Afterwards, came Freud's equally stunning abandonment and reversal of The Seduction Theory (after 1896) and the beginning of 'Fantasy and Childhood Sexuality Theory (1897 to 1905), Screen Memories (1899), Dream Theory (1899-1900) and The Psycho-Sexual Stages of Development (oral stage, anal stage, latent stage, genital stage) and The Oedipal Complex (1905). Part of the usual assumption regarding the timeline on Freud's development of his 'Fantasy Theory', I will challenge in a soon to come essay (I believe it started before 1895), but here, let us just stick primarily with the evening of April 21st, 1896.
On the evening of April 21st, 1896, Freud threw a real 'zinger' at the Psychiatric and Neurological Community when he read probably his most controversial essay in his entire 50 year professional career, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria', and declared in front of these psychiatrists and neurologists that 'hysteria' cannot happen without the patient having been sexually seduced and/or assaulted (i.e., raped)' at a very early age, around 4 or 5 years old that is 'blocked out of consciousness', 'split off from the normal growth of the personality', harboring itself in a 'closed closet of the memory' as it were, as an 'unconscious or repressed memory' -- i.e., the idea of 'repressed' signifying that there is or was a 'conscious or unconscious act of defensive willpower' at the time of the original event to psychologically 'bury the event, and/or the memory of the event, in a closed closet of the personality', as if to say, in effect, 'I don't want to remember this skeleton in my closet ever again.'
Now, I think it is important to make a distinction here that Freud partly alluded to, and perhaps partly 'abstracted into confusion', or perhaps it was some theorist and/or Psychoanalyst after Freud who created the 'semantic confusion'.
An act (or acts) of 'seduction', in the romantic and/or sexual sense, can refer to either a healthy and normal type of, and/or set of, behaviors that a man presents to a woman who attracts him, a woman presents to a man who attracts her, or even a man to a man, or a woman to a woman; or an act of seduction can also used in a different sense, to refer to a more negatively viewed type of 'one-sided, manipulative exploitation'.
For example, in the general realm of 'prostitution', depending on the context of the situation, the particular culture and time of history, and whose doing the judging, an act of prostitution if it involves 'human trafficking and/or kidnapping' can be viewed as a very criminal act of one-sided exploitation, or in the case of a 'prostitute' who is deemed to be more in control of his or her own 'choice-making decisions', it could be viewed as a transaction of 'two-sided exploitation', the prostitute getting money, the 'customer', sex. Or in this latter type of case, the whole encounter could even be viewed as a transaction of 'mutual adult consent'. Numerous different legal, moral, cultural, and historical factors can play into this whole 'classifying process' of at least one, two, three, or even more possibilities all of which may be given the same name of 'seduction'.
The same goes for the label of 'sexual assault'. And 'child abuse'. And 'domestic abuse'. The label 'child abuse' could be used to refer to anything and everything between: 1. scolding and/or disciplining a child; 2. spanking a child; 3. physically battering a child; 4. 'mentally battering a child'; 5. sexually assaulting a child. This type of labeling process can cause a nightmare of semantic confusion followed by moral, ethical, legal, social, political, and/or economic derailment fraught with both deserved and/or undeserved blame in connection with ruined lives.
One thing that I am trying to do here, that I have only lightly touched upon in past essays, is to make a 'connecting bridge' to what was happening back in Freud's time when Freud was mentally battling and struggling with some of these same issues, and what is happening today in our own justice courts regarding the very controversially interpreted (connected or unconnected) issues of sexual assault (abuse), child abuse, and domestic abuse.
These 'socio-semantic, philosophical, and legal issues' -- if we ever fully philosophically and semantically investigate and analyze all of these partly different, partly interconnected issues the way we should be doing -- have the potential of 'shaking to the very ground the very assumptive and philosophical foundations of not only Psychoanalysis but also our whole Canadian and American Systems of Justice. Inappropriate labeling and classifying, semantic confusion, assumptive generalizations, and false accusations can all cause big problems. So too can ignoring legitimate and real accusations.
I believe that on the eve of April 21st, 1896, Freud touched upon 'the powder keg of this potential political-socio-economic-legal explosion'. Or at least the portion of it that was connected to childhood sexual abuse back in 1896.
Quite bluntly and simply, the community of male psychiatrists and neurologists were stunned by the reading of Freud's most recent paper in 1896, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria'.
Now it is easy to look back at 1896 with a 21st century mentality of supposedly more 'democratic egalitarianism' in our collective consciousness. In this regard, one can ask the question: Where was at least some semblance of a 'scientific open mindedness' amongst all of these psychiatrists and neurologists who were supposedly some of the most intelligent men in Vienna at the time, to at least entertain the idea that there could be some 'clinical truths' -- or at least 'partial truths' -- contained within this new essay that Freud had just read to them. They were obviously not expecting what they got.
Were they all that naive and ignorant of the possible 'childhood sexual abuse and hysteria connection'? Was this connection just too far out in left field and too unexpected for them to entertain on a moment's notice?
Or were there other factors at stake? Was this whole subject matter just too 'politically hot to handle', and too 'politically incorrect' for them to deal with?
And/or was there something more sinister and 'self-defensive' going on in the 'narcissistic minds' of any, or some, of these men?
Were there any 'child sexual predators' in this community of male psychiatrists and neurologists who simply did not want this theoretical and therapeutic connection to be made?
Possibly. We will probably never know.
Was Freud politically and economically 'coerced' to give up this 'theoretical position' of 'childhood sexual abuse'?
Possibly. We will probably never know.
The head of the meeting that night, and the head of the Psychiatric Department at The University of Vienna, Krafft-Ebing, called Freud's paper a 'scientific fairy tale'.
Did Freud 'lose moral courage' after that night due to political and/or economic pressure exerted on him -- perhaps fearing for the very real possibility of his professional and economic career being destroyed if he continued his theoretical position of 'hysteria being caused, or at least partly caused, by childhood sexual abuse'?
Possibly. We will again probably never know.
What we do know is this...
After this reading of his paper on the eve of April 21st, 1896, Freud slowly between the end of 1896 and 1905 with the publication of both 'A Case of Hysteria' (The Case of Dora) and 'Three Essays on Sexuality', moved towards a partial or total abandonment of his very controversial 'Seduction Theory' and into the theoretical and clinical realms of 'Childhood Sexuality', 'Fantasy Theory', 'Screen Memories', 'Dream Theory', 'The Psycho-Sexual Stages of Childhood Development', and 'The Oedipus Complex'.
Arguably the most controversial of all of the 'post-1896' Freudian theories listed above was his theory of The Oedipus Complex. Some Freudian critics, most notably Masson again in the 1980s, have argued that Freud used and abused the Oedipus Complex Theory to essentially cover up childhood sexual abuse.
Did he? Possibly. How do you get into each and every one of his Psychoanalytic sessions to find out?
How can we determine, who, if any, Freud might have 'falsely used and abused' his Oedipus Complex Theory on (the idea that a child tends to generally be romantically and erotically attracted to, and attached to, the parent of the opposite sex in the normal course of 'psycho-sexual development') in the case of a patient who may have actually been sexually assaulted by the parent of his or her accusation?
On the eve of April 21st, 1896, Freud could, and can, easily be historically viewed as a 'champion of the women's rights movement'.
After April 21st, 1896, Freud could, and can, easily be historically viewed as one of the worst enemies of the women's rights movement. That is quite a switch in historically viewed significance.
And then there is, or was, Dr. Anna Freud -- Sigmund Freud's daughter. In the 1970s and particularly in the first two years of the 1980s, Anna Freud was faced with an extremely difficult 'professional choice' that would probably cause great grief and indecision for most of us: she could choose to protect her father's historical legacy through the support of his main ideas and theories; or she could choose to 'correct or modify' some of Freud's main ideas and theories by making them more 'democratically fair', 'customer friendly', and less 'culturally and historically anachronistic' to the whole women's rights movement by changing the strongest ideas connected to Freud's 'masculine, narcissistic cultural bias'. She chose to protect Freud's name and character and his good or bad legacy (or both) by supporting the 'status quo' of Freud's main ideas and theories, right or wrong, masculinely and narcissistically biased or not.
Was Anna Freud 'brainwashed' by her father and his 'one-sided potential interpretive danger of using and abusing The Oedipal Complex Theory'? Or did she actually legitimately support the use of The Oedipal Complex Theory on its own epistemological and ethical merits? Another one or two of those epistemological-historical questions that we will probably never know the full and proper answer to.
And then there is Janet Malcolm, author of a very entertaining and informative -- albeit editorially slanted and arguably containing numerous misquotations and/or misrepresentations of Jeffrey Masson -- book about the whole Seduction Theory Controversy as it re-surfaced publicly in the 1980s. Malcolm too, could have been more of a 'champion' for the women's rights movement on this particular Psychoanalytic controversy, by perhaps more fairly representing Masson and what he was trying to do in defense of both women and children, but alas, she chose to support Anna Freud and The Psychoanalytic Establishment Status-Quo. Very disappointing in my eyes. At the very least, she could have kept her most flagrant partisan and editorial comments out of her book. (Or made better editorial opinions. I will soon write a short essay in defense of this editorial comment of my own.)
And where was the women's rights movement as a whole to stand up in defense of what Dr. Jeffrey Masson was arguing for on their behalf? They seemed strangely and inappropriately quiet while this whole controversy was raging in The New York Times in the early 1980s.
And where were all the more 'liberalized and egalitarian' psychoanalysts at this time? Again, strangely and inappropriately quiet if what they believed and what they were not saying were 'hypocritically juxtaposed' against each other -- while Jeffrey Masson took 'the fall' for what many probably agreed with him on?
With all of this being the case, can we really believe that the 'social and self suppression/repression of Psychoanalysis' which seems to have at least partly begun on April 21st, 1896, was any less in existence in the late 1970s and early 1980s with Anna Freud on the Psychoanalytic throne but getting closer and closer to her deathbed? How about the seeming 'Social and Political Suppression/Repression of Childhood Sexual Abuse' in the public consciousness (or unconsciousness) as a whole?
Masson took an unfair 'Psychoanalytic hit' -- even if he did throw fuel onto his own partly self-lit fire while he 'burned at the stake' for saying that Freud 'lost moral courage' after April 21st, 1896. I at least partly agree with Masson on this opinion -- there was not much written about child sexual abuse after 1896, especially in regards to a father sexually seducing and/or more forcefully assaulting his daughter. This all became 'reinterpreted' under his post 1897 Oedipal Complex Theory with 'alleged real assaults' belonging to the territory of a young girl's pre-puberty and/or post-puberty imagination and sexually distorted memory/fantasy.
In other words, any alleged sexual assaults between a father and his daughter didn't really happen; rather, they were a product of the daughter's 'normal erotic imagination'. How's that for 'women's equal rights? Her words and concrete experience don't mean anything except through the re-interpretation of a predominantly 'masculine Psychoanalytic narcissistic bias?
I am not saying that there are not 'legitimate truths' and 'legitimate criticisms' on both side of the theoretical fence here. What I am saying is that generalizations are generalizations which means that they have no right to be called '100 per cent locked in truths', but rather, only 'clinical probabilities' or 'clinical possibilities'.
A clinician's/therapist's concrete experience with a particular client should always rule over abstractified, generalized theory, even if that is to say in any particular situation: 'Epistemologically and historically with this particular client -- or with any particular client -- I cannot say for absolute certainty what did or did not happen in the particular memory or set of memories that she describes. I can only offer what I think happened, or what I speculate happened, but I don't have any more God-given telepathic abilities to decipher 'Unequivocal Epistemological Truth' than anyone else does...I am paid to be a therapist, not a judge and jury, which means that I am here to help my client in the best way I believe possible, and for me, that means to believe in the 'epistemological truth' of what my client is saying to me unless and/or until there is strong circumstantial and/or empirical evidence to the contrary to put my client's credibility in question...And I am fully aware that narcissistic bias can and often does run deeply in both sexes...'
In a hundred years plus, Classical Psychoanalysis still hangs on with a 'Pit Bull Hanging on Bite' to a theory that has a deeply Freudian narcissistic bias attached to it. This is the Oedipal Complex and how the Oedipal Complex can be used and abused in Classical Psychoanalysis to hide and cover up potentially very real childhood sexual abuse.
There is no excuse for this and no justifiable explanation for this other than a hundred years plus of 'ethical impropriety'.
For a woman to walk into Psychoanalysis and tell her analyst that she was sexually assaulted as a child (or for this to come up in a 'repressed childhood memory'), and for the analyst to, without epistemologically investigating this matter any further, and without question, re-interpret this alleged 'assault' as the client's 'childhood sexual fantasy' is basically the equivalent of a judge telling all women who enter his or her courtroom that if they are coming to see him or her with an accusation of 'date rape' against a particular man, then they either 'asked for what happened', 'consented to what happened', have 'distorted what happened', and/or 'erotically fantasized what happened'.
And yet, unbelievably, today, even in the midst of millions of active feminists, the Oedipal Complex as it was originally created and theorized by Freud between 1897 and 1905, still stands.
I shake my head.
In its simplest metaphorical use as a transference concept, I subscribe to The Oedipal Complex.
For example, the woman I have been dating for the past 10 plus years, shares many, if not all, of the deepest family values of my mother. Is this a coincidence? I don't think so. Did I see this 'shared value system' when I first met her? I don't think so. And yet it is there.
This aspect of the Oedipal Complex is a fully justifiable, general clinical probability.
Men and women, more often than not, become involved with love partners who either resemble one of, or both of, their parents -- and/or the opposite. Call this latter phenomenon, if you will, the 'Reverse-Oedipal Complex'.
This having been said, I in no way support, or ever will, the potential use and/or abuse of The Oedipal Complex as a means of 'covering up real childhood sexual abuse', most notably between a father and his daughter.
This is a potential Psychoanalytic ethical atrocity waiting to happen...
And it will never go away until someone, somewhere high up in the Psychoanalytic Establishment, finally formally stands up and publicly either clarifies and/or apologizes deeply on this matter for any and/or all possible ethical and/or public relations improprieties to any and/or all clients over the past 105 years.
Until then, Classical Psychoanalysis, no matter how else or how fast it may or may not be evolving, remains at its basic philosophical foundation, a Theoretical and Therapeutic Construction teetering on the verge of collapse, and/or non-relevance in the 21st Century, due mainly to the fact that it rightly deserves to be associated with a 'Narcissistic Old Victorian Boy's Club', of which, most unfortunately, both Anna Freud and Janet Malcolm were also non-critical, pro-Psychoanalytic Establishment, 'lost in father Freud', members.
Anna Freud is dead. So too is Kurt Eissler. Janet Malcom, other than as a story teller, is irrelevant.
These were the 'heavy hitters' inside and outside the Psychoanalytic Establishment who 'blew Jeffrey Masson away' when he accused Freud of 'losing moral courage' after April 21st, 1896 when Freud predominantly or totally abandoned The Traumacy-Seduction Theory in favor of his quickly evolving Fantasy-Childhood Sexuality-Oedipal Theory' between 1897 and 1905.
Anna Freud was too overly protective of her dad. So too was Kurt Eissler. These were the two main twin guardians of Father Freud and Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis in the early 1980s. They both had a chance to support the opportunity, through the work of Masson, to update and modify Classical Psychoanalysis in a way that would not rule out the possibility of father-daughter sexual abuse. They both passed on this opportunity to 'update and modernize Classical Psychoanalysis' in order to protect what was left of Sigmund Freud's already largely battered reputation and credibility (mainly because of his outdated Victorian assumptive biases). That was too bad. An Psychoanalytic ethical impropriety could have been corrected. But it wasn't. Some 30 years later, this ethical impropriety still hasn't been corrected.
It still needs to be.
Like a political party, that believes that if it continues to say or do nothing bout a particular party scandal, the scandal will simply 'eventually blow away', so too it remains with 21st century Classical Psychoanalysis.
Maybe they believed -- at least partly rightly so -- that the scandal would eventually blow itself out in the 1980s and early 1990s.
But it here it is back again. In 2010. Being addressed and confronted by another theorist.
It won't go away.
Until someone from Classical Psychoanalysis finally steps up to the plate and says something different than anything and everything that has been said, or not said, before.
To be or not to be,
To become or not to become,
To correct an ethical impropriety, or not to correct an ethical impropriety,
That is the question....
In this case, silence is not golden.
Rather, silence is mummifying.
Silence has mummified, or is mummifying, Classical Psychoanalysis.
Does Classical Psychoanalysis still have a heart beat?
Yes, but it needs to make some theoretical and therapeutic modifications,
Before it becomes extinct.
And for this to happen,
Someone of Psychoanalytic power,
Needs to step up to the plate....
And in the meantime, probably long before that happens,
I will integrate pre-1897 and post 1897 Freudian theory into one big 'wholistic theory'.
In effect, I will restore Classical Psychoanalysis' repression and 'split personality'.
-- dgb, modified March 14th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
