I am about to embark on a critique of as many of Freud's most important and famous essays, ideas, theories, 'anti-theories', and their derrivatives as I can get to.
Now, I am in a bit of a quandry here. I need to do some explaining before I start this ambitious enterprise.
Firstly, I am not a psychoanalyst. I have never seen a psychoanalyst, and never stepped a foot inside a psychoanalytic training session.
Why? Probably money, period. Psychoanalysis has set itself up as an 'aristocratic psychology' -- a 'psychology for the rich' -- and/or that is the stereotype that it has created for itself, right or wrong, good or bad. To me, this is unfortunate. This in itself restricts Psychoanalysis' potential growth -- theoretically, therapeutically, culturally, and class-wise.
Furthermore, what Freud started, and what The Psychoanalytic Establishment continues to support and maintain -- is a psychology of exclusionism.
This is highly ironic and paradoxical because in my 35 years or so of studying psychology that runs through Humanistic Psychology (Rogers, Maslow, May, Fromm...), Cognitive Therapy (Maltz, Ellis, Beck, Frank, Kelly, Korzybski, Hayakawa, Branden, Rand, Meichenbaum...), Gestalt Therapy (Perls, Hefferline, Goodman, et al...), Adlerian Psychology (Adler, Dreikeurs, Mosak...) Transactional Analysis (Berne), and Psychoanalysis (Freud, Klein, Fairbairn, Guntrip, Kohut, Masson...), if there is one thing I have learned, it is probably this: that most if not all varieties of human neurosis, psychosis, and psychopathology usually start with the individual's perception -- real and/or imagined -- of some form of social/family/school/cultural/racist/sexist/ exclusionism.
Human neurosis can generally be summed up in the sentence: 'I am not wanted here, not invited, not liked, not accepted, not appreciated, not acknowleged, not relevant...
Transactional Analysis summed up the overarching idea above under two polar headings: 1. You're okay, I'm not okay'; 2. I'm okay, you're not okay'; or the two condensed together: 3. You're not okay, I'm not okay.
This applies to Freud himself just as much as it applies to anyone and everyone else...
Freud once said that you had/have to be a psychoanalyst in order to properly understand what comes out of 'the depths of the unconscious' and particularly the 'dynamics of repression'. I say, Well, repression is still a very controversial concept and subject matter that sometimes (often) defies what most would call 'good rational-empiricism'. It can easily become a 'circular concept' with no apparent foundational basis except in the eyes and ears of the theorist who 'believes in the existence of repression'.
A psychoanalyist says, 'You are repressed.' You reply, 'I am not repressed.' And the psychoanalyst then uses your 'resistance' as further evidence that 'you are repressed'.
How do you ever 'prove' the existence of a 'repression' except for the psychoanalyst's 'interpretation' as such, and how do you distinguish it from a much more common and more easily validated concept/phenomenon of 'suppression' or even 'dissociation'?
All of the concepts of 'suppression', 'subconscious', and 'dissociation' have much more 'tangible rational empiricism' attached to them than Freud's concept of 'repression' -- or even 'unconscious'.
I use the term 'unconscious' occasionally but generally hesitatingly, and I am much more comfortable with the concept of 'subconscious'. I don't think I will ever use the concept of 'repression' because in my life I have never come across a 'repression'. I believe in 'the psychology of defense' but, generally speaking, for the most part, steer away from the 'psychology of repression'.
Does this take me out of the 'domain of Psychoanalysis'? The Psychoanalytic Establishment would obviously say 'yes' immediately, further supported by the fact that I have no formal training in Psychoanalysis. But The Psychoanalytic Establishment and Institute is partly like 'Hotel California' -- once you get in, you can't get out. You become 'locked into their particular paradigm' which includes the 'globalization' of Freud's own 'transference neurosis relative to his father'. This statement applies to Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis; not Object Relations, nor some of the other 'sub-schools' that I am less familiar with -- Self Psychology, Lacanian Psychoanalysis...)
When Freud was alive, you had to be like Melanie Klein (no one else was, so his daughter Anna started a 'sibling rivalry' here...) Klein was female and basically perceived as non-threatening -- except to Anna Freud who heard and read the 'counter-Freudian alarm bells going off loud and clear'. The moral of this story is that all the other 'neo-ex-Freudians' had to do was to wear skirts (or I guess it was 'dresses' back then) into the Freudian Society Meetings -- and they would have all still been classified as 'Freudians'. (Perhaps I am over-simplifying and over-generalizing.)
However, history is history and no man 'broke through the neurotic paradigm of Freud's father-transference neurosis in Classical Psychoanalysis' and is still classified as a Classical Psychoanalyst.
Adler, Jung, Reich, Rank, Ferenczi, Sullivan, Erickson, Fromm, Perls all left in quiet or loud, overt or covert rebellion of Freud's dictatorship ...and even ...long after Freud had died...in the 1980s, Jeffrey Masson, the brief Projects Director of The Freud Archive...until he dared challenge father Freud's 'abandonment/suppression' of the Seduction Theory way back in 1896, and even more daringly, challenged Freud's '(loss of) moral courage' over this same alleged 'suppression'....for this, Masson too, had to 'walk the plank' of the 'Freudian Ship' but fortunately -- metaphorically speaking -- he was able to 'swim back to the shore of The California Coastline'...and then 'embark on a new ship to New Zealand'...where he has been for quite some time now and has written, and is still writing, numerous books on animal psychology (emotions in animals).
Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler obviously 'introjected' and 'identified' too much with father Freud's character and work because they couldn't 'see the forest for the trees'. They couldn't see that 'Object Relations' and 'Self Psychology' and 'Narcissistic Transference' Theory (and for that matter, Jungian Psychology, and Adlerian Psychology, and Transactional Analysis, and Gestalt Therapy, and Primal Therapy...) could have all become encompassed by 'Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis'...if father Freud had just not been so narrow-minded and harshly judgmental about his co-workers' and students' theories...
I intend to integrate them all -- indeed, if you looked at all of my Psychoanalytic papers written over the last two or three years, I would say we are about 'half-way' there...Maybe not....I've written about 1000 papers in the last five years (since 2006). If I can get another 1000 papers written by 2016 (not likely at my present pace and with my present work hours), I would be very happy and probably be able to 'more or less' finish the main structure of Hegel's Hotel -- and Multi-Dialective-Integrative (MDI) Psychoanalytic Theory. Even 500 papers may take me most of the way to the 'top of Hegel's Hotel'....which would include all my different editorial philosophical essays for each of the different time periods. But still I am focused now on Psychoanalysis.
Forgive me for being narcissisticly biased but I believe I offer the greatest likelihood -- and sophistication -- of achieving a more or less all-encompassing multi-dialectic-integrative psychoanalytic theory, complete with the most advanced and integrative theory of 'transference' that is out there.
The reason that Freud failed was that he insisted on sticking to an 'instinct-fantasy' theory that blocked out much of the best part of his 'reality theory and therapy' leading up to its 'suppression' after May 4th, 1896. Freud insisted on erecting and guarding 'theoretical and therapy boundaries' that prevented Psychoanalysis from fully growing and evolving....Otherwise, there would have been no reason for any of the other major 'post-Freudian schools' of psychology to develop.
This all begs the question -- particularly, and with all due respect, with both Sigmund and Anna Freud dead now: Why can't we have a united, wholistic 'Psychoanalytic' and 'Neo-Post-Ex-Psychoanalytic Convention' where any and every school of psychology/psychotherapy that initially sprang, directly or indirectly, from the roots and/or branches of Freudian Classical Psychoanalysis (which is most, if not all, of them, except for Behavioral Psychology) is invited back to 'be heard, appreciated, respected, honoured at the place where it all started...'the hub of the wheel' again...Classical -- actually 'Pre'-Classical, and then 'Classical' -- Psychoanalysis. It looks, from the interview I just partly read, that even Otto Kerberg has invested a significant part of his time and energy to making Psychoanalysis more 'empirically' based... Bring on the 'Behavioral Psychoanalysts' as well....even if I hated 'research analysis' back in my university days....'Rational-empircism' is a good thing even if the 'strict empirical' part is not 'my thing'...
They are all welcome to come to 'Hegel's Hotel' to read papers, debate ideas, integrate ideas, and celebrate 'the potential unity and harmony of diversity' -- all we need is for someone with a lot more money than I have to actually finance this type of 'integrative union or reunion enterprise' -- I have a fantasy of it being held in The Hegel Meeting Room at the Marriott Hotel in Heidelberg, Germany... or alternatively, in Vienna or New York or Toronto....Probably a 'pipe-dream' but who knows....maybe one day...
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I have my own model of the human psyche that is still evolving and which does not 'exclude' the ideas of any school of psychology that captures a part of my multi-dialectic-integrative theoretical fancy...
Here is my latest model...which is never cemented in concrete...
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The Gap-DGB Multi-Dialectic-Integrative (Psychoanalytic) Model of The Psyche
My eight auxilliary ego-states are:
1. The Nurturing Superego;
2. The Idian (Narcissistic-Dionysian) Superego;
3. The Righteous Apollonian Superego;
4. The Co-operative-Compliant Underego;
5. The Idian (Dionysian-Narcissistic) Underego;
6. The Rebellious-Apollonian Underego;
And the main central decision-making ego-state of the personality is...
7. The Central-Mediating-Ego;
Working downwards into the subconscious/unconscious, we have
8. The Dream Weaver;
9. The Shadow-Id Vault;
10. The Personal Transference Templates;
11. The Mythological-Symbolic (Archetype) Templates;
12. The Genetic-Potential Self Template;
13. The Nietzschean Abyss (Chaotic Disorganization).
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The difference between 'repression' and 'suppression' is extremely important because it is easy to conflate, condense, and confuse the two together.
I 'suppress' what I am afraid to ask or tell you -- the concept of 'suppression' is easily validated by self-experience. But 'suppression' implies that I know very well what I want to ask or tell you. In the case of a 'suppressed memory' as opposed to a 'repressed memory', I remember the 'memory' all too clearly -- I am just embarrassed and/or otherwise reluctant to share it with you. A 'repressed memory' implies that I don't remember the memory at all -- which raises doubts about its very existence or is it a 'conceptual construction' created by Freud to explain a phenomena that he couldn't otherwise explain (such as hysteria, or anxiety neurosis, or obsessional neurosis...)?
For much of Freud's career, Freud viewed 'repression' as 'the defense' associated with ALL human neurosis, until he finally realized -- or admitted -- that were many other 'psychological defenses' at man's disposal such as: introjection, identification, projection, displacement, denial, transference, dissociation, retroflection (which is used a lot in Gestalt Therapy) and one that Adler added which is much more important to the etiology of neurosis, and more pervasive than Freud's concept of repression -- and that is the concept of 'compensation'. But even more important and pervasive to the etiology of all neurosis is the concept of 'transference'.
I see 'transference' as the over or under-riding 'phenomenon' in most, if not all neuroses, with all the other 'defense mechanisms' working either with or against the expression of the particular transference (impluse and/or ego-defense).
I distinguish between: 'identification transferences', 'introjective transferences', 'projective transferences', 'compensatory transferences', 'positive transferences', 'negative transferences', 'oral transferences', 'anal transferences', 'genital transferences', 'distancing transferences', 'anal-schizoid transferences', 'anal-rejecting transferences', 'oral-nurturing transferences', 'narcissistic transferences', 'anti-narcissistic transferences', 'altruistic transferences', 'impulse-desire-fantasy transferences', 'impulse-restraint transferences' 'anxiety transferences', 'rebellious transferences', 'violent transferences'... and on and on we could go...
So call me an 'underground psychoanalytic theorist' if you will -- operating outside the walls of The Psychoanalytic Establishment, and even operating outside of 'The Academic Establishment'. I admire Spinoza's philosophical approach: Don't lock me into any kind of 'Establishment' that is going to try to 'muzzle my thinking' -- or the 'public assertion of my thinking' .
As soon as you become affiliated with any kind of 'organization' or 'institution' or 'political party' or 'religious denomination' or 'corporation' or 'school of thought', you become subject -- and often a 'slave' -- to the organization's agenda and particular brand of 'group think'. Not always -- some organizations and institutions are more liberal and flexible than others -- but often 'group think' or 'leader think' dominates...
At times 'group think' can be 'enlivening' and 'multi-dialectically challenging and evolutionary'. But this is probably by far the exception rather than the rule. Much more often, 'group think' becomes synonomous with 'no think' or thinking inside a 'stagnant, deadening paradigm', or worse a 'dangerous or even evil paradigm'.
The worst cases of 'group think' that come quickly to mind are 'Nazi Germany', 'McCarthyism', 'Witch Hunting', 'The Reign of Terror', any form of 'racial cleansing', 'stereotyping', 'discrimination', 'reverse-discrimination', 'religious extremism', 'political extremism', 'righteous trash-talking', any form of 'supremacy thinking that is socially divisive and exclusionist, let alone violent', 'narcissistic collusions that are non-democratic and exclusionist', 'political and corporate conflict of interests', 'lobbyist special-interest groups that do not have to face up to their 'bi-polar, anti-special interest group' in an open, democratic forum. (All lobbyist groups should have to operate through public, open, democratic forums.)
Back to Psychoanalysis...
In the case of a 'conscious' memory, a 'conscious memory' can also be called a 'subconscious memory' if it is 'psychodynamically alive' in our subconscious (or 'preconscious') and yet, if someone asks us to recall this particular memory, we can usually recall it within a few minutes, given the right 'prompter' and/or 'association'.
So 'defining' Psychoanalysis can be -- indeed, usually is -- a very subjective, narcissistic-righteous matter.
My main 'transference mentor' was Alfred Adler. Next in line -- Fritz Perls. Next in line -- Eric Berne. Well, I guess we should put Sigmund Freud in here somewhere between first and fourth. But by the time that Freud was starting to write seriously about transference, he had abandoned his pre-1897 'reality theory' and 'traumacy theory' and 'memory theory'...in favor of his 'instinct and fantasy theory'....
Which means that in order to talk about 'transference (or lifestyle) memories', I had to study Adler. And Perls..('unfinished gestalts'). And Freud between 1893 and early 1896. And even a bit of 'Janov' and 'The Primal Scream'. And Eric Berne and 'Games People Play'. These were the pieces and the players that I needed to pull my 'multi-integrative transference theory' together....
Mainly, I had to get by Freud's own 'anal-retentiveness' and 'either/or' philosophy...
Freud did a brutal job (meaning no job) of reconciling his pre-1897 Traumacy-Seduction Theory with his post 1897 evolving Childhood Sexuality-Fantasy-Symbolic-Oedipal Theory. He just 'dumped' the first as if it never existed -- or was 'complete garbage' -- and then developed an 'opposite thesis'. I guess he could do that fairly easily because in 1897 he had no following -- just three volumes of work in The Standard 24 volume Edition to support his work during this time period, and Joseph Breuer had become 'one too many disagreeements and a thousand miles behind'...
However -- that is why you have me here: to integrate what Freud did not know how to properly integrate. Dialectically integrate. That is why you have me 'trumpeting' the metaphorical structure of Hegel's Hotel as a larger and more useful 'multi-dialectic-humanistic-existential, philosophical and psychological paradigm' -- than 'Freud's Anal-Retentive, Classical Hotel'.
If I am coming down hard on Freud here -- like thousands before me -- it is not because I do not respect Freud. Because I do. Indeed, I believe that he was one of the creatively most brilliant thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries. (Otherwise, I wouldn't be spending so much time on him.) But this still doesn't mean that Freud wasn't commonly -- mistaken. And stuck inside a cultural Victorian paradigm, not to mention the 'narcissistic bias' of some of his own 'sublimated, transference' paradigms. (We are all guilty of this to greater or lesser degrees.)
In Victorian society, masturbation was commonly -- and/or at least publicly -- viewed as 'self-abuse'. So for Freud, stuck inside this Victorian paradigm, ending such 'neuroses' as 'neurasthenia' (chronic depleted energy) would logically involve 'stopping self abuse' -- i.e., stopping masturbation. (Maybe the opposite prescription might have been more appropriate.) In Victorian culture, 'castration anxiety' sounds like it was a very real -- and scary -- phenomenon, especially for a small boy growing up. 'If you keep wanking your thing there, little Siggy, daddy's going to cut it off!'
Personally, I think I partly understand Freud better than he understood himself -- and a thousand psychoanalysts after him have purported to understand him, such as the one and only Ernest Jones -- because such 'biographers' of Freud were all 'psychoanalyzing' Freud according to Freud's own theoretical parameters and assumptions. 'Towing the company' line if you will. 'Upholding the corporate image'. 'Giving Freud -- and all psychoanalysts -- what he and they wanted to hear.'
How can you possibly get any kind of significantly different understanding of Freud unless you have someone who is willing and/or able to see some of the 'deficiencies', 'liabilities', and 'limitations' of these same parameters and assumptions that Freud -- and all Classical Psychoanalysts -- have been locked inside for over 100 years? (Well, maybe not the ones who have stepped outside the parameters of Classical Psychoanalysis and into 'Object Relations', 'Self-Psychology, 'Lacanian Psychoanalysis', and the like...But they all have their theoretical parameters as well....Step into the theories of Jung, and Adler, and Perls, and Berne....and you can start to get some real growth and evolution...
I like 'Hegel's Hotel' better than 'Freud's Hotel' because Hegel's Hotel incorporates a better assortment of assumptions, parameters, paradigms, and 'glasses' than those that Freud was using at the time he was theorizing, and that essentially all, or most, 'anal-retentive' Classical Psychoanalysts have been using since. The Object Relationists and Self-Psychologists have become more evolutionary in their thinking...
This is not to say that Classical Psychoanalysis has not evolved since Freud died -- it's just that some of the most important assumptions that Freud was using -- and that Classical Psychoanalysis continues to use with little to no modifications and/or updated extensions since Freud died -- are also some of his most flawed assumptions. Like 'Childhood Sexuality Theory' and 'Fantasy Theory' and 'Oedipal Theory'-- without their bipolar 'alter-ego' theory: 'Traumacy-Reality-and sometimes Sexual Assault -- Theory'.
The two bipolar theories are still clamoring to be integrated. And I am still partly 'champing at the bit' to be the one to do it in the most comprehensive and sophisticated manner. Part of the show is already in progress...
If this makes me an 'egotist' and/or a 'narcissist', I can live with that. So was Freud. So was Masson. So are most professional athletes. You have to be an 'egotist' to get to the top of whatever 'mountain' you are trying to climb.
Like Ayn Rand would write, that simply means that /I/you/we believe in the strength and power of my/your/our skills and abilities....the skills and abilities that can make us all 'Supermen' and/or 'Superwomen' to the upper threshold of how high these skills and abilities can take us, just as long as we work hard enough, persevere long enough, and meet the challenge of any and all obstacles in order to to get to where we want to go...our 'end visualization', our 'end fantasy', whatever that might be...in my casing a massive integration of Psychoanalysis, and the completion of 'Hegel's Hotel'...
Not too many 'classical psychoanalysts' have had the courage to openly criticize Classical Psychoanalysis -- at least publicly -- and not be reprimanded for doing so. Most of them are no longer considered to be 'Classical Psychoanalysts'. In Spinozian style, they were/are 'ex-communicated'. They were/are -- 'excluded'. Just look at Masson's rebellion against Freud in the 1980s. Masson stood up for what he believed was right -- and for that -- he is no longer a 'Psychoanalyst'. Masson could say most of what he wanted to say about Freud and his theories privately -- just don't do so publicly unless you want to lose your job as 'The Project Director of The Freud Archives'. Which he did.
But alas things can change. Resentments can smooth over. 'Dissociations' can 'melt away', given the right circumstances, over time -- and 'bridges' and 'integrations' can start to take their place.
This is Hegel's World. This is Hegel's Hotel. 'Thesis'. 'Anti-thesis'. And finally -- 'synthesis'...'integration'...'either/or', 'right or wrong' melting away into a more harmonious, dialectic union...Perhaps with an 'agreement to disagree'. Or perhaps with a 'compromise towards the middle'. But most importantly, with more 'tolerance' and 'acceptance' for the right of any individual to 'disagree' with 'group think'. And not to be condemned for his or her 'ouside opinions'...
Freud was The Great Excluder...
I wrote already that he got this 'transference-characteristic' from his dad...
How come Freud couldn't see this clearly? Or could he? How come most Classical Psychoanalysts 'minimized' the 'negative transference' relationship between Freud and his dad? Or couldn't fully see it -- and worse, what the negative repercussions of it were on Classical Psychoanalysis.
Why? Because most Psychoanalysts -- read in particular Ernest Jones (his biography of Freud) -- did what Freud did. And Freud 'minimized' his dad. Sigmund 'excluded' his dad like his dad excluded -- and minimized -- little Siggy.
Most academics agree that the case of 'Anna O' is the first 'case' of Psychoanalyis. I agree -- in part.
But the 'template' case -- the case on which all of Psychoanalysis rests -- is little Sigmund's first, early childhood -- conscious -- memory.
And Freud -- and thousands of psychoanalysts -- continue to 'walk right around this first conscious memory of little Sigmund', like 'lemmings that follow their leader over a cliff'. I am partly sorry if I am coming across as being overly harsh here, or 'unfair to some more rebellious, individual thinking, psychoanalysts' but in the end we are all responsible and accountable for our own personal and collective 'transference neuroses' -- and doing something about them -- otherwise, why call 'Psychoanalysis' a 'first-rate form of psychotherapy'?
Psychoanalysts have to start thinking about 'conscious early memories' not as 'screen memories' that both hide and allude to other more important 'repressed memories and/or fantasies' but rather as important 'transference memories' in and by themselves. And for that, Psychoanalysts can thank Adler indirectly -- through me. Because what I am doing here is essentially turning 'Adlerian lifestyle and conscious early memory theory' back into an 'updated' form of 'Classical Transference Theory'. Which is so psychodynamically different than 'standard Freudian Classical Transference Theory' that many would ask, how can it possibly be called 'Classical' -- in which case I propose the alternative names of 'Quantum-Integrative Transference Theory' and 'Quantum-Integrative Psychoanalysis'.
'Screen Memories' (1899) is the worst paper that Freud ever wrote -- and Jones loved it....lap, lap, lap... while as Masson argued and I am paraphrasing, Freud was starting to 'conflate' and 'confuse' 'symbolic dream and fantasy material' with 'cold, hard, remembered reality'.
I am sure that Jones had his character strengths -- he did, I believe, support the growth and career of Fritz Perls when Freud wanted nothing to do with Perls because of the latter's 'rebellious' paper on 'Oral (as opposed to 'Anal') Resistances...
Freud excluded and excommunicated all significant 'male rebellers' just like his father 'excluded and excommunicated' little Sigmund...
Freud was a great rebel himself -- but once he achieved power -- he squashed all masculine rebellion in his ranks... This was a major part of his 'topdog/underdog transference bi-polarity and neurosis'... His 'excluding topdog' was his 'introjected dad'; and his 'rebellious underdog' was little Sigmund 'proving to his dad -- and to the world -- that he would find out all his dad's -- and his mom's -- private, most hidden sexual secrets -- with or without the help of his dad...and by transference extension -- with or without the help of his clients/patients, and the world at large.
Oh, yes. The memory. The conscious memory that has been so overlooked by so many psychoanalysts claiming to 'know all the hidden secrets of the mind'...And yet you all let Dr. Freud pull one over on you....as he pulled one over on himself...
Step out of Dr. Freud's 'false paradigm', gentlemen -- and gentlewomen.
Even Freud could -- and still continues to -- lead you down false corridors.
Even Freud could make serious 'false connections'.
Why would an 'archaeologist dig deep' if what he or she is looking for -- some 'supposedly hidden treasure' -- is sitting on the ground right in front of his or her eyes -- and nose?
Why would a psychoanalyst 'dig deep' into a client's unconscious if the answer to 'the riddle of the Sphynx' of the client's personality is lying right in front of the psychoanalyst's ears in an 'ignored', 'minimized', 'excluded' conscious early memory...
Note once again that I am partly Adlerian trained....and I would not have arrived at my own 'transference answer' to the riddle of the Sphynx of Freud's character if I had not been Adlerian trained. I superimposed 'Adlerian Lifestyle and Conscious Early Memory Theory' onto Classical Psychoanalysis.
Indeed, what I am doing here is superimposing the theoretical and therapeutic templates of all of Adlerian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Object Relations, Transactional Analysis, and Pre-Classical Freudian Theory -- right back where they belong on top of the template of Classical Psychoanalysis.
Because I am not -- at least in this essay -- and Hegel's Hotel in general -- an exclusionist. In the philosophy and psychology ideas, I am aiming to be much more of an inclusionist and an integrationist.
Now, obviously, I am going to exclude that which I do not believe to be important and/or value-laden. But most certainly, my flexibility, my liberal openess, is much greater than Freud's fixed, anal-retentive theoretical and therapeutic boundaries.
There is no one else in the world who is capable of doing what I am doing here for two reasons: 1. no one has exactly the same 'knowledge template' that I am carrying in my brain; and 2. just as importantly, no one is carrying exactly the same 'transference template' that I am carrying in my brain that demands that I push this story, that I push the integration of the history of Western Philosophy and Clinical Psychology to my vision and version of its evolutionary conclusion...push 'Hegel's Hotel' to its evolutionary conclusion...which will only be fleeting, because all essays are 'thought bites' that have a context in time and place, and even Hegel's Hotel which has already been in the works for 5 years since July, 2006, I believe, and I hope will be finished by March 3rd, 2012, will also be a six year 'thought bite' by the time it is finished if my estimate is accurate...with part of it aging -- like me...
Regarding my own personal transference template, consisting of a network of associated transference 'complexes' and/or 'neuroses', two of them seem to have associative connections with Freud's 'network of transference complexes and neuroses': 1. his 'father-transference complex'; and 2. his 'first conscious memory transference complex' in which he was evicted from the doorway of his parents' master bedroom for 'intruding' at the wrong time. My first conscious memory was very similar although connected with my friend's mother who was very angry at me for pushing her front doorbell more times 'than I should have, too early in the morning'.
Add these two transference similarities to my partial Adlerian training in 'interpreting conscious early memories' from an Adlerian 'lifesyle' perspective, and you have the three most important ingredients that explain why I have been better able to interpret Freud's 'first conscious memory-transference complex' better than anyone before me, particularly any 'Inside The Freudian Box Classical Psychoanalyst'.
Freud copied (introjected, identified with) his dad's 'rejecting topdog/object/superego' around the issue of 'exclusionism'.
And in similar fashion, Classical Psychoanalysis copied (introjected, identified with) Sigmund Freud's 'rejecting topdog/object/superego around this same issue of 'exclusionism'. That makes Classical Psychoanalysis a product of Sigmund Freud's own 'exclusionism-abandonment transference neurosis'.
For those of you who are not familiar with little Sigmund's first conscious memory, he 'busted in on his parents in their bedroom while they were doing the nasty'....and little Sigmund's father screamed at him to get out...(just as the woman/mother in my first conscious memory screamed at me to leave her front door).
A pretty understandable reaction by Sigmund's father...given the circumstances and his likely embarrassment, but that sure didn't help little Siggy any...He needed an explanation..
Indeed, little Siggy ended up spending the rest of his life -- via his transference complex -- vicariously trying to understand perfectly what exactly had transpired in his parents' bedroom...and he was certainly no stranger years and years later to 'his patients' resistance to telling the truth about their sexual secrets'... Indeed, from a transference perspective, he entirely expected it...It was 'deja-vu' for little Siggy turned big Sigmund...the beginning of a very long 'repetition compulsion' and 'mastery compulsion'.
Freud unconsciously re-created his own transference projection scene...the surrogate scene of his earliest conscious memory...The bed was 're-created' as the couch, and the female hysterical patients had become 'transference surrogates' to his mother lying on the bed...Was this his own private 'Oedipal Complex' playing itself out? Freud's own 'narcissistic transference fantasy' relative to 'surrogates' of his mother? Well, part of the transference component was certainly attached to his mother.
At what point the 'erotic' component of transference enters into the picture is a point of debate. Is the erotic component early childhood based, or does it enter into the picture as puberty turns on our 'sexual hormones'?
In DGB conceptuology, 'sublimation' is a 'transference projection phenomenon' first and foremost, with the 'sexual component' being a subset of the transference complex.
'Truth' often has two 'dialectical polar halves' attached to it, and it is very, very common for most of us to miss one of these 'polar halves'...In the family...in our schools...in our ruling political party, in the court system, in philosophy, in psychology...'the squeeky wheel gets the oil while the silent wheel remains in the Shadows of Non-Attention'...the dominant paradigm gets the sunshine, gets the spotlight, gets the goodies, while the 'invisible paradigm' gets lost in The Shadows of Non-Attention...not getting its share of the 'goodies'...and/or the 'equal rights' in many cases...
This was the philosophical brilliance of Anaxamander who foreshadowed the philosophy of Hegel, Derrida, and Foucault over two thousand years before the latter three philosophers came into existence. and this Freud could not see very well before, during, and after his abandonment of his pre-1897 Traumacy-Seduction Theory. It is possible that Freud was at least partly 'overly naive' coming into 1896, or shortly thereafter...
Was he overly naive to believe that all his female hysterical patients had been either 'sexually assaulted' or 'manipulated' and 'seduced' as children? Or were some of his female clients manipulating and lying to him? Or both?
This could have been a significant part of Freud's theoretical and therapeutic dilemma back around 1896-1897? Was Freud right or wrong to take his female clients' assertions regarding their childhood history of sexual abuse at face value? And/or were some or all of his female clients hiding their own narcissistic sexual fantasies behind these assertions of childhood sexual abuse?
Or was there another over-riding disturbing network of political, economic, and professional factors? Did the men who had power over the future of Freud's career essentially intimidate and coerce Freud into 'shutting his story down, shutting his theory of childhood sexual abuse down'?
And what if Freud was getting a complicated and confusing mixture of clinical behaviors and symptoms? Freud's whole theory of 'repression' and 'the pleasure-unpleasure' theory hinged on the idea that his clients were 'hiding the unbearable past' from themselves through the process of 'repression' (excluding traumatic memories from their consciousness). Freud's whole theory leading up to 1896 rested on 'making these unconscious, repressed traumatic memories conscious'...And then presto, the 'hysterical symptom associated with the traumatic, repressed memory, now conscious again, disappeared!'
However, there were complications to this nice, tidy story, with a happy ending...
For example, sometimes a 'hysterical' (neurotic) patient could keep a therapist busy for a lifetime with the continual creation of a vast array of new physical symtoms...Just read the Anna O. case, and see how busy she kept pooer Dr. Joseph Breur in what is generally viewed as the 'first psychoanalytic case'...Not to mention when she started to have 'erotic fantasies' of poor, Dr. Breuer, and told him that she was 'carrying his child'! (Presumably, she wasn't.)
Then there were an assortment of other cases where patients were fantasizing having 'romantic-sexual liasions' with bosses' and the like...Human, all too human...
So you can maybe start to see how Freud was getting into an entangled mess between trying to sort out the workings of 'human sexual traumacy' vs. the workings of 'human sexual fantasy'. The one certainly did not necessarily preclude or exclude the other. But Freud was building up an 'either/or' case for the stronger of the two theories.
1. Repression of sexual traumacy/seduction/assault? Or;
2. Repression of sexual fantasy.
It should be noted that not all of Freud's (or Breuer's) patients traumacies were of a 'sexual' nature. Anna O. stopped drinking liguids when she saw her dog drinking out of her cup or bowel. This memory was brought back to her awareness through 'hypnosis' and 'the talking cure' and she started drinking again. But Freud was locked into the 'sexual etiology'. Breuer was a much more cautious, rational-empirical scientist than Freud and was far more careful than Freud with his generalizations and theories...
However, no-one heard much from Breuer after he and Freud split company. Breuer's theoretical caution was less exciting and less shocking than Freud's dramatic exclamations and explanations...It wasn't as 'newsworthy' as Freud's brash statements, and to be fair to Freud, not as creatively brilliant in many cases...It was Freud who wrote the 24 volume Standard Edition, not Breuer.
Freud was perplexed -- and amazed -- by women's (and men's) sexual secrets.
Aren't we all oftentimes?
Sexual traumacy or sexual fantasy?
What was going on? Which way was Freud to go? Stuck inside Aristotlean logic, he set the whole dichotomy up as an 'either/or' choice. Big mistake. Perhaps the biggest mistate in Freud's career -- at least on the theoretical front. What he needed to do -- and what he didn't do -- was to 'dialectically embrace' the alleged dichotomy and figure out how both sides of the quandry contributed to a larger, 'Bi-Polar, Dialectic Truth', or 'Dialectic Bi-Polar Wholism'.
Freud could see the one 'polar truth' before 1897 but not the other; then, slowly, after 1897, Freud could see the 'opposite polar truth' (wishful fantasy) but not the original one (traumacy, seduction, assault) that he had spent the first 10 years of his professional career learning. What was that if it was not 'professional repression'? The irony of the whole matter is that both existed before 1897, and both existed after 1897.
You show, or tell me, of one person who has lived on this earth for even 5 years who has not experienced the twin polarities of 'traumacy' and 'fantasy', and I will agree to the Freudian concept of 'repression'!
Back between the summer of 1896 and say 1905, it was Freud who was 'The Grand Represser'. (After 1905, he became 'The Grand Excluder' -- as in excluding anyone -- or any male -- from Psychoanalysis who didn't agree with his 'childhood sexuality' , 'sexual fantasy' and 'Oedipal Theory'.
Did political, economic, and professional 'convenience' or 'or perceived necessity' contort and distort and 'unobjectify' Freud's brain? Freud wouldn't be the first to succumb to such a pressure? I am not trying to make excuses for Freud, or even assert that this is what necessarily happened -- Masson put out such a 'theory' in the 1980s, and for this he lost his job and his career. Is it possible that Masson chose to not ethically back down -- where Freud did?
Nobody -- not men or women (Freud had no huge 'women's movement' supporting him back then) -- wanted to hear publicly about 'child sexual abuse' in the 1890s. It was easier to blame the child than it was to blame the father, or the uncle, or the family friend... And nothing had really changed by the 1980s. It was obvious that The Psychoanalytic Establishment still did not want to publicly talk about child sexual abuse when confronted Classical Psychoanalysis on this account. Worse still, was Masson 'theorizing' that it was quite possible/likely that 'Freud lost moral courage'.
Meanwhile, there was a huge article in The Globe and Mail less than a week ago saying that women in prision were not getting the 'mental health' help that they needed -- whereas there were more avenues along this line already in place for men in prison.
I believe the estimates of 'childhood sexual abuse' I saw in the article amongst women in prison and/or amongst other women seeking psychiatric help was up in the 50 percentile, or probably even significantly higher. There was something that was bringing these 'hysterical women' or 'neurotic women with physical symptoms that seemed to go hand in hand with their mental processes' into Freud's practice in the 1890s, and it wasn't all about their 'repressed or suppressed erotic fantasies' (although this did seem to often play a part).
And still in the 1980s, The Psychoanalytic Establishment did not want to talk about how Freud's Oedipal Complex was leading analysts away from diagnosing 'real childhood sexual abuse', not 'figments of their patients Oedipal imagination'.
This might 'defame' Freud's character to say that Freud made such a huge theoretical, diagnostic, and therapeutic blunder! Is it any different today in 2011 or is The Psychoanalytic Establishment still hanging on with a 'Classical Freudian Oedipal hanging on pitbull bite'? Perhaps the more Psychoanalysts who move into Object Relations and Self Psychology, the less they have to stand up as an organization and actually publicly confront this 'ugly' problem.
I still like, and have no problem of using, The Oedipal Complex in my own theoretical work. But not to the 'literal' sense that Freud did. And not to the extent of 'diagnostically and therapeutically distorting a client's childhood reality'.
Economic, political, legal, and professional pressures can have a huge impact in all of us -- and turn us all away from 'the truth', at least as we personally believe in it.
How many of us don't engage in this type of practise every single day we go to work when we tell our boss 'what he or she wants to hear' or conversely, 'suppress' telling him or her what he or she doesn't want to hear?
How can we expect anyone to 'engage in freedom of speech' and 'tell his or her boss' what they really believe when the 'unemployment line' looms so large -- particularly in a bad recession -- as a 'very real factual possibility, a factual truth'?
It was very possible that Freud was no different. But since we are dealing with -- and 'speculating' about -- what 'was going through Freud's own mind at the time' -- none of us will ever know definitively. That is one secret -- his 'ethical innocence and/or guilt' -- that Freud probably took to the grave with him. Now, the 'ethical ramifications' of his decision still lies out in the open - - or at least partly in the open -- for all to see, and judge. Nobody -- other than a working pscyhoanalyst (and his or her clients) -- knows exactly what transpires behind closed psychoanalytic doors... and how many psychoanalysts may actually believe in the client experiential 'validity' of childhood and/or teenage sexual manipulation/assault, in this case, that case, or in many cases....and still 'tow the public company pathological anal-retentive Freudian Oedipal line'...
Not too many of us will ever know that realm of 'psychoanalytic-client privacy' as well...unless psychoanlysts and/or clients start going public with their personal stories... I'm not counting on it...
At best, Freud was too much an Aristotlean 'either/or' thinker, who couldn't get his head around 'dialectic engagement and integration'. He had the right idea with the concept of 'compromise formations'.
However, he didn't properly understand the dynamics of the transference except in his own 'tightly restricted, anal-retentive paradigm' of 'relationship transference between therapist and client'. Brian Bird hadn't written his paper on the 'universality of the transference' yet. That wouldn't happen until the 1960s.
Because of Freud's 'abandonment of the traumacy-seduction theory' and his evolving 'fixation' with 'fantasy theory', Freud -- nor any psychoanalytic theorist since -- until me -- has centred on the concept of 'transference memory'. (Actually, I have to give significant creative and chonological credit to both Alfred Adler, founder of Adlerian Psychology and the creator of the idea of 'conscious early memories as lifestyle memomies', as well as Arthur Janov, author of 'The Primal Scream').
In Psychoanalysis, we hear of 'transference relationships' but we never hear about 'transference encounters' -- and by logical association -- 'transference memories' (concious and/or unconscious).
Yet here is the future of Classical Psychoanalysis -- if Classical Psychoanalysis is to have any future.
From the idea of 'dialectic engagement, negotiation, and integration' -- comes the name of 'Quantum' Psychaoanalysis -- just as previously, in the realm of Physics, and 'thermogenics' -- 'particle' theory was integrated with its anti-thesis, 'wave' theory, to get 'Quantum Theory'.
Likewise here, 'Traumacy-Seduction-Manipulation-Assault' Theory becomes integrated with 'Childhood Sexuality-Fantasy-Oedipal Theory' to become 'Quantum Psychoanalysis'.
We have heard that every 'killer returns to the scene of his crime'. I don't know how true it is or not. But the same idea applies here.
Because, metaphorically and symbolically speaking, every 'neurotically traumatized child' returns to the scene of his 'childhood traumacy-transference scene' over and over and over again...This is what Freud ended up calling the 'repetition compulsion'. But Freud didn't properly understand the repetition complulsion -- he almost did with his concept of 'the mastery compulsion' but perhaps thought he was getting too close to 'Adlerian Theory' (the inferiority complex and superiority striving). Instead, Freud made the mistake of connecting the repetition compulsion to his evolving idea of 'The Death Instinct' (Beyond The Pleaaure Principle, 1920).
The repetition compulsion is often tied to 'death', 'destruction', and/or 'self-destruction', but only in the context of 'psychologically fighting for life', and the 'healing' of one's 'traumatic-transference neurosis'.
The traumatic-transference progression and/or regression goes like this: 1. chilhood traumacy; 2. 'Traumacy-tranference Memory'; 3. 'Compensation', 'Master Compulsion'; and 4. the creation of a 'Traumacy-Transference Fantasy Template' often 'cathected' with romantic and/or sexual energy of a supreme force; that is 5. 'Projected onto an adult 'surrogate transference figure' and this transference erotic love fantasy reigns supreme until one day, one's adult 'surrogate transference lover 'rejects us' in a style that unconsciously on purpose reminds us of our initial childhood traumacy-transference rejection, and childhood traumacy transference rejector (abandoner, betrayer, excluder, assaulter, manipulator...); and then 6. we suddenly and radically change 180 degrees in our thinking and feeling, like Freud did in 1896, and enter a 'heavy negative transference phase' of our 'transference love relationship' ,'heavily cathected with childhood negative energy'; and often end up 7. 'doing unto our rejector what our childhood and/or adult rejector did unto us, or we think our adult surrogate transference figure is about to do to us'...This is what I call 'negative transference identification', 'identification with the rejector, abandoner, betrayer, assaulter, aggressor, manipuator, excluder'.... and it often ends many 'transfernce relationships... This is what I call our full 'transference complex, neurosis, and/or game'. (as in Berne's 'Games People Play' -- meaning for the most part, 'The Positive and Negative Transference Games That We Play'...To stop playing the game (which many people don't want to do because of its heavy romantic-sexual component), we have to come to a full conscious understanding of the psycho-dyanmics of our trnasference complex/neurosis/game, and be able to consciousl choose to 'get off the transference ferris wheel, off the transference roller coaster, off the transference merry-go-round', which by the time we finish our unique, particular good and bad ride is often not very 'merry'....
Freud never got here...although he came close sometimes in different ways...'The Aetiology of Hysteria', 1896; 'The Dynamics of The Transference', 1912; 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' 1920...
The psycho-sexual secrets of men and women...
Did not usually come easy to Freud,
Nor to any psychotherapist,
Like a Christmas present from client to therapist, with a nice, neat, tidy ribbon and bow attached to it...
No, more often these secrets come together from different 'life experiences, built into psychological compensatory pieces -- woven together, subconsciously into a psycho-sexual transfernce whole'...
It is not only where we have come from with our childhoood transferences, but also, where we are trying to get to subconsiously or unconsciously, in order to 'subjectively feel more whole again'...
But Freud already knew this deep in his own subconscious,
He just couldn't quite completely figure out the psycho-dynamics of his own unconscious (or was unwilling to publicly share all of his private awenesses)...
Regardless, for his clients too, he couldn't quite put all their different psychological pieces together,
Trying as hard -- indeed, obsessing as hard -- as he did....
Where did this 'transference obsession' come from?
From the first time he busted...
Into his parents' bedroom,
This is why Freud's first conscious memory can easily be declared...
The 'first true case of Psychoanalysis'...
-- dgb, Jan. 30th-31st, Feb. 1st, Feb. 3rd., 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain
