Vol. 1, Ed. 1., Sept 3rd, 2013
Part 1
Is it better to 'philosophize with a hammer' -- Nietzsche ('Twilight of The Idols', 1889), Freud ('The Aetiology of Hysteria', 1896), Masson ('The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory', 1984, 85, 92)?
Or is it better to philosophize more diplomatically -- a 'compromise-formation' between saying what we want to say while at the same time 'couching' the way we say or write it.
To philosophize with a hammer -- or to philosophize with a diplomat's 'delicate tact'?
Politically, professionally, and/or personally, people may not be ready to hear what we have to say, may be attached or over-attached to their own paradigm of perspective, or, may simply, for narcissistic and/or righteous reasons, not want to hear what we are saying.
From our own perspective as a writer or speaker, there is the risk that if we state what we want to state too brazenly, too abruptly, too bluntly, too much 'hammer', not enough 'couching', we may completely put off the people we are addressing to the point that negative consequences can come back to hurt us in terms of derailing our professional career, our job, and our financial well-being.
Not always -- or even generally -- an easy choice.
Freud lectured to a group of professionals in the spring of 1896 with political clout over his career -- The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society -- on his newest paper entitled 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' -- a paper that centred on the very sensitive, and still very sensitive, issue of childhood sexual abuse. Freud believed at the time that instances of childhood sexual abuse were at the bottom of every case of hysteria that he had treated.
The Society certainly did not like that thesis, for reasons of either 'scientific disbelief' and/or just something that the fine doctors of Vienna did not want to hear at this point in time -- or more likely in my editorial opinion -- ever,
Obviously, therapists and clinical psychologist professionals today are much more aware of the existence and scary prevalence of childhood and adolescent sexual abuse -- but still, it is not a subject that most people are going to feel comfortable engaging in unless it is on some type of conference dedicated to this subject matter.
Well, Freud approached the topic on the night of April 21st, 1896 in front of The Vienna Society both with compassion for the victims he was talking about -- and, at the same time, also partly in a manner that can best be described as 'psychologizing with a hammer' that either shocked the medical doctors out of their seats, assuming that they were not prepared for Freud's thesis of that night (I don't know how many had any inkling of what was to come in the evening before the evening started), or if they were prepared, then they ambushed him rhetorically, sarcastically, ridiculingly with collusive pre-meditation, as opposed to ad-libbed spontaneity.
One way or the other, Freud got his ears filled with stinging remarks that night, and wrote to Fliess about it on April 26th, 1896. Wrote Freud:
'A lecture on the etiology of hysteria at the psychiatric society was given an icy reception by the asses and a strange evaluation by Krafft-Ebing: "It sounds like a scientific fairy tale." And this, after one has demonstrated to them the solution of a more than a thousand year old problem, a caput Nili (source of the Nile). They can go to hell, euphemistically expressed.' (The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904, p.184).
Well, Freud certainly did not 'lack moral courage' from April 21 to April 26th, 1896, based on both the essay that he read and wrote up at this time, or visa versa, that can still be found in the Standard Edition of Freud's Complete Works, and also at the back of Masson's 'The Assault on Truth; Freud Suppression of The Seduction Theory' (as his 'childhood sexual assault theory came to be called). Nor did Freud 'lack moral courage' up to his letter to Fliess on April 26th, 1896... But what about afterwards?
The trouble is, that Freud rarely talked or wrote about childhood sexual abuse with any kind of passion, righteousness, or substance after this meeting of April 21st, 1896. Or did he? Again, this question is not beyond contention. There were some passages in the Introductory Lectures of 1916 where Freud did not deny the existence of real childhood sexual abuse -- just not in the case of daughters relative to their fathers or step-fathers (where Freud believed that the Oedipus Complex Fantasy dominated -- i.e., the daughter's unconscious erotic fantasy towards her father distorted into what she believed was a 'real memory').
You could see this line of thinking, this line of logic, being applied to the Emma Ekstein case in the two letters of April 26th and May 4th, 1896, Freud was starting to apply his new, Fliess influenced, 'longing' theory -- worded otherwise, we can call this the beginning of Freud's 'fantasy theory'(the wrong case to start with) -- and by the fall of 1897, Freud first mentioned his idea of the Oedipus Complex theory -- which would start to greatly diminish the importance of Freud's pre-1897 triadic 'reality-trauma-seduction' theory' which would recede more and more into the background, indeed, largely disappearing out of existence to all major extents and purposes for the rest of Freud's career -- 1897 to 1939.
Wrote Freud in the 1916 Introductory Lectures, V. 16, p. 368 (and quoted by Masson in 'The Assault on Truth':
'The phantasies possess psychical as contrasted with material reality, and we gradually learn to understand that in the world of neuroses it is psychical reality which the decisive kind.'
Now, paradoxically and ironically, it can be asked: 'Whose 'psychic reality' is it anyway? -- the therapeutic client who states her memory of childhood sexual abuse as she remembers it?; or Freud as he 're-interprets' or 're-constructs' this memory and turns it into an 'Oedipal fantasy' (i.e., Freud's own interpretation of the daughter-client's unconscious erotic fantasy towards her father that she allegedly 'distorted' into a memory. This is where the concept of 'unconscious' can become very dangerous -- very easily reflecting the therapist's own psychical reality and projected onto the client in a manner that may actually 'violate' the client's own psychical -- and 'material reality', i.e., childhood sexual abuse history -- not 'clarify' and 'enlighten' the client of any 'erotic fantasy' towards her father). I just read this problem expressed this way.
One of the gravest dangers afflicting our culture in general and the field of mental health in particular is the assault on human subjectivity; the decreasing interest in honoring and valuing people's experience. In the craze to map the brain and prescribe pills for psychological disorders, the field of mental health is not only getting hijacked, it is losing its soul. (Jeffrey Rubin, Phd., Why Mental Health Is Losing Its Soul?)
By my standards, the Oedipus Complex does not have to be scrapped altogether but it most certainly should be re-defined. And it should never rule out the possibility of real childhood sexual abuse -- that is a case of putting the cart before the horse; not the horse before the cart.
Shame on Freud for forgetting -- or at least not properly applying -- the wisdom of one of his first mentors...
'Theory is good; but it doesn't prevent things from existing.' -- Charcot
It is very clear that Freud 'forgot' this piece of advice in the following passage taken from the 1916 Introductory Lectures, p. 370, and quoted by Masson in 'The Assault on Truth':
It was, and still is, a very, very unethical passage relative to Freud ruling out -- by theoretical assumption -- childhood sexual abuse in the case of female clients reporting childhood sexual incidents with their father which Freud 'automatically assumed' to be their unconscious 'Oedipus Complex Fantasy' at work.
'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 produced such an event in the story of their childhood their father figures fairly regularly as the seducer, there can be not doubt either of the imaginary nature of the accusation or of the motive that has led to it. A phantasy of being seduced when no seduction has occurred is usually employed by a child to screen the auto-erotic period of his sexual activity.' (Masson, The Assault on Truth, 1992, p. 196, Afterword).
At this point, things start to get much more complicated, analytically and Freud, I believe, had it partly right -- but not right enough.
The 'polar-twin' of this 'idealized, exciting image of each of our parents' (also identifiable as the 'good internal object' and subject to 'positive, sometimes, romantic and/or erotic transference-projective-perceptions from the child-adolescent-adult-client' onto the therapist or some other adult 'surrogate' of the idealized parent), is the 'bad, rejecting and rejected internal object' which can leave the surrogate therapist/analyst or other adult person subject to 'negative, hostile transference projective-perceptions from the child-adolescent-adult-client' (Freud, Klein, Fairbairn)
Thus, the Oedipus Complex should be treated as an 'ambivalent, love-hate, good-bad object, positive-negative transference' that again does not rule out the possible existence of any form of childhood trauma and/or abuse.
Which begs the question that Dr. Jeffrey Masson rhetorically started to ask in the early 1980s to both the Psychoanalytic Establishment and the public at large in lectures, interviews, magazine articles, and finally his book, 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory' (1984,85, 92) of this time period.
Did Freud 'lose moral courage' after the spring of 1896 regarding his professionally unaccepted and unwanted childhood sexual abuse theory?
Masson certainly believed -- and still believes -- that he did. And for the most part, so do I although I can also see elements of Freud's 'longing-fantasy' theory evolving from his work -- particularly his work in the area of dreams -- but perhaps also partly to try to absolve his and Fliess' culpability in the Emma Ekstein 'nasal surgery' of the spring of 1895 that was still bothering Freud in the spring of 1896 as Freud called Emma a 'hysterical bleeder' who essentially bled out of 'longing' to see her therapist -- i.e., Freud -- if or when he was otherwise unavailable. This theory of hysteria -- the beginning of his longing-fantasy theory in the spring of 1896 certainly smacks of 'narcissistic conflict of interest' -- and a personal-professional 'defence mechanism' on Freud's part (with Fliess' influencing help) -- perhaps intermixed with Freud's changing clinical beliefs at this time -- clinical factors and private narcissistic bias merging into Freud's 'new source of the Nile'...
Masson certainly didn't tread lightly over these very possible 'narcissistic biases' listed above -- the April 21st, 1896 Vienna Society meeting combined with with Freud's letter to Fliess of May 4th, 1896 where Freud stated to Fliess his belief that he was being 'professionally blackballed' by an absence of patient referrals from members of The Vienna Soceity; and the 1895-1896 Fliess-Freud-Emma Ekstein.medical fiasco where it certainly seemed that Freud was looking for a 'good enough reason' that could be used by Freud and Fliess to escape 'medical accountability' for Emma' ongoing 'bleeding problems' and eventually 'facial disfigurement'.
Whether justified or not, The Psychoanalytic Establishment certainly didn't like Masson's theory of 'Freud's loss of moral courage' in 1896, any more than the Vienna Society liked Freud's seduction theory back in the spring of 1896. Do we again point to 'narcissistic conflict of interest' as the main political and professional culprit here -- essentially no different in the spring and fall of 1981 than in the spring of 1896? I think that a strong case can be made here.
It was certainly a theory that neither Dr. Kurt Eissler (one of Freud's strongest loyalists) nor Anna Freud (certainly wanting to protect the legacy of her father's professional integrity) wanted to hear from Masson -- even if there was some potentially real substance to it -- anymore than The Vienna Society wanted to hear Freud's theory of childhood sexual abuse. And to be sure, Masson wasn't 'couching' his argument at all -- he was historically theorizing with a hammer. Not shockingly, to Masson's his psychoanalytic career self-destruction. Within a few months in the summer and fall of 1981, Masson didn't have his highly esteemed job as 'The Projects Director of The Freud Archives' any more. Shortly after, he was out of psychoanalysis altogether.
So I ask you once again, Is it better to philosophize and theorize with a hammer? Or should our statements be assertive without being 'hammer-like', or should they be even more 'gentle' but not ingratiating, say, like a 'therapeutic cushion'...
In the end, perhaps it comes down to a combination of 'value-priority' and 'context'-- our 'belief in truth' combined with the 'courage to say what we believe' vs. toning our assertions down somewhat for purposes of political, professional and economic self-preservation', and/or in another context, to not help send an 'unstable client' over the edge.
As I go through the early years of Freud's theorizing -- from 1893 to 1896 -- which I believe contain most of Freud's best theorizing -- his most down to earth, most common sense, most concretely reasoned theories, most 'reality-based' theories (given Freud's career long tendency to over-generalize and aim to be 'shockingly dramatic' in whatever his newest theory was) -- I want you to decide for yourself today, some 32 years after Masson split company with his psychoanalytic co-workers, whether you think Masson's argument of 'Freud losing moral courage' has any merit to it, or not?
Or whether you think Freud simply changed from one set of triadic theories (reality-trauma-seduction theory, up to say 1897) to (after 1896, childhood sexual fantasy-Oedipal Complex-impulse-desire-drive theory) because he believed that the 'clinical data' justified what he was doing?
And finally, is there any room for integration, synthesis, synergy here?
Or must this 1896-97 radical overhaul in theories -- and the Massonian-Psychoanalysis scandal of the 1980s -- forever end in 'either/or' impasse and, in effect, tragedy, although Masson has made a nice career for himself in the area of animal psychology in New Zealand.
Was anything learned from all that turmoil and rhetoric in the 1980s and early 1990s?
Has Psychoanalysis evolved at all from it?
I think they have. I think that they have become more 'comparative', more 'modern', and more integrative in terms of more easily 'moving in and out of the different 'sub-schools' of psychoanalysis?
However, through this all, there remains the question: Is 'Classical, Freudian Psychoanalysis' still a viable, meaningful, relevant 'sub-school' of Contemporary Psychoanalysis?
Or does it need to be archived and locked up in a museum at the Freud house in England, or elsewhere? Is it like the 'particle' theory in physics -- simply outdated, in and by itself. Or can Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis be modified, updated, and integrated, synthesized, synergized in the same way that the particle theory was eventually integrated with 'wavelength theory' -- and then evolved into 'quantum physics'...which itself may be starting to become outdated...
Thesis, counter-thesis, and synthesis...
Although not stated in exactly those words, that remains the main essence and substance today -- the main legacy -- of G.W. Hegel's 'dialectic logic and dialectic integration theory'.
One way or the other -- and you can decide as you may, if you have not already -- let me take you quickly through the years 1893 to 1896 and the factors that may or may not have played a part in such a major overhaul in supposedly 'opposing' sets of theories.
And that is the kicker for me -- the reason I have invested so much energy into this theoretical and historical problem.
For the question I have always asked myself, from the time I became involved in this controversy after learning who Masson was in the early 1990s, and what the controversy was all about, was and still remains this: Can the two theories be harmoniously integrated? Synthesized? Synergized?
With me being a self-labelled post-Hegelian, post-Nietzschean, post-Freudian, post-Adlerian, post-Gestaltian...post-everything-that-came-before-me...
I like to say that I don't belong to any one school of philosophy and/or psychology...and yet I partly belong to all of them...or at least those that have left a theoretical impact on me -- and my combined integrative work bears testimony to this.
Creative debate, negotiation, and integrative-synergetic interplay and solutions...
That is almost invariably my goal here in Hegel's Hotel...
And no different when it comes to the history, evolution, -- self-division and reintegration -- in Psychoanalysis...
When someone posits A and not B, or causality in one direction but not the other, turn things around and posit them the other way...
This is effectively what Freud did in 1896...
But I am not advocating 'cutting off your left hand' in order to 'start focusing on using your right hand'...
And then trying to argue that 'there was never any value in working with the left hand to to begin with'...
It takes two hands clappin', if you want a 'noise' to happen...
And likewise, 'reality-trauma-seduction theory needs fantasy-Oedipus (defined my way, not Freud's reductionistic way)-and-impulse-defense theory' in order to function effectively towards a 'wholistic' Neo-Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis...
Read all of Freud from 1893 to 1939 and make this a crucial part of your more integrative perspective; don't read a 'truncated, reductionistic' Freud from 1900 to 1939...
Theoretically and therapeutically, you have to be able to walk before you can either run or fly...
If you want to rule like 'Zeus', you need to be grounded, stabilized, and attached to 'Gaia' (Greek Goddess of Earth), 'Hera' (Goddess of Marriage and Family), and 'Hestia' (Goddess of hearth and home) first...
If we have no loving maternal role models in our earliest, most formative years...
Well, it is quite likely that we will be looking for these 'missing human role models' -- our own personal renditions of Gaia, Hera, and Hestia -- our whole lives, 'homeless' and 'ungrounded' inside our own minds and bodies...
Well, this is what Classical Psychoanalysis is like without what Freud wrote between 1893 and 1896...
Without 1893 to 1896 'Pre-Psychoanalysis', post 1897 Classical Psychoanalysis is a 'dissociated, neurotic' psychoanalysis.
And that is probably because of the two 'trauma neuroses' that Freud sustained in the spring of 1895 and 1896 consecutively and continually...the Emma Ekstein mishap in the spring of 1895, carrying over to the spring of 1896, and the 'rejecting doctors' of April 21st, 1896...
I call it a double case of personal 'Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder'...
Projected 'professionally' into Classical Psychoanalysis as a 'Colossal Defence Mechanism'...
If this is true, like I believe it to be true, then we need to 'undo' the neurosis by 'undoing the defence mechanism'...
And that means re-integrating Freud's earliest psychoanalytic work between 1893 and 1896 back into 'Classical' Psychoanalysis...
For the purpose of clarification, for the time being at least, I will call this 'Neo-Classical, Freudian Psychoanalysis'...
Let's re-visit 1893 to 1896....
And in addition to re-summarizing Freud's main thoughts in this time period...
I will add some of my own theoretical modifications, terminology, concepts, and theories...
Because what Freud did in 1923 -- i.e., create a structural, topographical and psycho-dynamic model of the personality in 'The Ego and The Id'...
He didn't do before 1897....
Building from 'The Ego and The Id'...
I will do it for him...
In fact, I am excited about the prospect of doing this...
I have started in this direction in previous essays...
But there is a new train coming...
Stay with me...
And jump on board for the ride!
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'It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions -- but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract 'either/or', and keeps to the concrete.' -- G.W. Hegel (1830, Shorter Logic)
'Life is the concept which realizes itself only through self-division and reunification.' -- G.W. Hegel (1830, Philosophy of Nature)
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-- dgb, Aug. 23rd, 26th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st, Sept. 3rd, Sept. 6th, 2013
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dream it! Go for it! Believe in yourself!
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations and Creations...
Are Still in Progress....
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