But how many of us have a good back-up plan waiting in the wings when there are hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers not working out there who would love to have the job that you hate, and who would take it in a heart beat. Advantage -- 'Narcissistic, Unethical Corporate Management'. With very little in the way of 'Political and/or Corporate Ethical Accountability' to answer to -- especially during a raging recession.  You hear politicians -- and sometimes corporate leaders -- talking about 'ethics' and 'accountability' and 'transparency' all the time. 

But how many political and corporate leaders today are actually 'walking the ethical, accountable walk  without having hidden narcissistic, unethical personal agendas that are running rampant underneath their smooth-talking pretentious ideology.' 

Is there a political and/or corporate leader out there anywhere anymore who actually knows how to both 'talk the talk and walk the walk' -- who knows how to act on the basis of his or her professed political and/or corporate idealism without having this 'alleged idealism' basically crumble into pretentious false ideology the minute that the media is no longer watching, and/or the minute that the smoothest talking and most honest sounding politician wins an election platform and enters into power. Surrounded by corporate sharks, piranha, hyenas, leeches, parasites...you get the picture...all wanting a big piece of the new action, and all wanting a 'pound of narcissistic flesh' from the supposedly and/or wannabe new, 'idealistic' leader.  The philosophy of all the narcissistic political and corporate lobbyists (not all of them but most of them I believe to have 'unethical, one-sided, narcissistic motives') is essentially this: 


Who can I influence and what do I have to do to influence them in order to get what I want? More crudely put, oftentimes (I do not have the inside presence in the political arena to speculate on percentage) the question can be worded as this: Who do I need to buy off (or intimidate or threaten) -- and/or how much do I have to throw at him or her or them -- in order to get the contract or the law that I want to narcissistically as opposed to democratically push through?  Am I overgeneralizing here? Am I too pessimistic, too cynical? I don't think so. 


How long is a new, fresh, uplifting philosophical system of idealism -- and the man and/or woman trying perhaps bravely and honestly at first to engineer this fresh idealism -- going to last in an ocean of polluted, corrupted, political-corporate-lobbyist-special-interest narcissism full of the nasty types of creatures listed above that are generally more powerful in numbers (and economic clout) than any new, young, wannabe idealistic leader? Forgive me for my brief rant here, my brief bout of unadulterated pessimism and cynicism that just came tumbling out of my fingers here in a floury of keyboard action. Optimism -- come back! Schopenhauer -- be gone!

Psychoanalysis, clinical psychology, and psychotherapy do not exist in a cultural vacuum.

They exist in a world of personal, social, political, corporate, economic, national, and international narcissism.

Freud -- at least partly -- had to deal with the predominance of a different set of neuroses back in his early clinical days. The 'narcissistic neuroses' -- they were still there -- but they were largely hidden; they were hidden in the 'shadows' of the personality (Jung), or in what Freud many years later would call the 'Id' of the personality. A woman had a romantic infatuation for her boss. But she lives in a Victorian culture of a very 'strict and dominant, unrelenting anti-sexual Superego'. So she 'denies' her romantic-sexual infatuation, she 'buries' it, she 'suppresses' it, and/or she even 'represses' it. But this type of 'energy' no matter how badly we may want it to -- does not usually disappear; indeed, it stays very much active, even if it now starts to become 'covertly active'.  This is one of the things that Freud -- as well as Breuer, Janet, and Charcot before him -- found in their separated and combined investigations. 'Sexual and/or romantic energy' was often to be found at the root of a clinical investigation into a woman's physical -- often called 'hysterical' -- symptoms. For a woman who had the 'genetic capability' of 'converting' sexual/romantic energy into a 'physical, hysterical symptom' or set of symptoms, this capability and clinical phenomenon became labelled by Freud as 'conversion hysteria'.

Connected with this idea, was the 'anti-gravity' principle of: What goes down, must eventually come back up. Call this the 'return of the denied, the suppressed, the repressed, the disavowed...'   


There was at least two or three different ways that 'denied sexual/romantic energy' could come back up in a Victorian 'sexually and/or traumatically suppressed and/or repressed' woman: 1. a physical (hysterical) symptom; 2. the therapist (Breuer, Charcot, Janet, Freud...) helping the woman to 'put the mysterious piece of the puzzle of her own physical symptoms back together again into their proper 'wholistic context' and place of psychological origin like Humpty Dumpty being put back together again, usually through a process of 'hypnosis' or 'free association' resulting in a 'associative reconnection' combined with an 'emotional abreaction and/or catharsis' as the physical symptom and the sexual/romantic and/or traumatic memory are reunited onto the same playing field once again. 'Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences', wrote Breuer and Freud in their 'Preliminary Communications', 1893, Studies on Hysteria, Standard Edition, Vol. 2, p. 7. 

But Freud still hadn't put the 'entire neurotic puzzle' together yet -- nor would he ever.

You see, Freud -- as brilliant a man as he was, and I have the greatest respect and admiration for some of his most brilliant theoretical and therapeutic discoveries such as 'transference' and 'narcissism' -- still had a propensity for 'theoretically overgeneralizing in opposite, bi-polar extreme ways'. This was both his theoretical and therapeutic downfall. Freud was a self-created victim of 'Aristotelean either/or logic'. 


There is a contradiction in Freudian Psychoanalysis of the greatest proportions here. On the one hand, Freud's theory of personality is inherently Hegelian and based on the principle of 'dialectic bi-polarity and integration'.  You have the 'Id' and the 'Superego' which are dialectically at opposite ends of the bi-polar extremes in terms of their 'psychic goals and wishes'.  The Id is all about the wish to 'act out narcissistic biological and psychological impulses' whereas the Superego is all about the necessity of 'ethical self-restraint'.  In between, we have 'the Ego' -- our own, individual, personal ego -- whose main function is to philosophically and psychologically mediate, negotiate, and integrate between the bi-polar opposing wishes of the Id and the Superego. 


This is a very simple, sweet, efficient, and pragmatic model of the personality. 


The model can be used just as efficiently and pragmatically today as it was (or rather, wasn't because it wasn't created yet) used in the Victorian era. The 'ego-id-superego' model was not created until 1923.  


Still, some of Freud's main underlying ideas of Psychoanalysis were roughly in place before 1895  even as many, many new theories were still to come such as: his 'Seduction Theory' (1896), his 'Screen Memory Theory' (1899), his 'Dream Interpretation Theory' (1899/1900),  'his sexual fantasy theory' (1897 onwards...), his 'Infantile and Childhood Sexuality Theory' (1897 to 1905 and onwards...), his 'Oedipal Complex Theory' (1897-1899 and onwards...),  his 'Transference Theory' (1895 and onwards...),


Still, the dualism and dialectic bi-polarity that Freud never fully figured out was the 'traumacy-fantasy' bi-polarity. This is where Freud 'got stuck and fixated' in his Aristotelean either/or logic. 


First, Freud was caught up in the Charcot-Breuer-Freudian brand of 'traumacy theory'  -- a childhood traumatic memory is denied, buried, repressed, and then resurfaces later as a clinical 'hysterical symptom or set of symptoms'. 


Then, Freud and Breuer abandoned each other as Freud decided (to Breuer's dismay and refusal to carry on with him) to turn their shared 'traumacy theory' into Freud's new 'sexual traumacy/assault/abuse' theory which later became known as 'The Seduction Theory'. At this point in his new theorizing, Freud had both overgeneralized and over discriminated his clinical findings.


Specifically, there is sufficient clinical evidence in his therapy practice to show that Freud was seeing and hearing at least a good four, five, or six co-factors in the etiology of his patients' neurotic/hysterical symptomology: 1. traumacy; 2. sexual and/or romantic impulse and fantasy; 3. sexual child abuse and traumacy; 4. repression (which also was called 'defense' and later became a combination of different 'psychological defenses', most of them summarized in Anna Freud's classic Psychoanalytic work, 'The Ego and The Mechanisms of Defense' (1937, 1966, 1991) such as: denial, repression, suppression, displacement, transference, introjection, identification, projection, projective-identification, identification with the aggressor, compensation, confluence, sublimation, reaction-formation, disavowal, splitting of the ego...more could be added such as 'approval-seeking', 'distance-seeking', transference-reversal and counter-phobia, the mastery compulsion....the human imagination is practically endless in the functional and/or dysfunctional service of 'psychological self-defense' ); and 5. biological predisposition.


So the question needs to be asked: Why did Freud first emphasize one factor in his clinical findings (traumacy theory), then another (sexual assault-seduction theory), and then still another (sexual fantasy theory) without dialectically integrating them and bringing them all together into one coherent psycho-theoretical package? 


And why has no one ever thought of doing it since?  I shouldn't say 'no one' because I am sure others have at least partly tried in their own respective ways -- but none in such a fashion as to aim to completely rebuild Classical Psychoanalysis like I am trying to do here and now. 


We have the Oedipal Theorists raging against The Seduction Theorists and visa versa (the prototypical anal-retentive Classical Psychoanalysts of the world following directly in the footsteps of Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and Kurt Eissler who, with my highest respect for their individual and combined contributions but not their 'theoretical one-sidedness, their 'theoretical blinders' that they wore, and their 'conceptual narcissism' upon which their theoretical blinders were based,  are all dead now...And still the 'clones' of Sigmund Freud's ghost keep coming and coming, keep coming back to us, keep getting 'classically analyzed and educated' ...like 'clone cars' coming off the same Ford or GM or Chrysler assembly line...even long after the 8 cylinder behemoths have long worn out their market welcome...(Well not totally...I still like driving my 8 cylinder Lincoln to work each day...so call me a bit of a hypocrite here...but still you get my point...)


Back in 1981, when Dr. Jeffrey Masson had started to turn Freud's 1897 abandonment of The Seduction Theory into world-wide front page news and a Psychoanalytic scandal, Masson received a letter from Anna Freud that read as follows:

Keeping up the seduction theory would mean to abandon the Oedipus Complex, and with it the whole importance of phantasy life, conscious or unconscious phantasy. In fact, I think there would have been no psychoanalysis afterwards. (personal correspondence from Anna Freud to Jeffrey Masson, see 1992, The Assault on Truth, p. 113.)


Well, with all due respect again,  Anna Freud, and for that matter, Jeffrey Masson too, who was more of a prolific researcher than an integrative theorist, both lacked the theoretical imagination and/or desire to dialectically integrate their differences.


Which is why I am here writing this, and why both Anna Freud and Jeffrey Masson, as well as hundreds of other theorists and counter-theorists, philosophers and psychologists, get to freely walk and talk and debate while I host and mediate their differences inside the conference rooms of Hegel's Hotel...


In the 1980s, the Psychoanalytic Establishment and Dr. Jeffrey Masson squared off against each other like a pair of 'battling pitbulls in a dogpit' each with their 'hanging on bite' -- or I think I've used this metaphor before: Masson was like the proverbial raging bull crashing around inside the Psychoanalytic China Shop...until the 'Psychoanalytic bouncers' finally threw Masson out of the China Shop (Masson partly left on his own accord...but all the 'china' was lying on broken on the floor...)

Both sides did what they thought was 'right'. Both sides said what they had to say...

A Classic Hegelian-Mexican standoff.  The classical one-two punch of 'thesis' and 'anti-thesis'.

With no 'synthesis' anywhere to be seen and/or found...

With careers and money and 'preserving' vs. 'deconstructing' the Freudian status-quo -- all at stake.

Masson eventually moved from America to New Zealand to study and write about 'animal psychology' and 'emotions in animals'...He has written a whole list of books after 'Assault on Truth' and 'Final Analysis', some on 'Anti-Psychiatry' and the rest on animal psychology, many of which I didn't even know existed until just recently... Masson simply turned and took his passion for researching and writing in another direction...

And The Psychoanalytic Establishment went back to being the very boring and mainly theoretically stagnant place it had been (especially Classical Psychoanalysis as opposed to Object Relations and Self-Psychology) that it had been before Masson arrived so energetically and charismatically on the scene...

Classical Psychoanalysis partly 'won' in the sense that once Masson was removed from the Psychoanalytic scene, it could go back to its very status-quo, stagnant, boring, one-sided, and at least partly 'pathological' existence. But in 'winning' -- it still 'lost'.

Because there is at least one sense in that I will come crashing through the theoretical and therapeutic doors of Classical Psychoanalysis just as hard as Masson did before me in the 1980s.

And it is in this sense:

Until Classical Psychoanalysis markets itself differently, and teaches its theories differently, and educates its Psychoanalysts differently -- it remains an 'anachronism from a different time and place', and worse than this, it remains an institution, a personality theory, and a system of psychotherapy based on 'an old patriarchal system of beliefs and values, with a dominance of male chauvanism, narcissism, and bias -- and no feminine and feminist compensations for this dangerously one-sided theory anywhere in sight -- Anna Freud for all her contributions to Psychoanalysis should have been ashamed of herself for not standing up for 'the phenomenology, the existence, and the self-respect of all women entering Classical Psychoanalysis -- particularly those women entering Classical Psychoanalysis who may have a case history of childhood sexual abuse, specifically as forced or manipulated upon them as a daughter by their father'...

In short, it is long past time that Classical Psychoanalysis removes itself from The Dark Ages, or at least from the Victorian Age... from a time when neither a man's nor a woman's sexual impulses could or would be properly accepted by the society they lived in -- and were 'covered up', 'suppressed', 'repressed' by many a woman, and from a time, like all times, where some fathers did/do indeed commit the horrendous crime of sexual assault against their daughters...

Until Classical Psychoanalysis can do this, until whoever is the most powerful person in The Psychoanalytic Establishment  -- and I don't have a clue who this is now -- until this person, has the courage and the integrity to stand up in front of a public media presence and say: 'Freud was wrong in the degree of extremism to which he abandoned his 'Traumacy and Seduction Theory' and both of these theories need to be properly re-integrated into Classical Psychoanalysis. We are now going to take the proper steps to move in this theoretical and therapeutic direction towards their rightful re-integration'...until this person has the courage and integrity to say something like this in front of a public audience and a public media, I will take my own personal steps in Hegel's Hotel to, protest against the 'anachronism' of  Classical Psychoanalysis's most theoretically and therapeutically pathological ideas... This does not include the sub-psychoanalytic domains of either Object Relations or Self-Psychology which, to my knowledge, have eliminated the 'Oedipus Complex' from their field of thinking.

Personally, I do not see the need to completely eliminate the Oedipus Complex -- I like to use the concept 'metaphorically' in ways that you will see examples of in the future -- but not to the extent of denying the existence of any and/or all cases of 'childhood incest' between some fathers and daughters.

Anachronistic (Classical) Psychoanalysis needs to 'detoxify' its most 'anachronistic and pathological' theoretical and therapeutic ideas. Otherwise, if I were a woman, I simply would not step inside any of its supposedly 'therapeutic' doors. For that matter, I can't see myself stepping inside any of its doors as a man either. Too much money, and too much theoretical and therapeutic sterility and stagnancy -- not enough theoretical and therapeutic evolution.

I do not see the need to completely abandon The Oedipus Complex as I have found a way to 'detoxify' Classical Psychoanalysis of its most anachronistic and pathological assumptions, and to more functionally integrate a 'detoxified' Classical Psychoanalysis with elements of Adlerian Psychology, Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Object Relations, Cognitive Therapy, General Semantics, and Transactional Analysis...with things still evolving and always subject to change...

If the builders in downtown Toronto can tear down the 'small homes' in Leaside and East York, and replace them with towering gigantic 'monster homes'...

Well, I can do the same in Hegel's Hotel...

In the famous, flamboyant words of the late Honourable Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau...


'Just watch me.' 

But this is not all about ego on my part (although, to be sure, some or even much of it is -- men and women are both driven by ego, pride, narcissistic self-confidence and self-assertion, or the lack of it).

In the end, Hegel's Hotel has to be of functional social-personal-philosophical-psychological-business-political value.  Because if it isn't, it will go the way of the dinosauer. Down the road to evolutionary extinction.  Only those things and those ideas that continue to hold and carry functional value persist over time. If something is important, people will come back to it. If not, then not.

Bigger is only better if 'bigger' carries more functional personal and social value.

What I am looking for here is a 'hotel-full' of productive and integrative philosophical and psychological ideas where Freud's ideas don't have to be separated and isolated and alienated from Jung's ideas, and/or Adler's, and/or Reich's, and/or Perls', and/or Klein's, and/or Fairbairn's, and/or Kohut's, and/or Berne's.

In the famous words of John Lennon and the 'Fab Four'....

'Come together...

Right now...

Over me.'...

In Hegel's Hotel...



-- dgb, Dec. 23rd, modified Dec. 27th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain,

--  Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are still in process...

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