Psychoanalysis in The Context of Capitalism, Politics, Narcissism, and Ethics: My Most Recent Thoughts on The Seduction Theory Controversy As It Still Affects Psychoanalysis Today

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The essay that used to be here is gone -- a victim of my deleting mind and fingers.

It is not easy for a writer to always be able to convey everything he or she wants to convey on a certain subject manner, especially when some of these messages are -- or may seem to be -- dialectically opposed to each other, at odds with each other, a walking, talking contradiction to each other....almost 'flip-flopping'....

I have done my share of flip-flopping as I have tried to make some sort of coherent, logical sense of Freud's own post-1896 'flip-flopping' from his previous 'Reality-Traumacy-Childhood Sexual Abuse (Seduction) Theory on the one hand to his 'Fantasy-Oedipal-(It's-In-His/Her-Imagination)-Impulsive-Instinct' Theory on the other hand....

How many times in the past have we heard a man defend himself against sexual assault charges using a defense like this, or she 'consented' to it, or she 'instigated' it...That is not to say that a woman cannot have her own 'narcissistic agenda' going on, and/or purposely or non-purposely 'distort' historical experiences, memories, etc. But Freud was a smart enough man to be alert to both or either possibility and not try to 'reduce' human behavior to a choice between two 'theoretical extremes': 1. either the father sexually assaulted the daughter (before 1896); and/or 2. the daughter 'wished' or 'longed' to be 'seduced' by the father -- either consciously or unconsciously, and usually unconsciously -- and it never happened in reality (after 1896).

Psychoanalysts -- or rather most 'Classically trained' psychoanalysts -- have tried to argue for over a hundred years that Freud was 'justified' in 'abandoning' his 'Seduction Theory' (which is another name for his 'Childhood Sexual Assault' Theory) in favor of his 'The daughter wanted to be seduced by her father' theory, i.e., his 'Oedipal Complex Theory'....

Nobody here -- most notably me -- is denying that human thoughts and emotions and impulses can't be paradoxical and contradictory the deeper we delve into anyone's personality. I have found through my life experience that human paradox and contradiction is the rule in human behavior -- even if there is a 'dominant, visible side' (our 'Public Personna Ego) and a 'suppressed or repressed invisible side' (our 'Conscious or Unconscious, Private Shadow Ego). But no concept in Psychoanalysis should 'pre-direct' and 'prejudice' an analyst into believing that all memories of reported childhood sexual assault cited by a daughter, a son, whoever -- should necessarily, by ironclad (over-generalization), be 're-interpreted' as a 'I wanted him to seduce me Oedipal fantasy'.

This, to me, is Psychoanalytic Blasphemy. Pathology. Corruption. It is Freud's own 'Scientific Fairy Tale'. Freud's own 'Identification With The Aggressor (The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society) in The Process of his own Ego-Defense'. Freud essentially 'betrayed' his female patients in order to 'appease' The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society.

Thus, in defense of Dr. Jeffrey Masson, I support his claim that, after 1896, 'Freud lost moral courage' -- even though neither of us can claim that we can completely get inside his head except through what Freud himself wrote in his letters to Fliess, and some of these letters were and still are pretty 'character damaging'.

 Now, on a personal note, I do not want to see my 'Psychoanalytic advertisers' disappear on me because I just 'launched another wrecking ball at The House that Freud Built -- and 'Freud's Wall'. Like 'The Jericho Wall'.

What I do want to see is plain and simple.

I want to see the use of 'The Oedipal Complex' the way that Freud taught it -- disappear off the face of the planet. In the famous words of David Hume (used in a more abstract but similar context) , 'Commit it to flames!'

Then, I will go one step further than Masson did.

I will advance -- as I already partly have in previous papers -- a 'dialectical-integrative-bi-lateral-bi-polar' as opposed to 'unilateral' theory that I will call 'The Paradoxical Traumacy-Fantasy Theory'.

The logic behind this 'bilateral theory' is very simple: People invent 'Compensatory Ego Fantasies' in order to 'alleviate', 'compensate for', 'defend against', 'conquer'....their deepest 'narcissistic injuries' and/or 'ego traumacies'.

By this way of thinking, Freud was 'half right' before 1897, and 'half right' after 1896. This theory on my part doesn't in anyway mitigate my belief that Freud was motivated by 'functional conveniences' and 'narcissistic biases' in his changeover from Traumacy-Seduction Theory to Fantasy-Oedipal Theory.

Freud, in this context, was a 'unilateral, one-sided, either/or, black or white, Aristolean thinker.

I am a 'bi-lateral, bi-polar, dialectical, Hegelian thinker'.

The advantage of the latter type of thinking can perhaps best be described in this fashion.

'Oxygen' has both a 'life force' and a 'death force'. It both keeps us alive -- and it eventually 'kills us' through the 'side effect process' of 'oxidation'.

'Anti-oxidants' can help to keep us alive longer -- by reducing the effects of the pathological, toxic, oxidation which 'kills live, healthy cells'.

Well, in the same manner, 'the anti-oxidant' for the traumacy theory is the fantasy theory and visa versa as long as both are used properly in the context of a client's life history, and both are 'theoretically and therapeutically used at their proper times'.

If the client's life has 'zagged' with a very traumatic, real childhood memory or memories of sexual assault, it behooves the therapist not to be 'locked in with a pit bull bite' to The Oedipal Complex Theory which would be highly inappropriate and/or pathological to the situation at hand. Grossly unethical, I would call it. None of us can know for sure what happened or didn't happen in a young girls' or boy's life but one of the worst things that can happen to a young girl or young boy should not be 'overlooked' because of some, more than one century old, one-sided, Victorian, Patriarchal, Chauvinistic, Masculine-Narcissistic-Biased, theoretical assumption.

If someone tries to tell me that Freud was not smart enough to know that he had seen and felt the 'horror and anguish' of a woman in therapy either reciting -- or 'repetitively re-enacting in some genuine way' a childhood sexual assault -- and that this 'horror and anguish' was real, not contrived -- well, I would laugh sarcastically, and say, well, I guess Freud was not a very smart man after all, if he could 'flip-flop' and so easily 'repress' such a horrifically serious matter. Instead, I will side with Masson -- Freud 'morally caved' to The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society in order to professionally appease  them and not to go around ranting anymore about 'scientific fairy tales' of childhood sexual abuse.

The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society didn't actually mind 'scientific fairy tales' -- as long as they weren't about 'fathers sexually molesting their daughters'.

That is why they were 'quiet as a mouse' when Freud invented 'The Oedipal Complex'.

Because, now it was 'all in the little girl's imagination'.

Where have we heard that before?

And how many of us haven't 'appeased our corporate bosses' in order to protect our jobs, our careers, and or our 'good standing' within the corporation we work for? That's called 'Narcissistic-Self-Survival, Capitalism'.

Friends, Romans, and Countrymen, 

I come here to both praise Freud -- and to bury him. 

Or at least to bury The Oedipal Complex the way he taught us to believe that it was true...

Below, from The Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, 1916, V. 16, p. 370....

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"Phantasies of being seduced are of particular interest, because so often they are not phantasies

but real memories.  Fortunately, however, they are nevertheless not real as
often as seemed at first to be shown by the findings of analysis.  Seduction
by an older child or by one of the same age is even more frequent than by an
adult; and if in the case of girls who produce such an event in the story of
their childhood their father figures fairly regularly as the seducer, there
can be no doubt either of the imaginary nature of the accusation or the
motive that has led to it."  (emphasis mine.)

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Masson lost his job and his career trying to defend the rights of female patients within the context of The Psychoanalytic Therapy Room.

And to this day, not a female psychoanalyst -- nor even the women's movement as a whole -- has risen up to defend Masson in public, and/or to pay tribute for what he, at the time, unsuccessfully tried to do -- i.e., make sure that psychoanalysts were not 'prejudicially dismissing' real memories of childhood sexual assaults and 're-interpreting' them as 'Oedipal fantasies'.

Freud was no Spinoza or Martin Luther King. He 'jumped boats' midstream from the one that wasn't 'floating' to the one that 'would float' -- at least among the members of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society.

Is it that The Psychoanalytic Establishment still cannot figure this one out? Or they just don't want to admit that it happened? I vote the latter.

'Traumacy Theory' is back in vogue among psychoanalysts.

I believe Dr. Jeffrey Masson should be accredited for this.

As much as no one in any Psychoanalytic Institute will admit it.

'The times, they are a changin'...

That is a good thing in this context...

I believe the old 'Classical' theorists and therapists are a dying breed...

At least the most extremely patriarch among them...

I have no problem calling myself a 'Post-Classical and Object Relations Theorist'....

Dialectic integration is the way of the future...

Stay tuned....and I will show you the way...

At least my own way...

Updating an old essay of mine, 'The First True Case of Psychoanalysis'...

And using my newest model of the human psyche...

I will interpret Freud's first conscious memory...

In a way that employs my own rendition of modified, Classical Psychoanalysis, Object Relations, and Adlerian Psychology...

My 30 plus year investigation into the 'phenomenon and theory of transference' will lead us to a new...

'DGB 21st Century Dynamics of Transference'...

In this -- Freud's 100th anniversary of the original 'The Dynamics of Transference' (1912)...

One of Freud's classic papers....

And the concept that I believe is 'The Real Foundation of Psychoanalysis' (i.e., 'transference'; not 'repression').

Til then,

Good night,

-- dgb, October 6, 2012...

-- David Gordon Bain


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All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. 
Thomas Jefferson 
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_jefferson.html#IZo0DmtqAbwYFWvf.99

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New Developments In The DGB 'Integrative Psychoanalytic' Model of The Personality

Updated Sept 27.....dgb


I'm going to bring my model of the personality back a little closer to Freud's classical model as he was developing it between 1920 and 1923. Included in my rendition, however, are some of Freud's earliest thoughts on traumacy theory (1893-1896), and his later mid period thoughts, concepts, theories, (1905-1915) on primary and secondary process, transference, narcissism... 

Two differences between my brand of thinking and Freud's are: 1. I am more of a 'dialectic interactive-integrative thinker' than Freud who, by distinction, was more of an 'either/or dualistic or reductionist theorist'. For Freud, it was basically either 'you understand it my way -- or you are not a psychoanalyst'. This was partly in his right as he was the original creator of psychoanalysis, but still, his 'theoretical reductionism' stifled and stagnated much potential evolutionary growth; and 2. I prefer the term/concept of 'dissociation' as opposed to 'repression'. Thus, there can be 'unconscious, preconscious or conscious dissociation' -- which may or may not be 'purposeful ego-defenses' -- they may or may not be simply 'cognitive un-awarenesses'; whereas there can only be one type of repression -- 'unconscious repression' which is basically, by Freud's definition, 'purposeful, unconscious repression'. 

As I have mentioned in a previous paper, I would have been fine differentiating between -- but still including as Psychoanalysis: 1. Freud's Classical Psychoanalysis; 2. Rank's 'Birth Trauma' and 'Creative' Psychoanalysis; 3. Abraham's 'Pre-Oedipal' Psychoanalysis; 4. Adler's 'Inferiority and Superiority Complex' Psychoanalysis; and 5. Jung's 'Mythological' Psychoanalysis; 6. Wilhelm Reich's 'Character Armour' Psychoanalysis; as well as 7. Klein's Object Relations; 8. Fairbairn's ('Rejecting' vs. 'Exciting') Object Relations; 9. Winnicott-Guntrip's 'Good Enough Mothering' Psychoanalysis; 10. Kohut's Self (Narcissistic) Psychoanalysis; 11. Lacan's (Linguistic-Semantic?) Psychoanalysis; 12. Bion's 'Alpha'/'Beta' Psychoanalysis; and 13. Horney's 'Basic Needs' Psychoanalysis; 14. Fromm's'Marxist-Socialist' Humanistic-Existentiial Psychoanalysis; and 15. Perls' Gestalt Therapy-Psychoanalysis -- without the 'analysis'....'let go of your mind and come to your senses'...16. Berne's 'Tranactional' (Psycho)Analysis; 17. Janov's 'Primal Scream' (Psychoanalysis)...18. General Semantics and Cognitive-(Behavior) Therapy; 19. Maxwell Maltz's and then 20. Nathaniel Branden's 'Self-Esteem' Therapy; 21. Abraham Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs' Humanistic Psychology....

Whoever I have missed has not sufficently influenced me to this date...Sullivan and Erickson, for example, and/or whoever I am still unfamiliar with...or just plain forgotten...22. Carl Rogers 'Client-Centered' or 'Congruence' Psychotherapy; 23. Rollo May's 'Existential Psychotherapy and 24. Victor Frankl's 'Logotherapy'... 

This sets up 25. 'GAP-DGB Multi-Dialectic (or Quantum), Humanistic-Existential Psychoanalysis and/or Philosophy-Psychology'. 


The model itself has changed again, which I will give my reasons for shortly...

From top to bottom the model looks like this...


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The Latest GAP-DGB Model of The Personality 

A/ Ego States

i) Adult Superego States

1. The Nurturing-Altruistic Superego;
2. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Superego;
3. The Distancing Superego;
4. The Righteous-Critical Superego

ii) Adult Ego States

5. The Conscious Private-Shadow Ego;
6. The Central, Decision-Making Ego;
7. The Public-Persona Ego;
8. The Romantic-Spiritual Ego;

iii) Stereotyped Childhood Under-ego States

09. The Nurturing-Altruistic (Approval-Seeking/Disapproval-Avoiding, Compliant, Pleasing) Under-ego;
10. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Underego;
11. The Distancing Under-ego;
12. The Righteous-Critical Under-ego;

B/ Mainly Pre-Conscious/Subconscious/Unconscious Elements

13. The Dream-(Fantasy-Nightmare-Creative) Process (Symbolic Existential Statements, Impulses, Fears...)

14. The Shadow-Id-Ego Sanctuary (Compensatory Safety and Pleasure Centers, 'The Elusive, Secondary Womb-Sanctuary);

15. 'Released' or 'Escaped' Shadow-Id-Ego-Superego Elements;

16. The Shadow-Id-Ego-Superego Vault (Holder of Perceived Dangerous or Unbearable Ideas, 'Dominating' vs. 'Suppressed'/Submissive' Contradictory Impulses... );

 17. The Evolving Shadow-Id-Ego-Superego and Romantic-Spiritual-Sensory Center (Before 'Splitting');

18. The Anxiety-Provoking-Chaotic-Apeiron-Nietzschean-Abyss-With-Evolving Contradictory-Paradoxical-Id-Ego-Superego Elements (The Birth of Existential Tragedies and Unresolved Life Paradoxes... Apollo vs. Dionysus, yin vs. yang, passivity vs. activity, life vs. death, narcissism vs. altruism, estrogen vs. testosterone, superego vs. underego, topdog vs. underdog, Gods vs. humans, perfection vs. imperfection, unity vs. separation, love vs. hate, anxiety vs. anger, creativity vs. aggression, mania vs. depression, superiority complexes vs. inferiority complexes....);

19. Life Experiences, Evolving Memory Templates, and Obsessive-Compulsive-Serial Repetition, Transference Templates and Complexes

20. The Primary Womb-Sanctuary;

21. The Genetic-Existential Potential Self.


This is my modified, revised, extended rendition of Freud's 1920 classic essay, 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' and his 1923 classic essay, 'The Ego and The Id'. 

Without the meat and potatoes of Freud's 'wonderful prose'...

My prose here consists of just the bare bones, just the bare bones...

Some of the particulars, we have addressed in past essays such as my distinction between Freud's concept of the Id and my more 'holistic' concept of the Shadow-Id-Ego-(Superego). 

Remember, if you can recall reading this, that Freud argued that 'the Ego was born from the Id'. (I will have to dig out the quote -- probably from 1923, 'The Ego and The Id' and/or from 'The New Introductory Lectures' (1932-1936). According to Freud, the newborn baby is all 'narcissism, all hedonism, all pleasure-seeking'. I understand where Freud is coming from in that statement but it is still a one-sided approach to the philosophy-psychology of the newborn infant. It can be just as easily argued that the newborn infant is crying for his or her own safety, own survival...and that maternal nurturing and maternal nourishment in the form of 'touch' and 'milk' are not only pleasurable -- they are also essential to the newborn baby's survival, and healthy survival. Thus, Freud's distinction between the 'pleasure principle' and the 'reality principle' or 'the survival instinct' (also discussed as the distinction between the 'pleasure instincts' and the 'ego instincts') -- is at least partly a non-starting philosophical assumption, especially if you are a dialectic thinker. Because Freud is over-looking -- dissociating himself and his psychology from -- 'the dialectical interaction and integrative connection between the pleasure-unpleasure principle and the reality or survival principle'. 

Furthermore, since historically, Freud's -- or rather Fichte's -- concept of 'the ego' goes much further back in Western history than Freud's 1923 concept of 'the id', and since 'the ego' is another word for 'the self' or 'The Self' -- or at least it was before Freud started to give it a stricter meaning -- the question must be asked, 'What is the Id if it is not part of the Self, or alternatively speaking, a part of 'the Ego' -- the 'Wholistic Ego'. The Id -- in German -- means 'the It' -- or existentially speaking, 'The Alien' -- as in a 'creature' or a 'brain' within us that is by definition, 'alienated' from us, foreign to us, dissociated from us...

Colloquially and partly jokingly (partly not), we often speak of 'having two brains' -- one above the neck, and one below the waist. When Freud wrote 'Civilization and its Discontents', Freud had in mind the general 'tension', 'disharmony', and/or 'disconnect' between our 'civil' (ego and superego functions) and 'uncivil' (id functions) selves -- between that part of ourselves that wants live safely in society, and that part which wants to 'defy' and 'rebel' against society's laws, rules, moral, ethics, in the interests of satisfying our more basic, uncivil, biological, narcissistic instincts, drives, impulses...

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Civilization and Its Discontents

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Civilization and Its Discontents
1930s Front cover german edition
Author(s)	Sigmund Freud
Country	Austria
Language	German
Subject(s)	Political philosophy
Genre(s)	Nonfiction
Publisher	Verlag
Publication date	1930
Media type	Print
Pages	127
ISBN	978-0-393-30158-8
Preceded by	The Future of an Illusion
Followed by	Moses and Monotheism

Civilization and Its Discontents is a book by Sigmund Freud. Written in 1929, and first published in German in 1930 as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur ("The Uneasiness in Culture"). It is considered one of Freud's most important and widely read works.^[1]

Contents   [hide]  1 Overview 2 Synopsis 3 Historical context 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit]Overview

In this seminal book, Sigmund Freud enumerates what he sees as the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. The primary friction, he asserts, stems from the individual's quest for instinctual freedom and civilization's contrary demand for conformity and instinctual repression. Many of humankind's primitive instincts (for example, the desire to kill and the insatiable craving for sexual gratification) are clearly harmful to the well-being of a human community. As a result, civilization creates laws that prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and it implements severe punishments if such rules are broken. This process, argues Freud, is an inherent quality of civilization that instills perpetual feelings of discontent in its citizens.

Freud's theory is based on the notion that humans have certain characteristic instincts that are immutable. Most notable are the desires for sex, and the predisposition to violent aggression towards authority figures and towards sexual competitors, which both obstruct the gratification of a person's instincts.

[edit]

Freud's basic premise about the conflict between the individual's 'instinctual tensions' and his or her 'moral-ethical-civil' choices...but still, there are other ways of linguistically and/or semantically making the same point without introducing the concept of 'the id' as being something 'dissociated' from the rest of the personality, which may or may not be the case. 

A distinction can be made between 'The Dionysian or Narcissistic or Hedonistic or Pleasure Ego' and contradistinctively, 'The Apollonian Righteous Ego' without having to step outside the boundaries of 'the ego' -- or 'The Whole Ego-Self'. Freud, in fact, did this in 1914, nine years before he created the concept of 'The Id'. Freud could have even created the concept of 'The Idian (Dionysian-Hedonistic-Narcissistic-Pleasure) Ego', and not 'leaped outside' of the parameters of 'the ego' as in 'Whole Self'. 'The Id' is most definitely a part of The Whole Self, and some people identify much more easily with their 'Idian or Narcissistic Ego' than others do...The idea in GAP-DGB Psychoanalysis is that 'the id is a part of the ego, and the ego is a part of the id, and sometimes they work in harmony with each other, sometimes they don't.' 

Thus, the whole idea of 'The Shadow-Id-Ego' is that there is an essential part of the whole personality -- in fact, all of it -- that originates in 'Chaos', 'The Apeiron', 'The Shadows', 'Traumacy and Compensatory Impulsive Drive', that 'splits' into either 'the ego' and 'the id' or worded better, in my opinion, 'The Idian (or Idian-Dionysian-Narcissistic-Hedonistic-Pleasure) Ego' and 'The Apollonian, Civil, Righteous Ego', and moves upwards towards the light or darkness of day, the light or darkness of the personality, depending on the individual 'loving or hating' contents of the personality, its positive, caring, and/or negative, toxic contents of the personality...

Tracing this 'snakes' and 'ladders' movement of the various 'vicissitudes' of The Idian-Dionysian Ego vs. The Apollonian-Righteous Ego, as they work either in harmony and/or in conflict with each other, up and down the 'conscious-subconscious spectrum' and through the 'association-dissociation spectrum' is the job of a good psychoanalyst...   

And that is where I will leave you today.


Next up -- my modified, extended, revised edition of another of Freud's classic essays, 'Dynamics of The Transference' (1912). 

-- dgb, Sept. 15-16, 2012....

-- David Gordon Bain 

Towards An Integrative Traumacy-Fantasy Theory of Neurosis

Ladies and Gentlemen,


I am not going to beat around the bush here -- my editorial opinions are well documented in many of my previous essays on this subject matter: Freud messed up big time between 1895 and 1897 when he proceeded to reject all of his work -- at least all of his work on traumacy and seduction -- that he had built up previously between 1893 and 1896. There are some precious essays in this time period that Freud wrote that even today make up much of the foundational groundwork for not only modern day Psychoanalysis, but also, most of the other major schools of psychology and psychotherapy as well.

You cannot talk Psychoanalysis without talking 'traumacy' -- and somehow, Freud, in a shocking repudiation of all his hard-earned, clinically supported work between 1893 and 1896, thought you could -- by changing the conversation from 'repressed childhood sexual traumacy and/or abuse' to 'repressed childhood sexual instinct and fantasy'.

One common denominator was left behind after 1896 and that was Freud's concept and theory of 'repression' which Freud viewed as the most important foundational pillar of Psychoanalysis. According to Freud, if you weren't talking about the psychology of repression, then you weren't talking about Psychoanalysis. This became one of the main divisionary chasms between the psychology of Freud and the psychology of Alfred Adler (Adlerian Psychology) who went on to emphasize the psychology of consciousness, unity in the personality, lifestyle, inferiority and superiority feelings and complexes, and the psychology of self-esteem, as opposed to the psychology of sexual instincts, drives, and fantasies.

If I be so bold as to call myself a 'psychoanalytic thinker' -- even though I lack the accreditation to be called a 'psychoanalyst' -- then, I would certainly call myself a 'Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic' thinker or a 'GAP' thinker or a 'GAP-DGB' thinker meaning that I seek to 'Dialectically Bridge The GAP' between Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, and Psychoanalysis (meaning all three of Classical Psychoanalysis, Object Relations, and Self-Psychology...and beyond...Bion, Lacan...).

More than anything, I want to re-build and extend the assumptive theoretical foundations of Classical Psychoanalysis in a manner that makes Classical Psychoanalysis 'relevant' again -- and not a 'Victorian Dinosaur or Anachronism' -- I want 'a freshly renovated version of Pre-Classical and Classical Psychoanalysis fused together with Object Relations and Self-Psychology -- ready for clinical usage today and until any further changes in clinical findings justify any further changes in the 21st century. Everything is always subject to change. ('You don't step into the same river twice.' -- Heraclitus)

Now, the model that I am in the process of creating here is a much larger, more integrative model of Psychoanalysis than the one that Freud created.


I am the multi-integrative-dialectical theorist who builds theories, models, and metaphorical bridges for the challenge of it -- and aims to synthesize and synergize the 'Classical Nihilists' with the 'Classical Introjectors'.


Do you want to see Classical Psychoanalysis molding and rotting in a 'Dark Victorian Closet' somewhere, or do you want to see Classical Psychoanalysis come existentially alive in a fashion that takes into account objections to Freud's 'Narcissistically Male (Patriarchal) and Victorian Biased' work, updates and expands Object Relations, Self Psychology, and is in the process of radically revising Freud's Theory of Transference.

More than anything, I want to switch the focus of our attention in the study of psychoanalysis from the focal point of 'repression' to the focal point of 'transference' and 'transference obsessive-compulsion complexes and/or disorders' (TOCC/Ds). If I wish to write about anything related to 'repression', then it will be about those 'repressions' that are hidden within the confines of our conscious/pre-conscious early childhood memories that stunt our self-awareness growth if we are always looking for completely unconscious, repressed memories and/or fantasies. 

In this regard, I wish to switch the focus of attention from allegedly 'unimportant conscious screen memories' to 'hugely important conscious transference memories'...of which...

Freud's own early childhood memory of 'busting into his parents' bedroom while they were having sex together' becomes 'the prototypical, flagship example' of what I am talking about in this context.... 

In this respect -- for those psychoanalysts and/or other students/teachers of clinical psychology who have the courage and open-mindedness to follow me in the direction I am about to take you -- what we are talking about here is essentially another potential 'revolution in psychoanalysis'. 

For simplicity's sake -- and I know I am probably missing a few important names and 'revolutions in psychoanalysis' here (and I am not including all the 'post' and 'neo' Freudians like Adler, Horney, Fromm, Sullivan, Erickson, et al) -- let us say that there have been six major revolutions in Psychoanalysis so far: 1. Freud's 'Traumacy and Seduction Theories' or 'Pre-Classical Psychoanalysis'; 2. Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis; 3. Object Relations (Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip, et al...); 4. Kohutian Self Psychology (extending Freud's theory of 'narcissism'); 5. Bionian Psychoanalysis (based partly or mainly on the concept of 'pre-conceptual trauma'); 6. Lacanian Psychoanalysis (which I do not know enough about at this point in time to intelligently comment on... 

It should be further noted that Jeffrey Masson created a partly successful, partly unsuccessful revolution of his own, that challenged psychoanalysts to return to Freud's 'Pre-Psychoanalytic Traumacy-Seduction Theory' that, in his mind, was superior -- i.e., more 'reality based' and 'clinically relevant' -- than Freud's post-1896-97 'Instinct-Fantasy Theory'. 

I don't think it is any coincidence that there is a substantial 're-appreciation' of traumacy theory' in Psychoanalysis today, based in my opinion, on Masson's important albeit controversial work -- and personal 'martyrdom' in costing his own career in Psychoanalysis. 

I largely concur with Masson in his core historical opinions, but seek to 'bridge the gap' between Freud's pre-1897 and post-1896 'reality' vs. 'fantasy' psychoanalytic viewpoints. Those who insist that the 'choice' is between Freud's reality-based 'Traumacy and Seduction (Sexual Trauma) Theories' and his later 'Sexual Instinct and Sexual Fantasy Theories -- including Freud himself -- are missing the main point: There is no person alive who I know of who has not suffered from some form of 'early childhood trauma', and there is no person alive who I know who has not partaken in some form of 'sexual fantasy'. Any nay-Sayers? 

This is not an 'either/or' choice -- or at least it does not have to be. Indeed, the challenge of Psychoanalysis is to more fully recognize the paradoxical nature of 'the fusion between early childhood trauma and later, evolving childhood, teenage, and adult sexual fantasy -- as well as 'sublimation' and more general 'narcissistic' and/or 'altruistic career fantasies that can be linked to the original childhood traumacy... 

Now, again, if I be so 'narcissistically bold', and based on the classification system above, I would call my own work right here 'a seventh major revolution in Psychoanalytic Theory' -- from a man who is not an accredited psychoanalyst, who has spent the last 10 to 20 years learning psychoanalysis in the confines of his own bedroom-office here, with Strachey's 24 volume Standard Edition of The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud sitting on a bookcase right behind my head here, along with other 'classic' -- in the broader sense of the word -- psychoanalytic -- and non-psychoanalytic -- works. 

Basically, I am content to say, that somewhat like Dostoevsky before me -- but of course differently, I write 'Notes From The (Psychoanalytic) Underground'....

And that is where I will leave you in Part 1 of what I hope will be a  'seventh potential major revolution' in psychoanalysis...

Have a good evening!

-- dgb, Sept 4, 2012

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations and Creations...

-- Are Still in Process...

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Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Read more athttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/fyodor_dostoevsky.html#4R9mgbAq4TACb1Gm.99

What is a 'Philosopher-Pantheist-Mythologist-Psychologist'? and What is 'The Holy Spiritual Quintrinity'? 'The Holy Sepritinity'?

Let's start with the first question. We are all philosophers -- philosophers of life -- either consciously, and in a focused, formal or informal manner, or more subconsciously without us being aware that we are making generalizations about life, man, and mind....

A pantheist is a person who believes that God -- or our Creator -- is in all things, all parts of life, all structures and processes in life.

Now, most of us know what the 'Holy Trinity' is -- God, Jesus, and The Holy Spirit. 

If you believe in pantheism -- like I do -- then it becomes a pretty easy stretch of logic to include man -- and indeed all living things -- within The Holy Trinity. Or actually, to make The Holy Trinity -- bigger.

That is where I arrive at 'The Holy Quintrinity' -- God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, I, and Thou. 

And/or, bringing in a full Martin Buber (and later Gestalt-Existential) influence: 'The Holy Septrinity' -- God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, I and Thou, Here and Now. 

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Martin Buber (Hebrew: מרטין בובר‎; February 8, 1878 – June 13, 1965) was an Austrian-bornIsraeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship.^[1] Born in Vienna, Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies inphilosophy. In 1902, Buber became the editor of the weekly Die Welt, the central organ of the Zionist movement, although he later withdrew from organizational work in Zionism. In 1923 Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und Du (later translated into English as I and Thou), and in 1925 he began translating the Hebrew Bible into the German language.

In 1930 Buber became an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main, and resigned in protest from his professorship immediately after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. He then founded the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education, which became an increasingly important body as the German government forbade Jews to attend public education. In 1938, Buber left Germany and settled in Jerusalem, Mandate Palestine (later Israel), receiving a professorship atHebrew University and lecturing in anthropology and introductory sociology.

Buber's wife Paula died in 1958, and he died at his home in the Talbiyeh neighborhood of Jerusalem on June 13, 1965.

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A 'mythologist-psychologist' -- interprets dreams, fantasies, symbols -- and our 'projections' -- which include our external projections into mythological figures, Gods, heroes, villains...and our 'internalizations' or 'introjections' of these mythological external projections in the form of internal 'archetype figures and stories'. Thus, in 'God' and 'Jesus Christ', we are looking for projections of our own 'self-ideals' that can then be contrasted against our 'self-image'. The 'gap' between 'self-ideal' and 'self-image' can then be psycho-therapeutically work on....seeking better self-integration....


In an 'I' and 'Thou' encounter, once we have let down all or most of our 'character armour', and we are showing 'congruence' between our 'outer persona' and our 'inner self', we become capable of touching our 'inner Holy Spirit' -- our 'Godliness' or 'Spirit of God' -- and likewise when we are sharing in this type of manner with another person who is doing the same -- thus, creating a situation where we are both 'sharing our mutual and dialectical Godliness' in a manner that 'enters' us into 'The Holy Quintrinity' or 'Holy Septrinity' -- God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, I and Thou, Here and Now....


That is the type of 'ideal religion or spirituality' that appeals to me, and is a spiritual extension of all my work. It is also my post-Hegelian rendition and humanistic-existential extension of what Hegel called 'The Absolute'.

And it is also an extension of Plato's famous mandate:

Know thyself. 

And more than this -- experience yourself spiritually both in terms of being who you are, and becoming who you can be. -- dgb, Sept 1, 2012. 

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations and Creations...

-- Are Still in Process....