I have told this story online in different parts and different ways in different essays and other transactions.
However, this rendition probably covers most of the essentials of what I want to communicate about the major influence that Dr. Jeffrey Masson had on my life in terms of: 1. becoming deeply involved in 'The Seduction Theory Controversy'; 2. meeting Dr. Masson by email, and interviewing him by email in March, 2010; and 3. becoming 'obsessed' with integrating early Freudian 'reality-trauma-seduction theory' (pre-1897) with his partly simultaneously (1895-1938) evolving 'impulse-drive-childhood sexuality-Oedipus-fantasy theory'.
I remember walking into a Queen Street East bookstore in Toronto, I think around 1994 or 1995 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 about the order that they caught my attention 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 Letters 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 believe I bought the first two books and left the bookstore; the third one I bought at a later date. Somewhere in this mix, I also bought Janet Malcolm's highly entertaining (but I learned later editorially skewed) 'In The Freud Archives' -- all four books dealing with the same controversial subject matter: Freud's (1896 to 2014...still ticking...) Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory vs. his later Oedipus (Childhood Sexual Fantasy) Theory.
Basically the controversy boiled down to 'which was more right' and 'which was more wrong' relative to the childhood etiology/causality of hysteria and obsessional neurosis -- it was like a 'Copernican 180 degree shift' in how Freud viewed the cause of neurosis -- and it all further boiled down to what Freud was and was not thinking in 1895-1896, which of course, will never be definitively known or proven other than in the leftover circumstantial evidence that can be found in Freud's letters to Fliess during these two psychoanalysis-revolutionizing years. And Freud was the primary revolutionary deconstructionist and reconstructionist (with assistance from Fliess) during these two most controversial years of the building of psychoanalysis.
Did Freud get it 'more right' in his first theory (his trauma-seduction theory) or in his 'second theory' (his childhood sexuality fantasy theory) -- or were there elements of 'right' and 'wrong' in both of these respective bipolar opposite theories that Freud didn't know how to bring 'under the same roof' -- like, for example, the way physicists were able to unite the 'particle' and 'wavelength' theories into one bipolar 'particle-wavelength' theory of matter and energy that was 'stronger' than both the 'partially right' theories previously.
If you think about it, all theories are inherently reductionistic and generally one-sided, pointing in 'this' direction but not in 'that' direction, unless or until you start to unite opposing bipolar theories into one package. This is how we get to the Hegelian idea that all theories (or at least the biased, one-sided theories) are inherently self-destructive as soon as they try to explain what they can't properly explain because what needs to be explained 'lies outside of the theoretical box' of what is trying to be explained.
If we have a case of 'innocent childhood sexual exploration' we don't want to confuse this with 'childhood sexual abuse' unless there is an adult or older child exploiting the situation; whereas if we have a case of 'real childhood sexual abuse, manipulation, exploitation', we don't want to confuse this with 'innocent childhood sexual exploration'. Certainly, we don't want to confuse theoretically interpreted sexual fantasies with real memories of childhood sexual abuse anymore than we want to confuse false or distorted memories with real ones.
A one-sided theory cannot explain everything on both sides of a bipolar issue that the one-sided theory takes a one-sided stance on. In contrast, a two-sided dualistic-dialectic theory can.
For example, people can initiate their own sexual impulses, whether child or adult, AND people can also be sexually manipulated, coerced, exploited, forced... by someone who has more power than them. Stated differently, sexual trauma and sexual fantasy, desire, and drive are not necessarily mutually exclusive phenomena. A two-sided dualistic-dialectic theory can account for this. A one-sided unilateral theory can't.
Capitalism and socialism both have 'human value' and 'dis-value' attached to them, depending on how and to what extent each of them they are applied, and to what extent they are connected to 'humanistic ethics' (allowing for the fact that there is still plenty of room for debate and human disagreement). Often, you see a right wing political ideology following on the footsteps of a left wing political ideology and visa versa because over time a one-sided ideological theory is going to expose itself as narcissistically favoring one side of the political ideological equation while neglecting and suppressing the other side of the equation that needs to be 'homeostatically balanced' with a more left wing-right wing dialectically integrative ideology that addresses both side of the political and ideological equation.
In this same fashion, after 1896, we have a Freudian ideology that emphasized 'human and childhood sexuality and drive' as opposed to 'human and childhood sexual abuse', and both theories were partly right, partly wrong which is why we are still arguing about them and which is 'more right' than the other.
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Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.
Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.
Education is the art of making man ethical.
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Thus, the one-sided idealist and/or ideologist is always going to be partly 'right' and partly 'wrong', partly ethical and partly unethical -- the 'unethical' part being attached to that part of his or her one-sided theory that does not cover the 'blind spot' of the 'territory' that is covered by his or her dualistic and dialectic opponent -- the idealist and/or ideologist who is covering that part of the 'wholistic territory' that is not covered by the first idealist and/or ideologist.
Thus, every theory -- or at least every one-sided theory -- is going to be at least partly 'neurotic' -- it is going to try to explain that part of reality that is its 'blind spot', and the blind spot is the other side of the fence of the unilateral theory.
Bipolar, dualistic-dialectic theories -- like 'the particle-wave theory' or
'quantum theory' -- do much better at capturing the blind spots that are missed by each
respective unilateral theory that needs the opposite side of the united bipolar theory to cover its unilateral 'blind spots'. Dare I say that it is often a lot like marriage. Opposites attract for a reason. Each helps to alleviate the other's blind spots.
Thus, the need for a 'reality-fantasy' theory in Classical Psychoanalysis that unites Freud's work both before and after 1896 -- something that Freud couldn't see, something that The Psychoanalytic Establishment (most notably Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler) in 1982 couldn't see, and something that even Jeffrey Masson couldn't see. They all had their 'psychoanalytic blind spots' that were reinforced by the nature of their opposing one-sided Freudian theories that each righteously adhered to and defended while declaring that the opposite theory was 'wrong'.
Thus, the need for a 'reality-fantasy' theory in Classical Psychoanalysis that unites Freud's work both before and after 1896 -- something that Freud couldn't see, something that The Psychoanalytic Establishment (most notably Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler) in 1982 couldn't see, and something that even Jeffrey Masson couldn't see. They all had their 'psychoanalytic blind spots' that were reinforced by the nature of their opposing one-sided Freudian theories that each righteously adhered to and defended while declaring that the opposite theory was 'wrong'.
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You were right from your side, and I was right from mine,
We're just one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind...- Bob Dylan
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Two opposing partial truths -- or at least the theories that represent these opposing partial truths -- when synthesized together make for a better all-encompassing theory than either theory working unilaterally by itself trying to cover a part of reality that is just not covered by the unilateral, one-sided theory.
I plan to fix this problem with a united Freudian and Post-Freudian 'reality-trauma-defense-fantasy-impulse-drive theory' that covers all of Freud's psychological work from 1893 to 1938 -- 45 years -- not the 39 years that is called 'Classical' Psychoanalysis. It should be called 'Classical One-Sided Psychoanalysis'.
-- dgb, Nov. 8th, 2014, updated, Feb. 25th, 2014,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations and Creations...
-- Are Still in Process...
