Updated, April 7th, 2014
I will not stop, I will not rest,
Until Chaos and Order,
Dionysus and Apollo,
Diogenes and Alexander the Great,
Plato and Aristotle,
Science and Art,
Science and Spirituality,
The Enlightenment and The Romantic Movement,
Hegel and Schopenhauer,
Hegel and Kierkegaard,
Hegel and Nietzsche,
The Phenomenology of Spirit and The Birth of Tragedy,
Construction(ism) and Deconstruction(ism),
Deconstruction(ism) and Reconstruction(ism),
Thesis and Anti-thesis,
Breuer and Freud,
Freud and Adler,
Freud and Jung,
Anna Freud and Melanie Klein,
Masson and Anna Freud,
Masson and Eissler,
Masson and Sigmund Freud,
Masson and The Psychoanalytic Establishment,
Can dance together again in Hegel's Hotel,
My metaphysical and hopefully one day physical....
Meeting place of convergent and divergent, integrative minds and spirits,
Looking for that special homeostatic-dialectic balance...
Between Unity and Individuality...
Between Idea and Counter-Idea...
Without becoming defensive, scared, angry, righteously blinded...
By what challenges our most personal values...
We need a 'Phenomenology of Spirit'...
That challenges our spirit...
That challenges our hearts and minds...
To look at life through an opposite perspective, an opposite paradigm...
A philosophical-psychological box outside of our philosophical box...
A Place of Dialogue and Debate For The Integration-Seeking, Harmonizing, Balancing,,
Synthesizing and Synergizing Spirit --
Personally, the lifeblood of my soul.
Ah, but it is so easy to look at life through our own eyes...
But through an other's eyes...
That is more challenging....
'Seek first to understand, then to be understood,
Stephen Covey wrote that...
Inside 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People'...
Similarly, I seek synergy inside...
Hegel's Hotel....
Where (A More Liberal-Minded) Masson and Any Liberal-Minded Psychoanalyst...
Might Walk Into the Same Lobby....
And contemplate the possibility of an integration...
Between Freudian Trauma...
And Freudian Fantasy Theory...
Both partly representing the intricacies...
The convergences and divergences of the human mind...
A dialectic trauma-fantasy theory that synthesizes black and white in that middle zone of gray....
But more than this,
A 'Thesis-Anti-Thesis-Synthesis' Hotel,
Where opposing theorists
Can enter with the willingness and open-mindedness to be ready to think...
Both inside and outside their own theoretical box...
And not go ballistic when someone disagrees with them...
Or presents something so uniquely unorthodox and new....
As to take a wrecking ball to everything that we have previously learned...
A theory is a representation of reality that can be changed...
Or modified...
In a single moment's change of outlook....
Superseded by a better theory...
Often, an imaginative, integrative theory...
That bridges two opposing theories in the middle...
Like the 'particle-wavelength dialectic theory'...
Splitting the difference between particle theory and wavelength theory...
And productively leading to 'Quantum Physics and Mechanics'....
So too will the intercourse....
Of Freud's Bipolar Trauma and Fantasy Theories...
Lead to the genetics....
Of what I will call 'Greater Classical Psychoanalysis....
Or integrate again, say between Greater Classical Psychoanalysis, Object Relations, and Self Psychology...
And now we have a 'Quantum Leap for Psychoanalysis..'...
Or what I will call...'Quantum' Psychoanalysis...
When opposing ideas, theories, perspectives, paradigms...
Metaphorically writing...
Copulate....(how Freudian!)
Oftentimes, you get a better breed of idea, theory, perspective, paradigm...
Than the 'polar-less' ideas and theories you left behind...
Thus Spoke...
Heraclitus, Lao Tse...
Hegel, Darwin..
Derrida....
The 'yin' and the 'yang' of human existence...
The estrogen and testosterone of human biology...
Competing, co-operating, breeding, loving, hating...
The paradoxes within psychoanalysis...
Need to match...
The paradoxes in human existence...
One minute I love you...
The next minute I hate you...
How do we deal with the ambivalence of 'love-hate'?
Great energy stems from great tension between opposites...
Exploding in love...
And/or exploding in hatred...
Where doves fly...
Or doves cry...
-- dgb, March 28, 2014
Happy Birthday, Jeffrey Masson!
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Essay 5: A Tribute To The Psychoanalytic Work of Jeffrey Masson -- The Man Who Ironically Created My Passion For Psychoanalysis
I may have told this story before online but I will tell it again.
I remember walking into a Queen Street East bookstore in Toronto, I think in the early 1990s -- probably between 1992 and 1994 -- and walking over to the psychology section, and seeing three books jump out at me by an author who I was totally unfamiliar with. The titles of the books, respectively, in no particular order, were: 1. 'Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst'; 2. 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory'; and 3. 'The Unabridged Complete Letter of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904' -- the first two written, the third edited, by the unknown writer (at least to me at that time), Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.
I bought the first two books and left the bookstore.
Final Analysis, I read in a few days with increasing curiosity and mounting passion. Jeffrey Masson sounded like 'the Bob Dylan of Psychoanalysis' (for me that was exciting, 'a rebel with a cause') -- at least until he left psychoanalysis over a decade earlier than when I was reading this book, but still apparently working off 'unfinished psychoanalytic business' in this, his latest book which, from his own subjective mindset, summarized his rise to the top of The Psychoanalytic Establishment (or at least 3rd from the top behind Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler). And, to me, this was an exciting story with a rather traumatic, tragic ending -- Masson's splitting from The Psychoanalytic Establishment, and from his close friendship with the old veteran psychoanalyst, Dr. Kurt Eissler, a long time loyal Freudian analyst.
At some point in the 1990s (the late 1990s probably) -- by this time Masson had switched to being an animal psychologist living in New Zealand -- I got a hold of Masson's email address and sent a couple of emails to him with Jeffrey's reply that he was basically no longer interested in psychoanalysis.
A number of years later -- probably moving into the mid to late 2000s by now (say, 2008 to 2010) -- I contacted Masson again, got a few replies from him (I could tell which emails he didn't particularly care for, or about, because he didn't reply to them). But at the end of 2009, I think I asked him if I could get a short, online interview with him in January, 2010. I think he said maybe. The interview didn't happen in January 2010, but in March 2010, I emailed him the questions I would ask him -- and he answered them. I got Dr. Masson to proofread the final interview piece, he said it looked fine, and presto, I had my first interview on line in Hegel's Hotel with a much esteemed interviewee -- the man who was ironically and paradoxically fueling my passion for psychoanalysis -- Dr. Jeffrey Masson.
I was thrilled -- and I agreed with many of his criticisms of Classical Psychoanalysis -- particularly, the more or less abandonment of Freud's early trauma theory (1893-1896), and his criticism of the Oedipus Complex as an intentional or non-intentional 'potential and/or actual cover-up' for real childhood sexual abuse, particularly between a female psychoanalytic client and her father, as reported by the client in a childhood memory or memories which she communicated to her analyst.
Well, what kind of a theory would or could deliberately, or by ignorance disguised as 'knowledge', actually allow an analyst to unequivocally 're-interpret' a female client's reported childhood sexual abuse as 'her own distorted childhood sexual fantasy -- courtesy of the Oedipus Complex'. You would think that feminist social activists would be protesting in front of Classical Psychoanalysts' offices at this inherent sexual bias and discrimination.
Well, it was this type of editorial comment and protest that Masson started to issue in public forums to active newspaper and magazine journalists (particularly, Janet Malcolm), and particularly his comment about Freud 'losing moral courage' (relative to standing up against Vienna patriarchal and narcissistically biased doctors who had power over the success or failure of his new and budding career) that got Masson, himself, in trouble with The International Psychoanalytic Establishment -- and ultimately, his 'non-extension' of his position as 'The Projects Director of The Freud Archives' (which is where Masson found and read Freud's unabridged and complete letters to Wilhelm Fliess which led Masson to conclude that there was something 'fishy' that happened in Vienna after April 21st of 1896, that motivated Freud to do a one hundred and eighty Copernican switch from his 'disappearing trauma theory' to his 'freshly evolving fantasy theory'.
Thesis, anti-thesis, and...synthesis...
In cases like this, unlike Masson and Freud, I do not believe in 'either/or'.
I do not believe in polar, unilateral theories that generally capture one end of a polar spectrum -- but not the other opposite side of the spectrum.
DGB stands for the initials of my name, but more than this, in the context of Hegel's Hotel here, it stands for 'Dialectic-Gap-Bridging' (Theories)...In other words, it stands for integrative or synthetic, even 'multi-integrative' or 'quantum-dialectic' theories...
That is the whole essence of Hegel's Hotel -- indeed, call me a 'post or neo-Hegelian-Humanistic-Existential' theorist...who is always looking for creative, integrative theories to 'bridge the gap' between 'polar opposite theories'...
The apparent disconnection, alienation, dissociation...between Freud's early trauma-seduction theory and his later fantasy-impulse-drive theory virtually demands a synthesis...
As much as Freud's post-1897 -- or post-1900 publicly -- use of the Oedipal Complex as a potential 'cover-up for real childhood sexual abuse', still, Freud couldn't have developed his fantasy-impulse-drive theory for some 42 years, maybe even 44 years stretching back to Freud's aborted 'Project for a Scientific Psychology' (1895) where you could start to see Freud's the hugely foretelling use of the word 'wish'...combined with the fact that Freud was starting to write 'The Interpretation of Dreams' in 1895 where again the word 'wish' -- as in fantasy -- would dominate -- to finish this long sentence off, Freud could not have upheld his 'fantasy theory' for some 44 years as a 'cover up' for avoiding any more discussion of childhood sexual abuse which unfavorable put The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society into a righteous frenzy, calling Freud's 'childhood sexual abuse theory' of hysteria a 'scientific fairy tale' on the infamous evening of April 21st, 1896....
Nor could the now infamous botched 'nasal-sexual surgery' by Fliess on Freud's patient, Emma Ekstein, in February of 1895, who would later would become disfigured by all the follow-up surgeries aimed at stopping her repetitive 'nasal hemorrhages' that more logically seemed to be more connected to the first botched surgery by Fliess and Freud, rather than any later concocted (guilt) theory of 'Emma's unconscious wish for Freud to return to her bedside by her 'use' of 'nasal hemorrhaging' to get him there'...
It would be a very sad day for psychoanalysis if poor Emma was Freud's first 'fantasy, wish-fulfillment' patient -- which by all circumstantial evidence -- it certainly looks like she was.
What a tragic, traumatic beginning for Freud's fantasy theory!
Who's 'neurosis' was, and still is, exploding off the page here -- Emma's or Freud's own 'wish-fulfillment theory' to cover up the part played by himself in this horrific, tragic-traumatic accident -- meant with seemingly the best of intentions for Emma but built from dangerous, untested, 'false knowledge' that both Fliess and Freud -- acting like 'The Keystone Kops' in this case -- thought was true? And as Freud asserted later, he had no thought whatsoever of any such dangerous negative side-effect happening from what he thought was an 'innocuous, danger-free' surgery. Little did he know that Fliess was going to leave a long piece of gauze in Emma's nasal passage, not tell anyone, and then trip back to Berlin from Vienna where the operation was conducted...
And so the word 'wish' was born from the fertile minds of Fliess and Freud during this very eventful year of the beginning of 'The Interpretation of Dreams' and Freud's aborted 'Project For a Scientific Psychology'...which also contained the word 'wish'...
I mean, with all due respect to Freud and many of his creatively brilliant ideas -- as hard as it may be -- and indeed, it was more or less impossible for both Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler to get their respective heads around the idea that their mutual idol -- and Anna's father -- could possibly commit such a gross transgression of both medical and theoretical ethics....still.... Freud wrote many brilliant -- and still standing strong -- essays after 1897, starting with The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899/1900.
So how do we integrate this possible moral transgression with creatively brilliant, and long-standing essays that were written after this moral transgression, but perhaps still a part of it, indeed, possibly around, and/or through, this possible 'moral-theory-creating-transgression'? Had 'Freud the neurotic' -- using a neurotic defense mechanism -- created at least a partly 'neurotic theory' out of his own personal, morally neurotic defence mechanism? The answer -- in my humble opinion -- is quite likely 'yes'. Which is why Classical Psychoanalysis has attracted so much criticism over the years -- both inside and outside Psychoanalysis -- and most telling of all, perhaps, is that Classical Psychoanalysis is particularly unattractive and unfriendly to women -- and particularly among active feminists who go after Freud's patriarchal narcissistic bias. Where were these feminists when Masson was being 'professionally lynched'?
So Masson became vilified -- demeaned and dismissed -- stereotyped as a 'charlatan' and a 'narcissistic opportunist' (come on, people, if he was a 'narcissistic opportunist', why would he ever have been so 'politically naïve and/or stupid' to have dared to open his mouth and give the public interviews that he did?).
To keep Psychoanalysis on the 'morally up and up' -- Psychoanalysis needed a 'witch' to 'burn' -- and they found an author to help them do that -- Janet Malcolm, who first seduced, then betrayed and 'murdered' her prime interviewee -- Dr. Jeffrey Masson....lumping him in with Jung and Adler and all the other 'ex-psychoanalysts' who Malcolm editorialized just didn't understand the 'full depth' of psychoanalysis like Freud and his loyalists did?
Right! And Martin Luther King didn't know anything about 'equal rights'!
Classical Psychoanalysis -- to the extent that it purports to be a legitimate 21st century 'school of psychotherapy' -- has to 'overturn' Freud's Victorian biases and particularly anything that could conceivably be connected to Freud's sudden and/or gradual abandonment of his trauma-seduction theory after 1896. Particularly to make it more 'customer-friendly' for women who deserve to know that they walk into an office to start analysis with a 'Classical' psychoanalysis -- and God forbid, that they may have been sexually abused by their dad as a child -- that they are going to get the same type of treatment that a man would -- and that their memory or memories of childhood sexual abuse will be accepted and respected as they are told -- all else being equal (unless this memory can unequivocally be proven to be wrong which is hard enough for a judge to prove one way or the other, let alone a psychoanalyst...). As far as I am concerned if I were put into a Classical Psychoanalyst's position, upon hearing such a memory, I am going to go with it as 'the truth' -- or at least have some kernel of truth in it -- unless or until something substantially different comes out from the client and/or someone else -- that puts this 'truth' into the category of 'significant skepticism'...
Remember, philosophers -- and all men and women -- have been arguing about 'epistemological truths' from probably the beginning of time....Power, narcissistic bias, and 'conflict of interest' should not rule on matters of 'truth'.
Did Freud 'lose moral courage'? I would suggest -- as hard as this may be for all of us to bear -- that there is very strong circumstantial between the Emma Ekstein sad story and the April 21st Psychiatry Meeting' to suggest that he did...
It is -- or will be dedicated to Dr. Jeffrey Masson and all the hard work -- important work -- that he did in Psychoanalysis in the 1970s and early 80s, aimed at telling The Psychoanalytic Establishment in specific, and the world, in general, that a very important part of psychoanalysis -- the work Freud did before 1897 -- was 'squashed' and 'dissociated' from psychoanalysis, or at least a very significant part of it, by Freud himself, which created a type of 'dissociative neurosis' in
Psychoanalysis, that to this day, has still not been properly repaired.
To repair all the inherent 'problem' in Classical Psychoanalysis would require a smooth, coherent, logical, and viable, practical integration between Pre-Psychoanalysis (reality-trauma-seduction theory) and Classical Psychoanalysis (fantasy theory, instinct, desire, and/or drive theory, infantile-childhood sexuality theory, and Oedipal Theory).
One of my primary goals in this network of 100 essays of psychoanalysis is to create such an 'integrative Pre-Psychoanalytic-Classical Psychoanalytic' integration and viable, practical theory-therapy. There will be other integrations on top of this one but this I view as being probably my most important one.
For those of you who may not know, Masson rose exceedingly quickly, passing all older psychoanalysts than him to the third highest spot on the Psychoanalytic Hierarchy, behind only Anna Freud herself, and Dr. Kurt Eissler.(one of, if not, the oldest, most longstanding, and loyal Freudians up until his death in the late 1990s.)
Then, with Masson first getting permission from Anna Freud to publish Freud's complete letters to Wilhelm Fliess, and then, due to Masson reading all of the unpublished letters that told a different story than the already published letters, Masson, in the early 1980s, reopened the highly controversial and provocative 'Seduction Theory' issue -- and what became a major public psychoanalytic scandal in the early 1980s....Masson accusing Freud of having 'lost moral courage' when he gave up his 1896 theory of the link between hysteria and childhood sexual abuse.
Which in my opinion, Freud probably partly did, based on a combination of political, professional, and financial duress -- and leverage he didn't have relative to the Vienna Psychiatric and Neurological Society and all the doctors in it having the power to 'pull' their patient referrals away from Freud if he continued to trumpet his theory of hysteria and childhood sexual abuse, which did not go over very well in Victorian Vienna, with the good Vienna (patriarchal) doctors.
For whatever reason -- political and/or theoretical -- Freud basically 'abandoned' his Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) theory, and turned this theory on its head -- by 1897 starting to advance the ideas of 'The Oedipus Complex', 'Childhood and Infantile Sexuality', Instinct and Fantasy theory in place of his earlier 'reality-trauma-seduction' theory..
I have no wish to re-open The Seduction Theory Controversy although if someone asks my opinion on it, I will be straight about what I believe which is that I think that there were perhaps a mixture of theoretical and political reasons for Freud's abandoning his early work so abruptly. Political reasons may have sped up this process or prevented a 'smoother evolution in his thinking'.
Ideally, I believe that Freud should have integrated the two sets of theories -- Pre-Psychoanalysis (reality-trauma-seduction theory) and Classical Psychoanalysis (Oedipus-Instinct-Fantasy-Childhood Sexuality) -- together. But having failed this, it has given me a mission to 'synthesize' what The Psychoanalytic Establishment should have many years ago synthesized.
I hold this advantage. I am on the outside looking in, rather than the inside looking out. No overt or covert political 'shoulds and should nots' staring over my shoulder. Making me nervous. No possible 'banishment' from an Establishment I have not joined.
Sometimes being outside of a 'biased, over-regulated, situation' -- is a good situation.
More possibility of 'breaking free' of 'Establishment-regulated dysfunctional assumptions'.
Psychoanalysis is changing, evolving, for the better...
But sometimes it seems like it is the Titanic turning...
It doesn't happen quickly....
Which is not good if there are icebergs in the water...
Gotta go for now, but Masson's birthday is coming up (March 28th)...and I will probably write the poem on here tomorrow morning....
I remember walking into a Queen Street East bookstore in Toronto, I think in the early 1990s -- probably between 1992 and 1994 -- and walking over to the psychology section, and seeing three books jump out at me by an author who I was totally unfamiliar with. The titles of the books, respectively, in no particular order, were: 1. 'Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst'; 2. 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory'; and 3. 'The Unabridged Complete Letter of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904' -- the first two written, the third edited, by the unknown writer (at least to me at that time), Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.
I bought the first two books and left the bookstore.
Final Analysis, I read in a few days with increasing curiosity and mounting passion. Jeffrey Masson sounded like 'the Bob Dylan of Psychoanalysis' (for me that was exciting, 'a rebel with a cause') -- at least until he left psychoanalysis over a decade earlier than when I was reading this book, but still apparently working off 'unfinished psychoanalytic business' in this, his latest book which, from his own subjective mindset, summarized his rise to the top of The Psychoanalytic Establishment (or at least 3rd from the top behind Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler). And, to me, this was an exciting story with a rather traumatic, tragic ending -- Masson's splitting from The Psychoanalytic Establishment, and from his close friendship with the old veteran psychoanalyst, Dr. Kurt Eissler, a long time loyal Freudian analyst.
At some point in the 1990s (the late 1990s probably) -- by this time Masson had switched to being an animal psychologist living in New Zealand -- I got a hold of Masson's email address and sent a couple of emails to him with Jeffrey's reply that he was basically no longer interested in psychoanalysis.
A number of years later -- probably moving into the mid to late 2000s by now (say, 2008 to 2010) -- I contacted Masson again, got a few replies from him (I could tell which emails he didn't particularly care for, or about, because he didn't reply to them). But at the end of 2009, I think I asked him if I could get a short, online interview with him in January, 2010. I think he said maybe. The interview didn't happen in January 2010, but in March 2010, I emailed him the questions I would ask him -- and he answered them. I got Dr. Masson to proofread the final interview piece, he said it looked fine, and presto, I had my first interview on line in Hegel's Hotel with a much esteemed interviewee -- the man who was ironically and paradoxically fueling my passion for psychoanalysis -- Dr. Jeffrey Masson.
I was thrilled -- and I agreed with many of his criticisms of Classical Psychoanalysis -- particularly, the more or less abandonment of Freud's early trauma theory (1893-1896), and his criticism of the Oedipus Complex as an intentional or non-intentional 'potential and/or actual cover-up' for real childhood sexual abuse, particularly between a female psychoanalytic client and her father, as reported by the client in a childhood memory or memories which she communicated to her analyst.
Well, what kind of a theory would or could deliberately, or by ignorance disguised as 'knowledge', actually allow an analyst to unequivocally 're-interpret' a female client's reported childhood sexual abuse as 'her own distorted childhood sexual fantasy -- courtesy of the Oedipus Complex'. You would think that feminist social activists would be protesting in front of Classical Psychoanalysts' offices at this inherent sexual bias and discrimination.
Well, it was this type of editorial comment and protest that Masson started to issue in public forums to active newspaper and magazine journalists (particularly, Janet Malcolm), and particularly his comment about Freud 'losing moral courage' (relative to standing up against Vienna patriarchal and narcissistically biased doctors who had power over the success or failure of his new and budding career) that got Masson, himself, in trouble with The International Psychoanalytic Establishment -- and ultimately, his 'non-extension' of his position as 'The Projects Director of The Freud Archives' (which is where Masson found and read Freud's unabridged and complete letters to Wilhelm Fliess which led Masson to conclude that there was something 'fishy' that happened in Vienna after April 21st of 1896, that motivated Freud to do a one hundred and eighty Copernican switch from his 'disappearing trauma theory' to his 'freshly evolving fantasy theory'.
Thesis, anti-thesis, and...synthesis...
In cases like this, unlike Masson and Freud, I do not believe in 'either/or'.
I do not believe in polar, unilateral theories that generally capture one end of a polar spectrum -- but not the other opposite side of the spectrum.
DGB stands for the initials of my name, but more than this, in the context of Hegel's Hotel here, it stands for 'Dialectic-Gap-Bridging' (Theories)...In other words, it stands for integrative or synthetic, even 'multi-integrative' or 'quantum-dialectic' theories...
That is the whole essence of Hegel's Hotel -- indeed, call me a 'post or neo-Hegelian-Humanistic-Existential' theorist...who is always looking for creative, integrative theories to 'bridge the gap' between 'polar opposite theories'...
The apparent disconnection, alienation, dissociation...between Freud's early trauma-seduction theory and his later fantasy-impulse-drive theory virtually demands a synthesis...
As much as Freud's post-1897 -- or post-1900 publicly -- use of the Oedipal Complex as a potential 'cover-up for real childhood sexual abuse', still, Freud couldn't have developed his fantasy-impulse-drive theory for some 42 years, maybe even 44 years stretching back to Freud's aborted 'Project for a Scientific Psychology' (1895) where you could start to see Freud's the hugely foretelling use of the word 'wish'...combined with the fact that Freud was starting to write 'The Interpretation of Dreams' in 1895 where again the word 'wish' -- as in fantasy -- would dominate -- to finish this long sentence off, Freud could not have upheld his 'fantasy theory' for some 44 years as a 'cover up' for avoiding any more discussion of childhood sexual abuse which unfavorable put The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society into a righteous frenzy, calling Freud's 'childhood sexual abuse theory' of hysteria a 'scientific fairy tale' on the infamous evening of April 21st, 1896....
Nor could the now infamous botched 'nasal-sexual surgery' by Fliess on Freud's patient, Emma Ekstein, in February of 1895, who would later would become disfigured by all the follow-up surgeries aimed at stopping her repetitive 'nasal hemorrhages' that more logically seemed to be more connected to the first botched surgery by Fliess and Freud, rather than any later concocted (guilt) theory of 'Emma's unconscious wish for Freud to return to her bedside by her 'use' of 'nasal hemorrhaging' to get him there'...
It would be a very sad day for psychoanalysis if poor Emma was Freud's first 'fantasy, wish-fulfillment' patient -- which by all circumstantial evidence -- it certainly looks like she was.
What a tragic, traumatic beginning for Freud's fantasy theory!
Who's 'neurosis' was, and still is, exploding off the page here -- Emma's or Freud's own 'wish-fulfillment theory' to cover up the part played by himself in this horrific, tragic-traumatic accident -- meant with seemingly the best of intentions for Emma but built from dangerous, untested, 'false knowledge' that both Fliess and Freud -- acting like 'The Keystone Kops' in this case -- thought was true? And as Freud asserted later, he had no thought whatsoever of any such dangerous negative side-effect happening from what he thought was an 'innocuous, danger-free' surgery. Little did he know that Fliess was going to leave a long piece of gauze in Emma's nasal passage, not tell anyone, and then trip back to Berlin from Vienna where the operation was conducted...
And so the word 'wish' was born from the fertile minds of Fliess and Freud during this very eventful year of the beginning of 'The Interpretation of Dreams' and Freud's aborted 'Project For a Scientific Psychology'...which also contained the word 'wish'...
I mean, with all due respect to Freud and many of his creatively brilliant ideas -- as hard as it may be -- and indeed, it was more or less impossible for both Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler to get their respective heads around the idea that their mutual idol -- and Anna's father -- could possibly commit such a gross transgression of both medical and theoretical ethics....still.... Freud wrote many brilliant -- and still standing strong -- essays after 1897, starting with The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899/1900.
So how do we integrate this possible moral transgression with creatively brilliant, and long-standing essays that were written after this moral transgression, but perhaps still a part of it, indeed, possibly around, and/or through, this possible 'moral-theory-creating-transgression'? Had 'Freud the neurotic' -- using a neurotic defense mechanism -- created at least a partly 'neurotic theory' out of his own personal, morally neurotic defence mechanism? The answer -- in my humble opinion -- is quite likely 'yes'. Which is why Classical Psychoanalysis has attracted so much criticism over the years -- both inside and outside Psychoanalysis -- and most telling of all, perhaps, is that Classical Psychoanalysis is particularly unattractive and unfriendly to women -- and particularly among active feminists who go after Freud's patriarchal narcissistic bias. Where were these feminists when Masson was being 'professionally lynched'?
So Masson became vilified -- demeaned and dismissed -- stereotyped as a 'charlatan' and a 'narcissistic opportunist' (come on, people, if he was a 'narcissistic opportunist', why would he ever have been so 'politically naïve and/or stupid' to have dared to open his mouth and give the public interviews that he did?).
To keep Psychoanalysis on the 'morally up and up' -- Psychoanalysis needed a 'witch' to 'burn' -- and they found an author to help them do that -- Janet Malcolm, who first seduced, then betrayed and 'murdered' her prime interviewee -- Dr. Jeffrey Masson....lumping him in with Jung and Adler and all the other 'ex-psychoanalysts' who Malcolm editorialized just didn't understand the 'full depth' of psychoanalysis like Freud and his loyalists did?
Right! And Martin Luther King didn't know anything about 'equal rights'!
Classical Psychoanalysis -- to the extent that it purports to be a legitimate 21st century 'school of psychotherapy' -- has to 'overturn' Freud's Victorian biases and particularly anything that could conceivably be connected to Freud's sudden and/or gradual abandonment of his trauma-seduction theory after 1896. Particularly to make it more 'customer-friendly' for women who deserve to know that they walk into an office to start analysis with a 'Classical' psychoanalysis -- and God forbid, that they may have been sexually abused by their dad as a child -- that they are going to get the same type of treatment that a man would -- and that their memory or memories of childhood sexual abuse will be accepted and respected as they are told -- all else being equal (unless this memory can unequivocally be proven to be wrong which is hard enough for a judge to prove one way or the other, let alone a psychoanalyst...). As far as I am concerned if I were put into a Classical Psychoanalyst's position, upon hearing such a memory, I am going to go with it as 'the truth' -- or at least have some kernel of truth in it -- unless or until something substantially different comes out from the client and/or someone else -- that puts this 'truth' into the category of 'significant skepticism'...
Remember, philosophers -- and all men and women -- have been arguing about 'epistemological truths' from probably the beginning of time....Power, narcissistic bias, and 'conflict of interest' should not rule on matters of 'truth'.
Did Freud 'lose moral courage'? I would suggest -- as hard as this may be for all of us to bear -- that there is very strong circumstantial between the Emma Ekstein sad story and the April 21st Psychiatry Meeting' to suggest that he did...
It is -- or will be dedicated to Dr. Jeffrey Masson and all the hard work -- important work -- that he did in Psychoanalysis in the 1970s and early 80s, aimed at telling The Psychoanalytic Establishment in specific, and the world, in general, that a very important part of psychoanalysis -- the work Freud did before 1897 -- was 'squashed' and 'dissociated' from psychoanalysis, or at least a very significant part of it, by Freud himself, which created a type of 'dissociative neurosis' in
Psychoanalysis, that to this day, has still not been properly repaired.
To repair all the inherent 'problem' in Classical Psychoanalysis would require a smooth, coherent, logical, and viable, practical integration between Pre-Psychoanalysis (reality-trauma-seduction theory) and Classical Psychoanalysis (fantasy theory, instinct, desire, and/or drive theory, infantile-childhood sexuality theory, and Oedipal Theory).
One of my primary goals in this network of 100 essays of psychoanalysis is to create such an 'integrative Pre-Psychoanalytic-Classical Psychoanalytic' integration and viable, practical theory-therapy. There will be other integrations on top of this one but this I view as being probably my most important one.
For those of you who may not know, Masson rose exceedingly quickly, passing all older psychoanalysts than him to the third highest spot on the Psychoanalytic Hierarchy, behind only Anna Freud herself, and Dr. Kurt Eissler.(one of, if not, the oldest, most longstanding, and loyal Freudians up until his death in the late 1990s.)
Then, with Masson first getting permission from Anna Freud to publish Freud's complete letters to Wilhelm Fliess, and then, due to Masson reading all of the unpublished letters that told a different story than the already published letters, Masson, in the early 1980s, reopened the highly controversial and provocative 'Seduction Theory' issue -- and what became a major public psychoanalytic scandal in the early 1980s....Masson accusing Freud of having 'lost moral courage' when he gave up his 1896 theory of the link between hysteria and childhood sexual abuse.
Which in my opinion, Freud probably partly did, based on a combination of political, professional, and financial duress -- and leverage he didn't have relative to the Vienna Psychiatric and Neurological Society and all the doctors in it having the power to 'pull' their patient referrals away from Freud if he continued to trumpet his theory of hysteria and childhood sexual abuse, which did not go over very well in Victorian Vienna, with the good Vienna (patriarchal) doctors.
For whatever reason -- political and/or theoretical -- Freud basically 'abandoned' his Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) theory, and turned this theory on its head -- by 1897 starting to advance the ideas of 'The Oedipus Complex', 'Childhood and Infantile Sexuality', Instinct and Fantasy theory in place of his earlier 'reality-trauma-seduction' theory..
I have no wish to re-open The Seduction Theory Controversy although if someone asks my opinion on it, I will be straight about what I believe which is that I think that there were perhaps a mixture of theoretical and political reasons for Freud's abandoning his early work so abruptly. Political reasons may have sped up this process or prevented a 'smoother evolution in his thinking'.
Ideally, I believe that Freud should have integrated the two sets of theories -- Pre-Psychoanalysis (reality-trauma-seduction theory) and Classical Psychoanalysis (Oedipus-Instinct-Fantasy-Childhood Sexuality) -- together. But having failed this, it has given me a mission to 'synthesize' what The Psychoanalytic Establishment should have many years ago synthesized.
I hold this advantage. I am on the outside looking in, rather than the inside looking out. No overt or covert political 'shoulds and should nots' staring over my shoulder. Making me nervous. No possible 'banishment' from an Establishment I have not joined.
Sometimes being outside of a 'biased, over-regulated, situation' -- is a good situation.
More possibility of 'breaking free' of 'Establishment-regulated dysfunctional assumptions'.
Psychoanalysis is changing, evolving, for the better...
But sometimes it seems like it is the Titanic turning...
It doesn't happen quickly....
Which is not good if there are icebergs in the water...
Gotta go for now, but Masson's birthday is coming up (March 28th)...and I will probably write the poem on here tomorrow morning....
Essay 4: Re-Working Freud's Ego, Id, and Superego Theory (Part 1)
Freud viewed 'the id' -- a concept he created to help people better understand the nature and basically every type of energy and behavior emulating from the 'bottom' of the psyche -- but here we arrive at a logical inconsistency in the way Freud described the id.
Specifically, Freud defined and described the id as being like a 'container' or a 'reservoir' that contained 'the polar life and death instincts or drives' -- not as the energy within the container that is the combined mixture of the life and death forces that propel the human organism forward, and/or self-sabotage the organism backward towards its/our ultimate death and/or (self)-destruction...
Over time, the id -- beyond all definitional technicalities -- came to be viewed as this energy source anyway -- and to boot (here he introduced another definitional technicality) -- unconscious energy and ideational as well as affective and impulsive motivational material that provided the 'foundational building blocks' for everything developing in the conscious human personality or psyche.
That is, Freud viewed the human personality in its infancy as being 'all id' which -- to introduce another logical inconsistency in the way Freud viewed the id and the personality as a whole -- can, if you read other parts of Freudian theory (1914, 'On Narcissism') basically be equated with what I will call 'the primal, narcissistic ego' even though Freud never created such as term-concept (although he did briefly create the term-concept 'pleasure-ego' and contrasted it against 'the reality ego' around the same time-period as 'On Narcissism' (in another one or more of his 'metapsychological papers', 1915, five years before Freud wrote 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle, 1920, where he introduced the life and death instincts, and eight years before Freud wrote 'The Ego and The Id', 1923, where he introduced 'the ego', 'the id', and 'the superego').
What I am getting at is this. Freud started to get himself and psychoanalysis into 'conceptual trouble' when he started to 'reify' and 'objectify' and 'dehumanize' the human personality -- which many critics would complain about over the years -- because Freud 'dissociated' the id from the ego -- as opposed to 'splitting the ego' into two opposing or simply different 'ego-states': 1. 'the id-ego (or primal-narcissistic ego)'; 2. 'the mediating, central ego'; and 3. 'the restraining ego' -- or 'righteous-critical superego'.
In one of Freud's earliest work (1894, 'The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence'), Freud was struggling with Janet's idea of 'the splitting of consciousness'.
Why would Freud take issue with this idea of Janet's of 'the splitting of consciousness'? Well, probably, at least significantly, because it was Janet's idea -- and not his own; if I be so bold to say, Freud wanted to 'stake out' his own theoretical territory that was different than Janet's, contrasted against Janet's; (as well as everyone else's work -- Charcot, Breuer -- who he had learned from, was working with, and/or competing against.
However, more than this, I can see Freud struggling with Janet's idea of 'the splitting of consciousness' because what Freud had in mind was something either a tad bit different, or very different -- and that was a 'splitting between consciousness and unconsciousness'.
Let us be aware that in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson had first published his classic book, 'Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde'.
So the idea of 'split personalities' and 'egos' vs. 'alter-egos' was alive and percolating in this time period -- actually before this time period in 1894 (Breuer and Charcot in the 1880s with Freud learning from them both in the late 1880s).
Now, would we view 'Mr. Hyde' as an 'id personality' or an 'alter-ego personality' or as a 'primal, narcissistic personality' -- or all of the above.
I opt for all of the above.
Which tells us that the term-concept of 'id-ego' is not that far removed from any of the writers and/or theorists mentioned above: Robert Louis Stevenson, Charcot, Breuer, Janet, Freud...) 'A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.' A thorn by any other name would still hurt if you unknowingly contacted it. And 'the id' by any other name -- the 'alter-ego', 'the primal narcissistic ego' or 'the id-ego' would still be 'the id'.
It is just a matter of 'conceptual primacy'.
We could talk about 'the splitting of the ego' (in the process of 'civilization and its discontents') into: 1. 'the (primal-narcissistic) id-ego'; 2. 'the central mediating ego'; and 3. 'the ego-ideal and critical-righteous superego'.
Or we could talk about 'the splitting of the id' into: 1. the id; 2. the ego; and 3. the superego.
A name is just a name. And concepts are just concepts. And roses by any other name would still smell sweet, while thorns if you touched them unknowingly, would still hurt.
I will advance these ideas tomorrow morning...
Specifically, Freud defined and described the id as being like a 'container' or a 'reservoir' that contained 'the polar life and death instincts or drives' -- not as the energy within the container that is the combined mixture of the life and death forces that propel the human organism forward, and/or self-sabotage the organism backward towards its/our ultimate death and/or (self)-destruction...
Over time, the id -- beyond all definitional technicalities -- came to be viewed as this energy source anyway -- and to boot (here he introduced another definitional technicality) -- unconscious energy and ideational as well as affective and impulsive motivational material that provided the 'foundational building blocks' for everything developing in the conscious human personality or psyche.
That is, Freud viewed the human personality in its infancy as being 'all id' which -- to introduce another logical inconsistency in the way Freud viewed the id and the personality as a whole -- can, if you read other parts of Freudian theory (1914, 'On Narcissism') basically be equated with what I will call 'the primal, narcissistic ego' even though Freud never created such as term-concept (although he did briefly create the term-concept 'pleasure-ego' and contrasted it against 'the reality ego' around the same time-period as 'On Narcissism' (in another one or more of his 'metapsychological papers', 1915, five years before Freud wrote 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle, 1920, where he introduced the life and death instincts, and eight years before Freud wrote 'The Ego and The Id', 1923, where he introduced 'the ego', 'the id', and 'the superego').
What I am getting at is this. Freud started to get himself and psychoanalysis into 'conceptual trouble' when he started to 'reify' and 'objectify' and 'dehumanize' the human personality -- which many critics would complain about over the years -- because Freud 'dissociated' the id from the ego -- as opposed to 'splitting the ego' into two opposing or simply different 'ego-states': 1. 'the id-ego (or primal-narcissistic ego)'; 2. 'the mediating, central ego'; and 3. 'the restraining ego' -- or 'righteous-critical superego'.
In one of Freud's earliest work (1894, 'The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence'), Freud was struggling with Janet's idea of 'the splitting of consciousness'.
Why would Freud take issue with this idea of Janet's of 'the splitting of consciousness'? Well, probably, at least significantly, because it was Janet's idea -- and not his own; if I be so bold to say, Freud wanted to 'stake out' his own theoretical territory that was different than Janet's, contrasted against Janet's; (as well as everyone else's work -- Charcot, Breuer -- who he had learned from, was working with, and/or competing against.
However, more than this, I can see Freud struggling with Janet's idea of 'the splitting of consciousness' because what Freud had in mind was something either a tad bit different, or very different -- and that was a 'splitting between consciousness and unconsciousness'.
Let us be aware that in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson had first published his classic book, 'Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde'.
So the idea of 'split personalities' and 'egos' vs. 'alter-egos' was alive and percolating in this time period -- actually before this time period in 1894 (Breuer and Charcot in the 1880s with Freud learning from them both in the late 1880s).
Now, would we view 'Mr. Hyde' as an 'id personality' or an 'alter-ego personality' or as a 'primal, narcissistic personality' -- or all of the above.
I opt for all of the above.
Which tells us that the term-concept of 'id-ego' is not that far removed from any of the writers and/or theorists mentioned above: Robert Louis Stevenson, Charcot, Breuer, Janet, Freud...) 'A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.' A thorn by any other name would still hurt if you unknowingly contacted it. And 'the id' by any other name -- the 'alter-ego', 'the primal narcissistic ego' or 'the id-ego' would still be 'the id'.
It is just a matter of 'conceptual primacy'.
We could talk about 'the splitting of the ego' (in the process of 'civilization and its discontents') into: 1. 'the (primal-narcissistic) id-ego'; 2. 'the central mediating ego'; and 3. 'the ego-ideal and critical-righteous superego'.
Or we could talk about 'the splitting of the id' into: 1. the id; 2. the ego; and 3. the superego.
A name is just a name. And concepts are just concepts. And roses by any other name would still smell sweet, while thorns if you touched them unknowingly, would still hurt.
I will advance these ideas tomorrow morning...
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Essay 3: New DGB Theory: Transposing -- and Re-Working -- Freud's 1923 Concepts of 'Id', 'Ego', and 'Superego' Back in History Into Freud's Early 'Pre-Psychoanalytic' Essays -- Most Specifically, Freud's 1894 Essay, 'The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence'
Updated March 16th, 2014 -- dgb
Do you support Freud's early 'reality-traumacy' theory(1893-1896)? Or do you support Freud's later 'instinct-fantasy' theory (1897-1939)?
Freud himself set this up as an 'either/or' question and opted after 1896 for the latter instinct-fantasy theory
There has been controversy ever since then, as a good number of theorists both inside and outside of psychoanalysis believed or believe that Freud 'got it right' the first time round, and made a 'mistake' turning away from reality-traumacy theory in favour of instinct-fantasy theory.
Freud, on the other hand, believed that he made the 'mistake' in his first theory (his combined 'reality-memory-trauma-seduction theory') -- and got it 'right' in his polar opposite theory -- his instinct-fantasy theory which he spent the rest of his life after 1896 developing, modifying, mutating, but generally speaking, staying 'true' to.
Other brands or 'schools' or 'sub-schools' of psychoanalysis have strayed away from Freud's 'Classical' brand of Psychoanalysis ('Classical' Psychoanalysis being the more general name for Freud's post-1896 'instinct-fantasy' brand of psychoanalysis) to different degrees -- some leaving it more or less completely behind in favor of newer brands or schools or sub-schools of Psychoanalysis. And that is not including the 'ex-psychoanalytic theorists and therapists who left Psychoanalysis altogether.
Some psychoanalysts -- I do not know what percentage we are talking about but I would guess something under 30 percent -- have remained true to Classical Psychoanalysis.
Others have developed or are developing a more 'eclectic' approach that either integrates or at least utilizes ideas from all the 'main current brands' of psychoanalysis (Object Relations, Self Psychology, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Bionian Psychoanalysis...) but most, to my limited knowledge, I do not believe have opted to return to Freud's pre-1897 'reality-memory-trauma-seduction' ideas. 'Trauma' theory may have been re-introduced, however, in different ways, by different schools of psychoanalysis such as the ones just mentioned above.
No one, to my knowledge, has opted to try to put together an 'intertwined, dialectical reality-fantasy theory' where both of Freud's 'bipolar' theories 'reality theory' vs. 'fantasy theory' (before 1897, and after 1896) are meshed together into one 'full spectrum' dialectic theory like the 'particle-wave' theory was introduced into physics.
That is what I wish to do in psychoanalysis.
Why? Because Freud, whether you are a supporter of his early reality-trauma theory or his later fantasy-instinct theory, in both cases, created a one-dimensional, one-directional, and unilateral theory of the human psyche, each side largely ignoring the other. In effect, he created two different 'dissociation' theories -- each theory 'dissociating' itself from the other which seems to me to be highly ironical because this is exactly what his 'neurotic' clients were doing relative to particular 'subjectively perceived sensitive life experiences, issues, stressors, and underlying unbearable ideas, affects, and/or impulses pertaining to these stressors'.
Did Freud create a 'Dissociative brand of Psychoanalysis', in particular, after 1896, i.e., relative to his 'Classical' brand of Psychoanalysis when he no longer associated himself and his theory with his previous 'Reality-Memory-Trauma-Seduction theory (let's call this Freud's pre-1897 combined 'RMTS' theory)?
I believe that Freud's 'fantasy-impulse' (I prefer 'impulse' to 'instinct') theory, if explored deeply enough, can be seen to rest on, or be built from, his previous RMTS theory. The two bipolar theories are not at all 'mutually exclusive' but rather are intimately and dialectically connected to each other. Specifically, from 'trauma', we 'compensate' with 'fantasies'.
A person may spend his or her whole life, unconsciously or semi-consciously, trying to 'rebuild lost childhood self-esteem' (Adler, 'inferiority feelings' and 'superiority striving' -- 'the masculine/feminine protest') due to early childhood trauma, either big or small or somewhere in between, but the important thing here is -- subjectively perceived as 'trauma' or 'traumatic'.
Extrapolating from Freudian narcissistic theory (On Narcissism, 1914), -- adding a partly Adlerian bend to it (this Freudian paper above was written significantly to 'compete' with both Jungian and Adlerian ideas and critiques, that much criticized Freud's 'sexually reductionistic' strict Classical theory').
In effect, with the concept of 'narcissism', Freud was at least moving partly towards Adler (Adler was still a Freudian when the two of them started talking about 'narcissism' and 'narcissistic injury' together in The Vienna Meetings, which in Adlerian terminology grew out of his ideas of 'organ inferiority' and 'overcompensation', later moving more generally into 'self-esteem injury' and 'inferiority feelings', and then later the 'compensatory masculine protest', and later still the 'compensatory superiority feelings', which took Adler away from Freud's 'sexual foundation' but still, Freud could argue back that the adult 'neurotic' client is essentially looking for a 'return to primary narcissistic satisfaction and bliss' (which can be viewed as a form of 'unconscious self-therapy' (self esteem recovery and/or ego enhancement) but this was getting a little too close to Adler, for Freud to likely feel comfortable with, so instead the idea could be argued that 'narcissism' was attached to 'the pleasure principle' and Freud's underlying 'sexual foundation' of human motivation).
Without Freud's explicit acknowledgement of this idea, the idea of 'narcissism' can be viewed as a 'bridge' between Freudian theory and Adlerian theory as the concept of narcissism can be used to encompass: self-interest, selfishness, the pleasure principle, sexuality, and self-esteem or ego enhancement.
This is where Classical Freudian theory comes closest to Adlerian theory although some significant similarities can also be drawn up between Freud's 'transference theory' (or my mutation of it) and Adler's 'lifestyle theory'.
Now, Freud didn't have any 'personality constructs' that he used in his early 1893-96 work although 'transference' showed up in his 1895 work (Studies in Hysteria).
So I am going to 'import' or 'introject' Freud's famous personality constructs added to his work in 1923 (The Ego and The Id) -- and these would be his famous -- 'ego', 'id', and 'superego' concepts...into Freud's early 1893-1895 work....with some significant modifications based on our new 'dialectical integration of Freud's early trauma theory and his later fantasy theory.
Now, I fully realize that I am going to raise some Spockian eyebrows here -- even possibly make orthodox psychoanalytic theorists and thinkers -- 'wince in pain' as I 'dialectically integrate' or 'conflate' a part of the ego and the id into one concept. But for those, who are open-minded and flexible enough in their thinking, bear with me as I work through my line of thinking and aim to package a 'paradigm' of unorthodox, complicated multi-integrative psychoanalytic theory into something that does indeed come together in an understandable, coherent, fashion.
Creativity comes from organizing chaos that has all the 'raw materials' we need to build something 'partly old, partly new', and ideally offers more meaningful, functional value than what we had before we 'took Humpty Dumpty fell apart -- and then we put him back together again -- as a 'new and improved Humpty Dumpty.
We respect tradition and yet we deconstruct and reconstruct tradition at the same time, because of the 'mental traps' and 'dysfunctionalities' that this tradition may continue to carry with it, often generation after generation, without critique, modification, mutation, evolution...that might take us to a better place.
I like 'old Victorian houses' but I like 'renovated, old-new' Victorian houses even better.
That is what I do. Metaphorically speaking, I 'freshly renovate old, out-dated Freudian Victorian houses, and integrate them in design with 'other Psychoanalytic houses', and my own unique designs, to create a different, larger type of 'Psychoanalytic and Neo-Psychoanalytic Mansion'.
I use Hegel's famous dialectic logic and paradigm -- 1. thesis; 2. anti-thesis; 3. synthesis/synergy -- to get firstly and most abstractly to 'Hegel's Hotel'; and within this, what might be called 'Freud's Hotel' -- but in a highly renovated, mutated, modified fashion; and ultimately, what I hope is coming from all of this work is either: 1. 'The DGB Interactive-Integrative Wellness and Education (I-I-WE) Society, Journal, and Institute; and/or 'The DGB Business Ethics-Philosophy-English/(Language Communication)-and-Psychology... (BE-PEP...) Society and Institute'. Shortened version: The DGB Philosophy-Psychology Society, Journal, and Institute.
That is the 'ideal vision', and this essay is one small part of that vision.
Please sustain judgment as long as you can, and be open-minded as you experience my deconstruction, reconstruction, modification, and mutation of 46 years of Freudian theory (1893-1939), starting below, with Freud's 'id theory'.
..................................................................................................................................
B/ Re-Defining and Re-Working Freud's Concept of The Id To 'Better Fit' With Freud's Early 1893-1896 'Pre-Psychoanalysis
We are entering a partly old, partly new language here...prepare to modify the old Freudian concepts, theories, and meaning into a 'Freudian-post-and-neo-Freudian-DGB stew'.
DGB Mutation #1: Freud's 'id' becomes my 'id-ego' or 'idian-ego'. Thus, the id becomes a part of 'the ego-as-a-whole' -- not something radically apart from the ego and the superego -- with the capability -- just like Freud's ego and superego -- of being either 'conscious', 'pre-conscious', or 'un/subconscious'.
The 'id' in this DGB mutation, is no longer a 'container' or a 'reservoir' 'housing' the 'life' and 'death' instincts. We reserve instead the term 'superego-id-ego-vault' ('siev') to reflect this idea of 'containment' and 'defense against, and restraining of, id impulses, id energy, and id complexes', some of which manage to 'escape' or 'be released' from their 'siev-like vault' anyway (due to things like stress overload, drugs, alcohol, a lessening of superego and ego defenses)...
Thus, the 'id-ego' is that impulsive, creative and destructive, element or 'ego-state' or 'ego-compartment' of the ego-as-a-whole that deals specifically with the most impulsive, primal, uncivil, driving forces in the personality. (Thus, in contrast to Freudian classical psychoanalysis, the id-ego is an essential part of our self -- or our 'ego-as-a-whole' as opposed to an 'alien force' completely detached from the ego-as-a-whole. Again, the id-ego (including id desires and impulses, id affects, id thoughts, id drives, id complexes...can be either unconscious, pre-conscious, and/or conscious -- just like the Freudian superego and the Freudian ('reductionistic') ego'.
The id-ego is to be viewed as 'the primal and primary ego-state' -- the ego-state of the newly born infant, and developing toddler -- until 'parental socialization' starts to 'kick in' and create within the evolving child a 'secondary ego-state' and 'secondary ego-process' that involves 'restraint', 'inhibition', 'creative conflict-resolving and problem-solving, 'compromising', 'reality-testing'... as opposed to 'raw, unadulterated, unfiltered, primal, primary narcissistic and pleasure-seeking' thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and actions....
Thus, in this first DGB mutation, we now have the 'primal, primary, narcissistic-pleasure-seeking id-ego' replacing the anachronistic, objectified 'it' or 'id' as a Freud-perceived 'biologically determined, alien-to-the-ego-totally-unconscious force' within the personality.
No longer is the id a lifeless 'container' or a 'reservoir' containing the 'life' and 'death' instincts. Now, our 'id-ego' is an 'organic, thinking, feeling, desiring, demanding' part of our ego -- our 'narcissistic-pleasure-seeking primal, primary, uncivilized, impulsive, driving, desiring ego-state' within the boundaries of 'our ego-as-a-whole'.
Within the realm of our new concept of the superego-id-ego vault or siev, we can differentiate between two polar 'sievs' -- usually conflated together into one siev: 1. our 'traumatized' superego-id-ego vault' containing our 'unbearable or unacceptable traumatized id ego and id-ego energy'; and 2. our 'unbearable or unacceptable compensating-fantasizing id-ego and id energy'.
Both types of energy -- or 'traumatized' id-ego energy and our 'fantasizing/phantasizing' (phantasizing referring to 'negative fantasy or phantasy energy') id-ego energy -- conflate together into complexes to form the type of 'love-hate' ambivalence (and our 'life' and 'destructive death' impulses) that we so commonly -- indeed, probably always -- find in any 'psychoanalytic analysis'. We can say that the human personality is inherently -- and particularly after traumacy and socialization -- 'polymorphously bipolar'.
This is where I will leave you to ponder what I have written -- feel free to judge this essay now the way you wish to (not that I pretend to have any control over when you choose to judge what you are reading) -- until we start to develop other, related, and inter-connected ideas.
-- dgb, March 16th, 2014
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Creations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Do you support Freud's early 'reality-traumacy' theory(1893-1896)? Or do you support Freud's later 'instinct-fantasy' theory (1897-1939)?
Freud himself set this up as an 'either/or' question and opted after 1896 for the latter instinct-fantasy theory
There has been controversy ever since then, as a good number of theorists both inside and outside of psychoanalysis believed or believe that Freud 'got it right' the first time round, and made a 'mistake' turning away from reality-traumacy theory in favour of instinct-fantasy theory.
Freud, on the other hand, believed that he made the 'mistake' in his first theory (his combined 'reality-memory-trauma-seduction theory') -- and got it 'right' in his polar opposite theory -- his instinct-fantasy theory which he spent the rest of his life after 1896 developing, modifying, mutating, but generally speaking, staying 'true' to.
Other brands or 'schools' or 'sub-schools' of psychoanalysis have strayed away from Freud's 'Classical' brand of Psychoanalysis ('Classical' Psychoanalysis being the more general name for Freud's post-1896 'instinct-fantasy' brand of psychoanalysis) to different degrees -- some leaving it more or less completely behind in favor of newer brands or schools or sub-schools of Psychoanalysis. And that is not including the 'ex-psychoanalytic theorists and therapists who left Psychoanalysis altogether.
Some psychoanalysts -- I do not know what percentage we are talking about but I would guess something under 30 percent -- have remained true to Classical Psychoanalysis.
Others have developed or are developing a more 'eclectic' approach that either integrates or at least utilizes ideas from all the 'main current brands' of psychoanalysis (Object Relations, Self Psychology, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Bionian Psychoanalysis...) but most, to my limited knowledge, I do not believe have opted to return to Freud's pre-1897 'reality-memory-trauma-seduction' ideas. 'Trauma' theory may have been re-introduced, however, in different ways, by different schools of psychoanalysis such as the ones just mentioned above.
No one, to my knowledge, has opted to try to put together an 'intertwined, dialectical reality-fantasy theory' where both of Freud's 'bipolar' theories 'reality theory' vs. 'fantasy theory' (before 1897, and after 1896) are meshed together into one 'full spectrum' dialectic theory like the 'particle-wave' theory was introduced into physics.
That is what I wish to do in psychoanalysis.
Why? Because Freud, whether you are a supporter of his early reality-trauma theory or his later fantasy-instinct theory, in both cases, created a one-dimensional, one-directional, and unilateral theory of the human psyche, each side largely ignoring the other. In effect, he created two different 'dissociation' theories -- each theory 'dissociating' itself from the other which seems to me to be highly ironical because this is exactly what his 'neurotic' clients were doing relative to particular 'subjectively perceived sensitive life experiences, issues, stressors, and underlying unbearable ideas, affects, and/or impulses pertaining to these stressors'.
Did Freud create a 'Dissociative brand of Psychoanalysis', in particular, after 1896, i.e., relative to his 'Classical' brand of Psychoanalysis when he no longer associated himself and his theory with his previous 'Reality-Memory-Trauma-Seduction theory (let's call this Freud's pre-1897 combined 'RMTS' theory)?
I believe that Freud's 'fantasy-impulse' (I prefer 'impulse' to 'instinct') theory, if explored deeply enough, can be seen to rest on, or be built from, his previous RMTS theory. The two bipolar theories are not at all 'mutually exclusive' but rather are intimately and dialectically connected to each other. Specifically, from 'trauma', we 'compensate' with 'fantasies'.
A person may spend his or her whole life, unconsciously or semi-consciously, trying to 'rebuild lost childhood self-esteem' (Adler, 'inferiority feelings' and 'superiority striving' -- 'the masculine/feminine protest') due to early childhood trauma, either big or small or somewhere in between, but the important thing here is -- subjectively perceived as 'trauma' or 'traumatic'.
Extrapolating from Freudian narcissistic theory (On Narcissism, 1914), -- adding a partly Adlerian bend to it (this Freudian paper above was written significantly to 'compete' with both Jungian and Adlerian ideas and critiques, that much criticized Freud's 'sexually reductionistic' strict Classical theory').
In effect, with the concept of 'narcissism', Freud was at least moving partly towards Adler (Adler was still a Freudian when the two of them started talking about 'narcissism' and 'narcissistic injury' together in The Vienna Meetings, which in Adlerian terminology grew out of his ideas of 'organ inferiority' and 'overcompensation', later moving more generally into 'self-esteem injury' and 'inferiority feelings', and then later the 'compensatory masculine protest', and later still the 'compensatory superiority feelings', which took Adler away from Freud's 'sexual foundation' but still, Freud could argue back that the adult 'neurotic' client is essentially looking for a 'return to primary narcissistic satisfaction and bliss' (which can be viewed as a form of 'unconscious self-therapy' (self esteem recovery and/or ego enhancement) but this was getting a little too close to Adler, for Freud to likely feel comfortable with, so instead the idea could be argued that 'narcissism' was attached to 'the pleasure principle' and Freud's underlying 'sexual foundation' of human motivation).
Without Freud's explicit acknowledgement of this idea, the idea of 'narcissism' can be viewed as a 'bridge' between Freudian theory and Adlerian theory as the concept of narcissism can be used to encompass: self-interest, selfishness, the pleasure principle, sexuality, and self-esteem or ego enhancement.
This is where Classical Freudian theory comes closest to Adlerian theory although some significant similarities can also be drawn up between Freud's 'transference theory' (or my mutation of it) and Adler's 'lifestyle theory'.
Now, Freud didn't have any 'personality constructs' that he used in his early 1893-96 work although 'transference' showed up in his 1895 work (Studies in Hysteria).
So I am going to 'import' or 'introject' Freud's famous personality constructs added to his work in 1923 (The Ego and The Id) -- and these would be his famous -- 'ego', 'id', and 'superego' concepts...into Freud's early 1893-1895 work....with some significant modifications based on our new 'dialectical integration of Freud's early trauma theory and his later fantasy theory.
Now, I fully realize that I am going to raise some Spockian eyebrows here -- even possibly make orthodox psychoanalytic theorists and thinkers -- 'wince in pain' as I 'dialectically integrate' or 'conflate' a part of the ego and the id into one concept. But for those, who are open-minded and flexible enough in their thinking, bear with me as I work through my line of thinking and aim to package a 'paradigm' of unorthodox, complicated multi-integrative psychoanalytic theory into something that does indeed come together in an understandable, coherent, fashion.
Creativity comes from organizing chaos that has all the 'raw materials' we need to build something 'partly old, partly new', and ideally offers more meaningful, functional value than what we had before we 'took Humpty Dumpty fell apart -- and then we put him back together again -- as a 'new and improved Humpty Dumpty.
We respect tradition and yet we deconstruct and reconstruct tradition at the same time, because of the 'mental traps' and 'dysfunctionalities' that this tradition may continue to carry with it, often generation after generation, without critique, modification, mutation, evolution...that might take us to a better place.
I like 'old Victorian houses' but I like 'renovated, old-new' Victorian houses even better.
That is what I do. Metaphorically speaking, I 'freshly renovate old, out-dated Freudian Victorian houses, and integrate them in design with 'other Psychoanalytic houses', and my own unique designs, to create a different, larger type of 'Psychoanalytic and Neo-Psychoanalytic Mansion'.
I use Hegel's famous dialectic logic and paradigm -- 1. thesis; 2. anti-thesis; 3. synthesis/synergy -- to get firstly and most abstractly to 'Hegel's Hotel'; and within this, what might be called 'Freud's Hotel' -- but in a highly renovated, mutated, modified fashion; and ultimately, what I hope is coming from all of this work is either: 1. 'The DGB Interactive-Integrative Wellness and Education (I-I-WE) Society, Journal, and Institute; and/or 'The DGB Business Ethics-Philosophy-English/(Language Communication)-and-Psychology... (BE-PEP...) Society and Institute'. Shortened version: The DGB Philosophy-Psychology Society, Journal, and Institute.
That is the 'ideal vision', and this essay is one small part of that vision.
Please sustain judgment as long as you can, and be open-minded as you experience my deconstruction, reconstruction, modification, and mutation of 46 years of Freudian theory (1893-1939), starting below, with Freud's 'id theory'.
..................................................................................................................................
B/ Re-Defining and Re-Working Freud's Concept of The Id To 'Better Fit' With Freud's Early 1893-1896 'Pre-Psychoanalysis
We are entering a partly old, partly new language here...prepare to modify the old Freudian concepts, theories, and meaning into a 'Freudian-post-and-neo-Freudian-DGB stew'.
DGB Mutation #1: Freud's 'id' becomes my 'id-ego' or 'idian-ego'. Thus, the id becomes a part of 'the ego-as-a-whole' -- not something radically apart from the ego and the superego -- with the capability -- just like Freud's ego and superego -- of being either 'conscious', 'pre-conscious', or 'un/subconscious'.
The 'id' in this DGB mutation, is no longer a 'container' or a 'reservoir' 'housing' the 'life' and 'death' instincts. We reserve instead the term 'superego-id-ego-vault' ('siev') to reflect this idea of 'containment' and 'defense against, and restraining of, id impulses, id energy, and id complexes', some of which manage to 'escape' or 'be released' from their 'siev-like vault' anyway (due to things like stress overload, drugs, alcohol, a lessening of superego and ego defenses)...
Thus, the 'id-ego' is that impulsive, creative and destructive, element or 'ego-state' or 'ego-compartment' of the ego-as-a-whole that deals specifically with the most impulsive, primal, uncivil, driving forces in the personality. (Thus, in contrast to Freudian classical psychoanalysis, the id-ego is an essential part of our self -- or our 'ego-as-a-whole' as opposed to an 'alien force' completely detached from the ego-as-a-whole. Again, the id-ego (including id desires and impulses, id affects, id thoughts, id drives, id complexes...can be either unconscious, pre-conscious, and/or conscious -- just like the Freudian superego and the Freudian ('reductionistic') ego'.
The id-ego is to be viewed as 'the primal and primary ego-state' -- the ego-state of the newly born infant, and developing toddler -- until 'parental socialization' starts to 'kick in' and create within the evolving child a 'secondary ego-state' and 'secondary ego-process' that involves 'restraint', 'inhibition', 'creative conflict-resolving and problem-solving, 'compromising', 'reality-testing'... as opposed to 'raw, unadulterated, unfiltered, primal, primary narcissistic and pleasure-seeking' thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and actions....
Thus, in this first DGB mutation, we now have the 'primal, primary, narcissistic-pleasure-seeking id-ego' replacing the anachronistic, objectified 'it' or 'id' as a Freud-perceived 'biologically determined, alien-to-the-ego-totally-unconscious force' within the personality.
No longer is the id a lifeless 'container' or a 'reservoir' containing the 'life' and 'death' instincts. Now, our 'id-ego' is an 'organic, thinking, feeling, desiring, demanding' part of our ego -- our 'narcissistic-pleasure-seeking primal, primary, uncivilized, impulsive, driving, desiring ego-state' within the boundaries of 'our ego-as-a-whole'.
Within the realm of our new concept of the superego-id-ego vault or siev, we can differentiate between two polar 'sievs' -- usually conflated together into one siev: 1. our 'traumatized' superego-id-ego vault' containing our 'unbearable or unacceptable traumatized id ego and id-ego energy'; and 2. our 'unbearable or unacceptable compensating-fantasizing id-ego and id energy'.
Both types of energy -- or 'traumatized' id-ego energy and our 'fantasizing/phantasizing' (phantasizing referring to 'negative fantasy or phantasy energy') id-ego energy -- conflate together into complexes to form the type of 'love-hate' ambivalence (and our 'life' and 'destructive death' impulses) that we so commonly -- indeed, probably always -- find in any 'psychoanalytic analysis'. We can say that the human personality is inherently -- and particularly after traumacy and socialization -- 'polymorphously bipolar'.
This is where I will leave you to ponder what I have written -- feel free to judge this essay now the way you wish to (not that I pretend to have any control over when you choose to judge what you are reading) -- until we start to develop other, related, and inter-connected ideas.
-- dgb, March 16th, 2014
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Creations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Essay 2: Towards a New Multi-Dialectic, Multi-Integrative -- Quantum -- Philosophy-Psychology and Psychoanalysis-Neo-Psychoanalysis...
March 8th, 2014
Essay 2: The Project as a Whole -- At Least Within The Field of Philosophy-Psychology-Psychoanalysis-Neo-Psychoanalysis
My goal, my vision, my sought after multi-integration -- at least within the field of clinical psychology, personality theory, psychological health and pathology, and psychotherapy -- is ambitious: to integrate my own 40 years of academic study in this realm of investigation, including the underlying foundations of philosophy, in such a manner that it all will come together into a 'coherent, multi-integrative-dialectic (quantum) whole'.
There are two names that I will give to this project, one: Hegel's Hotel: DGB (Multi-Dialectic-Multi-Integrative -- or Quantum) Philosophy-Psychology';
The second is a subset of the first above, and that is: 'DGB (Multi-Dialectic-Multi-Integrative -- or Quantum) Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis'.
Together, they make up the name of this project -- 'The DGB Quantum Philosophy-Psychology and (Multi-Dialectic-Multi-Interactive-Multi-Integrative)Psychoanalytic-Neo-Psychoanalytic Project'.
The 'Hegel's Hotel' part of this name makes up the assumptive-philosophical paradigm that drives this whole idealistic, evolutionary-multi-dialectic-mutative-integrative process -- a 'triadic' process that can best be simplified by the following 'classic' Hegelian formula which Hegel never actually stated in the fashion that he is generally given credit for, and yet it was both the implicit and partly explicit driving force behind one of the greatest philosophical masterpieces in Western history (G.W. Hegel, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit', 1807).
Hegel's dialectical-interactive-integrative formula is usually cited as: 1. thesis; 2. anti-thesis; 3. synthesis -- with more modern writers such as Stephen Covey in his best-selling book, 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People', 1989,1990, devoting most of his book to the idea of 'Thinking Win-Win' (Habit 4); 'Seeking First to Be Understood, Then to Understand' (Habit 5); and 'Creatively Synergizing' (Habit 6) -- all three of which can be viewed as modern day applications of Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit'. Well, not quite. Not even Hegel was what I would call a 'dialectically-interactive-egalitarian-think-win-win-seek-first-to-understand-then-to- be-understood-creatively-synergize-your-differences' type of thinker. Neither was Freud. Neither was Anna Freud. Neither was Kurt Eissler. Neither was Masson. Because if they were, they would have worked out their conflicted difference in more creative-synergetic harmony.
For argument sake, there are two types of choices or decisions that a person can make:
1. An 'either/or' choice;
2. A 'think-win-win-seek-first-to-understand-then-to-be-understood-creatively-synergize-your-differences' choice (or set of choices) with a mutually motivated, co-operative partner.
Well, so many times we have in life a competitive as opposed to a co-operative partner, and an authoritarian, unilateral thinker as opposed to a dialectically-egalitarian-interactive-integrative thinker. The first type of thinker -- even if he or she 'wins' and/or 'dominates' but at the expense of the other person or group 'losing' and/or 'being dominated, suppressed, oppressed, repressed' is going to be dealing with covert, underlying resistance, rebellion, civil anarchy leaving the so-called 'win' tainted, tarnished, toxic, which the authoritarian, unilateral type of thinker having to deal with all this 'nuclear fallout' after the 'blow by' the less powerful resistor or resistant group.
Our second oldest known Western philosopher -- Anaximander -- talked and wrote about this type of 'conflict resolution' and created the original idea of 'The Shadow', 'Chaos', or 'The Apeiron' (the latter being Anaxamander's choice of terms) and the idea of 'Cosmic Justice' -- 'what goes around, comes around' with the Suppressed-Oppressed-Repressed-Enraged' Inferior Power, regaining strength, energy, and power in 'The Shadows of The Apeiron' until, one day, this Suppressed Power 'forces' its way up into the light of day again -- Centre Stage of a New Psycho-Drama -- in which the old power conflict will be played out again to a new and/or similar old conflict-resolution.
This philosophical view of Anaxamander's foreshadowed by about 2400 to 2500 years, and more, the evolutionary and revolutionary work of Hegel, Marx, Breuer, Charcot, Janet, Freud, Jung, Foucault, Derrida, Perls... 'Evolutionary Deconstructionism' taught the reverse of the theory of gravity (what goes up, must come down -- like a man jumping); in contrast, first Anaximander, then the rest mentioned above taught the reverse (what goes down, must come up -- like a volcano exploding, or a dam breaking, or a Boston Tea Party...or a War of Independence or a Civil War)...
The human personality is often an internal civil war between a frightening, irresistible force, and a resisting, defending, compensating wall. And so began the work of Freud -- and the birth of Psychoanalysis.
This 'psychological truism' is as true today as it was when Freud first started writing about this phenomenon in 1893 and 1894. I call it the 'central core' of Psychoanalysis -- all types of Psychoanalysis, but particularly 'Pre-Classical' (1893-1896) and 'Classical' (1897-1939).
Between Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud we have the 'Dialectic-Triadic-Evolutionary-Romantic-Post-Modern-Threesome' of modern day philosophy-psychology and psychoanalysis-neo-psychoanalysis. Nietzsche rejected his Hegelian roots (The Birth of Tragedy or BT) but BT was one of Nietzsche's finest legacies -- the first bridge between Hegel and Freud. Each of us has a 'Dionysian Id' (our 'erupting volcano'), an 'Apollonian Ego and/or Superego' (our resisting, defending wall), and our 'symptoms' or 'compromise-formations' between them. The way this psycho-drama plays itself out inside of us can lead us to a 'sterile world and path of over-anal-retentive-defensiveness and compensation'; or conversely, an oral-genital obsessive-compulsive-addictive world or path of lack of impulse control and related self-destruction; or, if we don't play out either of these 'Polar Births of Tragedy', we might actually find a more 'homeostatically and dialectically balanced, reasonably harmonious, middle ground between them.
That is the 'binding force' behind my whole philosophical-psychological work here as summed up by the name and the metaphysical metaphor which labels it: Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology: Project for a Greater, Multi-Dialectic, Multi-Interactive-Multi-Integrative -- Quantum -- Humanistic-Existential Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis.
...............................................................................................................................................
B/ Guiding Metaphysical Integrative Concepts and Theories
The first realm of study -- particularly the 'philosophical' implications and applications of what I intend to create here -- extend primarily outwards from the starting point of the human personality into all of the 'cultural extensions' of the human personality including: business, economics, politics, art...; whereas the second realm of study focuses mainly on the study of man's 'mind-brain', using a combination of 'interpreted and generalized, metaphysical psycho-structures and psycho-dynamics or psycho-processes' as 'guiding fictions' but, at the same time, as 'useful cognitive-language tools' that are being used because of their 'close structural, associative, and dynamic similarity' to 'what actually seems to be going on' in the human mind-brain -- based on 'yours truly here's' life experiences, perceptions, interpretations, generalizations, and judgments, and the above mentioned 40 years of both therapeutic experience and clinical study...
Using my own integrative 'realistic guiding fictions' of both metaphysical concepts and psycho-dynamic theories, as tools then -- hopefully, I will bring into play here with as much simplicity, clarity, and coherence as I can muster together on these pages, a 'psycho-dynamically old-new brand of evolutionary and integrative neo-psychoanalysis and philosophy-psychology that will advance the cause of clinical psychology, personality theory, neurosis and psychopathology, psychotherapy, and wellness psychology'.
'Integrative' becomes the key word here because I intend to draw my knowledge, insights, and integrative theoretical creations from 'any' and 'all' schools of philosophy and psychology that have made a significant impact on my mind-brain during my 42 year (1972-2014) 'voyage'.
.............................................................................................................................
C/ The Integration of 'Psyche' and 'Soma'
One of my goals of integration involves the integration of the human 'psyche' with the human 'soma' (that is, human psychology with human physiology, chemistry, bio-chemistry, hormonal interplay, neurology and neuro-psychology, etc.).
Not that I have any special expertise or knowledge in biology but what I have noticed over the years is that man's 'psychological defense system' functions very much like his 'biological defence system' (our 'immune system'), so I will be extrapolating on this comparison over the course of these essays.
Freud himself, in 1895, tried to bring biology, genetics, evolutionary theory, and physiology into the 'same room' as psychology -- integrating everything together in one essay -- but never completed the project, never completely figure out, as has anyone else, how a 'neuron firing' becomes a 'thought' and/or visa versa.
Regardless, this unfinished 1895 essay, 'Project for A Scientific Psychology', became the foundation for much of what Freud wrote over the next 44 years until the end of his life.
I would like to add some ideas to what Freud worked hard on but never finished 119 years ago.
......................................................................................................................................
D/ Six Foundational 'Sub-Schools' of Psychoanalysis
These are the six major 'sub-schools' of Psychoanalysis that I will be working with and drawing from in the essays that follow:
1. Freudian 'Pre-(Classical) Psychoanalysis' (1893-1896);
2. 'Classical' Freudian Psychoanalysis (1897-1939);
3. Object Relations (Starting with Kleinian Object Relations, the 1920s, 30s, until Klein's death, but still seemingly going strong today...include also, the work of: Fairbairn, Winnicott, Erickson, Guntrip, and many other Object Relations theorists...);
4. Self Psychology (launched by Heinz Kohut in the 1950s, and onwards....introduced the important concept of 'narcissistic transferences'...and as an extension of Object Relations brought into play the idea of 'Self-Object Relations'...)
5. Bionian Psychoanalysis (Bion launched his own unique brand of 'Object Relations' in the 1950s...with some intriguing concepts and theories to consider...)
6. Lacanian Psychoanalysis started off as a provocative and controversial sub-school of psychoanalysis -- 'unaccepted' by the international body -- but has now been accepted into 'the fold', and is being taught as a recognized sub-school of psychoanalysis.
Beyond psychoanalysis, there are many different 'post' and 'neo' schools of psychoanalysis that we will also be looking at including schools created by Adler, Jung, Horney, Fromm, Perls, Berne, Janov...
Digging back before Psychoanalysis we have many schools of philosophy (although they usually weren't, and aren't, referred to as 'schools' of philosophy) that have either directly or indirectly influenced psychoanalysis or simply pre-dated psychoanalysis with similar ideas...starting in ancient Greece and China and evolving forward: Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Darwin, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Goethe, and the contemporary philosophers of psychoanalysis such as Foucault and Derrida...
This is a huge project....but the project has been evolving online for over six years now.....so now it's just a matter of presenting a more coherent, organized, value-laden, package....
Let's see if I can put everything together in a meaningful manner for you and me both...
-- dgb, March 9th, updated April 1st, 2014,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging-Synergies...
-- Are Now In Process...
Essay 2: The Project as a Whole -- At Least Within The Field of Philosophy-Psychology-Psychoanalysis-Neo-Psychoanalysis
My goal, my vision, my sought after multi-integration -- at least within the field of clinical psychology, personality theory, psychological health and pathology, and psychotherapy -- is ambitious: to integrate my own 40 years of academic study in this realm of investigation, including the underlying foundations of philosophy, in such a manner that it all will come together into a 'coherent, multi-integrative-dialectic (quantum) whole'.
There are two names that I will give to this project, one: Hegel's Hotel: DGB (Multi-Dialectic-Multi-Integrative -- or Quantum) Philosophy-Psychology';
The second is a subset of the first above, and that is: 'DGB (Multi-Dialectic-Multi-Integrative -- or Quantum) Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis'.
Together, they make up the name of this project -- 'The DGB Quantum Philosophy-Psychology and (Multi-Dialectic-Multi-Interactive-Multi-Integrative)Psychoanalytic-Neo-Psychoanalytic Project'.
The 'Hegel's Hotel' part of this name makes up the assumptive-philosophical paradigm that drives this whole idealistic, evolutionary-multi-dialectic-mutative-integrative process -- a 'triadic' process that can best be simplified by the following 'classic' Hegelian formula which Hegel never actually stated in the fashion that he is generally given credit for, and yet it was both the implicit and partly explicit driving force behind one of the greatest philosophical masterpieces in Western history (G.W. Hegel, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit', 1807).
Hegel's dialectical-interactive-integrative formula is usually cited as: 1. thesis; 2. anti-thesis; 3. synthesis -- with more modern writers such as Stephen Covey in his best-selling book, 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People', 1989,1990, devoting most of his book to the idea of 'Thinking Win-Win' (Habit 4); 'Seeking First to Be Understood, Then to Understand' (Habit 5); and 'Creatively Synergizing' (Habit 6) -- all three of which can be viewed as modern day applications of Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit'. Well, not quite. Not even Hegel was what I would call a 'dialectically-interactive-egalitarian-think-win-win-seek-first-to-understand-then-to- be-understood-creatively-synergize-your-differences' type of thinker. Neither was Freud. Neither was Anna Freud. Neither was Kurt Eissler. Neither was Masson. Because if they were, they would have worked out their conflicted difference in more creative-synergetic harmony.
For argument sake, there are two types of choices or decisions that a person can make:
1. An 'either/or' choice;
2. A 'think-win-win-seek-first-to-understand-then-to-be-understood-creatively-synergize-your-differences' choice (or set of choices) with a mutually motivated, co-operative partner.
Well, so many times we have in life a competitive as opposed to a co-operative partner, and an authoritarian, unilateral thinker as opposed to a dialectically-egalitarian-interactive-integrative thinker. The first type of thinker -- even if he or she 'wins' and/or 'dominates' but at the expense of the other person or group 'losing' and/or 'being dominated, suppressed, oppressed, repressed' is going to be dealing with covert, underlying resistance, rebellion, civil anarchy leaving the so-called 'win' tainted, tarnished, toxic, which the authoritarian, unilateral type of thinker having to deal with all this 'nuclear fallout' after the 'blow by' the less powerful resistor or resistant group.
Our second oldest known Western philosopher -- Anaximander -- talked and wrote about this type of 'conflict resolution' and created the original idea of 'The Shadow', 'Chaos', or 'The Apeiron' (the latter being Anaxamander's choice of terms) and the idea of 'Cosmic Justice' -- 'what goes around, comes around' with the Suppressed-Oppressed-Repressed-Enraged' Inferior Power, regaining strength, energy, and power in 'The Shadows of The Apeiron' until, one day, this Suppressed Power 'forces' its way up into the light of day again -- Centre Stage of a New Psycho-Drama -- in which the old power conflict will be played out again to a new and/or similar old conflict-resolution.
This philosophical view of Anaxamander's foreshadowed by about 2400 to 2500 years, and more, the evolutionary and revolutionary work of Hegel, Marx, Breuer, Charcot, Janet, Freud, Jung, Foucault, Derrida, Perls... 'Evolutionary Deconstructionism' taught the reverse of the theory of gravity (what goes up, must come down -- like a man jumping); in contrast, first Anaximander, then the rest mentioned above taught the reverse (what goes down, must come up -- like a volcano exploding, or a dam breaking, or a Boston Tea Party...or a War of Independence or a Civil War)...
The human personality is often an internal civil war between a frightening, irresistible force, and a resisting, defending, compensating wall. And so began the work of Freud -- and the birth of Psychoanalysis.
This 'psychological truism' is as true today as it was when Freud first started writing about this phenomenon in 1893 and 1894. I call it the 'central core' of Psychoanalysis -- all types of Psychoanalysis, but particularly 'Pre-Classical' (1893-1896) and 'Classical' (1897-1939).
Between Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud we have the 'Dialectic-Triadic-Evolutionary-Romantic-Post-Modern-Threesome' of modern day philosophy-psychology and psychoanalysis-neo-psychoanalysis. Nietzsche rejected his Hegelian roots (The Birth of Tragedy or BT) but BT was one of Nietzsche's finest legacies -- the first bridge between Hegel and Freud. Each of us has a 'Dionysian Id' (our 'erupting volcano'), an 'Apollonian Ego and/or Superego' (our resisting, defending wall), and our 'symptoms' or 'compromise-formations' between them. The way this psycho-drama plays itself out inside of us can lead us to a 'sterile world and path of over-anal-retentive-defensiveness and compensation'; or conversely, an oral-genital obsessive-compulsive-addictive world or path of lack of impulse control and related self-destruction; or, if we don't play out either of these 'Polar Births of Tragedy', we might actually find a more 'homeostatically and dialectically balanced, reasonably harmonious, middle ground between them.
That is the 'binding force' behind my whole philosophical-psychological work here as summed up by the name and the metaphysical metaphor which labels it: Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology: Project for a Greater, Multi-Dialectic, Multi-Interactive-Multi-Integrative -- Quantum -- Humanistic-Existential Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis.
...............................................................................................................................................
B/ Guiding Metaphysical Integrative Concepts and Theories
The first realm of study -- particularly the 'philosophical' implications and applications of what I intend to create here -- extend primarily outwards from the starting point of the human personality into all of the 'cultural extensions' of the human personality including: business, economics, politics, art...; whereas the second realm of study focuses mainly on the study of man's 'mind-brain', using a combination of 'interpreted and generalized, metaphysical psycho-structures and psycho-dynamics or psycho-processes' as 'guiding fictions' but, at the same time, as 'useful cognitive-language tools' that are being used because of their 'close structural, associative, and dynamic similarity' to 'what actually seems to be going on' in the human mind-brain -- based on 'yours truly here's' life experiences, perceptions, interpretations, generalizations, and judgments, and the above mentioned 40 years of both therapeutic experience and clinical study...
Using my own integrative 'realistic guiding fictions' of both metaphysical concepts and psycho-dynamic theories, as tools then -- hopefully, I will bring into play here with as much simplicity, clarity, and coherence as I can muster together on these pages, a 'psycho-dynamically old-new brand of evolutionary and integrative neo-psychoanalysis and philosophy-psychology that will advance the cause of clinical psychology, personality theory, neurosis and psychopathology, psychotherapy, and wellness psychology'.
'Integrative' becomes the key word here because I intend to draw my knowledge, insights, and integrative theoretical creations from 'any' and 'all' schools of philosophy and psychology that have made a significant impact on my mind-brain during my 42 year (1972-2014) 'voyage'.
.............................................................................................................................
C/ The Integration of 'Psyche' and 'Soma'
One of my goals of integration involves the integration of the human 'psyche' with the human 'soma' (that is, human psychology with human physiology, chemistry, bio-chemistry, hormonal interplay, neurology and neuro-psychology, etc.).
Not that I have any special expertise or knowledge in biology but what I have noticed over the years is that man's 'psychological defense system' functions very much like his 'biological defence system' (our 'immune system'), so I will be extrapolating on this comparison over the course of these essays.
Freud himself, in 1895, tried to bring biology, genetics, evolutionary theory, and physiology into the 'same room' as psychology -- integrating everything together in one essay -- but never completed the project, never completely figure out, as has anyone else, how a 'neuron firing' becomes a 'thought' and/or visa versa.
Regardless, this unfinished 1895 essay, 'Project for A Scientific Psychology', became the foundation for much of what Freud wrote over the next 44 years until the end of his life.
I would like to add some ideas to what Freud worked hard on but never finished 119 years ago.
......................................................................................................................................
D/ Six Foundational 'Sub-Schools' of Psychoanalysis
These are the six major 'sub-schools' of Psychoanalysis that I will be working with and drawing from in the essays that follow:
1. Freudian 'Pre-(Classical) Psychoanalysis' (1893-1896);
2. 'Classical' Freudian Psychoanalysis (1897-1939);
3. Object Relations (Starting with Kleinian Object Relations, the 1920s, 30s, until Klein's death, but still seemingly going strong today...include also, the work of: Fairbairn, Winnicott, Erickson, Guntrip, and many other Object Relations theorists...);
4. Self Psychology (launched by Heinz Kohut in the 1950s, and onwards....introduced the important concept of 'narcissistic transferences'...and as an extension of Object Relations brought into play the idea of 'Self-Object Relations'...)
5. Bionian Psychoanalysis (Bion launched his own unique brand of 'Object Relations' in the 1950s...with some intriguing concepts and theories to consider...)
6. Lacanian Psychoanalysis started off as a provocative and controversial sub-school of psychoanalysis -- 'unaccepted' by the international body -- but has now been accepted into 'the fold', and is being taught as a recognized sub-school of psychoanalysis.
Beyond psychoanalysis, there are many different 'post' and 'neo' schools of psychoanalysis that we will also be looking at including schools created by Adler, Jung, Horney, Fromm, Perls, Berne, Janov...
Digging back before Psychoanalysis we have many schools of philosophy (although they usually weren't, and aren't, referred to as 'schools' of philosophy) that have either directly or indirectly influenced psychoanalysis or simply pre-dated psychoanalysis with similar ideas...starting in ancient Greece and China and evolving forward: Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Darwin, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Goethe, and the contemporary philosophers of psychoanalysis such as Foucault and Derrida...
This is a huge project....but the project has been evolving online for over six years now.....so now it's just a matter of presenting a more coherent, organized, value-laden, package....
Let's see if I can put everything together in a meaningful manner for you and me both...
-- dgb, March 9th, updated April 1st, 2014,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging-Synergies...
-- Are Now In Process...
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