We have two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach
A man does what he must -- in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers -- and this is the basis of all human morality
.John Fitzgerald Kennedy
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Concepts, theories, paradigms, even 'pills' that are supposed to make us better -- they all have both a 'life force' and a 'death force'. The life force of the concept is that part of it that actually 'structurally and dynamically fits' what it is supposed to represent or do in nature. The death force is that part of the concept that 'destructively surprises' us because it doesn't fit or do at all what it is supposed to fit or do in nature.
-- dgb, July 17th, 2012
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You've probably all heard the expression, 'The first cut is the deepest.' Rod Stewart popularized this expression with a hit single by this name, written and released by Cat Stevens in 1967, covered by Stewart in 1977. Many other artists have also covered the song.
Well, when early childhood self-esteem traumacies (or 'narcissistic injuries') and identification and/or compensatory transference reactions against these early traumacies merge together -- like they almost invariably do -- i.e., we all have to meet with our first major rejection, abandonment, betrayal, failure, embarrassment...sooner or later in our early life trials and tribulations -- well, the experience is usually something that we remember for a lifetime because of its 'surprise/shock value' -- and, in this regard, we likely will take different types of steps that can be generalized and classified -- steps to guard against the same type of negative experience happening to us again in the future. In some cases, it's like we put a 'wall around our heart' and/or any other relevant part of our body which the psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich, called 'character armor'. At other times, it may seem like we have a 'death wish' or a 'rejection wish' as we subconsciously and obsessionally 're-create scenes' in our adult life that have all the makings of a particular early childhood 'rejection' and/or 'failure' scene.
This is what Freud ended up calling our 'repetition compulsion' which is based on the existence of a 'psychic counter-phobia' aimed at 'symbolically mastering' in adulthood what we failed to accomplish in early childhood. This can be seen in Freud's earliest childhood conscious! memory where he was very non-ceremoniously evicted from his parents master bedroom because he 'busted in' on them while they were having sex together. This speaks volumes to Freud's lifelong 'obsession with sex' and in particular, his 're-creating his early childhood master bedroom scene' in the symbolic format of his 'psychoanalytic room' with the patient 'lying on the couch' and 'little Siggy' -- now a full-grown adult psychoanalyst -- having a 'full hour' to intently observe and listen to the most intimate of ''sexual stories' that his patients eventually started to open up to him about. This 'counter-phobic' phenomenon in conjunction with a person's early childhood rejection-transference scene is what I call 'the transference mastery compulsion' or 'transference reversal' (of which there are a number of different types of transference reversal).
Ronald Fairbairn was closer to getting it right than Freud when Fairbairn introduced the concept of 'our rejecting object' which paradoxically and astoundingly tends to become our obsessive-compulsive 'exciting object' -- in other words, as adults we start to chase around 'rejecting-exciting objects' (i.e., usually people, adult transference figures) who subconsciously
remind us of our 'childhood rejecting objects' in an effort to symbolically 'master the childhood rejection scene' that we could not master as a child. The childhood scene 'causes' a 'rift' or 'split' in our self-image and self-esteem and the transference mastery compulsion becomes a usually lifelong attempt at 'self-psychotherapy' with the intent of making our self-image and self-esteem 'better' or 'whole' again.
In other words, the early childhood transference rejection scene becomes a 'stimulus' for the beginning of 'the splitting of the ego' and the 'transference mastery compulsion which Freud called the repetition compulsion -- becomes at least partly a project for 'making the ego healthy and whole' again. This we will aim to do from a variety of different, classifiable 'ego-positions' (Melanie Klein, Karen Horney), involving lifelong 'movements' towards people, against people, and/or away from people (i.e, 'the pleaser', 'the rebel', and/or 'the distancer' with different 'sub-categories' of each such as 'The Apollonian-Righteous Rebel' vs. 'The Dionysian-Hedonistic-Narcissistic Rebel')....
You can see from the above presentation that we do not need to choose between 'instinct or impulse theory' on the one hand, and 'traumacy theory' on the other hand -- because the two are often, if not usually, intimately connected. Conflated together. By extension, this means that Freud set up an arbitrary, 'smoke and mirrors, dog and pony show' when he made such an ordeal about choosing between traumacy theory and instinct-impulse-fantasy theory back in 1896-97 -- for reasons that will probably always remain at least partly unknowable because none of us can go back in time and know exactly everything that was going through his head at this time (other than we we can read in The Complete Freud-Fliess letters, some of which -- like the May 4th, 1896 letter -- seems rather 'integrity incriminating'.
This remains a big 'head scratcher' for psychoanalytic and non-psychoanalytic scholars and historians alike -- unless you are overly attuned to submitting to the psychoanalytic corporate policy line...which insists that everything Freud did and said in defending his radical 180 degree change in theory (from traumacy to fantasy) was on the up and up -- motivated by the aim of correcting the 'traumacy mistake' in his thinking -- and making it 'right'.
The question remains: Did Freud get it right the first time, the second time, or was he half right, half wrong the first time, and flipping over to the other side (fantasy theory rather than traumacy theory), half right and half wrong again, only this time on the 'fantasy' side.
Or was this whole ordeal more about 'being silenced' by his medical superiors -- with his career on the line -- regarding any connection between 'hysteria' and 'childhood sexual abuse'?
By May, 1896 Freud was experiencing the backlash from two of his own recent 'personal, professional traumacies' -- the Emma Eckstein scandal in the spring of 1895, and the scientific meeting of the evening of April 21st, 1896, followed by a 'blackballing' of Freud relative to a stoppage in the flow of his patients after the April 21st meeting by the Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society (see Freud's letter to Fliess of May 4th, 1896).
It seems quite logically coherent -- following Masson's line of argument -- to infer that Freud came to understand 'which side of his bread was buttered on, and who was doing the buttering' -- a line of thinking that most of us can easily identify with today if we want to continue to belong to the organization that is 'buttering our bread'. Freud was human -- just like the rest of us are -- and integrity, less integrity, or no integrity, Freud needed to feed his rapidly expanding family.
Did he morally cave? Masson sacrificed his own psychoanalytic career in insisting that he did.
I know this is a line of thinking that will make many of you feel uncomfortable but how many of us have not 'bent or silenced our opinions' to some degree or another to satisfy our corporate bosses -- and keep our careers and/or jobs... In Freud's case, it seems more than likely from his May 4th, 1896 letter to Fliess that Freud was under 'economic duress' as The Psychiatry and Neurology Society of Vienna were 'medically blackballing' him by withholding patient referrals from him because of his 'politically unpopular seduction theory' (childhood sexual assault theory as the main causal base of hysteria and obsessional neurosis).
Nobody wanted to hear about early childhood family sexual manipulations, seductions, and assaults back in 1896 -- least of all the governing patriarchal medical community....and I am guessing -- like Masson guessed back in the 70s and 80s (which cost him his psychoanalytic career) -- that Freud 'bent his message' to appease his bosses....and get his medical referrals back...
Say, it ain't so, Joe...
Well, there is an argument to be made that Freud's 'fantasy theory' was coming down the chute anyway....In 1896, 'The Interpretation of Dreams' was in the works...Even in the winter of 1895-96, Freud was starting to waver on his traumacy theory....perhaps sped along by Freud's 'wish' to have poor Emma's 'hysterical bleeding' equated with her own 'wish' to regain the attention of the two 'medical therapists' who almost killed her...(Fliess directly, Freud, indirectly by being involved with Fliess and their mutually hare-brained decision to conduct 'nasal-sexual surgery' on Emma...In fairness to Freud, Freud let Fliess conduct the same surgery on his own nasal passages with less traumatic results than Emma...My calculated guess -- partly verifiable in the Freud-Fliess letters -- is that at least Freud was having 'nasal passage problems' (from still playing around with cocaine; perhaps Emma too...).....Anyways, to me, this is the only line of logic that would intelligently explain why Freud suddenly turned 'memories into wishes' while at the same time, de-valuing the original memory that the alleged or real wish came from, in the process, turning his back on Breuer, Charcot, and everything that he had learned up to that point regarding the 'neurotic effect' of 'traumatic-transference memories' on 'hysterical and/or obsessional symptoms'...
Say it ain't so, Joe....
Anna Freud said it wasn't so. She said that without turning his back on 'traumacy theory', Freud would have never developed 'fantasy theory'....Wrong! Freud could have easily tied his newly evolving fantasy theory into his previous traumacy-seduction theory.
Masson believes that Freud should have stayed the course with 'traumacy-memory-reality theory'. I believe that Freud saw first one aspect of the same transference complex (traumacy theory) , then the other aspect (fantasy-impulse theory) -- and for the life of me -- Freud was a very intelligent man -- I cannot see how Freud could have missed the fact that 'traumacy-memory-transference theory' and 'fantasy-memory-transference theory' were both a part of the same transference complex phenomenon. That is -- unless he wanted to 'dissociate/distance' himself from the two traumatic experiences of his own last two years (the Emma Ekstein traumacy in the spring of 1895, and the scientific meeting of April 21st, 1896 -- both of which were openly discussed with Fliess in the same letter of May 4th, 1896. It was obvious from this letter that Freud was more interested in saving his (and Fliess') respective medical careers than he was concerned about Emma Ekstein's medical well-being and what caused her bleeding hemorrhages which were obviously complications from her ill-advised nasal surgery performed by Fliess a year earlier; not any 'wish' on Emma's part to 'bleed' in order to get the attention of the two doctors who almost killed her.
To my way of thinking there are four ways that memories can be distorted or lost : 1. loss of memory and/or neurological function; 2. loss of phenomenological-existential-transference importance; 3. time; and/or 4. narcissistic bias (dissociation, suppression, repression...).
From a DGB perspective, it is of the utmost importance to distinguish the difference between an 'early childhood transference memory' and an 'early childhood or later teenage/adult transference fantasy'. Which obviously does not mean hiding all alleged childhood sexual assaults under the guise of 'The Oedipal Complex'. To be clear, the one does not necessarily preclude the other. In fact, probably more often they are intimately connected. The structure of the 'traumacy-transference memory neurosis' is woven into the 'erotic romantic and/or sexual fantasy of the connected transference fantasy complex'. We see this in women who are treated violently by their fathers who still 'just happen' to 'sexually and/or romantically find' men in their adulthood who -- lo and behold -- are violent just like their childhood father was. We see this also in young boys or teenagers who are sexually molested by older men -- who just happen to turn around and become 'childhood sexual predators' themselves, probably targeting boys of about the same age as the time when their own childhood sexual abuse happened. In psychoanalytic circles this is called 'identification with the aggressor'.
What we have here is the paradoxical psychoanalytic formula that can be stated as this: we all tend to 'reject people' in the same or similar style as the manner in which we remember being rejected consciously or subconsciously in one of our earliest shocking, traumacy-transference memories.
I love Classical Psychoanalysis. But there is a reason that (this comes from the speculative estimate of a psychoanalyst who I was talking to about a month ago at a meeting) -- about 80 percent of psychoanalysts today are: 1. practicing some form of 'traumacy theory'; 2. believe that the 'traumacy' vs. 'fantasy' theory doesn't have to be a 'mutually exclusive, either/or' conflict ordeal, and would prefer to see it minimized rather than maximized; and 3. are involved more in 'Object Relations' than Classical Psychoanalysis -- presumably because Classical Psychoanalysis -- at least the way Freud taught it -- has become an 'anachronistic dinosaur' with too many Victorian, Patriarchal, Narcissistic Biases still governing it at at time in 2012 here, where, paradoxically, some of these ideas do not properly take into account 'the evolution of women's rights and the equality of women' while at the same time, seemingly more and more women have become psychoanalysts, are involved in the present and future evolution of psychoanalysis -- and presumably, most male and female 'enlightened' psychoanalysts can see that there is just no place for those of Freud's culturally and narcissistically biased ideas that should have died back in the Victorian era, not still been carried through the Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler era, and, stunningly, still being at least partly carried into 2012.
For many, it has been easier to 'jump psychoanalytic ships' from 'The Classical' Ship (Titanic)' to the much better floating and structurally sound 'Object Relations' ship. That is because no psychoanalytic theorist has dared to seriously 're-build' The Freudian Classical Ship. I have no problems in this regard. I am not a paid psychoanalyst -- and in this regard, don't have to worry about 'who is buttering my bread'. That is why I love Spinoza for his choice not to teach at any university (and even so, he was still expelled from his contemporary Jewish community) because he knew that the universities where he lived in Holland (and Holland was about as liberal in its thinking as any country in Europe at that time) would still try to 'suppress' elements of his thinking if he wanted to get paid by them...specifically, his ideas about 'pantheism' which the Jewish community viewed as a 'sneaky form of atheism'...
I am perhaps as disappointed -- if not more disappointed -- with Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler as I am with Sigmund Freud. At least father Freud gave me a 'whole world of theoretical ideas to creatively work with and re-integrate'.
Unfortunately, in seeking to protect the integrity and reputation of her father, Anna Freud only held onto the 'classical psychoanalytic discrimination against women' about 40 years longer than she should have -- with Kurt Eissler being almost equally accountable... One of the symptoms of 'neurosis' is 'hanging onto the past -- to past ghosts and skeletons -- rather than leaving these ghosts and skeletons behind us in our past where they belong, not still haunting us in our present....Some memories are harder to leave behind than others, some ideas are harder to let go of than others but a hallmark of neurosis is being 'stuck in the past'...and not evolving in a healthier direction...
I am -- from a theoretical point of view anyway -- a 'Classical Psychoanalyst-Object Relationist-Traumacy-Memory-Reality-Fantasy-Impulse-Transference-Humanistic-Existential Theorist'.
I carry forward the best of Freud's theoretical ideas that are still very much alive and functionally useful today. I throw out his 'Patriarchal-Victorian-Cultural-Discrimination-Against-Women-and-Personally Narcissistic-Neurotic Ideas'...that 'zigged' when the broader scope of healthy life 'zagged' and which are no longer functionally useful today...
To this comprehensive, foundational Reality-Fantasy Classical Psychoanalysis -- I add my own and other brands of Object Relations, Self Psychology, and probably smaller elements of Bionian Psychoanalysis and/or Lacanian Psychoanalysis to go with my already existing Adlerian, Jungian, Humanistic-Existential, Transactional Analytic, Primal Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, and General Semantic-Cognitive-Emotional-Behavioral Therapy elements...
This multi-integrative theory will come together -- it already largely has. Masson said that he wished me luck -- believed me to be sincere and comprehensive in my ongoing effort -- but didn't think it would work. Without Masson, I wouldn't be here. Whether psychoanalysts want to acknowledge it or not, Masson has greatly influenced the direction and evolution of Psychoanalysis (with its regained respect for 'traumacy theory').
I applaud Psychoanalysis for the present direction it is taking -- at least in terms of Object Relations and Self Psychology which essentially 'resuscitated and rescued psychoanalysis from Freudian oblivion'. I believe that Classical Psychoanalysis can be resuscitated and rescued as well -- but not as Freud constructed it -- except in its 'entirety' from say, 1893 to 1939 -- leaving out the worst parts of what Freud constructed (as mentioned above).
Goodnight.
-- dgb, July 16, 17, 2012,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Creations...
-- Are Still in Process...
