Modified and updated Aug. 19th, 29th, Sept 7, 2014...dgb
Change the way you conceptualize something -- thinking outside the box to use the now common expression -- and you change the direction of your thought process.
Freud changed the direction of psychoanalysis when he rejected after 1896 his hard-earned reality-memory-trauma-seduction (childhood sexual abuse) theory which is often now referred to as 'Pre'-Psychoanalysis (1893-1896) in favor of the freshly evolving theory in his mind at the time that would carry his thinking the rest of his life -- i.e., his 'instinct-fantasy-drive-childhood sexuality-Oedipal' theory that Freud is now mainly famous (or infamous) for, which, together, is generally referred to as 'Classical' Psychoanalysis (1897-1939).
But what if Freud made a mistake rejecting his early reality theory to the extent that he did, which is a question that many serious analysts and non-analysts alike have asked themselves over the years -- especially when it came down to Freud choosing 'imagined' childhood sexual abuse (The Oedipus or Electra Complex in young girls) over the 'real' childhood sexual abuse that Freud was hearing about from is clients in his earliest years of investigation (1893-1896, and even before)?
This is the question that basically triggered the Psychoanalytic Scandal of the early 1980s involving
The Projects Director of The Freud Archives at the time -- Dr. Jeffrey Masson -- telling the whole world that Freud had turned his back on, and 'suppressed', childhood sexual abuse after 1896 with a growing strength of inflexible dogma the more years he put behind him after 1896, and that he did this as an act of 'moral loss of courage' in order to perhaps save his job and career, and not clash swords with the people who had power over his destiny -- the members (all men) of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society.
This paints a less than idealistic picture of Freud and his possible moral choice at the time. It could be that he was under a lot of duress from The Society -- basically being blacklisted by them, while Freud had a rapidly growing family to feed, Anna Freud having just been born in December, 1895. Or we can choose to believe what Psychoanalysis has told us to believe, and that is that Freud basically rejected his trauma-sexual abuse theory because it was an 'inferior' theory to his evolving fantasy theory, and/or that Freud never really completely abandoned his trauma theory -- it just played a subsidiary role in his thinking after 1896.
But how often do we hear of a theorist-therapist making such a radical 180 degree turn in theory in such a very short time -- proclaiming in the spring of 1896 that ALL of his cases of hysteria and obsessional neurosis had at their roots a history of childhood sexual abuse -- and that the members of The Vienna Society were 'jackasses' for not listening to him; and then turning around within the next year and a half and saying that he was wrong -- that the number of childhood sexual abuse theories that he had before believed were 'real', could not have possibly been real, that there were too many such cases to be 'credibly' deemed real, all the things that the Society had thrown at Freud a year and a half earlier, calling his theory a 'scientific fairy tale' -- Freud although initially rebelling against them and calling them 'jackasses' for not believing in the reality of his theory, well, it seems that Freud, between 1896 and 1897 basically internalized their argument, as well as finding an alternative set of theories that would take Psychoanalysis in a whole new direction -- for better, and/or for worse.
Looking back at it now, doesn't this whole series of events seem highly suspicious -- Freud basically going from rebelling to succumbing to the what The Society wanted to hear from him? This is what Masson argued throughout the 1980s and early 1990s (and still believes now) although The International Psychoanalytic Institute would not have anything to do with such an argument -- especially the part about Freud 'losing moral courage' -- and still will not to this day, although silently 'childhood trauma' has re-emerged as a heavy factor in contemporary psychoanalytic theory, whether that be from an Object Relations perspective, and Attachment Theory perspective, or a Self-Psychology perspective -- just not from Freud's original 1893 to 1896 perspective, which in my opinion, remains the proper foundation of ALL psychoanalysis, and, in large part, most brands of non-psychoanalytic therapy. Did patriarchal Vienna politics change psychoanalysis in 1896?
It certainly looks like it to me -- especially when you factor in the February, 1895 Emma Ekstein nasal surgery fiasco, and the birth of Freud's (and Fliess's?) 'wish fulfillment' theory between the rest of 1895 and 1896 -- small snippets of it visible in Freud's April-May, 1896 essay on hysteria being caused by childhood sexual abuse, foreshadowing the 180 degree radical turn of psychoanalysis to shortly come, the part about childhood sexual abuse being left behind, and the rise of The Oedipal Complex and the 'little girls erotic fantasies towards her dad 'allegedly distorting' her 'allegedly real' memories of childhood sexual abuse -- taking the place of the former childhood sexual abuse theory.
Looking back at this whole sequence of events from my 2014 historical pedestal, as Masson was in the 1980s, I am more inclined to support the opinion of Masson than The International Psychoanalytic Institute that 'something still smells rotten in the town of Vienna in the year of 1896.
Freud could have been a very early and brave women's and children's social activist around the implementation of better political and legal services to protect against the abuse of women and children in the family. For a very brief period in history -- April-May, 1896 -- he was. And then everything turned around and folded like a house of cards -- and now Freud remains heavily criticized -- rightly so -- for being the creator of a set of patriarchal assumptive biases that were built into (the poisoned?) heart and soul of Classical Psychoanalysis. How often after 1896 has real childhood sexual abuse been overlooked, ignored, suppressed in Classical Psychoanalytic offices around the world? That is a very scary question. Masson was quoted as saying that Psychoanalysis would have to recall all patients starting in 1900 (maybe earlier) like Ford had to recall all its Pintos!
Couldn't Freud have worked out an integrative 'reality-fantasy' theory that was at least more reality based than what he ended up creating? Or that wouldn't have satisfied the narcissistic demands of The Vienna Society who, it would certainly seem, didn't want to hear any more theories about childhood sexual abuse?
Psychoanalysis, over the years, became more and more criticized as being an 'Old Boys Club' -- a proponent of Victorian Patriarchal Bias as opposed to the proponent of 'Women's and Children's Civil Rights and Protections' that it could have become if Freud had stayed on his original path -- blowing the whistle on childhood sexual abuse, and continuing to blow it until changes were made in the rights and protections of women and children in abusive family settings.
Now, the opposite might have happened if Freud had persisted in the direction he was going in his April-May 1896 essay on childhood sexual abuse. He might have lost patients -- which in the letter of May 4th, 1896 to Fliess, Freud said that he had -- that his waiting room was empty and that he had been blackballed by The Vienna Society, doctors no longer referring patients to him. If this had continued, he would have been out of business, perhaps his career destroyed, and we might have never heard from Freud again. All speculation of course. But worthy of strong consideration -- the circumstantial, historical evidence, especially in the unabridged Freud to Fliess letters edited by Masson, seems strong enough to suggest that Freud purposely steered clear of any more serious talk about childhood sexual abuse. The 'erotic fantasies of children' took its place -- some might say a little too 'coincidentally' so.
Well, I intend to integrate the two bipolar opposite theories -- trauma theory and fantasy theory -- that Freud never integrated.
Masson said that he didn't believe it could be done although he liked my seemingly passionate spirit in trying. That was back in 2010. Probably, he would be less generous if he were to comment today -- although I am only surmising.
In one sense, this would require a rather massive integration -- connecting Freud's work of 1893 to 1896 harmoniously and logically with the rest of his work from 1897 to 1939.
But in another sense, it is a relatively easy integration -- or at least the crucial part of it.
Let us say that 'hysterics' -- a label that is not used much anymore (perhaps replaced in good part by the label of 'borderline personality') -- as well as almost all other 'neurotics' (another label that is not much used today but I will continue to use it) -- suffer from what might be called 'Early Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder' (EPTSD). Well, a part of the customary 'fallout' of this disorder is something that might be called 'Post-Traumatic-Fantasy-Defense and/or Compensation' (PTFDC).
And right there -- in that paragraph above -- is the essence of the main idea that we need to integrate Freudian early trauma theory with his later fantasy theory.
On this note, we will stop for today, and continue on this path, in the essays that follow.
-- dgb, Sept 7th, 2014.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging...
-- Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process....
