The Dark Years of 1895-1896: Freud, Fliess, Cocaine, Emma Ekstein, 'Traumacy' vs. 'Longing' -- and 'The Silence of The Lambs'

Introduction

There are two things I want to do as we probe deeper into the early beginnings of Psychoanalysis, starting with Breuer, Anna O., Charcot, Janet, and Freud -- and leading up to the crucially significant years of 1895-1896.

Firstly, I want to discuss the main stresses that were on Freud's mind that would seem to lend credence to Jeffrey Masson's theory in the early 1980s (The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory, 1984, 1985, 1992) that Freud basically 'lost moral courage' when he abandoned/suppressed his pre-1897 Traumacy-Seduction Theory in favor of his post-1896 evolving 'Childhood Sexuality-Instinct-Fantasy-Oedipal Theories' that became the backbone of what is now referred to as 'Classical' (Freudian) Psychoanalysis.

If, as I will argue, Freud's post-1896 increasing abandonment of The Traumacy-Seduction Theory was based more on 'personal narcissistic bias' as opposed to any new 'scientific-clinical' developments, or valid scientific-clinical reasons for abandoning his pre-1897 theoretical conclusions, then as Masson argued back throughout the 1980s and early 90s -- and still believes today -- we have a right to fully challenge the whole philosophical-assumptive base of what is still being theorized and practised today as 'Classical' Psychoanalysis.

For historical and semantic purposes, Freudian Classical Psychoanalysis should perhaps or probably be 'frozen stiff' as it is -- otherwise, we won't know what we are talking about when we talk about it; however, even with this goal in mind, there is some room for disagreement.

I would speculate that most traditional Freudian scholars would probably define 'Classical' Psychoanalysis as 'everything Freud wrote between 1899 and 1939, forty years of theorizing starting with "Screen Memories" written in 1899 and ending at Freud's death in 1939. However, it should be noted that Freud's theorizing from 1920 onwards, starting with "Beyond The Pleasure Principle" written in 1920, and including "The Ego and The Id' written in 1923, is radically different than -- or shall we say 'modified' from -- what Freud was wrting in the early 1900s, or even, from 1899 leading up to 1920.

On this ground alone, I personally, would like to see 'Classical' Psychoanalysis redefined as 'anything Freud wrote in The Standard Edition, in any of his 24 volumes of work which would take us back to 1886 -- over 50 years of Freudian theorizing, and of course, this would include his more or less self-rejected and highly controversial 'Traumacy and Seduction Theories'.  These two theories are no more inconsistent in terms of Freud's overall body of work than 'Beyond The Pleasure Priniciple' and 'The Ego and The Id' are relative to the theoretical work  that Freud did between -- say, 1899 and 1919.  

'Theoretical consistency' should not be a 'parameter' by which we define and describe 'Classical' Psychoanalysis -- because however we want to define or describe 'Classical' Psychoanalysis -- in the end, it is no more consistent than Freud defined and described 'the id'.  Freud, in my mind, is probably the greatest -- and most creative -- theorists in Western history. But that does not mean that he was 'integratively consistent'. Based on the idealistic parameter of 'integrative consistency', Freud failed on numerous counts -- he didn't have the time, the energy, and/or the willpower to completely integrate Classical Psychoanalysis up to the point where anyone could argue that it was 'internally consistent'. Quite frankly, the same can be said for my 'wannabe masterpiece' here -- Hegel's Hotel.

I have changed and/or modified my opinion on so many different issues over time, that I have not had the time, the energy, and/or the willpower to go back into 'the archives' of my work and look at some thousand essays that I have written over the last five years (since 2006) to determine if they are all 'internally consistent' or not.

Bah! Humbug! Let the internal inconsistencies stand as a testamont to the evolution of my thinking over time -- and not necessarily wanting to change what I once believed.  So I don't really judge Freud's work on any basis of 'internal inconsistency' -- except to the extent that I know that I can integrate it better -- and am in the process of doing so.  Freud may have been the most creatively brilliant theorist in Western history but he was not the greatest 'integrative' thinker. He couldn't -- or wouldn't -- integrate his self-rejected Traumacy and Seduction Theories with the rest of Classical Psychoanalysis. In other words, he couldn't -- or wouldn't -- integrate 'Psychoanalytic Reality Theory and Therapy' (before May 4th, 1896) with 'Psychoanalytic Fantasy Theory and Therapy' (starting on May 4th, 1896).

I put Freud's 'abandonment and/or suppression' of his 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' on the same level as 'his burning of many of his most private letters, including all of his letters from Fliess' --  there was a significant part of Freud's character that simply did not want to be 'publicly transparent'.

Furthermore, there was another part of Freud's character that was professionally ambitious, expedient, pragmatic, conservative, Machiavellian (as in 'the end justifies the means').  'Suppressing a theory and/or advancing a new one' -- if it 'safeguarded' his professional career, regardless of the 'ethical implications' here -- is  something that Freud would look long and hard at, and this is exactly what Freud did in the spring of 1896 under a high combined load of 'internal stress' under the influence of 'external duress'.  

By my interpretive and evaluative analysis of this point in Freudian history, and following in Masson's lead but not being entirely content with the extent of Masson's argument alone --  it did not completely 'hit the mark' for me -- I believe, like Masson, that Freud 'ethically crumbled'  with at least three factors playing a significant part in this story: 1. Freud's falling finances and his need to financially support his growing family; 2. 'negative economic leverage' applied by The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society; 3. The Emma Ekstein Medical Fiasco involving Fliess and probably the use of cocaine combined with Freud's lingering 'ethical guilt' in this matter which happened a year earlier (February, 1895) than the time we are talking about here as described in Freud's letter to Fliess on May 4th, 1896.   

I will describe my own personal interpretive analysis of this Freudian point in history in the bulk of this essay below...

Now, to be sure, there are probably thousands of clinical psychoanalyts out there today, practising their craft -- who are not practising Classical  Psychoanalysis. They may be practising 'Object Relations' or 'Self-Psychology' or 'Lacanian Psychoanalysis' -- or possibly a hundred and one other 'modified derrivatives' of what they first learned under the heading of 'Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis'.

Some psychoanalysts -- and certainly a wide and lengthy assortment of psychotherapists from other schools of psychology -- still use Freud's Traumacy and/or Seduction Theory today, either in their entirety or in some modified format of it.

Relative to Psychoanalysis, it is hard to get a handle on how many psychoanalysts -- Classical or otherwise -- use Freud's old traumacy-seduction theory and therapy in any greater or lesser capacity, because no one is publicly and/or formally talking on this issue. Maybe Freud's work before 1897 is being taught at Psychoanalytic Institutes, maybe it is being practised to some greater or lesser extent -- either overtly or covertly -- but again, no one is making any public, formal statements on this matter. So anyone 'outside the loop' is left in the dark on this matter.

Buried in the confines of 'Siggy's Secret Psychoanalytic Cave -- his Secret Society' seems to be the way that The Psychoanalytic Establishment as a whole prefers to treat this issue. 'Mum's' the word -- for public consumption (meaning no public consumption at all).

If I had been in Anna Freud's shoes before she died in 1982, when Masson raised the Traumacy-Seduction Theory Controversy/Scandal for the upteenth time in the history of Psychoanalysis on a far greater scale than anyone before him,  I would have most definitely done things differently. 

Specifically, I would have changed/modified Classical Psychoanalysis in my best effort of clearing it from any and all possible charges of 'Victorian Patriarchal Bias'. The people left in charge of protecting 'Classical' Psychoanalysis -- and back in the 1980s that was primarily Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler -- should have been more focused on the 'present' and the 'future' of Classical Psychoanalysis -- not the 'past', and Anna's father 'ethical legacy', as much as I am sure she loved her father, perhaps too much to 'objectively' govern -- and act in the 'best interests' of -- The Psychoanalytic Empire.

Anna Freud, in the face of Masson's early 1980 ethical charges against her father, had an admittedly huge dilemma facing her -- and conflict of interest -- between choosing to protect the ethical integrity of her father's character vs. 'unpathologizing' the structure and psycho-dynamics of Classical Psychoanalysis. Or perhaps she could have done the latter while not admitting or agreeing to any alleged ethical guilt on her father's path. But she didn't. Anna Freud did nothing to alleviate or compensate for the theoretical and ethical charges aimed against Freud by Masson, and Masson had some solid ethical grounds to base these charges.

Instead, Jeffrey Masson, Projects Director of The Freud Archive, and third from the top of The Freudian hierarchy at the time, on the combined decision of the Board of Directors of The Freudian Establishment, which I assume included Kurt Eissler, second to the top of The Freudian hierarchy, behind only Anna Freud, but who had also become a very close friend of Masson's, but still, at the same time, was ultimately 'faithful' to the 'ethical integrity' of Sigmund Freud's legacy, just like Anna Freud -- two  'unconditional protectors of Freud's ethical integrity' -- in the face of some strong 'ethical charges' that were being aimed directly at father Freud -- regarding the latter's 'abandonment' and/or 'suppression' of his 1895 and 1896 'Traumacy' and 'Seduction' Theories, respectively.  

Ultimately, Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler both failed Classical Psychoanalysis -- and where it needed to go, as opposed to where it came from -- in the 'perceived prioritized need' to protect father Freud's ethical legacy.  In this regard, Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler -- as well as failing the future of Classical Psychoanalysis -- also failed 'egalitarian feminism' and 'women's civil rights' -- instead, preferring to still giving 'pseudo-legitimacy' to father Freud's 'Patriarchal Victorian Values and Narcissistic Biases' that had become hugely outdated by 1982. But in this regard, perhaps both Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler, as the two foremost leaders of The Freudian Empire, had themselves become 'outdated'. 

Masson was certainly waiting in the wings to add 'new (or old, 'pre-Classical') blood' to Classical Psychoanalysis but ultimately, The Freudian Establishment as a whole chose to both 'dismiss' and to 'depreciate' the 'rebellious value' that Masson had brought to Psychoanalysis. It became an 'Either/Or' Ethical Duel where, on the face of things, Masson lost, but 'history' often if not usually has a means of 'undoing' and 'reversing' past injustices and untruths. 

If Anna Freud had really wanted to protect the 'ethical integrity' of her father's character, then she should have never allowed Masson to publish Freud's Complete Letters to Wilhelm Fliess. Sigmund Freud would have most certainly have had these letters destroyed if he had ever been able to get his hands on them. They contained many of his most intimate thoughts to his closest friend through the most controversial building years of Classical Psychoanalysis. And for anyone who chooses to read these letters, Freud does not come out 'smelling like roses' in many of them. Freud -- like all of us -- was human, and perhaps much too 'cathected' to his own personal narcissism and ambition.

In words that are much more 'compacted' than those offered by Masson in 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory', I will do my best to 'be as objective' as possible in the case I present below but in a way that ultimately incriminates Freud, not Masson.  Here is the story of 1895-1896 as I have interpreted it.

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For The Psychoanalytic Establishment, the issue of The Traumacy-Seduction Theory -- particularly in light of the Masson-Freud scandal of the 1980s -- always seems to be such a 'powder-keg of gunpowder waiting for the smallest spark to ignite the whole barrel of gunpowder -- again, for the upteenth time' --  that The Establishment as a whole seems to wish to keep the gunpowder keg away from all possible ignition sources.

If I am another possible 'ignition source', then I expect that i will be treated like all other past figures in this regard -- the ignition source will be left to 'burn itself out in the wind' -- like all others -- this has more or less worked for the past 70 to 100 years. Why should I be treated any differently. To use another metaphor, the worker bees do everything in their collective power to keep any and all intruders as far away from the 'bee hive' and the 'queen bee' as is necessary to protect/defend their ongoing existence -- as 'classically' learned. 

I certainly did not come into this issue with any wish to 're-scandalize' Freud for any of his historical behaviors. As I believe I have said elsewhere, about 70 to 80 percent of my ideas come from Freud in some direct or indirect fashion. 

Still, if historical reports seem to show that Freud's 'cocaine abuse' for more than 10 years (1884 to at least 1895) interfered in any capacity with his 'better medical, theoretical, and/or therapeutic  judgment' -- then who is guilty of 'scandalizing' Freud's name -- Masson, me, or Freud himself? 

In particular, if it can be shown that specific 'stresses' that were converging on Freud all at the same time in 1895 and 1896 -- 1. Freud's cocaine use and the negative effect on his health and judgment; 2. the Emma Ekstein medical scandal where she almost bled to death from Fliess' and Freud's  ill-conceived 'nasal-sexual surgery' or 'folie a deux' as Masson has called it (1984, 1992, The Assault on Truth, p. 99);  3. the recent birth of Anna Freud in conjunction with Freud's 5 other children and his wife, all of whom needed to be economically supported; 4. the April 21st, 1896 meeting of The Society for Psychiatry and Neuorology in which Freud read his new paper, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' (1896) in which he connected the main cause of hysteria with the client's repression of childhood sexual traumacies/seductions/assaults/rape/abuse -- and which was essentially publicly ridiculed by the group members present that night, Krafft-Ebing saying, 'It sounds like a scientific fairy tale' .  (1985, The Complete Lettersof Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904, p. 184); 5. Freud's post-meeting 'ostracization' by this same group of medical peers and superiors -- and the fact that they stopped 'referring patients' to him (as stated by Freud himself in The Complete Letters, p. 185., see below) --  until he started to 'retract' his 'seduction theory' and move in the direction of his freshly evolving 'instinct-fantasy' theory...at which point, or some point, he obviously started to get cases again; 6. the impending death of his father in October of 1896...

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Part of a letter from Freud to Fliess on May 4th, 1896,

'I am as isolated as you would wish me to be. Word was given out to abandon me, for a void is forming all around me. So far I bear it with equanamity. I find it more troublesome that this year for the first time my consulting room is empty, that for weeks on end I see no new faces, cannot begin any new treatments, and that none of the old ones are completed. Things are so difficult and trying that it requires, on the whole, a strong constitution to deal with them. (1985, The Complete Letters, p. 185.)

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At the same time, in the same letter, Freud was still thinking of the 'botched' Emma Ekstein nasal operation of February 1895, over a year earlier, in which Ekstein almost bled to death because Fliess unknowingly left about half a metre of gauze in her nose for about about a month while he left Vienna (where the surgery was conducted) and went back to his home town, Berlin, in Germany.

In fairness to Freud, Freud had the same type of nasal operation as Esktein did  during Fliess' same visit to Vienna in February, 1895, with not as horrifically acute after-effects as Ekstein experienced in terms of a long piece of gauze left in his nose, but still, he endured significantly bad health problems for a good year afterwards, including the usual nasal infections (pus running out his nose), migraines, weak pulse, and heart arrhythmia.   

It would seem, and I think most scholars would entirely agree here (sorry, no references but you can check this generalization out yourself), that Freud's 'theoretical and medical partnership' with Fliess was almost entirely misguided -- and hugely dangerous to potential or actual 'guinea pig' patients like Emma Ekstein in terms of taking unnecessary risks with 'medically offside' surgeries and 'highly trusting, highly susceptible' patients. In short, Fliess and Freud were acting like a couple of 'back room abortionists' -- and both should have lost their medical licenses for this operation.   

Both Fliess and Freud had 'gone medically offside' on this type of 'non-sanctioned, nasal-sexual operation' that was designed to do, I don't know what....alleviate the negative side effects of 'too much cocaine up possibly all three of their noses' -- this is certainly speculative on my part but let's put 2 and 2 and 2 together here...What do you think was happening that led up to -- and supposedly 'necessited' -- two 'nasal-sexual' operations -- one on Emma, and one on Freud? Ah, maybe I should 'grab this dirty laundry' and do what a thousand theorists have done before me -- throw the dirty laundry into the laundry room before the public gets to see and/or read it, and either leave the laundry room door tightly closed (Anna Freud, Eissler -- and surprising, even Masson didn't get involved in Freud's 'cocaine misadventures' at a time when Masson was accusing Freud of 'loss of moral courage'), and/or put Freud's dirty laundry through the washer and dryer before it is proudly shown to the public as 'nice and clean' -- no more stinky smell of 'pus running out of anyone's nose'...)

I suggest that if you want any more substaniated proof and/or circumstantial evidence, just read the Freud-Fliess letters of 1895-1896...much of the story is told in Freud's own words...and no wonder he wanted these letters destroyed....

Oh! Let's just turn the other way on the darkest, and probably most unethical two years of Freud's history...and pretend this particular event never happened -- even if it did 'coincidentally' happen -- including the operation's 'psychological after-effects' on Freud's 'self-incrimination', 'guilt', and then the 'working through' of this guilt with what amounted to a very 'neurotic psychological defense mechanism' on Freud's part (specifically, 'rationalization', 'justification', 'denial') -- Freud was just entering into 'the defense mechanism' portion of this horrific medical event when Freud got 'slammed again' -- psychologically -- this time by The Society for Psychiatry and Neurology in Vienna who didn't like his new 1896 essay that connected 'hysteria' with 'childhood sexual abuse' with Krafft-Ebing describing his essay as being 'like a scientific fairy tale' (although 'scientific fairy tales' are not always untrue -- try the 'scientific fairy tales of: Copernicus, Darwin, Einstein...my editorial addition). 

 Since the two psychological problems were in his mind at the exact same time as witnessed by his May 4th, 1896 letter to Fliess, perhaps we should not find it too surprising when Freud ended up 'using the same stone to kill two different birds' -- his fresh new 'longing-wishful fantasy' theory (or was it Fliess'?).

A year after this botched nasal operation, Ekstein was no longer 'the traumacy victim' of 'two grossly over-reaching, unethical doctors' (Freud and Fliess), and 'one negligently performing doctor' (Fliess); instead, Emma Ekstein was now 're-interpreted' a 'hysterical bleeder' who 'longed' to be back in the company of the two doctors who almost killed her. Ouch! That theory is almost as painful to read -- actually not even remotely close -- to the brutal surgery that Emma had to endure from two 'totally unpardonable, ethically offside scientific doctors'.

How can we think anything but 2 plus 2 equal 4 when Freud used the same 'longing, wishful fantasy' theory to now change his 'childhood sexual abuse' theory into a 'wishful, longing, childhood sexual impulse' theory of children 'sexually longing for' their parent of the opposite sex and covering this 'internal, unconscious longing' up with 'distorted, false memories of childhood sexual abuse'(the 'still to be born', but fastly evolving 'Oedipus Complex'.) This too -- which was essentially being created at the same time as the Emma Ekstein affair and the same time that Freud was being 'economically starved' by members of The Society For Psychiatry and Neurology in Vienna -- this too, is extremely painful to read under these contextual, historical circumstances -- which other than being confronted by Masson in the 1980s -- have largely been ignored.

Thus, it is entirely plausable -- indeed, probable -- that Freud used the same 'newly born May 4th, 1896 theory' - i.e., the same 'wishful fantasy, longing, theory', or the beginning of 'The Oedipus Complex' Theory -- to 'narcissistically cover himself up, politically, economically and professionally, and to put himself back on the road to 'professional and economic success' again....partly under the 'coercive duress' of The Vienna Society for Psychiatry and Neurology.

The precedent -- and the prototype -- of the 'longing-fantasy' theory had been created by Freud to 'absolve' Fliess and himself of 'medical guilt' (that they both deserved to feel because they both should have lost their medical license over the very badly conceived, probably medically non-sanctioned, and negligently performed surgery), and now with this new 'longing-fantasy' fresh in Freud's memory -- presto -- Freud found that it worked for getting himself out of 'The Seduction Theory Poltical and Professional Mess' as well.

Not only did Freud 'lose moral courage' under 'professional coercion and duress' -- but even worse than this -- Freud under intense stress, concocted a 'longing-fantasy' theory (which would later become the essence of his 'Oedipus Complex Theory'), that essentially allowed him to stop talking about 'the reality' of childhood sexual assaults!

It is the same theory that 'rapists' often use in court -- 'She wanted it.'

Presto!! 'Two -- two mints -- in one'.   

While a hundred and fifteen years of psychoanalysts (with the exception of Masson, Ferenczi, and a few others...) couldn't or wouldn't put two and two and maybe two again together here, in this May 4th letter, and see what an essentially 'dastardly deed' Freud was in the process of pulling off....Freud was essentially about to remove Psychoanalysis from its 'ethical high ground' -- remove the 'strong foundational basement' from Psychoanalysis that would protect it from any and all later 'abandonment and abolishment' criticisms as 'political and professional attitudes' started to change in favor of  offering more support for 'victimized children and women' -- spawned especially by the growth and evolution of the 'feminist movement' that was essentially politically non-existent back in 1896 when Freud was floundering in the face of patriarchal, Victorian professional economic intimidation and coercion towards him that was effectively starving him out of business.

Freud 'hung in' for a couple of weeks -- from April 21st, 1896 to May 4th, 1896 -- but the May 4th letter to Fliess shows him starting to 'come apart at the seams' under all the stress he was feeling at the time including a 'boatload of medical guilt' still left over from the February, 1895 surgical nightmare with Fliess doing nasal surgery on Emma Ekstein. Since the 'traumacy' theory didn't 'fit well' in this episode -- actually, it fit very well but Freud didn't want to acknowledge the fact that he and Fliess were Emma's 'medical victimizers'. Rather, Freud was getting more and more comfortable with perceiving Emma as a 'hysterical bleeder' -- she bled because she 'unconsciously longed' to see her two medical victimzers' again.  

This perception greatly 'alleviated' Freud's medical guilt -- and lo and behold -- he started to see that this 'longing' theory could and would do very well at getting him out of his 'Seduction Theory Political Mess' as well. No longer were his female clients 'sexually assaulted (usually by their respective fathers) as children'; rather, now they 'longed' to be 'sexually assaulted by their fathers'. Politically, the theory would work very well with alleviating and subduing the 'political-economic onslaught' against him of  The Vienna Society for Psychiatry and Neurology because now, 'no crimes were being committed against children by grown men'; rather, his female clients as either teenagers/adults looking back into their childhood, or at the actual time of the alleged 'childhood memory' had 'unconsciously distorted these memories because they actually 'longed to be seduced and/or assaulted' by their father. This alleged 'psychological phenomenon', most of us already know, came to be labelled as 'The Oedipus or Electra Complex'.  

In short, Freud was letting his own 'neurotic guilt and anxiety' take over and 'manipulate' the outcome and direction of his psychological theories. Sad -- in fact, very disturbing -- when contrasted with the 'idealized mythological image' of the man we have come to associate with the 'courageous, righteous pursuit of truth' even in the face of 'very harsh, critical political and social opposition' -- which Freud did indeed get --  but if you follow the actual historical reports, especially the reports in Freud's own words through his very private, intimate letters to Fliess -- the man does not come out looking 'nearly as ethically or morally perfect', indeed, far, far from it.   
Today, the 'old wood house' that I would describe as 'Classical Freudian' Psychoanalysis -- is a far cry from the much stronger, more durable 'brick house' that Freud was in the process of building before 1895 and 1896 rolled around.

The current 'wood house' -- at least the one that Freud built after 1896 -- is very old and decrepit, and has no solid basement foundation, but The Psychoanalytic Establishment, still wanting to 'protect and serve' Freud's legacy as an 'ethically courageous man' -- a man of 'impeccable moral integrity' -- continues to 'paint bricks' over top of the 'rotting wood foundation' -- and say that everything is 'perfectly okay as it is' with 'Classical' Freudian Psychoanalysis...

At least, that is what they say for 'public consumption' -- like any 'political party' or 'institution' would say in order to stave off the fear and/or anger/rage of a 'righteously indignant public that starts to see and/or smell the full extent of the internal/external political scandal and the rot of crumbling (or already crumbled) ethical-moral values that the institution is/was allegedly built on'...Fool's gold...

That Classical Psychoanalysts -- or at least the most 'unenlightened' of them -- are still able, under the 'ethical umbrella' of Freud himself and the whole network of worldwide Psychoanalytic Institutions to 're-interpret' a woman's very real and horrific childhood rape under The Classical Psychoanalytic Principle of The Oedipus/Electra Complex' as not a 'real rape at all' but rather, as her own 'wishful, longing sexual fantasy toward her (seductionist/rapist) father' -- that all Classical Psychoanalysts, since Freud, have actually been 'taught' to interpret 'all female memories of their own 'alleged childhood seductions/assaults/rapes by their father' in this manner  -- is nothing short of a 'psychotherapeutic, ethical holocaust'....that carries on...

In 1896, Freud made a 'Faustian deal with the devil' -- and it wasn't all his entire fault' because the 'devil' was staring him in the face in the form of 'The Vienna Society for Psychiatry and Neurology'  -- a society that could either 'feed' Freud or 'starve' him depending on whether or not he decided to 'drop' his infamous Seduction (Childhood Sexual Assault) Theory.

I do not say this lightly. And it is not where I wished to arrive. But it is where 'very damning circumstantial, coincidental, historical evidence' has brought me. For me, the May 4th letter from Freud to Fliess is the most damning piece of evidence of all -- the fact that Freud's and Fliess' 'hysterical longing' theory pertaining to the 'reason' for Emma Ekstein's massive, post-surgical nasal bleeding episodes (even though a half a metre of gauze had been left up her nose for a month) and a report from Freud that The Vienna Society for Psychiatry and Neurology had ostracized him and taken away all of his client business; i.e., the fact that these two events came together in time within the contents of the May 4th, 1896 letter, and the fact that the same 'longing' theory could be used to get him out of 'the scalding hot water' of both -- this, too me is too 'coincidental' to ignore.

Plus the fact that both Freud and Fliess were 'dangerously wild' doctors -- far too ready to 'play with patients' lives' in the pursuit of their own 'narcissistic ambition' and 'scientific discoveries'. What made Freud great on the one hand, also made him very dangerous on the other hand -- in the end, more concerned about himself and his own raw ambition than he was in the welfare of his patients.

If the Emma Ekstein fiasco had been a 'once in a career' colossal error, that Freud never came close to repeating again -- then, I could probably look the other way on this episode, and/or say, that in any professional field, including medicine, errors, even bad errors, happen. 'Professional and legal guidelines' are usually established according to the prevailing 'knowledge' and 'ethics' of the day, but Freud and Fliess ran 'roughshod' over these guidelines like they didn't even exist -- or they didn't care that these guidelines existed. Neither Freud or Fliess should have had medical licenses. And this was not the first time that Freud had run into 'ethical trouble' with his 'medical behaviors'.

In his early professional years (1884 to 1891), Freud, from all reports that I have read (see Sulloway, Freud: Biologist of The Mind, 1979, 1992, The Cocaine Episode -- that should have had an 's' on the end of 'Episode', my addition, p. 25) was handing out cocaine to his friends, fiancee/wife, and patients like it was candy, trumpeting it professionally as a 'magic substance', even as the 'bad consequences of using cocaine were starting to pour in' -- and most, if not all, 'prudent' doctors surrounding Freud had stopped using cocaine medically for all of the supposedly 'magical things' that it did -- stimulant, local anaesthetic, cure for vomiting and indigestion, and as a means for withdrawal from morphine addiction. (Sulloway, p. 25.)  But Freud persisted, continued to 'trumpet' its benefits, and then he had a good friend and patient (Flieschl) die in 1991, at least in part from cocaine addiction, prescribed by Freud, as a means of supposedly getting him off of his morphine addiction (which he was taking because of a 'bad thumb amptutation surgery' which was obviously causing him grievious pain). 

Unbelievably, this was still not enough to get through to Freud's thick, arrogant brain, and in 1895, Freud was still taking cocaine himself, probably along with both Emma Ekstein and Fliess. There is no definitive proof that I can find here -- just strong 'coincidental and circumstantial evidence' with all these 'nasal problems' and 'nasal-sexual associations' and two grievious nasal surgeries in February 1895 (performed by Fliess on Ekstein and Freud)...

And letters being signed like this one...

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Freud writing to Fliess, November 29th, 1895, and signing off,

'I hope soon to hear many good things of you, wife, child, and sexuality through the nose. 

Most cordial greetings, 

Your Sigm.' (1985, The Complete Letters, p. 152)

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No wonder why Freud wanted all his letters to Fliess destroyed...


Does any Freudian scholar and/or Classical Psychoanalyst wish to argue any of the points I have made above? I would be glad to be 'shown and enlightened' differently...

Over and over again, all I hear coming out from behind Psychoanalytic Walls...

Is 'The Silence of The Lambs'...


Sometimes I look into the Abyss....


And 'The Raging Bull in The China Shop'....I see...

Is not Freud's rage against his father...

Is not Masson's rage against Freud in the 1980s...

Is not my father's rage against 'injustice' -- or 'imperfection' -- in my childhood...

No....

The Bull in The China Shop...

Is me...

When I see...

Hypocrites, narcissists, and manipulators...

Hiding behind Grand Marble Walls...

And Ivory Towers...

Living behind white picket fences...

With SOME out-of-touch psychoanalysts

Saying...'Emma Ekstein was a hysterical bleeder'...

And ALL female clients childhood memories of 'being sexually assaulted by their respective fathers' are 'unconscious sexual fantasies'... 

And SOME out-of-touch politicians, administrators, psychiatrists, neurologists, psychoanalysts, parents...

Saying....

'There's no problem here...'

'The kids are alright...'

Again, I must emphasize the all important ideal of 'homeostatic-(bi-polar-dialectic) balance and justice. It is so easy to 'overcompensate' from one extreme to its opposite...

'Painting a pretty picture' to hide the transgressions and atrocities that occur behind closed doors is an atrocity in itself.  But so too is becoming a 'touchless society' where everyone is too afraid to touch anyone else lest they be accused of some form of 'dastardly sexual misconduct'... 

The ethical answer -- as always -- lies somewhere in the middle...

Between traumacy and impulse...

Between assertiveness and sensitivity...

Between self and social interest...

Between narcissism and altruism...

Between justice for men...and justice for women...

Between justice for adults and justice for kids...

We must not get trapped at either or any extreme...

But keep rhetorically fighting our way...

Back to the democratic middle...

Back to the point of homeostatic-dialectic balance...

Not to let the narcissism...

Of government, social, and/or corporate-institutional power...

Defeat us...

Nobody wants to attend the funeral...

Of  ethical idealism...

Do we?

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

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. -- Thomas Jefferson

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


-- dgb, March 31st, modified/expanded April 2nd, April 3rd, May 31st, 2011,



-- David Gordon Bain,


-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations,


-- Are Still in Process....

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

From Wikipedia...

In philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, the golden mean is the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency. For example courage, a virtue, if taken to excess would manifest as recklessness and if deficient as cowardice.


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


And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.



-- Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Yes, how many times can a man turn his head



Pretending he just doesn't see ?


The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind


The answer is blowin' in the wind.


-- Bob Dylan

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

BRUTUS



Be patient till the last.


Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my


cause, and be silent, that you may hear: believe me


for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that


you may believe: censure me in your wisdom, and


awake your senses, that you may the better judge.


If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of


Caesar's, to him I say, that Brutus' love to Caesar


was no less than his. If then that friend demand


why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer:


--Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved


Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living and


die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live


all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him;


as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was


valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I


slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his


fortune; honour for his valour; and death for his


ambition. Who is here so base that would be a


bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended.


Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If


any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so


vile that will not love his country? If any, speak;


for him have I offended. I pause for a reply.




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


Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen



She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children


Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage


And never sat once at the head of the table


And didn't even talk to the people at the table


Who just cleaned up all the food from the table


And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level


Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane


That sailed through the air and came down through the room


Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle


And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger


And you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears


Take the rag away from your face


Now ain't the time for your tears.






In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel


To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level


And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded


And that even the nobles get properly handled


Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em


And that ladder of law has no top and no bottom


Stared at the person who killed for no reason


Who just happened to be feelin' that way witout warnin'


And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished


And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance


William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence


Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,


Bury the rag deep in your face


For now's the time for your tears.




-- Bob Dylan



The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll


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



The loss of ethical idealism, empathy and caring,
-- And social fairness,

Is the birth of personal and social narcissism and ethical inertia,
-- The Failing and Falling of Rome...and Psychoanalysis...
And the loss of our own sense of
Personal power...
To make things 'ethically right' again.
'The darkest hour is just before dawn'.

-- dgb, May 31st, 2011.


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

On SID (Shadow-Id-Drive) Formations, Transference Complexes, and The Dialectic (Two-Way) Communication Pathway From The Subconscious to The Central Ego

The main idea that I have been developing over the last four essays -- the idea of 'SID Formations and Complexes', 'SID' standing for 'Shadow-ID Defensive' (Formations and/or Complexes) -- is an extrapolated and integrative concept that adjoins Jung's concept of 'The Shadow' with Freud's concept of 'The Id', and also at the same time, seeks to integrate Freudian Traumacy Theory with his later Instinct/Impulse Theory.

In this latter regard, SID Formations can include 'traumatic memories', emotional affects of any and every type, symbolic-metaphorical-mythological and/or psychotic formations, as well as 'instinctual and/or impulsive drives' of any and every type.

The 'SID Chamber' which I may also refer to as 'SIGGY's Cave' (Shadow-Id Groups and Ghosts of Yesterday), can be viewed as being like a combination of 'engine room' and 'quarantine room' ('SIC Bay') where 'threatening' experiences, secrets, ideas, impulses, affects, behaviors are shut down either permanently, temporarily, in certain contexts, and/or in their most blatant, extreme form....released perhaps in either more 'watered-down' or 'sugar-coated' form, or in the face of drugs, alcohol, and/or extreme stress....

Hormones -- and hormone 'signals' -- flow up and down between our mind and body. The same goes for 'motivational' and 'energy' flow. Freud tried to make sense out of this 'mind-brain-body' connection in his unfinished work called 'Project for a Scientific Psychology' (1895, S.E., V. 1. p. 283).

Freud finally gave up on this project -- in terms of 'solving' the mystery that he originally set out to solve, i.e., 'finding the elusive mind-body connection' where every philosopher and scientist before him had failed.  Still, the work was not in vain, as it contained what amounted to as an overview and a table of contents of 'the essence' of his work to come -- for the next 40 years, plus.

And although I have not read 'The Project', I would speculate that much of the 'core of Freud's thesis' relative to the interworkings of the 'higher' and 'lower' parts of the 'mind-brain' are captured in my essay here. 1895 was a crucial year for Freud. He was caught between a 'rock and two hard places': 1. traumacy theory; 2. seduction theory; and 3. a 'covertly percolating' instinct-impulse theory.

However, the one thing that Freud couldn't or wouldn't -- and didn't -- do, is put all three theories together into a meaningful 'dialectic or trialectic whole'. That is what I am doing here -- integrating all elements of Freud's traumacy, sexual traumacy, and instinct-impulse theory.

For whatever reason -- which we will speculate about at a later date -- Freud could or would not think dualistically or dialectically or trialectically here. Rather, he could only think in terms of 'either/or'.

Either his (1895) 'traumacy theory' was right; or his later (1896) 'seduction (sexual traumacy/assault) theory was right; or his still later (post-1896) 'instinct-impulse' theory was right. No compromise-solutions, no integrations, no syntheses...And after 1896, his instinct-impulse theory 'won out' over the other two theories (the traumacy and seduction theories) -- to the detriment of the future evolution of Psychoanalysis.  A lot of people suffer from 'either/or' neuroses -- and Freud, in this case, was definitely one of them.  


I call Freud' s brave but nebulous 'The Project' -- 'The Black Box' of human psychology-physiology-neurology-biology-chemistry (PPNBC) that is all multi-dialectically linked and at the same time beyond any current understanding available to man.  Call it 'The Magic 'God-Nature-Creation Communication Connection Within The Black Box Portion of The Human Mind-Brain-Body'.

Does a person's bio-chemistry affect his or her psychology? Or does the person's psychology affect his or her bio-chemistry? Or both? I opt for the 'dialectic-two way street' option.  Between 'mind' and 'brain (or 'body'), there is a 'magic, God-Nature-Created, box of inter-mind-brain-body communication' that no one to this day in human evolution still comes close to understanding. Freud bravely tried -- and failed -- at attempting to understand, or at least partly understand, the nature of this 'mind-brain-body' connection.

Our body sends 'hunger pangs' up to our 'mind-brain', and our mind-brain decides what it is going to do about the 'problem'.

'Hormonal' signals can come from the body, or alternatively, be set off by what we perceive outside us in our environment. 'Mental cues' can 'travel downwards' to meet 'affective energy' in our SID Chamber and merge together into one 'mind-body-action' complex that either stays in The SID Chamber of travels back upwards again to be handled by our Executive Central Ego (ECE) for choice of decision-making action.

We can view our SID Chamber -- and our SID Formations -- as originating in a more primitive, more uncivil -- and uncompromised -- lower part of our mind-brain, to be 'screened', 'edited', 'restrained', 'water-downed'. 'sugar-coated', 'compensated for', 'defended against'...as it moves -- or attempts to move upward towards the 'more civil, social, educated, conscious part of our mind-brain. 

Alternatively, in some cases, our SID Formations and/or Complexes can simply 'erupt' and 'explode' into our conscious mind-brain -- 'no holds barred', the Socially Conscious (Co-operative, Compliant) Ego and The Executive Central Ego being basically 'pushed aside' by a much stronger, cognitive-emotional-behavioral force originating from our SID Chamber -- or below that in our 'Transference Complexes' and/or our 'Genetic Self'.  

Under normal, healthy conditions, there is a sophisticated 'multi-dialectical communication path' moving throughout our mind-brain, from top to bottom, and bottom to top, from left to right side of the mind-brain, and right to left. 

That is, until we start to look at the different types of 'neurotic (traumacy)-transference disorders and how they both 'cause' and are 'caused by' different types of 'blockages' or 'dissociations' in the personality, or alternatively, 'impulsive cognitive-affective-behavioral explosions'.

'Neurotic disorders' can be defined and described in different ways.

1. Neurotic disorders reflect the personality 'out of balance'.

2. Two different types of 'neurotic disorders' can be distinguished from each other: 'gaps' in the personality vs. 'obsessive-compulsions' in the personality, both reflecting opposite ways of the personality being 'out of balance'.

3. A 'neurotic disorder' is the opposite of a 'learning disability' or a 'failure in learning'; in contrast, the neurotic person, relative to his or her particular neurotic complex, has 'learned too much' -- in Freud's language, they 'suffer from reminiscences' and 'false connections' between these 'reminiscences' and their 'badly or falsely construed association' to 'present-day reminding people, places, things, signals...' 

4. This is what I am calling -- in extrapolated Freudian terminology -- a 'neurotic (traumatic)-transference neurosis'. In essense, the 'inappropiate or false learning lesson' stemming from the memory of a bad, painful experience in the past has been 'transferred' inappropriately into a present-day situation -- and led to a 'neurotic complex of thinking, feeling, behaving...'


This is where we will leave things for today...

-- dgb, March 30th, 2011,

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations,

-- Are Still in Process...

Room 2004: Different Types of Shadow-Id-Drive (SID) Formations/Complexes and Their Derrivative Cognitive-Emotional-Behavioral Expression

SID (Shadow-Id-Drive) Complexes can be classified and described in many ways...such as: as 'oral' vs. 'anal', 'narcissistic' vs. 'altruistic', 'Apollonian' vs. 'Dionysian', righteous vs. rebellious, 'topdog' vs. 'underdog', direct vs. indirect, overt vs. covert, explosive or non-explosive, buried in 'Siggy's Cave' for a lifetime, or entering and leaving Siggy's Cave faster than a speeding bullet...in slow, small releases like  a 'dirty allusionary joke'...or with all the cognitive-emotional-behavioral strength and force of an erupting volcano...

We can see the 'erupting volcano' type in what Charcot called 'Grand Hysterical Attacks'....or in cases of 'exploding narcissistic rage'...or explosions of grief....or love....or lust....or anxiety...and/or in the 'primal-symbolic process of a psychotic/nervous breakdown'...


From the subconsciousness or unconsciousness of 'Siggy's Cave, the SID Complex -- whatever it might be -- can enter into consciousness and through any 'auxillary ego-state' which we haven't really clearly described and defined yet....like 'The Righteous Superego-State' or 'The Rebellious, Under-Alter-Ego State'....or through 'The Dionysian Under or Superego'....or 'The Narcissistic Under or Superego'....or The Approval-Seeking Underego'.....


The SID Complex could involve a 'Traumacy-Transference Memory' or a 'Traumacy-Transference Compensatory Fantasy' -- or elements of both.


More on this very fertile field of investigation at a later date in time...What the concepts of 'The Shadow-Id' and different types of 'SID Formations or Complexes' do, is they create a 'new marriage' in Psychoanalysis between Freud's pre-1897 Traumacy-Seduction Theory and his post-1896 Instinctual Impulse Theory.


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

8. Melanie Klein: 'Good' and 'Bad' Mother Objects -- and The Birth of Object Relations


Melanie Klein took Freudian Theory too an even younger age than Freud. For Freud, most 'Oedipal impulse neuroses' were formed around the age of 3 or 4.
If we are talking 'traumacy neuroses', these can happen at any age between birth and death. But Melanie Klein -- probably because of the nature of her own personal 'Traumacy-Impulse-Transference Neuroses' -- there is the acronym that I was trying to avoid but it came back anyway, even after being 'pushed down'. A 'TIT' neurosis. I shake my head, but the picture is strangely at least partly important here...in its Melanie Klein and Object Relations connection.


Klein had a largely horrific early childhood. (See...Hinshelwood, Robinson, and Zarate, Introducing Melanie Klein, 1999). They write:

Melanie, the only child not breast-fed by mother, had a wet nurse. (No loss in my books.) Her father openly favoured Emile (sibling rivalry -- my Adlerian addition).

Whether 'who' breast-fed little Melanie was an issue in her early character development -- or not -- is a contentious point of debate. However, there were some other factors surrounding Melanie's early upbringing that were definitely 'traumatic' -- the death of one of her older sisters (Sidone, 8) when Melanie was 4, probalby a 'lack of sufficient attention and affection' from both her mother and father, and then later, her dad died when she was 18, and an older brother (Emanuel, 25) died when she was 20.


Regardless, in the words of the authors of Introducing Melanie Klein...


'Her (Melanie Klein's) psychoanalytic contributions uniquely stressed the raw, painful emotions of rage, envy, and hatred as well as creativity, and she attributed such powerful feelings to children. She particularly stressed the very earliest relationship of all -- to the mother's breast.' (p. 7.)'

Klein was the primary founder of what was to become known as 'Object Relations' (Psychoanalysis).

In this regard, Klein introduced such important concepts as: 'good object' and 'bad object', 'good mother' and 'bad mother', and I believe unless I am mistaken (subject to confirmation), 'good breast' and 'bad breast'.


Now let us step away from Melanie Klein and see how her ideas can be added to the concept of 'SID Complexes'....


9. SID Complexes and Bi-Polar Disorder


First, however, let us talk a bit about 'Bi-Polar Disorder'. We are all bi-polar. Indeed, we all have hundreds if not thousands of real or potential bi-polarities.


So the name 'Bi-Polar Disorder' is highly ambiguous -- a 'catch-all diagnostic term' that could mean almost anything, depending on the 'particular content of the bi-polar extremes that are presumably not integrated very well, if at all...

In our new terminology here, our 'SID (Shadow-Id/Secret-Interest Drive) Chamber' or 'Siggy's Cave' is basically a combination of a 'subconscious holding bin or jail' while, at the same time, partly active -- or at least active in terms of all its 'SID inmates' -- in the form of a bi-polar 'submerged alter-ego' that generally creates a 'counter-force' to the types of 'secondary-reality-based, cognitive activities' that are usually -- or at least more visibly -- going on inside our 'Executuve Central Ego (ECE).


This is essentially the same as saying in Jungian terminology that 'The Personna' is the conscious and socially visible bi-polar opposite of 'The (Submerged, Suppressed, Dissociatated) Shadow'...although looks can be deceiving and all of us have different Personna-Shadow or ECE-SID dynamics.


In the old terminology, Bi-Polar Disorder (BPD) used to be called 'Manic-Depression' which at least told you more concretely what the nature of the opposing two bi-polarities were: 'mania' and 'depression'....


The person goes on his or her own personal 'Dionysian Carnival'...and then, once his or her energy has finally crashed, assuming that he or she still has a home to return to, the person comes back to his or her home and 'crashes' in 'depression' -- again. Depression, mania, depression, mania...and so the cycle continues until there is some sort of intervention... I don't know too much about Melanie Klein's personal history but it is possible that she perhaps had some sort of 'manic-depression' going on...She seeemed to be just as absent from her own kids as she was from her own mother and father...


We can talke about 'Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde' bi-polar disorder -- Ted Bundy being a perfect example.


A social worker talked to me the other day about a very extreme case of a teenager, 17 years old, who had been diagnosed with BPD. His father left him at 14 and his worst behaviors, from what I gathered, started to show themselves very quickly afterwards -- he both raped his sister and killed his mother.

He was/is a big boy -- 300 pounds plus. The social worker had to interview him in one of the few 'psychiatric institutions' left around here -- and the kid was trying to get through the plastic protective shield separating the two of them to 'kill' the social worker. Injected with two rounds of valium, the kid was still raging out of control. And the whole purpose of the interview was to see if this kid was ready for a 'half-way house' yet. I don't think so....unless they want to take the highly possible risk of a 'dead group home worker'.


Indeed, the case reminded me of one of the most infamous serial killers in American history -- Ed Kemper -- who murdered his grandmother, mother, and a series of high school/college girls before he finally gave himself in. This was in the early 1970s. The case is easy to look up...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Kemper

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



In the case of this young man, you have a 'raging bull' type personality where the 'rage' is not even being attempted to being hidden. Like the erupting volcano, it has simply 'fast-tracked' its way through any 'restraining conscious force' of the Superego and/or Executive Central Ego...and essentially taken over the Central Ego...Is there a 'bi-polarity' behind the 'rage'? I would guess probably 'grief' -- grief pertaining to the loss of the boy's 'AWOL father'... Call this a 'rage-grief' polarity...


There are many other 'bi-polarity disorders' -- such as an 'Apollonian-Dionysian' BPD, or a 'Madonna-Whore' BPD Complex as described below, and attributable, in different ways, to both a man and a woman. Here is the man's version:

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


The Madonna-Whore Complex


In Freudian psychoanalysis, a Madonna–whore complex is a psychological complex that is said to develop in the human male. The term is also used popularly, often with subtly different meanings.

According to Freudian psychology, this complex often develops when the sufferer is raised by a cold and distant mother. Such a man will often court someone with qualities of his mother, hoping to fulfill a need for intimacy unmet in childhood. Often, the wife begins to be seen as mother to the husband—a "Madonna" figure—and thus not a possible object of sexual attraction.

For this reason, in the mind of the sufferer, love and sex cannot be mixed, and the man is reluctant to have sexual relations with his wife, for that, he thinks subconsciously, would be incest. He will reserve sexuality for "bad" or "dirty" women, and will not develop "normal" feelings of love in these sexual relationships. This introduces a dilemma where a man may feel unable to love any woman who can satisfy him sexually and is unable to be sexually satisfied by any woman whom he can love.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna%E2%80%93whore_complex


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






The 'female' version of the 'Madonna-Whore' Syndrome might be better equated with the movie, 'Looking for Mr. Goodbar'...

...........................................................................................
Looking for Mr. Goodbar (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_for_Mr._Goodbar_(film)


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


In both male and female versions of The Madonna-Whore Syndrome, we can see the interplay of a person's 'Personna' with his or her 'Shadow' or The Executive Central Ego (ECE) with a particular SID Complex.


A 'Passive-Aggressive' or 'Overtly Compliant-Covertly Rebellious' BPD is also very common, as is an 'Organized-Disorganized' BPD. Turning to the 'Sexual BPDs', we could talk about 'sado-masochism', 'exhibitionism-voyeurism', 'bi-sexuality', 'dominant-submissive', a whole host of different 'anal-oral' bi-polarities as extrapolated from Classical Freudian distinctions...'oral-assertive-anal-schizoid', 'approval-seeking-anal-rebellious' (same ideas as 'passive-aggressive'), 'oral nurturing-anal rejecting'...and on and on we could go...'oral nurturing-oral narcissistic'....'anal-retentive-anal-explosive'...


I hope you are starting to get the idea of just how many basically endless types of BPDs there are....because every wish, every need in the body, hinges on the principle of 'Bi-Polar-Homeostatic-Balance.


With all of these endless 'content' possibilities in terms of 'BPD', the diagnostic category of BPD in and by itself is a totally abstract, ambigous diagnostic term -- until the 'diagnostician' starts to itemize the particular contents of both 'bi-polarities within the BPD.

'Psychotherapy' -- if this type of problem or 'break in self and/or social contact' becomes 'acute, 'serial', and/or 'chronic' -- is generally addressed and hopefully achieved by helping this type of person (which includes most of us to some greater or lesser extent) 'make better contact' between the two dissociated parts of his or her personality -- and/or at the same time willing to share in different social contexts with different people that we feel more or less comfortable with.

Obviously, if a husband or wife is having great difficulty expressing his or her feelings and/or perceived needs to his or her partner, this is probably something that should be 'therapeutically addressed' unless the couple can work through the problem themselves and/or, for whatever reason, they are 'comfortable' leaving the 'status-quo' the way it is...


Different relationships -- depending on the degree of mutual trust, respect, and caring -- should 'guide us' to our appropriate level of 'self-disclosure'. Disclosing 'too much' personal information to 'the wrong person or people' can sometimes be just as problematic as not disclosing enough personal thoughts and feelings to the person/people that we love and trust most (or are having trouble with 'trust' and 'love' issues because of past or present 'bad encounter' scenarios).


That is about as much as I would like to write on this subject for today...For sure, we will come back to the essence of this essay -- just like Freud and Jung did -- over and over and over again...

But for today, this is enough...


-- dgb, March 23rd, 25th, 2011,

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...

Room 2203: Re-Defining Freud's Concept of 'The Id' as 'The Shadow-Id' (Chamber) Containing 'Shadow-Id-Derrivative' (SID) Formations and Complexes

In this essay, I am going to write briefly about Freud's concept of 'the id' -- and how this concept might have been defined completely differently if Freud had created it in 1894 (say, in 'The Neuro-Psychoses of Defense') rather than in 1923 (in 'The Ego and The Id).


As I stated in the first essay, one of my main goals in this series of Freudian, Psychoanalytic essays is to integrate Psychoanalysis where it has not been integrated before. And this starts with a metaphorical bridge over top of the 'Freudian Abyss' that separates his pre-1897 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' (which is usually classified as 'Pre-Classical' Psychoanalysis) with his post-1896 'Biological Instinct' Theory (which lies at the heart of what became known as 'Classical' Psychoanalysis).


As many have stated before me in similar and/or different words, Freud's concept of 'the id' -- indeed, his whole 'biological-instinct centered paradigm' of post-1897, Classical Psychoanalysis -- is too reductionistic....too narrow a pair of psychological glasses to look through in order to properly understand the full spectrum of human behavior.


Man does not live by sex, survival, aggression and destruction alone, although to be sure, these are highly significant and highly volatile areas of human thinking, feeling, and behaving -- and central areas of any investigation into the understanding of, and motivation behind, human behavior.

In Freudian Classical Psychoanalysis, The 'ID' (with a captial 'D') can be defined by breaking it down into the following acronym: 'Instinctual Drive' (or 'Impulsive Desire', or 'Instinctual Desire' or 'Impulsive Drive').

However, if 'The ID' was defined in terms of Pre-Classical Traumacy-Seduction Theory -- and even dialectically integrating the idea of 'Instinctual/Impulsive Desire/Drive' right into the middle of The Traumacy-Seduction Theory -- we would need a different two-word acronym to define and describe the full essence of what 'The ID' meant. We could call it the  'The Isolation-Dissociation (ID) Chamber' or 'The Shadow-Id Derrivatives' or The 'Secret Interests and Desires' Chamber -- or to use another anacronym, 'The SID Chamber' for short. Or 'SIGGY's (Silente Interest Group and Ghosts of Yesterday) Cave'.

Now I don't want to go too fast here for those of you who are relatively new to this subject matter -- and we will go back over this material with a fine tooth and comb at a later date -- but there are a couple of different but related 'human paradoxes that are running wild' here together in a way that was effectively driving Freud crazy in 1895, 1896.

Here's one human paradox -- clients/patients/people tell the truth -- and they also lie, embellish, distort, and whitewash the truth...

Human honesty is always the 'play toy' of human narcissism.

That was one of the things that Freud was 'finding out' by 1895, 1896 -- which was really only a 'clinical confirmation' of something that Freud had found out a long, long time ago, previously, back when he was 3 or 4 years old. Especially when it comes to 'sex' -- people lie, whitewash, and cover-up.

Any arguments with that assertion?

It fits for me -- with occasional exceptions, of course.

The formula goes something like this: 1. 'Narcissistic (Hedonistic-Sensual-Sexual) Impulse'; 2. 'Narcissistic (Hedonistic-Sensual-Sexual) Deed'; 3. 'Ethical-Moral- Transgression'; 4. 'Narcissistic (Ethical-Moral)-Coverup'.

Now sometimes this 'Ethical-Moral-Transgression (EMT)' is based on very 'tight, stringent, anal-rententive ethical morals' in which case it is going to be very tough for anyone and everyone to 'live up to these saintly standards'....And then in other cases, depending on the particular contents of a person 'SID Chamber' -- the human SID Formation/Complex' may paradoxically be 'inhuman' -- 'narcissistically pathological', indeed, depending on its structure, dynamics, and psycho-social-history, these contents may be brutally inhuman and illegal -- resulting in 'nightmare behaviors' that typlify someone like Ted Bundy...or thousands of other past, present, and/or future 'narcissistic sociopaths'...

It all depends on just exactly 'what is down there' in 'The SID Chamber' or 'SIGGY's Cave'...

What is down there is a combination of 'past traumacy' and 'present impulse'...

And the working of 'The Pleasure-Unpleasure Principle' -- we steer away from 'pain' (unless we are attracted to pain) and we steer towards 'pleasure'.

At the same time, we steer away -- generally speaking, unless again there is a 'personal attraction in this direction' -- from 'being out of control' and we steer towards 'being in control'...This is what Freud very briefly -- too briefly -- called 'The Mastery Compulsion'.

Mastery is generally pleasurable; in contrast, being 'out of control' is usually perceived as being stressfully anxiety-provoking -- in essence, 'unpleasurable'.

Now we will turn quickly and sharply to a 'loose DGB rendition' of one aspect of Kleinian (as in Melanie Klein, 1882-1960) Theory. Let us call this 'The Bad Traumacy-Impulse-Transference Theory' or -- here we go again with me and my acronyms -- 'The Bad TIT Theory'.

Yes, I had to do it... Actually, both seriously and satirically, the acronym is very appropriae and fits very well relative to what I want to say here, and my ongoing pursuits into the future of this theory...

Do I hit you with a bit of Kleinian 'Object Relations', 'Good' and 'Bad' Objects, 'Good' and 'Bad' Mother, 'Good' and 'Bad' Breast Theory...? 

Or do I hit you with my most 'provocative punch'...like....

We all, at least partly -- both men and women -- chase 'Good' and 'Bad' 'TITS'...

'TITS' here is both a metaphor -- and one of my now infamous acryonyms...

'TITS' as an acronym stands for: 'Traumacy-Impulse-Transference-Syndrome' 'Synergies'..

Wow! Sounds profound! Sounds impressive!Does it mean anything?

Of course it means something! It means something very astute and profound.

And paradoxical....Man's existence is full of a smorgasboard of paradoxes...

Melanie Klein went back to the nursing infant and the mother's breast...

I don't go back that far -- I go back to 3, 4, or 5 years old...in Adlerian style...but that is to come a little later...

Let's stick with Melanie Klein for a few minutes...

I'm sorry but my references aree loose here....the internet...Introducing Melanie Klein...and partly -- or largely -- my own rendition of what I find most important in the work of Melanie Klein, in her 'Object Relations Theory'...

The feeding infant is born largely 'oral narcissistic' in nature....his or her survival is dependent on getting the right type of 'nourishment' from 'mother's breast',  'mother's milk' -- and/or now, 'a bottle surrogate', hopefully with the right types of 'nutrients' in it...

The 'breast feeding baby' comes to associate 'the good mom and the good breast' with available 'food, nourishment -- and love'....

In contrast, the feeding -- and needing to be loved -- baby comes to associate 'the bad mother' and 'the bad breast' with an 'unavailable, anal-rejecting mother' who does not answer the baby's needs for food, nourishment -- and love....

Both 'objects' -- the good and bad mother, and the good and bad breast -- become internalized in the infant's mind and create a 'internal split' in the psyche that matches the baby's 'external split reality'.... a world of 'oral nurturing' and a world of 'anal rejecting'. This can be viewed as both the beginning of the baby's 'external warm and cold reality' -- and the beginning of both a 'warm and cold internal reality as well' that matches the external reality...

Indeed, the harsher the baby's external reality is likely to be, the harsher the baby's internal reality is likely to be as well -- to the point where you can get different degrees of 'anal-rejecting babies' -- they may reject their food, they may reject their mother, they may reject anything or anyone who they do not feel comfortable with...Indeed, in integrating this 'Good' and 'Bad', 'External' and 'Internal' Mother and Breast Theory  with Freud's 1920 'Death Instinct Theory, Klein argued that the young infant already has an evolving 'death instinct' with accompanying 'death wishes' and that these 'death wishes' are easily associated to 'the bad mother' and the 'bad breast'...

 In Melanie Klein's own personal history, apparently she was breast fed by her 'wet nurse'. Where was mommy? She was obviously 'unavailable'... It seems like Melanie Klein had a lifelong problem with 'depression', 'unavailability to her own kids', perhaps 'manic-depression', and/or some type of 'grief-rage' bi-polar disorder...Without going into her full biographical and psycholgical history, it is impossible for us to get a 'full reading' of what exactly was going on inside Ms. Melanie Klein -- but a lot of it was very depressing and tragic, as depressing and tragic as one person's psychological and biographical history could/can possibly be... To be pursued at another time perhaps...

I find it easy to understand and accept much of the premise and psycho-logistics of Klein's theoretical work...and easy to 'transfer' into other theories like Classical Freudian, Adlerian, and Janovian...

I spent two years at The Adlerian Institute of Ontario -- and even made one trip to The Adlerian Institute in Chicago -- so for me to mix Adlerian Theory with Classical Psychoanalysis, Kleinian Object Relations, Fairbairn's Object Relations, Transactional Analysis, Perls' Gestalt Therapy, and Arthur Janov's 'Primal Scream Theory and Therapy' -- all of this comes pretty easy for me...My own rendition of Hegel's dialectic theory is the 'straw' that mixes this 'integrative smoothie'...

In the 1880s and 1890s theorists and therapists like Breuer, Charcot, Janov, Freud were all chasing 'the unconcious', 'unconscious, dissociated states of mind', and 'repressive defenses'...

That was fine for them and what they were chasing...but I am chasing something different here...I say, 'Why spend $200 an hour for ten years of Psychoanalysis probing for 'this uncosncious memory and/or fantasy' ...and then that one...the 'proverbial needle in the haystack syndrome'...if or when a therapist can simply ask for a client's earliest conscious memories -- two, three, or four of them -- particularly the earliest one that is remembered -- and come up with 'Transference Magic in a Bottle'....and unlike the most serious problem that Freud was 'chasing' in the 1880s and 1890s -- it isn't 'cocaine'...

In Adlerian theory, these earliest memories that I am talking about are called 'lifestyle memories'...Here we will call them 'transference memories' or 'transference-lifestyle memories' (TLMs). Again, these are 'conscious' memories as opposed to 'unconscious' (unremembered) or 'repressed' memories...In one sense, we  might say they are 'unremembered' because they are not usually remembered and/or thought about until someone -- like a therapist -- asks us to remember them...Then we can usually 'dig them out' of our 'unconscious' or 'subconscious' or 'preconscious' within a minute or two...or three...or four...

Usually one of these TLMs will contain what I will call our 'Primal Traumacy/Failure/and/or Rejection Scene'...

Here we are getting close to the main idea behind Arthur Janov's work although I think he might have been looking for 'unconcious' or 'repressed' early childhood memories...I will have to check that...

In Janov's work, the essence of the therapy seems to amount to -- presumably in the nurturing environment of the therapeutic setting -- unleashing a 'Primal Scream' which is meant to bring forth all the 'emotional anguish' attached to our earliest 'Primal Traumacy-Rejection Scene'....which is tied up to our 'lifelong transference neurosis and neurotic symptoms'...

I'm doing a lot of paraphrasing and interpreting here without so much as looking for Janov's 1970 book, 'The Primal Scream' in my library...It could take me a week to find it..... See the internet to learn a little more about the type of psychology and psychotherapy that Arthur Janov developed...It seems like an updated, modern day version of Freud's pre-1897 'Traumacy Theory'.  

Earlier than Janov's 1970 best seller, Eric Berne came up with his own best-seller in 1964 called 'Games People Play'....This too fits into the DGB Massive Integrative Jigsaw Puzzle we are putting together here...In DGB Traumacy-Impulse-Transference Theory, these 'games' are called: 'Transference Games'...and can be very easily and meaningfully described and labelled in Berne's Transactional Analysis terminology...These 'games' are often very non-productive, 'neurotic', dysfunctional, destructive, self-destructive -- and 'tragic'...

They are like Freud's 'cocaine fixes' -- 'pleasurable' and 'satisfying' -- until the pus starts to run out of his nose, the migraines start up , and the heart starts to lose a beat or two...

I will give you three or four examples of 'transference games' from Freud's own life...

First the memory -- 'the primal scene'...

Freud, as an unabashed 3 or 4 year old, burst into his parents' master bedroom -- only to catch his parents 'doing the nasty'...I think, to the little Siggy, at the time, he saw what looked to be like his 'father peeing on his mother'...Obviously, Freud's very limited knowledge at the time didn't extend any further than this...

In the scene, his father 'freaks' on little Siggy...and yells at him in no uncertain terms..'Get the bleep, bleep out of this room'...

And that, 'my dear readers' -- or my dear 'Watsons', if you will  -- is the 'beginning of Act 1' on 'The Birth of Psychoanalysis'.  Freud was his own 'first case'.

Psychoanalysis was born in this psychodrama --  the 'psycho-structure and psycho-dynamics -- of Freud's earliest conscious -- not repressed -- memory, the 'Primal Scene Rejection Memory' cited above.

At least three, four, maybe five or more different types of interconnected 'lifelong transference games' came out of this primal transference rejection scene memory for little Siggy, turned adult Siggy. Before I get to these transference games, let me add eight new 'Oedipal Complex Sub-Distinctions':

1. 'The Good Maternal Oedipal Complex';

2. 'The Bad Maternal Oedipal Complex';

3. 'The Good Counter-Maternal Oedipal Complex';

4. 'The Bad Counter-Maternal Oedipal Complex';

And the same four sub-distinctions for the 'Paternal/Counter-Paternal Oedipal Complex'...

It should be noted that not all 'transference games' are 'neurotic and dysfunctional' -- some can be productive both to the self and to society...On the other hand, some can be very dysfunctional and destructive...

Game 1. 'The Psychoanalytic Game': 'My patient is going to try to lie to me, confuse me, distract me, whitewash me, fool me...with a wide assortment of 'tricks' or 'defense mechanisms' designed to lead me astray -- to in effect, 'pull the wool over my eyes' -- in order to 'hide' from me what is going on, and what is going on is definitely 'sexual'....

Game 2: 'Let's You and Me, Dad, Play With Mom': This 'transference game' was not nearly as creatively productive in Freud's life...In fact, it resulted in the horrific 'Medical Menage et Trois' between Freud, Fliess, and Emma Ekstein...You can find this story in Essay 6...

Game 3: 'The Master Bedroom Eviction Game': How many co-workers did Freud effectively evict -- either directly or indirectly -- from Psychoanalysis? Too many to count....Breuer, Fliess, Adler, Jung, Steckel, Rank, Ferenczi, Perls....and in Freud's 'paternally rejecting' image, this time orchestrated by his daughter, Anna Freud, and the eldest senior psychoanalytic statesman in the 1980s, Kurt Eissler -- this time, on the 'receiving end of the psychoanalytic eviction notice' was Jeffrey Masson...

Game 4: The 'Homosexual Game' -- My Dad's Missing 'Nurturing Tit': Freud spent his whole life vicariously trying to 'please' his dad, looking for the sign or type of affection, the approval, the encouraging support, that just wasn't there sufficiently for little 'Siggy'...'The boy will come to nothing' are the words that Siggy remembered coming out of his dad's mouth....and of course....'Get the bleep, bleep out of my bleep, bleep bedroom'....Freud connected 'homosexuality' and 'paranoia' -- the (potentially homosexual) son being effectively 'paranoid' of a very anally-rejecting (and sometimes 'anal-sadistic') father...But beneath the 'potential for homosexuality', the son -- in this case, Sigmund -- simply wants his dad's affection, encouragment, and love...This whole psycho-drama was played out 'extremely intensely' in Freud's most intimate 'friendship' to Fliess -- who was almost like 'the mirror image' of Sigmund himself, and presumably in this same regard, like Sigmund's father himself....Sigmund had a similar type of emotional relationship -- albeit not nearly as long and as intense -- with Jung, even though Jung was almost 20 years younger than Sigmund.

But then, in a moment's notice, Freud could turn his very cold, harsh shoulder away from the different close, male co-workers at different times in his life, and 'identify' with his father's rendition of 'the eviction game'...and 'another one bit the dust'... Freud had a lifelong 'Masculine Seduction-Abandonment (Paternal Oedipal, Identification With The Aggressor) Transference Neurosis-Game'...going on...

I will quickly summarize...

Many -- if not most or all of us -- are looking for a 'Missing Maternal and/or Paternal 'Tit' or a 'Nurturing Shoulder' to lean on...whatever it was that we suddenly perceived as 'missing' in a particular early childhood encounter memory that may have stood, in turn, metaphorically or symbolically for an 'essential missing ingredient in a particular relationship' ...and the rest of our lives we spend 'longing' for that particular missing ingredient...

Here is the meeting ground where Freud's 'traumacy' theory met with his later 'compensatory longing and fantasy' theory. Unfortunately, Freud could only see 'one theory at a time' -- he couldn't see how both theories dialectically and psychodynamically interacted with each other... 

The exact structure, content, and dynamics of this 'Missing Love' Neurosis can usually be found and 'pieced together again' like 'Humpty Dumpty', or like an intricate 'jigsaw puzzle' -- at least cognitively -- from the recitial of a person's conscious early memories, particularly the first one. Now -- 'healing' the emotional and behavioral damage brought about over a lifetime by this 'neurotic transference game' is a horse of a different colour. 

Psychotherapy -- if it is good psychotherapy -- will likely help. But, more or less, a person is going to have to deal with his or her transference neuroses for the entirety of their lifetime...through good, bad, and ugly times...

Ferenczi -- towards the end of his career -- started playing, much to Freud's anal-rejecting chagrin, with what we might call 'Touch' Psychoanalysis, trying to 'supply the patient' with their 'missing Maternal and/or Paternal Nurturing Love'...This would foreshadow the 'Client-Centered Therapy' of Carl Rogers...

Other schools of therapy -- of 'cognitive, reality-based, and/or Gestalt paradigms' -- would 'more confrontationally' tackle the clients' 'neurotic need for affection, love, power, distance, or whatever the neurotic, manipulative game was that they were playing...' (Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Albert Ellis, Eric Berne, Fritz Perls, William Glasser...)

Rather than spend our whole lifetime neurotically trying to 'change our love surrogate of a bad father into a good one' or 'change our love surrogate of a bad mother into a good one' -- 'You're okay, I'm not', or 'I'm okay, you're not', or 'You're not okay and neither am I'...

You see the essential 'neurotic paradoxical nature of the game' is that we are looking for both the 'good and bad tit' or 'good and bad shoulder' in the same person....

It is not enough that we look for a 'more nurturing mother or father'...No, that is not what we want...The 'obsessive-compulsive-addictive-orgasmic fix' attached to our 'transference games' is some aspect of the idea of 1. 'trying to make a bad boy, good'; or 2. 'trying to make a good boy, bad';  or 3. 'trying to make a bad girl, good'; or 4. 'trying to make a good girl, bad'...

Are you starting to get the picture here? 

You see, we need the 'chemistry' of 'conflicting psychological tension'...The greater the tension...the greater the release...ultimately in a psycho-physical transference orgasm...

Now, do you see why 'grown adults' play these sometimes creatively productive and sometimes neurotically destructive 'transference games'...

It is kind of a 'psychological game of Russian Roulette'...

Either we have the greatest orgasm of our life...

Or the encounter/relationship usually at the same time risks the possibility of ending in some type  of 'nuclear holocaust'...

Or the encounter/relationship is 'too boring a transference game' and we start looking for 'bigger and better prey'...

On this note, I will leave my little exposition here...and let us both take a break...

And chew on this for a while...


-- dgb, April 6th, 2011,

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...