Towards An Integrative Psychoanalysis of The 21st Century

Just finished...June 1st, 2011...



To study -- and properly understand Freud -- you need to have a good handle on all of his writing from about 1894 to 1939 -- 45 years of writing as captured in Strachey's 24 Volume Standard Edition. And even that may not be enough. Freud was a constantly evolving thinker -- some of his ideas remained relatively constant for the whole 45 years, and others were turned upside down like they were written by Freud's 'alter-ego' -- with no creative integration in the middle.

In this latter regard, I am talking mainly about the radical change Freud made to Psychoanalysis in 1896. But there are other very significant examples like 'On Narcissism' in 1914, 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' in 1920, and 'The Ego and The Id' in 1923. Even what we usually call 'Classical' Psychoanalysis was hugely different in 1905 than it was, say, after 1923.

I don't have a complete handle on all 45 years of Freud's work yet but I am getting there slowly, and am still learning new things from and about Freud, as I continue to write here.

Each Freudian essay -- and each provocative assertion within a particular essay -- is a written 'sound bite' that in the end needs to be understood in the context of the full 45 years of Freud's writing -- and what was happening historically in Freud's life as he was writing what he was writing. This, in my view, is how to best understand the evolution -- and at times, 'de-evolution' -- of Freud and 'Classical' Psychoanalysis.

By the way, I belive and strongly advocate that 'Classical' Psychoanalysis should be re-defined as all major 45 years of Freud's writing (from 1894 to 1939), not from say, 1899 to 1939 which leaves out the first major five years of Freud's writing including a 'suppression' as Masson would put it, of Freud's 'Traumacy' and 'Seduction' theories.

If Freudian loyalists want to scream and say that this would make Psychoanalysis 'internally contradictory', I would smile and say, "Well yes, and so too are the men and women that Psychoanalysis is trying to understand at the deepest level -- so too, are they 'internally contradictory' so the 'internally contradictory model' of human thinking, feeling, and behaving -- it is completely appropriate and functionally necessary to a complete understanding of the 'human psychic territory' it seeks to deeply understand!"

Furthermore, deep tensions, stressful conflicts, and seemingly insurmountable contradictions when fully tackled and negotiated by the human mind or minds -- can lead to fabulous, creative, dialectic integrations than foster temporary (shorter or longer lasting) evolutionary 'unified dialectic homeostatic balances'!

And that my friends, is what Hegel's Hotel is all about.

Having spent significant parts of almost the last 40 years myself (1972 to 2011) studying most of the major schools of psychology and psychotherapy, I find myself in a position now of putting significant parts of all these different 'schools' of ideas together into a 'New Gestalt' -- and since I am particularly mesmerized by Freud these days -- I want 'Classical Psychoanalysis' -- or at least a rather hugely radical modification and extension of Freud's 'Classical' Psychoanalysis -- to be at centre stage of my 'freshly evolving -- and long time coming -- gestalt'. I could have made it 'Gestalt Therapy' or 'Adlerian Theory' or even 'Analytic' (Jungian) Theory'. 

But informally speaking, I am a Freudian theorist at centre stage with 'satellite inspirations' from Object Relations, Self Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, Jungian Psychology, Frommian Theory, Transactional Analysis, Primal Theory, Cognitive Theory, and General Semantics Theory.

Having said this, as a therapist, I would use a 'hot seat' and an 'empty chair' for my client, not a 'couch'.

If I had Freud on the 'hot seat', I would be directive at some point -- if Freud didn't get there first -- and ask him to speak to Emma Ekstein, and Krafft-Ebbing, and Dora, and Fleischel, and Fliess, and Jung, and his father...during the same or different work pieces, depending on the context of what went down in particular segments of Freud's 'personal work'...

And at some point I would find out exactly why Freud abandoned his Traumacy and Seduction Theories -- even though I think I already know. I think Freud developed his 'Fantasy Theory' as a defense against the personal and social consequences of his previous 'RealityTheory'. When Freud wanted to deny and escape from the personal guilt and traumacy he felt from the Emma Ekstein medical scandal, he turned to 'fantasy theory'. He turned to his 'longing theory'. Emma Ekstein became a 'hysterical bleeder' because she 'longed to be with' her two misguided medical therapists who almost killed her (Fliess and Freud) -- and 'bleeding' was the way that she (unconsciously believed that she) could bring them back to her when they were gone for too long. The bleeding was no longer (reality theory) because there was half a metre (or however long it was) of gauze stuck up her nose for almost a month because Fliess had forgotten that he had put it there.  Until another doctor finally found it up there, having been called in on an emergency basis to deal with a 'nasal crisis' that had poor Emma 'moaning to the moon', the new doctor  pulled at he didn't know what yet, and out came the gauze -- and a quart or two of blood after it-- as Emma almost bled to death after the gauze was shockingly pulled out by the unknowing new doctor.

That 'personal traumacy' in Freud's life (as well as Emma's of course) was in February, 1895. The Krafft-Ebbing Medical Society Affair was in April 1896. Here too, in the same letter on May 4th, 1896, Freud dealt with two 'different traumacies' in his personal life in the space of a year -- in the same way -- he replaced 'reality theory' with 'fantasy (longing) theory'. In both cases, the 'fantasy theory' could also be viewed as a 'blame the victim' theory. In April 1896, Freud's 'Seduction Theory' was ridiculed by the Scientific-Medical (Psychiatry-Neurology) Society of Vienna. Krafft-Ebbing -- and the 'other boys' did not want to have anything to do with a theory that linked 'hysteria' to 'childhood sexual assault' by an adult male -- and usually the father. Between the 'traumatic meeting' on April 21st when Krafft-Ebbing said that Freud's newest theory was like a 'scientific fairy tale' -- and May 4th when Freud wrote to Fliess his most insightful letter into the workings of his own psyche relative to both the Emma Ekstein and the Krafft-Ebbing traumatic events -- and trying to find a 'conflict-resolution' and a 'compromise-formation' to both of them, Freud finally got his wish -- a 'wish theory' -- his female clients who said that they had been 'sexually assaulted' as children only 'wished' that their fathers had 'seduced' them....and Emma Ekstein 'wished' the blood out of her nostrils...

And so 'Classical' Psychoanalysis was born...

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

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)
....................................................................................



We need to do better. 

Psychoanalysis needs to do better. 

Freud 'ethically failed'.

Kurt Eissler 'ethically failed' in his loyal support of Freud's 'ethical integrity'. 

Anna Freud 'ethically failed' in her loyal support of her dad's 'ethical integrity' .

Who ever is leading The Psychoanalytic Empire today...

Is still 'ethically failing'....

Masson read -- and published -- The Complete Letters from Freud to Fliess, and having read them, he concluded and publicly asserted that Freud had 'lost moral courage' after 1896 when he started to abandon/suppress the Seduction Theory.

For this public assertion, Masson was 'dismissed' from his job and career as newly appointed 'Projects Director of The Freud Archives'...and 'ex-communicated' from Psychoanalysis (back around 1982). This was kind of like the way Spinoza was 'ex-communicated' from The Holland Jewish Orthodox Church for spilling out ideas of 'pantheism' which they believed was a 'sneaky form of atheism'. And Spinoza went on to become perhaps the most famous 'Holland Jew'...

However, even Masson partly failed for not pulling his argument strongly enough together in a way that people -- both academics and laypersons -- could both clearly understand, and more importantly, fully believe.

In a short email interview I did with Masson, Masson said that he wished he had written a 'longer' version of 'The Assault on Truth' -- with a much longer list of impeccable references...

I believed to myself at the time -- and still believe -- that that was not what was missing from Masson's argument.

The logic had to be airtight.

And the writing had to be done with the full impact of....

A Nietzschean Hammer...

Masson came down hard on Freud...

But not hard enough...

The argument needed to be more blatantly clear...and

'Beyond reasonable doubt'...

Once people finished shaking their collective heads...

And could finally start to get their heads around...

What really happened in Freud's life in 1895 and 1896...

And how it affected what he did...

And why he so quickly and radically changed...

The Face and Destiny...

Of Psychoanalysis...

Then they could probably finally start to fully accept...

The idea...

That Freud had really 'messed up' bigtime back in 1895 and 1896...

In the way that he 'unpainted' himself out of a really 'tight corner'...

This was not the first time that he had done this...

Something similar had happened back in the late 1880s....

When he first met his most dangerous lover...

Cocaine...

And when he gave this 'magic elixir' to one of his best friends...(Fleischel) to help 'wean him off' of another dangerous lover -- morphine...

Even as more and more negative reports were coming in as to cocaine's dangerous qualities and very addictive component....

Freud still gave out cocaine like it was 'the fountain of youth'...or 'candy' on Halloween...

At least until it...

Played a part in his friend's death in 1991...

Most scholars seem to publicly subscribe to the theory that Freud 'dropped cocaine' shortly after this tragic event...

And yet cocaine again seemed to be involved....

In the Emma Ekstein medical fiasco of 1895....

That almost cost her her life...and did cost her...

The disfigurement of her pretty face for the rest of her life...

After all of this....

Freud was still trying his best to absolve himself of all guilt...

And 'blame the victim' instead...

Out of this, came his 'wishful thinking' theory...

And Classical Psychoanalysis was 'unethically born'...

When scholars and laypersons can finally fully accept this interpretation...

Of Freudian and Psychoanalytic History....

Then we can all sit down together...

Or follow me if you can...

As we start to build a 'New Integrative Psychoanalysis' for the 21st Century... 

In which all 45 years of Freud's writing is important...

To the extent that it doesn't include 'Narcissistic Victorian and Masculine Biases'....and 'Blaming The Victim'...

And to the extent that...

The first major 3 years of Freud's writing -- from 1894 to 1896...

Is not 'abandoned' nor 'suppressed'...

Nor 'defended' against...

Like some 'neurotic' client...

Defends against...

Abandons...

Suppresses...

Dissociates...

Projects...

The 'traumatic reality'

That he or she cannot bear

To face...

Before he or she turns away from painful reality...

And puts on a 'pretty, wishful face'...

So that the public can't see...

That he or she is crying -- or raging -- inside...

-- dgb, June 1st, 2011,

-- David Gordon Bain

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

Some of Freud's best works both before and after 1897...


The Neuro-Psychoses of Defense (1894),

Studies on Hysteria (with Breuer, 1895),

The Aetiology of Hysteria (1896)

The Interpretation of Dreams (1899-1900),

Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality (1905),

The Dynamics of The Transference (1912),

On Narcissism (1914),

Beyond The Pleasure Principle (1920),

The Ego and The Id (1923)

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

On The Parallelism Between The Phsyiology and The Psychology of Defense

Under construction....


Freud was a biological reductionist. Right from day 1 in Freud's gradual switchover from biology, physics and neurology to psychology, Freud never entirely left biology, physics, and neurology behind but only looked for different ways throughout his almost 50 years of studying the human mind, to take what he learned in psychology -- and bring it back into the realm of what he learned in the earliest part of his career in biology, physics, and neurology.

In some ways, there is nothing wrong with doing this. There is much to be gained by having a good solid knowledge of both the physical and the psychological dimensions of the body and mind. I wish I had a greater knowledge of physics, biology, biochemistry, and neurology. But even with my limited knowledge, I can see a strong parallelism. 

Now parallelism is not the same thing as reductionism. In parallelism, we see certain parallels in the way the mind and body work together. We don't reduce all psychology to biology anymore than we would reduce all biology to psychology. But we see similarities in the way that both work -- and integrate together. 

For example, we can see a strong parallel in the way that the mind-body puts together its strategy, and the execution of this strategy, in fending off (defending against) what it perceives to be foreign biological invaders, and the way our same mind-body also fends off (defends against) what it perceives to be foreign psychological invaders. 

Indeed, the exact same strategies would seem to be in place for both the physiology -- and the psychology -- of defense.

However we describe the 'mechamisms' in the 'physiology of defense' -- by this principle of 'parallelism' we should see the same basic mechanisms at work in the 'psychology of defense'. What are they?

Fight, flight, co-operation, and submission.


To be continued....

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

Sliding Back and Forth Between Psychoanalysis, Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, and Transactional Analysis -- Using The DGB 'Over-Arching' Personality Model

Let us look at the 'Quantum Psychoanalytic Model of The Personality' that I have built using Classical Psychoanalysis, Object Relations, Narcissistic (Self) Psychology, Jungian Psychology, Adlerian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, and Transactional Analsysis as my main 'collective guide posts' -- and see how this model might be 'translatable' back to each of its original 'school' sources. 

The DGB Personality Model as it stands right now, looks like this:

1. The Nurturing-Altruistic Superego/Topdog/Superior Ego/Parent;

2. The Narcissistic (Selfish) Superego/Topdog/Superior Ego/Parent;

3. The Dionysian-Hedonistic Superego/Topdog/Superior Ego/Parent;

4. The Righteous-Critical Superego/Topdog/Superior Ego/Parent;

5. The Nurturing-Altruistic (Approval-Seeking) Underego/Underdog/Inferior Ego/Child;

6. The Narcissistic (Selfish) Underego/Underdog/Inferior Ego/Child;

7. The Dionysian-Hedonistic Underego/Underdog/Inferior Ego/Child;

8. The Righteous-Critical Underego/Underdog/Inferior Ego/Child;

9. The Conscious Psycho-Drama Room (The 'Hot-Seat and Empty Chair' Room, and/or...The 'Psychoanalytic Couch' Room);

10. The Central Ego/Ego/Personna/Adult;

11. The Subconscious Dream Weaver;

12. The Subconscious Psycho-Drama Room (The Shadow-Id Dissociation Room);

13. The Personal Traumacy-Compensation-Fantasy-Impulse-Transference Template (The Personal Transference Template...for short);

14. The Mythological-Symbolic-Archetype-Transference Template (The Mythological Transference Template....for short);

15. The Genetic Potential Self (The GPS);

16. Internal Chaos/Nietzsche's Abyss/Anaximander's Apeiron -- Internalized.


-- dgb, May 14th, 2011,

-- David Gordon Bain

The Use, Misuse, and Abuse of Freud's 'Oedipal Theory' -- and The Equally Dangerous Misuse and Abuse of 'The Seduction Theory'

Newly constructed...May 14th, 2011...

The concept of 'The Oedipal Complex' should be, for the most part, not that hard to understand with 'overly abstracted, pansexual' hardline Freudian psychoanalytic interpretations being held up like red flags -- danger, danger! Be careful here of over-Freudian-misinterpretation, misuse -- and the potential for theoretical/therapeutic abuse!  

Let me define and describe The Oedipal Complex as this -- our earliest childhood love and/or love-hate role models that we 'introject' inside us to become 'internalized love templates', or more paradoxically and probably universally relevant, our 'love-hate-(attraction-repulsion)-templates' that can be divided into seven types that effectively stay with us our whole life and mainly dictate the type of 'love object' or 'transference figure' we are attracted to with 'evolutionary modifications and changes' along the way that are partly dictated by 'here-and-now' circumstances as well as the original childhood love-hate-attraction-repulsion templates mentioned above. This definition and description isn't too far removed from what Freud wrote in 'The Dynamics of The Transference' (1912) as described in his first few introductory paragraphs.  


On a concrete level, there are as many unique, specific types of 'Oedipal Complexes' as there are people but here are seven major different classification types that are worth distinguishing from each other.


1.  A 'Maternal Oedipal Complex' (MOC) where we are attracted to someone who subconsciously reminds us of our mother -- in this regard, our 'mother' is our 'early childhood love object-transference figure and makes up our 'internal love template' which we then 'project' and/or 'transfer' (or 'projectively transfer') onto someone in our present day adult environment who reminds us of our mom;

2. A 'Paternal' Oedipal Complex (POC) where we have developed a 'childhood love template' of our father who we then 'project' onto or into  someone in our present day who we subconsciously view as being similar to our father -- i.e., a 'paternal love object-transference figure' (This type of 'projection' -- like all types of projection -- can be 'contactful' or 'distorted' or anywhere in between;

3. A 'Reverse-Maternal Oedipal Complex' (RMOC) where we are attracted to someone who we subconsciously perceive as having the 'opposite' characteristic(s) of our mother -- and 'project' this childhood role model into a present-day love-object-transference figure';

4. A 'Reverse-Paternal Oedipal Complex (RPOC) where we are attracted to someone who we subconsciously perceive as having the 'opposite' 'characteristic(s) of our father -- and project this childhood role model into a present-day love-object-transference-figure;

5. A 'Female-Non-Mother Oedipal Complex' (FNMOC) where we are attracted subconsciously to some other early childhood female role model (a sibling, a neighbour, a teacher, a stranger, a friend...) -- and 'project' this childhood role model into a 'present-day version of this 'lost' childhood love-object-transference-figure';

6. A 'Male-Non-Father-Oedipal Complex' (MNFOC) where we are attracted subconsciously to some other early childhood male role model -- and 'project' this childhood role model into a 'present-day version of this childhood love-object-transference-figure';

7. A 'Mixed Female and/or Male Oedipal Complex' (MFMOC) where we are attracted subconscously to a mixture of different childhood role models -- and 'project' this mixed childhood role model template (or mixture of different, more particular templates) into a 'present-day love-object-transference-figure' who seems to reflect a 'composite' of these mixed childhood love object transference characteristics.


Well, I guess the full psycho-dynamics here are not that simple but the most important point that I wish to make before closing is that, as a therapist, you don't 'literally translate childhood romantic-sexual attraction' to the point of overlooking, ignoring, denying, dissociating... a real childhood memory of a real client that reflects a 'real childhood sexual assault' that you 'fritter away interpretively' and say, in effect, 'Well, that is just the woman's distorted memory-fantasy of a particular childhood event (partly real, partly imagined, or totally imagined) based on the narcissistic influence of her Paternal Oedipal Complex'...

If a therapist 'over-interprets' a female client's early childhood memory in such a fashion as to 'white-wash' or 'obliterate' a real childhood sexual assault -- then this a totally pathological misuse and abuse of the concept of The Oedipal Complex.  Again -- oedipal complexes can come in all different types, shapes, and sizes, some more sexualized than others -- as a theorist and therapist, you neither want to diagnose 'a false childhood sexual assault' but nor do you want to 'interpret away' a 'real childhood sexual assault'.

You want to remain 'objectively open' to any life or experiential possibility, and not to close your mind in such a way that you may 'diagnostically miss' the possibility of  something that 'objectively or really happened' in your client's childhood that 'your possibly narcissistically biased theory that you were trained to believe in does not cover.

This goes for both the following hardline, narcissistically biased, one-sided, polar theories: 1. The Seduction Theory taken to the extreme where anything and everything can be 'interpreted' as meaning a 'childhood sexual assault'; or 2. The Oedipal Theory taken to the extreme where 'all asserted childhood sexual assaults' -- or at least those connected to 'father-daughter' relationships -- are 'reductionistically interpreted' as being a 'product of the little-girl-now adult client's Oedipal imagination'.

There are two equally narcissistically biased 'camps' of psychotherapy -- and I am exaggerating my point here to make sure that I clearly make it: 1. Those run by 'Out of touch, out of date, Victorian, Patriarchal, Masculinely Biased, Freudian Has Beens'; and 2. Those run by 'Hardline, Overly Narcissistic, Feminist-Biased, Therapists who want to turn every father, every male, into a 'female victimizer' -- and every female client into a 'victim of masculine abuse'. 

Both men and women are equally capable of both being -- and 'playing up the roles' of -- 'victims' and 'victimizers', 'seducers' and 'seduced', 'manipulators' and 'manipulated'.

Both hardline extremist polar theories are equally one-sided -- and 'narcissistic' -- from opposite perspectives.

Both are equally theoretically and therapeutically dangerous.

Both need to come back to 'centre-court' and regain their 'flexible objectivity and open-mindedness'.

Both need to 'meet in the middle' with an over-arching theory that is capable of 'taking them either way to whatever different degree that seems to 'most accurately represent' the particular client's actual case and clinical material.'.

In this regard, I am promoting a bipolar 'Seduction-Oedipal Transference Theory' or more generally stated...a bipolar 'Traumacy-Fantasy-Impulse-Transference Theory' -- both of which are capable of bending or blending the flexibility of this theory in what is deemed as the most appropriate and relevant direction. The precedent set in physics is the 'Particle-Wave Theory' -- or what has become 'Quantum Physics'. 

In a similar fashion here, I am looking at what might be called 'Quantum Psychoanalysis'.

More on this as we move along...

-- dgb, May 10th, updated May 14th, 2011, 

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...

Updated Table of Contents and Links (May 5th, 2011): Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology...

Good day my dear readers,

Spring is almost here....the birth of new life...the opportunity for those of us who wish it....to be 'reborn' again....meant here in a 'dialectic-humanistic-existential' sense...with or without 'religious ideals' that hopefully match up with the values of 'dialectic-humanistic-existentialial ethics' (DHEE) -- i.e., combining and balancing 'awareness','self-assertiveness' and 'self-actualization' on the one hand with 'social contact', 'sensitivity', 'empathy', and 'altruism' on the other hand -- i.e.,  giving the same DHE ethical values and rights to your family members, friends, co-workers, local and more distant neighbours...that you want and expect for yourself...

The DGB Extended Dialectic Law of Mutual Reciprocity: 'Do unto others what you would want and expect from them in terms of maintaining a dialectic-democratic balance of individual freedom and rights combined with civil-social-political-legal protections from the transgression of these same individual freedoms and rights.'



Hegel's Hotel is in the process of 'renovation' again...a continually evolving process!

Here is the newest table of contents with connecting links...

An Updated Table of Contents with Links, May 5th, 2011



Floor 1: Most Recent Essays: http://hegelshotel-mostrecentpapers.blogspot.com/


Floor 2: Table of Contents and Blogsite Links: http://hegelshotel-dgbn-history.blogspot.com/

Floor 3: Introductory Essays on The DGB Dialectic-Integrative Perspective;
http://hegelshotel-dgbn-topdog.blogspot.com/

Floor 4: More Introductory Essays on The DGB Dialectic-Integrative Perspective; http://hegelshotel-dgbn-introductions.blogspot.com/

Floor 5: Greek Mythology: Religious, Spiritual, Philosophical, and Scientific Underpinnings: http://hegelshotel-dgbn-psychology.blogspot.com/

Floor 6: Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides: Ancient Greek Philosophy;
http://hegelshotel-dgbn-meetthephilosophers.blogspot.com/

Floor 7: The Sophists, Socrates, and Plato;
http://dgbphilosophyromanticism.blogspot.com/

Floor 8: Aristotle: Empirical Compensations For Plato's Rational Idealism;
http://gap-dgbnphilosophythelaw.blogspot.com/

Floor 9: Lao Tse, The Han Philosophers: Dialectic Similarities in Ancient Chinese Philosophy;
http://hegelshotel-dgbn-homeostasis.blogspot.com/

Floor 10: The Post-Aristotlean Roman Philosophers: Skeptics, Stoics, Cynics...;
http://hegelshotel-dgbn-freedom1.blogspot.com/

Floor 11: Medieval, Scholastic/Religious Philosophy;
http://dgbphilosophymarx.blogspot.com/

Floor 12: Descartes and Spinoza: Rationalism, Wholism, Pantheism;
http://hegelshotel-dgb-ethics.blogspot.com/

Floor 14: Early Scientific Philosophy to British Empiricism: Empiricism 'Out of Control';  http://gap-dgvnphilosophy-summingup.blogspot.com/

Floor 15: Enlightenment Philosophy and The Balancing of Rationalism, Empiricism, Humanism...; http://gap-dgbnphilosophytheenlightenment.blogspot.com/

Floor 16: Adam Smith and 19th Century Capitalist Idealism;
http://dgbphilosophylanguage.blogspot.com/

Floor 17: Rousseau, Goethe, and Europeon Romanticism;
http://dgbphilosophyromannarcissism.blogspot.com/

Floor 18: German Dialectic Idealism (Part 1): Kant vs. Fichte: Subjective-Objective Divisionism vs. Wholism;  http://hegelshotel-dgbn-emaildebates1-3.blogspot.com/


Floor 19: German Dialectic Idealism (Part 2): Schelling vs. Hegel: Romantic vs. Epistemological/Ontological Idealism;
http://dgbphilosophythesophistsvssocrates.blogspot.com/


Floor 20: Radically Modified Hegelianism: Marx, Engels, and Socialist Idealism;
http://hegelshoteldgbphilpolitics.blogspot.com/


Floor 21: Anti-Hegelianism (Part 1): Schopenhauer: Cosmic Narcissism: Hegel's Hotel;  http://dgbphilosophypower.blogspot.com/


Floor 22: Anti-Hegelianism: (Part 2) Kierkegaard: Christian Existentialism: Hegel's Hotel;
http://dgbphilosophyirrationalism.blogspot.com/


Floor 23: 19th Century Christianity: Altruism vs. Self-Denial: Hegel's Hotel;
http://dgbphilosophyraptors.blogspot.com/


Floor 24: Nietzsche (Part 1): The Birth of Tragedy: Apollonianism vs. Dionysianism;
http://gap-dgbnphilosophy-summingup.blogspot.com/

Floor 25: Nietzsche (Part 2): Narcissistic Subjectivism: Christian and Scientific Deconstructionism; http://gap-dgbnpsychologicalhealth.blogspot.com/

Floor 26: Niezsche (Part 3): The Dionysian Will to Power, The Abyss, and The Superman: Hegel's Hotel;  http://hegelshotel-dgb-business.blogspot.com/




To be continued...

Theories -- Even Good Theories -- Are Always Partly Wrong (And Bad Theories Can Be Partly Right)!

Let us understand one thing that brings more openness to our style of thinking and less righteous intolerance in our attitude in terms of getting stuck inside unnecessary  'either/or' combative arguments.

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

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.  -- Stephen Covey


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


Theories -- even good theories are always wrong some of the time! You want your theories to be as 'right' as possible...but still, no theory can capture 'all of the rightness of reality'....and all theories will go down trying and dying while they are trying...

It cannot be any different.

Because if a theory was always right -- meaning in every context, every situation, with every case example -- we would not call it a 'theory'; rather, we would call it a 'fact' or we would call it 'the truth' or as some theorists-philosophers-psychologists or religious and/or political zealots are prone to do, we would call it 'The Truth'....or even Hegel used the term -- 'The Absolute'...

Actually, if any one philosopher has or had the right to call his or her philosophy the philosophy of a 'human dialectic evolution towards The Absolute' -- it was Hegel.

Different than most philosophers before him, Hegel saw that human evolution -- indeed, all of life evolution -- depended on 'extremist, one-sided, polar philosophies dialectically engaging with, and playing off against, each other in an engagement that voluntarily or forcefully moved both parties toward the middle...towards a more 'homeostatic-dialectic-(democratic) balance' that was more 'mutually satisfying' and 'dialectically stabilizing' for both parties than either 'extremist philosophy' by itself.
...................................................................................................... The Master and The Slave Relationship
 The master and the slave both need each other. They are both dependent on each other. They both have 'gaps' in their respective evolutionary development, and this gap is exactly 'the strength' of the evolutionary development of the bi-polar other. The master knows how to direct the slave and to give him or her instructions -- in more or less coercive fashion; in contrast, the 'slave' knows how to do what the master probably doesn't know how to do himself or herself (unless 'the master' has done 'the chore' that 'the slave' knows how to do in the absence of -- or beside -- 'the slave'.  Both 'master' and 'slave' need each other, need to 'dialectically engage' with each other in a more mutually 'humanistic-existential' fashion, and in this regard, to meet more in the middle, in order to 'complete' their own particular 'wholistic evolution'.  (My own interpretation of Hegel's 'Master-Slave' Theory.)

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


Hegel was certainly not the first 'dialectic philosopher' that believed in such a philosophy -- indeed, far from it. That honour would have to go back to the ancient Greek philosopher, Anaximander, or the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tse....or some very, very ancient Chinese philosopher before Lao Tse, and/or perhaps a very, very old Middle Eastern philosopher, and/or an equally very, very old East Indian philsopher, and/or a very, very old Native North American Indian philosopher....none of whom I have historically followed backwards in time past about 600 BC...I don't think written records go back much further than that...

However, Hegel, in clearer words than any philosopher before him, announced such things as 'Every philosophy or theory is inherently self-contradictory, and will eventually 'explode and self-destruct' in this inherent self-contradiction....'Every theory carries the seeds of its own self-destruction'...


That's quite an interesting philosophy. What it means -- essentially -- is that every philosophy, every theory, every characteristic contain both a 'life instinct' and a 'death instinct' in it at the same time. Sounds very Freudian -- very -- 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle'.

Stated differently, every one-sided theory is like a 'ticking time bomb' -- 'it has a finite lifespan' -- and it is just a matter of time before the theory 'explodes' outwardly or 'implodes' inwardly -- and 'self-destructs'. Except perhaps, the theory of 'Multi-Dialectic-Evolution' which takes into account the idea of opposing polar entities -- both 'phenomenally real' (like cat and mouse) and 'ideologically conceputalized' (like the 'pleasure' and 'reality' principle or 'the life instinct' and 'death instinct' -- doing exactly what they generally do: expoding outwards, and/or imploding inwards towards self-destruction.  

Taken a little further, we might propose the dialectic paradoxical theory of Hegelian descent that:  'Every life entity carries within it the seeds of its own self-destruction'.


Indeed, maybe I have come up with a theory here that defies the inherent limitations that we just put on any and all theory/ies -- specifically, perhaps this is a theory that is always right! A theory of 'The Absolute Truth' -- 'Absolute-Dialectic-Multi-Integration Theory-Is-Terrific!' (ADMIT-IT!)

I know -- me and my acronyms -- I'm creatively offside! Overboard! Get the life rafts! Man overboard!

Certainly, this could have provided Freud in 1920 with his strongest argument in defense of his very controversial 'Death (Self-Destruction) Instinct and Entropy' (DIE) Theory. I'm sick. My acronym again. I must have death on my mind... 56 and thinking about death...Freud was 64 in 1920 and thinking about death. Three more years from 1920 -- i.e., 1923 -- and Freud would be diagnosed with cancer (of the jaw?), but amazingly, he held on until 1939...that would be 83 years old. Nietzsche died at my age right now -- 56. That's scary -- I feel closer to Nietzsche than to Freud...I will shoot for 60 and everything after that is a 'bonus'...
We breathe in 'oxygen'. Oxygen is a 'living entity'. Oxygen is one of the driving forces of life. However, it is also one of the driving forces of death. Something 'oxidizes', 'ages' (rusts, gets wrinkles, loses its 'functional efficiency'...) -- and eventually it dies or we die from the destructive force of oxidizing oxgen
 as it paradoxically 'combusts' in the body in order to give us 'the driving force of life'.


In other words -- 'oxygen' contains both a 'life and a death instinct' in terms of its relevance to the existence -- and the non-existence -- of man. Again, this sounds very 'Freudian' -- very 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle'.

Freud always had some 'conceptul gems' -- even in some of his most outrageous essays -- when you read him and thought/think that he was most 'off his rocker'. You could/can still learn something from him.

'All life is paradoxical.' (There is another 'Absolute' theory.) -- a paradox built on the foundation of man's (and life's) essential 'bi-polar nature and essence' , indeed, man's 'multi-bi-polar' nature and essence.

If you get diagnosed with BPD -- 'Bi-Polar Disorder' -- relax. Ask your psychiatrist -- 'which one? Tell him or her that you have a 'thousand bi-polar disorders'. Could he or she be more specific?

Indeed, we all have a thousand bi-polar disorders -- at one time and/or another...

Nobody is perfectly balanced -- not even your psychiatrist!
 In fact, unbeknownst to you, he or she may be more unbalanced than you?

Swith seats, switch roles -- and feel the surge of 'power' within you...

Is it all relative? Or is it 'legalized relativity and power'?

Any time we say to ourselves, 'Turn left'...there is something that will begin to 'formulate' in another part of our brain -- could be in either our 'Righteous Superego' or our 'Rebellious Underego' or even, way down in our 'Shadow-Id-Drive (SID) Chamber' -- that says, 'Why didn't you turn right?'

Why is it that 'ethics' destroys our sexual fantasies?

Because 'sexual desire and fantasy gets off on the 'ethically forbidden'.

Why does your daughter always bring home the boy or man that (she knows -- or at least subconsciously knows) you least want to see her with?  Romantically and sexually her 'aphrodisiac' is consciously and/or subconsciously 'defying your parental authority'. Our Creator -- 'God and/or Nature' -- has a 'sneaky, sadistic streak in him and/or her. He/She/It/They know that the best way to guarantee 'biological, cultural, and conceptual diversity' -- is for the child-teenager-adult to 'get sexually turned on' by  'defying the parents' righteous authority rules'...regardless of whether these rules are overtly stated or covertly percolating...and then boiling... Your children can see through your illusions and manipulations and hypocrisies... They are very smart...and eventually learn their own 'transference games people play'...


So, even as there is a driving life force, a driving theory, a driving philosophy, a driving impulse...that is 'exploding' -- or at least 'wants' to explode -- into 'behavioral action', at the same time, there is always a 'second-guessing counter-force', conscious or subconscious, that is wanting either to 'restrain the first force' and/or 'explode in a different direction'....This is an essential derrivative of 'the multi-bi-polar nature and essence of man'...the drive always eventually towards 'homeostatic-dialectic-bi-polar-  balance-unity-and-harmony -- even as we say, 'Forget that...who wants boring balance...I'm off to explore the 'excitement' of a polar extreme...'  This is still part of the dialectic-bi-polar-integrative process... You will be back!...You may have fun for a while playing the extreme...until you almost kill yourself or get sick of your own self-destructionism -- like that little molecule of 'oxygen' that contains both life and death processes...and then like a pendulum swinging...you will be back...perhaps overcompensating...and swinging outwards to the opposite extreme...and then eventually back towards the centre again...
There is no disorder that I can think of that doesn't either consists of some type of 'deficiency' and/or 'avoidance' in man, or conversely, an 'excessive, toxic surplus' of something...'Too much'...or 'too little'...these are the essential 'diseases' and/or 'disorders' of life...

Life is about making 'Either/Or' (E/O) choices...

And, at the same time, or at different times, life is about making 'Multi-Integrative-Dialectic (MID) choices....which is a fancy way of saying that life is about make 'Compromise-Choices' (CCs)...that ideally appeal to both sides in a 'Dialectic-Control-Battle' (DCB)...between 'for' and 'against'...'pro' and 'con'...'good' and 'bad'...they can all be turned around, and turned upside down....to give us the opposite perspective...

Freud was a DIE-HARD. Here we go again with my acronyms...I can't help it....They just keep coming....A 'DIE-HARD' is a 'Dialectically-Incomplete-Extremist-Hot-And-Righteously-Driven'...


So was Masson in the 1980s.....He's tamed down a little now....Over ten years of righteously defending an upopular Establishment position will tame most people down over time...as entropy -- and the wish for peace and harmony -- takes more importance in your life...But of course, this is me speculating....Masson is still fighting ethical battles on the vegetarian (as in 'no meat') front... 'The Face on The Plate in Front of You'...



Freud lost some of his 'courage' -- as Masson put it on May 4th, 1896... 115 years ago today if my math is right...That was the day his Traumacy-Seduction Theory Died in Submission To A Greater, More Coercive, Manipulative, Diabolical Complex of Powers....Money, Politics, Corporate Institutionalism...Cocaine, 'Nasal-Sexual Surgery'....and Medical Guilt....Freud went from one polar extreme (Traumacy-Seduction Theory) to the opposite extrem (Instinct-Fantasy Theory). He was too much of a DIE-HARD (same with Nietzsche) to ever come back to find the 'multi-integrative-dialectic balance'.

I will have to do it for him.
Freud's Traumacy-Seduction Theory was 'wrong'....meaning 'righteously and reductionistically one-sided'...which means that Masson's defense of this theory in the 1980s was also righteously and reductionistically one-sided...


If a theorist, a philosopher, a psychologist, a politican, an economist...emphasizes only one 'extremist-one-sided-bi-polar theory' in the 'full bi-polar spectrum of birth, life, creativity, evolution, de-evolution, polar tragedy, destruction/self-destruction, victim and victimizer, entropy, and death', then the theorist is necessarily going to be wrong because he or she is 'stuck in his or her theoretical box', can't see out of it, is trapped, and will essentially die inside it, because he or she cannot 'break the straight-jacket' of what the theory had done to -- and is doing to -- him and/or her...(That is one theory that I will give Fliess credit for -- his theory of 'psychological bi-sexuality' -- we are all essentially 'bi-sexual' in that we all have 'male and female DNA inside us', 'also, male and female hormones inside us in different balances', and in most cases, 'Introjected (Internalized) Male and Female Love-Hate Object-Templates' causing us ecstasy and tragedy....inside and outside of our mind-brains...


Even when I often think that Freud was at his absolute 'cognitive-emotional-behavioral' worst....such as in the midst of his 1895-1896 'cocaine and Emma Ekstein medical fiasco', he can still throw a surprising...even shockingly...'good concept' at me...and the rest of the world reading Freud...


The post-1895 Freudian concept of 'longing' that was to signify the beginning of what we now call 'Classical' Psychoanalysis -- as in a school of Psychoanalysis based primarily on the 'wishful fantasy-driven-impulses-and/or-instincts' that 'under-ride' our thinking, feeling, and behavior....is not a concept or a theory without important value...it just needs to be put in its proper place at the other 'bi-polar end' of Freud's earlier 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory'...


Anna Freud once said -- and I am paraphasing here without a proper reference at the moment (I believe it was in a private letter to Masson that can be found in the introduction to either 'Assault on Truth' or 'Final Analysis', I think the latter --- to be confirmed) -- she said essentially, Without Freud having abandoned the Traumacy-Seduction Theory, there would have been no 'Instinct' Theory which is now the foundation of Classical Psychoanalysis.



Anna Freud was wrong in this respect. The Traumacy-Seduction Theory was/is a one-side bi-polar theory of human nature, psychology, and psychopathology, that emphasizes 'the roots of our neuroses' in our childhood traumacies...the theory becomes even more 'reductionistic' if you believe, like Freud did, that the 'traumacies' had to be 'unconciously repressed' (meaning unobtainable to our normal memory processes except through professional hypnosis, suggestion, 'forehead pressing', and/or free association -- in short, 'Psychoanalysis'.


By itself either Traumacy or Seduction Theory -- and/or the two integrated together --is still a one-sided, reductionistic theory that is like the 'one-sided foundation' in the basement of a house...the house is quite likely at some point going to 'lean over' like 'The Leaning Tower of Pisa' -- and/or with any serious 'wind factor' -- probably topple over...

That was -- and still is -- The Traumacy-Seduction Theory.


The same story goes for Freud's post-1896 'Instinct' Theory...


Every theory is inherently one-sided and capable of toppling over if, and by, itself...unless or until it is 'counter-balanced' by its 'polar-opposite theory'....This is the essence of Derrida's 'Deconstruction' Philosophy which is a 20th century extension of 19th century Hegelian and Post-Hegelian Dialectic Theory....'Quantum Physics' is an example of 'Quantum-Dialectic Post-Hegelian Philosophy...it came about by 'integrating two opposing theories of energy, motion, and physics -- together into one dualistic-dialectic quantum theory'....


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


From Wikipedia...

Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of the dual particle-like and wave-like behaviour and interaction of matter and energy.

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


Obviously, if you think about Psychoanalytic theory in this 'Quantum-Dialectic Light', then the answer to the 'Tramacy-Seduction Theory' vs. 'Instinct-Fantasy' Theory of Psychoanalysis -- becomes integrating the two theories together.


That would lead us to 'Traumacy-Impulse-Transference' Theory...and I will leave the anacronym alone this time around...no I won't ....because, as I have said elsewhere, it either literarily and/or metaphorically partly fits...



All of us, in our 'most neurotic moments', are at least partly looking for some sort of 'Missing Tit' -- or more formally, a 'Missing Breast' -- of Nurturing, Encouraging, Support...in our times of greatest stress....



Whether we want to focus in on the more 'narcissistic, hedonistic (sensual-sexual)' part of 'infantile-childhood-adult' -- 'longing' and/or the more 'maternal-paternal-nurturing-encouraging' part of 'infantile-childhood-adult 'longing' -- there is an important place for both of these elements of later Psychoanalytic Theory...just don't leave out the 'traumacy-seduction' theoretical base as well...


Mix all of these different components of 'pre' and 'post' 1896 Psychoanalytic Theory and you are going to get a much better brand of 'Wholistic' as opposed to 'Reductionistic' Psychoanalytic Theory...


And this is what I am calling...'Multi-Integrative-Dialectic' Psychoanalytic Theory....


Enough for today...


Today is the 115th anniversary of the day that Freud first turned Psychoanalysis -- upside down.


-- dgb, April 9th, updated May 4th, 2011,


-- David Gordon Bain,


-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...









-- Are Still in Process...

Never Look Back...

"Never look back unless you are planning to go that way."

-- Henry David Thoreau

Reason vs. Denial

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.

Ayn Rand

Freud, Fliess, Emma Ekstein, Krafft-Ebing -- and The Abandonment of The Seduction Theory

Let me be clear on one thing. I am not here to write 'deconstructive' essays on Freud and Classical Psychoanalysis that don't have a more 'constructive' purpose behind them. 

I would not have invested hundreds of hours (if not more) into studying Freud if I didn't -- for the most part -- like, and respect, what I was reading.

Now as Fritz Perls has emphasized in similar but different words, there is a big difference between trying to 'swallow a steak whole' as opposed to 'chewing it carefully into small little pieces' and then 'swallowing the small pieces in a way that is much easier on the stomach and does not cause indigestion' -- perhaps 'picking 'grit and fat from out of your mouth', and putting it on your plate rather than trying to swallow what is probably not good for you.

The same is true of learning. 'Carefully Chewed -- or Assimilated -- Learning' is generally much better for you than ''Non-Chewed, Introjected Learning'.

So it is with Freud and Psychoanalysis. Information that is absorbed from Freud -- when it was written in a totally different time and place, Victorian Vienna until the last year of his life (1938) -- can be 'hazardous to your health' if it is 'swallowed whole' -- i.e., 'introjected' -- without very careful chewing and assimilation into your own independent thought process that critiques everything you are reading'...

I, myself, am very 'anal-selective' in terms of the ideas that I am integrating into my own brand of GAP-DGB (Quantum Dialectic) Psychology (Psychoanalysis) -- and my almost 40 years of studying different schools of psychology (since I first read Maxwell Maltz's 'Psycho-Cybernetics' and S.I. Hayakawa's 'Language in Thought and Action in 1972 which led to studying psychology at The University of Waterloo (I wrote my Honours Thesis for the very esteemed 'Cognitve-Behavior Theorist' -- Dr. Donald Meichenbaum when he was there in the same time period between 1974 and 1979); after that I went on to study Adlerian Psychology at The Adlerian Institute of Ontario and Gestalt Therapy at The Gestalt Institute of Toronto, before I focused in on Psychoanalysis and some Jungian Psychology -- all of this time and energy, and assimilated learning, I think, gives me decent credibility for choosing the ideas that I have chose, and/or am still in the process of choosing to be a part of my own integrative psychology system here -- and to draw -- with a lot of careful thinking -- the rather bald and harsh conclusions that I have drawn below regarding some of the suspcious, bad ethical choices, decisions, actions that Freud made and participated in between 1895 and 1896.

Because I am certainly not here -- like perhaps others before me -- to hide what I believe to be the historical truth, and the truth behind Freud's very unethical behavior as reported and interpreted below.


For one thing, psychoanalysts have tried very hard for the most part to either ignore or at least minimize the seriousness of Freud's cocaine abuse. The less idealized reality of the situation was Freud's cocaine abuse was very serious -- from the few reports that I have read on this matter that seem to be much closer to the truth, Freud took cocaine for at least 11 years -- from 1884 to 1895, and possibly longer. Not too many Freudian scholars -- or even 'anti-Freudians' -- want to openly and publicly say this.

I seem to get 'bad public ratings' whenever I open this Freudian can of worms...

The 'Coke Can'....

Is this because I am 'out to lunch' on what I am writing?



Or is it because readers in general just do not want to see this 'ethically challenged' side of Freud?

Masson wrote that Freud 'lost moral courage'. I used to question why Masson made such an 'inflammatory' statement back in the 1980s. The statement essentially ruined his career while he was near the very top of The Freudian Hierarchy....right next to Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler...

After reading 'The Complete Letters'...including the 'unpublished' ones that Masson found in The Freud Archive, which led Masson to draw this highly inferential and inflammatory conclusion....

Now I don't.



In fact, if anything, I have taken Masson's inferences even further than Masson did...Masson didn't -- and still doesn't -- want to write or talk about Freud's cocaine involvement other than to the extent that Freud used cocaine for allegedly 'medical' reasons...

I do.
..............................................................................................................

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered (or persuaded -- my addition) by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone. (I will hold up a 'mirror' before I leave them alone -- my addition).


Ayn Rand


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

I had a sister-in-law that started taking cocaine about the same age that Freud did -- 28 -- and she died about the same age that Freud was showing many of the tell-tale signs of prolonged coke abuse: heart arrythma, heart attacks, migraines, depression, infected sinuses, pus running out of his nose...for Freud that was in 1895 at the age of 39...and it was right in the centre of one of the most distressing and disturbing 'professional' events in Freud's life  -- a female patient under his care and persuasion, Emma Ekstein, was convinced by Freud to have a 'nasal surgery' (as some form of new, obviously radical,  'physical psychotherapy' -- which I would put in the same category as 'Electric-Convulsive Therapy (ECT)' and 'Lobotomies'...not something that I would recommend to anyone...). The nasal surgery would be conducted by Freud's best friend  -- Dr. Wilhelm Fliess -- who was a nasal specialist -- and a 'radical, overly-adventurous'  theorist and therapist -- just like Freud in terms of throwing 'medical caution to the wind', in the name of 'science'. 'Go boldly where no man has gone before'....Freud and Fliess both tended to take this slogan far too literally without putting up 'ethical stop signs'...


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

Wilhelm Fliess...Wikipedia.....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Fliess

Wilhelm Fliess (German: Wilhelm Fließ; 24 October 1858, Arnswalde, Province of Brandenburg – 13 October 1928, Berlin) was a German otolaryngologist who practised in Berlin. On Josef Breuer's suggestion, Fliess attended several "conferences" with Sigmund Freud beginning in 1887 in Vienna, and the two soon formed a strong friendship. Through their extensive correspondence and the series of personal meetings, Fliess came to play an important part in the development of psychoanalysis.




Fliess developed several idiosyncratic theories, such as reflex nasal neuroses, postulating a connection between the nose and the genitals, and vital periodicity, forerunner of the popular concepts of biorhythms that never found scientific favor outside of psychoanalytic circles, though others, such as the idea of innate bisexuality, were incorporated into Freud's theories. Freud referred occasional patients to him for treatment of their neurosis through anaesthetization of the nasal mucosa with cocaine, and through nasal surgery. Together, Fliess and Freud developed a Project for a Scientific Psychology, which was later abandoned.



Emma Eckstein (1865-1924) had a particularly disastrous experience when Freud referred the then 27-year-old patient to Fliess for surgery to remove the turbinate bone from her nose, ostensibly to cure her of premenstrual depression. Eckstein haemorrhaged profusely in the weeks following the procedure, almost to the point of death as infection set in. Freud consulted with another surgeon, who removed a piece of surgical gauze that Fliess had left behind.[1] Eckstein was left permanently disfigured, with the left side of her face caved in. Despite this, she remained on very good terms with Freud for many years, becoming a psychoanalyst herself.



Fliess also remained close friends with Freud. He even predicted Freud's death would be around the age of 51, through one of his complicated bio-numerological theories ("critical period calculations"). Their friendship, however, did not last to see that prediction out: in 1904 their friendship disintegrated due to Fliess's belief that Freud had given details of a periodicity theory Fliess was developing to a plagiarist. Freud died at 83 years of age.



Freud ordered that his correspondence with Fliess be destroyed. It is only known today because Marie Bonaparte purchased Freud's letters to Fliess and refused to permit their destruction.



Fliess's son Robert (1895–1970) was also a psychoanalyst and a prolific writer in that field. He devised the phrase ambulatory psychosis[2].



Though Fliess' ideas are often ridiculed today, modern science has in fact revealed that the nose has more than one connection with sexual behaviour and the genitals. The nose is now known to contain erectile tissue, and this may also become engorged during sexual arousal as a side-effect of the signals fired off by the autonomic nervous system to trigger changes in the genitals of both men and women. A condition exists known as honeymoon rhinitis, in which men and women experience nasal stuffiness during sex, and a small number of people are known to sneeze, sometimes uncontrollably, when engaging in or even thinking about sexual activity. The existence of evolutionary relics within the autonomic nervous system has been hypothesised as a cause.[3] Even more remarkably, a study on mice has suggested that the difference between male and female sexual behaviour may be explained by a tiny organ in the nose rather than gender-specific brain circuitry.[4]

He appears as a character in Joseph Skibell's 2010 novel, A Curable Romantic.


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

Unfortunately, Fliess -- like Freud -- was sometimes a little too liberal, exuberant and unrestrained in 'trying out his new theories'. Most of them were pretty crazy sounding, only got more convoluted and more confusing, the more you read about them, and unfortunately, neither Fliess nor Freud were 'conservative and careful enough' to stop themselves from using a human patient as a human guinea pig for a brand new 'nasal-sexual' surgery. Perhaps there was one common denominator that made this new 'nasal-sexual surgery' make some kind of logical, albeit unprofessional, sense -- specifically, cocaine abuse.

We will continue with this story in a few minutes but first let me say this:

I don't really care too much about what Freud did on his personal time. If Freud's cocaine use/abuse hadn't quite possibly/probably altered the course of Psychoanalytic history, I probably wouldn't have been writing about it. But something funny happened in 1896 -- most Freudian scholars will shrug their shoulders and say that Freud radically changed and, for the most part, left behind, a theory that he believed was wrong (The Traumacy-Seduction Theory). This explanation has not satisfied some theorists who think that Freud over-reacted and changed/abandoned a theory he shouldn't have changed/abandoned.

Most notable in this latter regard -- or 'camp' -- was the work and beliefs of Dr. Jeffrey Masson, former Projects Director of The Freud Archive, who challenged in the early 1980s, after reading, editing, and eventually releasing to the public (1985) The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, what he believed to be Freud's 'suppression' of his 1896 Seduction (Child Sexual Abuse) Theory, arguing that Freud 'lost moral courage' in the spring of 1896 after he had read his new essay/theory (The Aetiology of Hysteria, 1896) to The Psychiatry and Neurology Society on the evening of April 21st, 1896.

Masson argued that Freud was politically, professionally, and economically intimidated and coerced by The Society -- among other factors that were happening at the time, of which probably the most important was The Emma Ekstein nasal surgery fiasco mentioned above, which we will continue to discuss in a few short moments.

I have read some of the 'Complete Letters' and agree with Masson -- in fact, have introduced the 'cocaine' factor here that Masson has, for the most part, stayed away from in his writing as a 'pathological factor'. This factor -- if I am right, which I strongly believe that I am -- takes more of centre stage in Freud's professional life when, in 1891, Freud saw a friend/patient (Flieschl) die partly because of 'cocaine addiction' that was prescribed to him by Freud with the intention of helping Flieschl to 'kick his morphine addiction'. Flieschl had numerous medical problems leading up to his death -- but cocaine was certain one factor in his death, and Freud was right in the middle of this situation, and should have learned right there and then in 1891, like other doctors at the time had already learned around him a 4 or 5 years earlier, that cocaine was very dangerous and addictive, and shouldn't be handed out to patients, friends, and family -- like 'candy' or some 'magical potion'. 

Freud didn't seem to learn and was taking it by reports in his own letters right up to at least 1895 -- with perhaps or probably another patient -- Emma Ekstein -- getting involved in Freud's 'cocaine misadventures'.  The evidence is 'circumstantial' but I believe (and I think that many or most of you will likely agree with me) -- 'circumstantially strong'.

All of this was happening -- as Masson has described in 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory' (1984, 85, 92) -- at a time when Freud radically turned the theoretical and therapeutic assumptions of Psychoanalysis upside down.

It is the changes that Freud made to Psychoanalysis that I am primarily concerned about here, as much as you may or may not want to negatively judge Freud for his 'loss of medical ethics' -- under a strongly dangerous and addictive drug -- cocaine -- that contrary to most 'narcissistically biased' historical reports, was causing Freud a lot more trouble in his personal and professional life than most Freudian scholars and historians would have us believe  As mentioned above, Freud was experiencing serious medical problems himself in 1895 that showed all the tell-tales signs of cocaine abuse -- and Freud's and Fliess' belief in -- and 'surgical involvement' with -- 'nasal-sexual' surgery doesn't make too much sense until you introduce the factor of -- cocaine.

Regardless, I am here to change -- or at least significantly modify -- the assumptive foundations of Classical Psychoanalysis, not dwell more than necessary on Freud's cocaine abuse.  Like a hundred post-Freudian theorists before me, I am here to get rid of -- and replace -- a handful of bad Freudian assumptions with better Post-Freudian ones (borrowed and integrated from other theorists like Adler, Jung, Klein, Fairbairn, Fromm, Berne, Perls...) -- 'the bad Freudian assumptions' being introduced at a time when Freud was under extreme mental and emotional stress and duress.

What I am doing theoretically -- indeed, what I have done to a large extent already -- is unique in its particular integration and configuration of 'Pre-Psychoanalytic, Classical Psychoanalytic, Object Relations, and Post-Freudian elements of psychology and psychotherapy. 

Read my last paper on 'A Transference Analysis of The Freud, Fliess, and Ekstein Medical Fiasco' -- and you will read a 'transference analysis' of Freud's character that is uniquely different from any previous psychoanalytic and/or non-psychoanalytic analysis before me. It rests on the assumptive principles of what I used to call 'GAP' Psychology -- as in Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic Psychology. Now I call it 'GAP-DGB Psychology or just DGB Psychology or DGB Quantum-Dialectic Psychology (or Psychoanalysis). 

However, the years 1895-1896 have always been the two most controversial years in the history of Psychoanalysis. The highly emotionally charged Seduction (Childhood Sexual Assault) Theory of Freud's in 1896 -- and his subsequent 'abandonment' of it -- is still generating 'emotionally explosive' essays more than 100 years later. After 1896, Freud essentially 'turned Psychoanalysis upside down (or right side up, depending on your perspective') in the same manner that Marx turned Hegelian Dialectic Theory upside down -- to make it an 'economically deconstructive and idealistic' philosophy (Marx) as opposed to an 'epistemologically idealistic' ('The Evolutionary Search for 'Absolute Truth') philosophy (Hegel).

With Freud -- Freud was thinking 'economics' when he turned Psychoanalysis upside down in 1896 -- but he was not thinking 'socialistic idealistic economics' -- rather, he was thinking 'narcissistically' about his own 'Capitalistic Economic Survival'. And he was also thinking about his own medical and professional reputation. In May, 1896, Freud had no clients -- and presumably no money coming in -- he had been 'blacklisted' by the Psychiatry and Neurology Society for his brand new 'Childhood Sexual Abuse' theory and its 'causal' relation to hysteria and other neuroses. That didn't go over very well with the 'masculinely biased, patriarchal' Psychiatry and Neurology Society at all. Krafft-Ebing said that Freud's latest essay read like a 'scientific fairy tale'.  Freud's client referrals 'coincidentally' started to dry up immediately after this 'professional, scientific conference'.

Also converging on May 4th, 1896 -- about a week after the Psychiatry Conference that was held on the evening of April 21st, 1896 -- was an 'unfinished', year old problem that had been 'ethically bothering' Freud for over a year, and was still very much at the top of Freud's mind. This was the 'botched Emma Ekstein nasal-surgery affair conducted by Freud's best friend, Fliess, in February, 1895 -- Freud had the same surgery done on himself by Fliess with less -- but still significant -- surgical after effects.  At least we can say that Freud was willing to undergo the same 'surgical treatment' that he had persuasively pushed onto the naive, unsuspecting Emma Ekstein. Obviously, Freud was totally not expecting the 'horrific surgical consequences' of Emma Ekstein's surgery -- where Fliess left a long string of gauze up her nose -- and then Fliess, and Freud, forgot it was still there while Fliess went home to Berlin from Vienna. 

The gauze stayed in Emma's nose for about a month until some other unsuspecting doctor got involved (because Fliess was back in Berlin at this time), and checking out some problems that Emma was still having with her nose. It seemed to be badly infected. The new doctor found something up Emma's nose, pulled on it, and the long piece of gauze came tumbling out of her nose -- along with about a gallon of blood (I'm exaggerating a little bit here for emphasis.) Emma almost bled to death in front of Freud who went white with shock...Every doctor can -- and does make mistakes -- but it would seem that Freud very much 'repressed' Hippocrites First Oath: 'First, do the paient no harm!'

When you add to this almost tragic story the very real possibility -- indeed, probablility -- that 'the use of cocaine' was likely tied into these two 'nasal-sexual operations' (which was what Fliess and Freud called this type of surgical procedure -- read Freud's Complete Letters to Fliess...and shake your head in shocked amazement...), and that a year later, on May 4th, 1896, Freud was still thinking about Emma -- and trying to 'rationalize away' his own feelings of ethical and medical guilt -- and you converge this with the disastrous Scientific Meeting that Freud just came out of April 21st, 1896, along with Freud's fastly diminishing case load, and you add to this picture, the fact that Anna Freud had just been born in December, 1895, and Freud had a lot of kids to feed....and the fact that Freud's dad died in 1896 (I don't know what month he died)...the point here is that Freud had a lot of stress on his mind in the spring of 1896...and something had to give...

Something did give -- Freud's Seduction (Childhood Sexual Assault) Theory. 

Emma Ekstein can be viewed as Freud's first case example of his brand, spanking new (post-Seduction Theory) 'Instinctual Impulse and Fantasy Theory'. Or stated differently his 'wish fulfillment' theory -- which would four years later take over centre stage in his 1900 Classic 'The Interpetation of Dreams' (ID).

However, right now Freud had more pressing problems -- even as the material for 'ID' was fast entering Freud's forever creative mind...

On May 4th, 1896, Freud needed to 'absolve' himself of his Emma Ekstein guilt. And he did this in a very creative way -- Freud, in the letter of this day to Fliess, called Emma Ekstein an 'hysterical bleeder' -- but no longer in the 'traumatic' sense -- rather, in the 'sexual impulse' sense. Emma bled serially and profusely out of 'longing' -- longing for the two 'therapists' she supposedly loved -- who almost killed her.

In this minute of May 4th, 1896 -- although Freud had been developing this idea from the end of 1895 -- Freud 'blew away' The Traumacy-Seduction Theory (too much emphasis on 'victimizing adults' -- including 'victimizing doctors'...) and in its place, Freud made the client/patient 'accountable' for her own 'instinctual impulses'. Freud would use this same 'longing' theory publicly for the first time in the 'Dora' case of 1905. All you Freudian scholars, professionals, and students out there -- compare the 'analytic results' of the Emma Ekstein medical fiasco with Freud's 'interpretive analysis' of Dora in 1905. Voila! A 'new' source of the Nile -- the 'instinctual longing theory' -- and 'The Oedipus/Electra Complex'. Tell me that the results of The Dora Case weren't 'creatively born' from the nightmare results of the Emma Ekstein Medical Fiasco. Note clearly how the onus of responsibility and accountability had shifted very 'slyly' in both 1896 and 1905 from two 'victimizing adults' in each case (Freud and Fliess in the Emma case vs. Dora's father and his adult 'friend' who had propositioned a young Dora) to two 'sexually longing girls'...(who were allegedly 'longing' for their male victimizers...and/or 'sexual objects' depending on what pre or post-1896 Freudian perspective you wish to take...).

Magically -- i.e., Freud waved his 'magical theoretical wand' in 1896 -- and there were no more 'adult male victimizers' -- just 'sexually longing' women...

To put this another way, Freud can be viewed as a 'masculine feminist' -- before May 4th, 1896 -- 'charging on his white horse' to the rescue of all women who had been sexually molested, manipulated, assaulted, abused... as children or as teenagers...usually by adult, victimizing males...(most often 'allegedly' the father)...

Then, starting on May 4th, 1896, Freud 'absolved' all 'allegedly victimizing men' of responsibility, accountability -- and 'guilt' (especially his own relative to the Emma Ekstein medical nightmare), and instead made all young girls and women 'accountablie', 'responsible' for their own 'sexual longing' (even if it wasn't there).

All the male scientists, doctors, and psychiatrists were happy -- and Freud got his caseload back.

And here in a nutshell, is my extrapolated Massonian Theory of why Freud abandoned The Seduction Theory...

In a word -- 'guilt'. 

Now I have taken it on myself to go back and fix Freud's 'neurotic theoretical damage'...

Freud was human and acted the way he did for narcissistic (selfish) reasons -- which is not uncommon to any of us to different degrees -- whatever you may think of him for probably doing what he did 'unethically'.

But this does not mean that 'Classical' Psychoanalysis should be forever 'neurotically and erotically reified' in the over-idealized, old man's guilt...

The Ivory Tower of The Psychoanalytic Establishment hangs to one side -- but still stands -- like The Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Maybe you like it looking that way.

But I have come here -- without Psychoanalytic consent since I am not a Psychoanalyst, and I would not likely get their consent even if I was a Psychoanalyst (Masson didn't) -- to 'straighten' its structural foundations.

Its long past time for The Psychoanalytic Establishment to get on board with today's feminists and to provide an 'equal treatment' for sexually victimized women -- from the 'traumatic' perspective -- as well as from any 'appropriate (instinctual) impulse' perspective.

In short, it is way past time for 'Classical' Psychoanalysis to become '21st Century Classical' Psychoanalysis...

This is not an 'either/or' campaign. All of Freud's 50 years of theorizing needs to be properly integrated together -- preferrably with the valuable integrative help of other important outside theorists as mentioned above.

And me as 'The Central Mediating-Integrating Theorist'...

Personally -- and you can call me a 'narcissistic megalomaniac' if you wish (I, like the rest of you, I speculate, in different stable vs. unstable degrees, carry a 'bi-polar, vascillating, fluctuating, inferiority to superiority complex...and back to square one again...sometimes living or dying on the strength or weakness of some perceived achievement and/or social acknowledgement vs. failure and/or social/self rejection') --

I think I am one of the leading-edge psychoanalytic theorists, underground or not, in the world right now...but of course...I am narcissistically biased...and, for better or worse, have a better overall conceptualization of what I am trying to accomplish here than those of you who I hope are motivated to follow me through this project to the end and achieve a better overall picture, complete with more concrete details, of how I am attempting to 'dialectically modify' Psychoanalysis, expanding its assumptive foundations and outer boundaries in numerous different directions -- and making it the 'central essence' of Hegel's Hotel. 

Coincidentally -- or 'astrologically' -- it wil be the 115th anniversary (assuming my math is correct) of May 4th, 1896 -- the day Freud turned Psychoanalysis upside down -- tomorow -- which is now -- today.

-- dgb, May 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 2011

-- David Gordon Bain