1/ Introduction: The Winter of Freud's Discontent (1895-96) -- and An Overview of DGB Central Ego (Linguistic-Semantic-Cognitive or 'LSC') Theory
Historically speaking, we know that the winter of 1895-1896 was a year of pivotal change in the theoretical foundations and dynamics of Psychoanalysis. It was the winter that Freud started to 'abandon, suppress, and/or submerge his previous 'traumacy' theory and his freshly emerging 'seduction' theory, the latter of which was a 'sexual' extension of his previous traumacy theory, meaning that the idea of the 'seduction theory' was conflating two ideas (and the human experiences upon which they were based) together: specifically, 'sexual traumacy'.
Now, here is where the English language -- and the German language, in partly similar, partly different ways before it was translated into the English language after it -- can create havoc on the minds of Freudian students, scholars, theorists, therapists, and lay readers alike who try to interpret it into 'subjective-objective' or 'phenomenal' or 'phenomenological' meaning. Even in this last sentence of mine, we see the use of technical terms that demand 'definition' and 'description' -- an exposition of each term's 'range' and 'focus' of meaning within the context of my subjective-objective usage of these terms.
'Linguistically-semantically (having to do with the dialectical interconnection between language and meaning), we see an imperative distinction that can, and does, need to be made relative to the 'psycho-dynamics of cognitive thinking' between our: 1. 'linguistic world' (i.e., our world of language and language symbols); 2. 'conceptual world' (i.e., our world of thoughts, ideas, concepts, theories, generalizations, abstractions); 3. 'phenomenal or subjective-objective world'; and 4. 'objective' world or 'objective reality' that we may or may not be subjectively conscious of that is happening either inside of us and/or around us in our environment. (The latter two distinctions come from Kant -- i.e., in his terminology, our 'subjective-phenomenal' world vs. our 'objective-noumenal' world' (the latter of which is paradoxically a 'metaphysical world' beyond the capability and/or 'empirical performance' of our 'senses' and/or 'linguistic-conceptual understanding'.
The simplest example I can give you is of say, my 'stepping off the curb and onto the street, being 'lost in my own inside fantasy world', and not seeing the car that is just turning the corner and coming right at me. In my moment of 'subjective-objective disconnect', we can say that my 'own private conceptual-phenomenal world' is at 'odds' -- or 'alienated' from my 'objective, real world' that is imposing an immediate danger on me. This 'disconnect' or 'alienation from objective reality' is only overcome at that exact moment where I finally see the car coming at me -- which could be too late for me to take any 'defensive' or 'compensatory' action to prevent the car from hitting me. (I can perhaps only hope that the driver saw me before I saw his or her car coming at me, and that he or she has time to react that I don't.
Now, we come to the 'therapeutic relationship' and the 'dialectic interaction' between the 'therapist' and his or her 'client/patient'.
The historical question can, and has been asked (and we will never, ever, get an 'entirely satisfying, -completely right' answer -- consequently, the still existing controversy over this historical, psychoanalytic matter) -- but here is the question anyway: 'To what extent, did Freud fully grasp what was going on between his individual clients and himself in the therapeutic relationship, as well as the essence of his clients' childhood relationships, especially with his or her parents and siblings vs. to what extent was this 'interpretive and evaluative information' falsely or partly falsely grasped, in the worst case scenario manipulated and contrived, consciously or subconsciously, purposely, or non-purposely, in such a way that it affected the history and evolution of Psychoanalysis, either positively or negatively -- or both?'
There were at least three, probably four, different, significant events that happened between the spring of 1895 and the fall of 1896 that may or may not have interacted with each other to shape much of the history and the evolution of 'Classical' Psychoanalysis to this day.
1. Freud's 'causal etiology' of 'hysteria' and the other neuroses was progressing, evolving, changing from a 'trauma theory' to a 'sexual trauma theory' to a 'mixed sexual trauma and sexual wish-fulfillment/fixation/fantasy' theory to a 'straight sexual wish-fulfillment-fixation-fantasy' theory...This whole evolution would take longer than the two years focused on here but it was these two years that would become central to what is now referred to as Freud's 'abandonment or partial abandonment of the trauma-seduction theory' in favor of what would become the cornerstone of 'Classical' Psychoanalysis: 'sexual instinct-wish-fulfillment-fixation-fantasy-drive theory' with his 'trauma-seduction (and childhood sexual assault) theory being left largely behind, especially in cases involving female clients citing memories of childhood seductions and/or assaults by her father;
2. The Emma Eckstein Nasal-Surgery Medical Fiasco of March, 1895 in which Fliess performed the surgery on Emma while Freud watched;
3. The Scientific Meeting of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society on the evening of April 21st, 1896, in which Freud read his new paper, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria', in which he blamed childhood sexual manipulation, seduction, and/or assault by a parent, sibling, family relative, or stranger on being the most significant 'cause' in the childhood etiology of 'hysteria' and other neuroses like 'obsessional neurosis' which involve modified variations spinning off of the same theme.
4. Freud's father died in the fall of 1896.
Now, the 50 million dollar question becomes: Did any of these last three factors -- either independently or together -- affect the changes that were taking place in Freud's mind relative to the first major factor? Changes were already taking place in Freud's mind before the last two factors even occurred but, at the same time, it is quite possible/plausible/likely that the latter two factors might have had/probably did have? a more long term effect on the history and evolution of Classical Psychoanalysis. If so, what was the full nature of this effect, and was it a good one, a bad one, or both? Since The Oedipal Complex Theory became a hugely modified derivative of The Seduction Theory, and ethical-moral controversy still surrounds the substitution of The Oedipal Complex Theory for The Trauma-Seduction Theory, one cannot easily dismiss (unless you are motivated to) Masson's accusation of Freud 'having underlying currents of narcissistic bias' that may have significantly tainted the fall of The Seduction Theory and The Rise of The Oedipal Theory, the latter of which has the capability of 'covering up' the first -- i.e. a real childhood incestuous sexual assault that a 'Classical' psychoanalyst 'reinterprets' or 'reconstructs' as the client's own 'repressed sexual fantasy'.
This is very dangerous therapeutic ethical business -- especially when Freud, over the course of many years, slowly 'cemented' his 'unilateral, one-sided clinical theory of The Oedipal Complex into what, in the end, was viewed as a 'clinical fact'.....an ethically 'negligent' act of the highest order, many would say 'patriarchally biased' or 'narcissistically biased' to hide the atrocities of some fathers against their own children....a scientfically and theoretically negligent act on Freud's part that still hasn't been 'fixed' -- or at least 'publicly fixed' by The Psychoanalytic Establishment (including his own daughter, Anna, who seemed more fixated on protecting her father's reputation, integrity, and legacy, than she was in protecting the 'therapeutic rights' of women who deserved, as much as men, to have the right to tell their childhood story without having the 'Classical' analyst dismiss and 're-interpret' the woman's story of her own 'paternal incest, manipulation, seduction, rape' -- in 'automatic fashion like a psychoanalytic robot' -- into her own sexual fantasy. Reality is never so 'black' and 'white' -- particularly when the accused father keeps coming up 'white'. Theories are never 'facts'.
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Was Freud really caught in a theoretical and therapeutic paradox of confusion in the winter of 1895/96?
Or was Freud working to manipulate -- either consciously or subconsciously -- himself out of his own moral and professional guilt regarding the Emma Eckstein nasal surgery scandal?
Was Freud both the author and the victim of his own 'ego-defenses' at work because he psychologically 'needed' to absolve both himself and Fliess of their mutual moral-professional guilt?
Or was 'The Interpretation of Dreams' just blasting up through his psyche to the point where his 'fantasy theory' started to overtake and submerge his 'reality theory'?
An argument can be made for both contentions and I believe that it is possible that the two alternative possibilities could have become 'conflated together' into one behavioral response. Specifically, a gradual changeover from 'reality theory' to 'fantasy theory'.
You can go back as far as 'The Neuro-Psychoses of Defense (1894) or even much further back than that to Breuer's case of Anna O. in the early 1880s -- and you can find clinical evidence to support Freud's 'rising fantasy theory' of late 1895-99. It's not like the clinical evidence needed to be entirely 're-interpreted' although that happened too. And it does seem very, very strange that Freud should so suddenly turn his back on arguably one of his best papers ever -- or at least one of his 'most clinically grounded and passionate-compassionate paper' ever. I'm talking about
'The Aetiology of Hysteria' (1896) which was a pretty (although not entirely) logical extension of all of Freud's (and Breuer's, and Charcot's) earlier work.
3. On The Evolution of Many Modified Theories Between 1893 and 1896
Janet's Theory of Hysteria (before Freud's, 1893?): Hysteria was based in a 'splitting of consciousness';
Freud's Theory 1a (1894, The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence): Hysteria was based in conflicting, incompatible ideas that motivated an act of will (not usually conscious) on the part of the patient which in turn sometimes produced a 'splitting of consciousness'. (S.E., V. 111, p. 46-47)
Note: A 'splitting of conscious' later became 'repression' for Freud which might be viewed as a 'dissociation between consciousness and unconsciousness'. This theory actually still gave Freud the leeway to pursue any one of the following sub-theories.)
Freud's Theory 1b: Hysteria was based in repressed, early childhood trauma;
Theory 1c: Hysteria was/is based in repressed, early childhood sexual trauma/seduction/assault (1896);
Theory 1d: (betweem December 1895 and late 1896...and onwards): Hysteria was/is based in repressed, early childhood sexual fantasy and instinctual drives.
Now, these are a very small sample -- and oversimplifications -- of Freud's theories between 1893 and 1896. Indeed, I wouldn't even dare to try to articulate what might have been 50 or 100 of all the different modifications and variations on the same theme that Freud presented either publicly or privately to Fliess during this time period.
Two things I can say about this:
Firstly, in reading the letters to Fliess from December 1896 tells me that Freud still seemed reasonably grounded in his theorizing -- at this point, it seemed to be a mixture of 'reality' and 'fantasy' theory which doesn't sit too far away from what I am aiming to do as well. So it was not like there was any 'knee-jerk' reaction to abandon and suppress The Traumacy-Seduction Theory; rather, there seemed to be a concerted effort to 'increase the level of responsibility of childhood sexual activity' -- and what back then were referred to by Freud as 'the sexual perversions', with still some mention of 'adult seducers'......a general formula that I don't think would change too much until maybe the later Case Examples like 'Dora', 'Little Hans', 'The Rat Man' and 'The Wolf Man' and then even much later in the 'Introductions To Psychoanalysis', and his 'Autobiographical Account'.....But I need to re-read these cases before I can fully editorialize my personal opinion on them...
What is clear at the end of 1896 is that Freud didn't 'theoretically jump off a cliff' -- as Masson has previously articulated, Freud was still carrying some 'reality theory' intermixed with his 'fantasy theory'; it's just that over time, his traumacy-seduction theory seemed to draw the focus of less and less of his attention, until it was practically non-existent -- inappropriately and immorally non-existent. It was kind of like Freud's moral guilt between the spring of 1895 and 1896, In March of 1895, Freud's remorse and self-reproach was real and contactful.
But by the spring of 1896, it was still there but no longer contactful -- rather 'responsibility and blame' for Emma's many occasions of post-surgical, light and profuse bleeding, had now become, with Fliess' influence -- [projected onto Emma in the form of the ('narcissistically Freud and Fliess biased') 'clinical diagnosis' of 'hysterical bleeding'. Bad!! BAD!! BAD!!! 'A loss of moral courage and responsibility on Freud's part...
Now, going back to the theories I listed above, if Freud had stuck with Theory 1a, he could have easily sub-classified Janet's Theory plus Freud's Theory 1b, 1c, and 1d all under Theory 1a -- in fact, probably any and all theories that Freud ever created.
However, either Freud was too much of an 'either/or' theorist (which he was) and too much in competition with Janet. And/or Freud was too 'psychologically messed up' by his own moral, non-professional guilt, and 'psychologically' needed to believe that Emma Ekstein was a 'hysterical bleeder' and from there at least partly 'abstractified this theory' into his more general 'neurotic fantasy theory'....
As mentioned above, there was certainly enough clinical evidence to support Freud's 'rising fantasy theory' -- without negating either his traumacy and/or seduction theory -- by looking again at the existing clinical evidence that Freud didn't properly catch the first time around.
Anna O. certainly had 'neu....erotic fantasies'....written up in Studies on Hysteria (1893-95) but dating back to Breuer's earliest 'hysterical' clinical work in the 1880s;
Anna O. towards the end of her clinical work with Breuer fantasized that she was having Breuer's baby!......end of Breuer's clinical work with Anna O. as he had a wife and family to protect at home...
So did Fraulein von R. and Miss Lucy R. -- both written up in Studies on Hysteria (1893-95)....Fraulein von R. blamed herself for erotically thinking of a young man while she was nursing her sick father (The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence (1), V. 111, p. 48) while Miss Lucy R. was a governess who fell in love with her employer and had resolved to drive this inclination out of her mind because it seemed to her incompatible with her pride....(p. 48).
One final point here that is important: Freud's so-called 'fantasy' or 'sexual instinct' theory could -- and still can -- also be viewed as a rising theory of 'narcissisitic sexual fixation' starting in childhood....which would propel Freud eventually to his later theory of 'narcissism (1914). Before then, Freud and Adler had a very exciting conversation -- to both Freud and Adler -- when Adler in one of The Vienna Society Meetings (November 7th, 1906, pgs. 36-42) introduced his theory of 'organ inferiority' and 'overcompensation' which also can be connected to the idea of 'hyper-cathected objects and activities' which also can be connected to 'libidinous, oral and anal obsessive compulsions, which can be connected to the 're-creation' and 'repetition compulsion' which ultimately can be connected to -- 'transference', 'transference neuroses', 'transference scripts', 'transference games' and 'transference complexes'.....
So -- no, Freud's 'fantasy theory' can not be viewed as being completely 'neurotic'; it was well grounded in clinical evidence; what was 'neurotic' and 'pathological' was 1. Freud's 'projective ego-defense' against the whole Emma Ekstein ordeal; and 2. Freud's eventual usage of 'The Oedipal Complex as an 'unconscious' or 'conscious' defense against having to deal once again with the painful, 'politically and professionally incorrect' subject matter of childhood sexual abuse relative to a father seducing and/or assaulting his female child-daughter who was later as an adult patient of Freud probably trying to painfully and abstractfully articulate a childhood sexual seduction/assault memory that Freud was -- like he did with Emma Ekstein -- 'projectively denying, dismissing, and holding accountable for this now suppressed again moral travesty onto his patient as her own 'Oedipal Fantasy'...
Like what he did with Emma Ekstein, that was a morally indefensible behavior on Freud's part that he should not be forgiven for -- and to this day, it still needs to be fixed.
Still, it looks like Freud came closer to an integrative 'reality-fantasy' theory than I once gave him credit for. By re-introducing elements of Adlerian theory into this equation, I will take you further along this 'reality-traumacy-compensatory-oral-and-anal-libidinous-and-anti-libidinous-defensive-erotic-fixation-transference-memory-and-fantasy' path.....
If I didn't believe that I could fully articulate a 'reality-fantasy' theory that would 'bridge the gap' in Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis between 1896 and say, 1899 or 1905 or 1939 (which Freud already partily did; I think he would later call his 'traumacy factor' in the 1900s -- 'accidents'), I wouldn't be here...because that is what I believe I do best, and that is what I can improve on old, outdated Freudian Theory (which I stopped reading about the time of Brian Bird's famous transference essay in the 1980s).
If you want to be an 'Existential Superman or Superwoman', then you have to show that you can 'play with -- and beat -- the best'. That's assuming -- from a Maslow 'hierarchy of needs' paradigm -- that we have fended off all our most basic economic, physiological, and psychological needs that come before our 'drive to strive to be existentially alive, and embrace life with a flourish -- the flourish of the Superman/Superwoman'!
That doesn't mean that everyone is going to 'laud' my work....there are going to be some dissenters and resenters...but you can't worry about that.....you listen to the feedback and the criticisms and you modify your work if you think the criticisms are warranted....but other than that....you do your thing...and you move on....to the next challenge...If you sat around and listened to criticisms all day, and let your work be frozen by them, then what have you accomplished? This is the life of the 'anxiety-neurotic'...
If I had the type of power to make this type of decision, I would call Freud's theoretical work up to April 21st, 1896 'Classical' or 'Reality' Psychoanalysis, I would call his theoretical work after April 21st, 1896 'Post-Classical' or 'Fantasy-Impulsive Drive' (Fantasy-ID) Psychoanalysis and I would call my own brand of 'underground' Psychoanalysis -- 'Multi-Integrative-Dialectic' ( 'MID') or 'Dialectic-Gap-Bridging (DGB) Psychoanalysis -- or 'Integrative Reality-Fantasy-Object Relations' Psychoanalysis or 'Quantum-Dialectic' Psychoanalysis -- any or all of these names work for me.
However, at the same time, I don't want you to forget that outside of Psychoanalysis there have been some strong influences in my work as well such as: 1. Adlerian Psychology; 2. Jungian Psychology; 3. Gestalt Therapy; 4. Cognitive-Language-Semantics Therapy; 5. Frommian Psychoanalysis and other forms of 'Humanistic-Existential Psychology' including the influences of the many of the great philosophers...like Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Spinoza, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Diderot, Rousseau, Goethe, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel (consequently, the title of my network of blogsites: 'Hegel's Hotel: A Phenomenology of Mind-Body-Spirit For The 21st Century'), Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Camus, Kafka, Korzybski, Hayakawa, Kelly, Ellis, Maltz, Rand, Branden, Foucault, Derrida...
All these many influences may sound impressive but 'the proof for this post-Hegelian, multi-integrative-dialectic approach -- still has to be in the final pudding'.
One example of my MID approach can be seen in my dialectic 'Shadow-Id' concept where the Jungian concept of 'The Shadow' in this context represents the 'traumatic memory influences' that continue to haunt us and 'shadow' us throughout our lives, whereas the concept of 'The ID' represents the 'Impulsive Drives' that are usually born out of our 'childhood narcissistic fixation memories' which may represent either 'narcissistically pleasurable' or 'narcissistically and traumatically painful' memories. Not all of them necessarily have to come from early childhood. Obviously, narcissistically pleasurable or narcissistically traumatic memories can happen at any point in our lives but it is usually our first early childhood memories that lay the foundations for our memory, learning, and transference templates (MLT's). These might be called our 'primal, childhood transference memories' which usually overlap and conflate with our primary childhood transference relationships'.
I profess to have a greater 'transference' understanding of Freud than most students of Freud out there for three main reasons:
One, because Freud's first 'first, primal transference memory' is remarkably similar to mine which gives me an 'intuitive' transference advantage over those who don't have this advantage;
Two, I've studied Adlerian Psychology enough that I can step outside of the 'Classic Freudian Paradigm' easier than most of his biographers/students including his most famous biographer, Ernest Jones (who got some 'transference interpretations' of Freud at least partly right, but otherwise was trying to 'project' 'deep psychoanalysis' into the mind of a two or three year old boy....That was a little extreme, I think.)
Three, I hate to sound narcissistically and/or righteously petulant which at times I am sure I do because I think I have gotten some things right that others haven't. (Dolly Parton in an interview with Piers Morgan once said that sometimes you have to blow your own horn in order to let people know you are arriving; otherwise, they may not know you are coming -- or, my addition, fall asleep on you because they don't know what you are bringing to the party -- if anything at all...you could be just another 'brick on the wall'...)
My 'narcissistic-righteous petulance' is generally well hidden in my Shadow-Id -- balanced, or even overbalanced -- by my 'more surface dominating inferiority-insecurity thoughts, feelings, and behaviors'. Sometimes I need to be 'drunk' or 'emotionally unstable' to show my more arrogant 'alter-ego' (Getting 'drunk' is a faster way to your 'Shadow-Id' than Psychoanalysis. Two or three Black Russians should do it...A long time back -- over ten years ago before the laws changed, I once kissed a strange woman in a bar who I was standing right next to, and who I hadn't even said hi to...she was receptive...but I was so shocked at my impulsive behavior that I had no 'follow up' after that....Our brief encounter....died after our kiss and my embarrassment at my own behavior....my ego-defenses rushing in to 'put my Shadow-Id back in my 'Shadow-Id Vault' and I think my Shadow-Id was so shocked at having 'escaped' from its usual 'vault' that it/I didn't have anything left in my Shadow-Id 'spontaneity of the moment' repertoire, Black Russians or no Black Russians 'briefly knocking out' my ego-defenders ....)
This is an area where I 'split the difference' between Freudian and Adlerian Psychology. I believe that we all have 'inferiority or insecurity or underego-states' as well as 'superiority or superego states'. Rather than argue -- like Adler -- that the personality is 'united and conflict free' and that a person's 'lifestyle' is a 'united line of action in one direction', I counter-argue that 'The Wholistic Self' or 'Ego-Shadow-Id-Superego' is more or less 'continually conflicted along different goals and wished for lines of action' and it has been this way at least since our 'primary traumatic transference memories' started to 'split our Self' into different functional and/or dysfunctional parts or 'ego states' or 'shadow-id-ego-states'...that, at the very least, separate 'spontaneous impulsive behavior' from 'more socially accepted, less impulsive behavior'....
3/ Transference
Freud's famous 'self-analysis', in my eyes, failed to cut surgically right through to the heart of his own 'transference complexes' in the same manner that I am going to demonstrate right here...
Some of my transference interpretations of Freud's personality can be found in other essays that I have written before this one such as one of my most popular essays, 'The First True Case of Psychoanalysis', but I am going to bring together in this essay a number of different transference interpretations -- and complexes (Freud's mainly, but partly mine too), as well as 'historical and motivational interpretations' -- that hopefully shine some new beams of light on a subject matter that Freudian scholars never get tired of -- Freud himself specifically, as well as the traumacy-seduction theory controversy, intereprtive and evaluative disagreements relative to the theoretical and therapeutic value of The Oedipal Complex, and more....
As a quick comparison/contrast between Freud's first conscious early memory and mine, let's look at what we have:
Freud's first memory (about 3 years of age): He busts into his parents' bedroom while they are engaged in having sex together, and his father screams at him to get out.
My first memory (about 4 years of age): I stroll down the street early in the morning (let's say 8-9am), I climb up my friend's front steps to his house, looking for him to come out to play, I ring the doorbell, no answer, and again, no answer, and again, no answer....but somewhere around the third or fourth ring (or maybe it was the tenth -- just kidding, it wasn't that many but I was persistent) -- my friend's mother came storming down from upstairs, she was probably sleeping -- or otherwise engaged -- she came storming to the front door as I may or may not have been peering through the front door window -- opened the door, and screamed at me for ringing the doorbell so often, so early in the morning. I was shocked into psychological paralysis (a feeling that keeps haunting me in my recurrent dreams/nightmares). She slammed the door on me, and I remember still feeling 'psychologically paralyzed by shock. I couldn't move or say anything, I was so stunned.
Freud had a 'seduction-abandoment transference complex' around men...whereas...
I have a 'seduction-abandonment transference complex around women...and men too...although my issues with men seem to revolve around issues of power, authority, approval-seeking, and rebellion whereas my issues wth women seem to be more around seduction, romance, intimacy, distancing, sex, sexual loyalty, and abandonment...But you are here to read about Freud -- not me -- so let's not waste anymore time.
This is the heart of what we have to work with -- Freud's earliest conscious memory transferences -- but also coming into play in what could be drawn out into a more and more complicated series of transference interpretations are: Freud's childhood relationships, his relationship with his dad, his mom, his nephew John, his niece Pauline, a girl who lived with John and Pauline -- named Gisela, his controversial essay(s) 'The Aetiology of Hysteria (1897), 'Screen Memories' (1899), the Freud to Fliess letters, the Emma Ekstein nasal-surgery scandal, Freud's Oedipal Complex Theory, and Freud's whole life....
I'm not sure what all we can pack into this essay here -- but let's see where it takes us....I think that it could take us down some intriguing 'secondary paths', and even open up some new lines of investigation....Before we start, let me just say one more thing: If I believe that the 'historical evidence' -- whether 'circumstantial' or not -- 'implicates' a 'loss or lack of moral integrity' on Freud's part, I will say so; if not, and/or if this harsh judgment needs to be 'tempered' by putting it into better 'historical and cultural context' relative to the time and place Freud lived, and the power and influence of the people who at that time and in that context judged him harshly as well -- but for opposite reasons -- i.e., for being 'too assertively bold' rather than 'not assertively bold enough', then I will say this as well. Somestimes -- and this includes today just as much as back in Victorian Vienna in 1896 -- institutions and the people within them become what I read another writer call 'passive enablers' which means that they stand by and 'passively watch' what is going on in an institution, knowing full well what is happening, knowing that what has happened and/or is still happening is morally, perhaps even legally, wrong, and yet they say or do nothing about it because they 'don't want to cause a scandal and jeopardize the reputation of the institution they work for precisely because it is the institution they work for -- and it pays them and feeds them under the 'covert, often unstated assumption and condition' that you 'keep quiet' about what is happening.
The Penn State Scandal is a perfect example. In this regard, I am going to boldly assert in a similar but partly different fashion to Dr. Jeffrey Masson 30 years before me, that The Psychoanalytic Establishment, is, and has been since Dr. Sigmund Freud was 'ruling the roost', full of 'passive enablers' (as well as, to be fair, a whole list of 'Assertive Classical Psychoanaytic Critics and Deconstructionists' who have made their editorial opinions overtly and publicly known).
It might be argued that 'passive enabling' is almost, or a lesser form of, 'The Stockholm Syndrome' reaction, an 'Identification with The Powerful Aggressor' who, in this case, keeps you well paid and well fed -- as long as you keep quiet and tow the corporate line (which usually means either 'saying nothing' or 'saying the appropriate, politically and/or corporately correct thing').
In the case of The Psychoanalytic Establishment, it is Freud's most questionable moral judgments that are in question here, particularly the ones starting to come through in the winter of 1895/96 and hilighted in the May 4th/96 letter to Fliess in which Freud, agreeing with a thought that Fliess obviously had put into Freud's head earlier that winter or spring, asserted that 'Fliess was right' -- that Emma Ekstein was a 'hysterical bleeder' -- (fantasy theory) -- rather than a 'surgically butchered bleeder' -- (reality theory).
This dramatic change in thinking on Freud's part -- from 'reality-memory theory' to 'fantasy-dream-instinctual impulse theory' still 'neurotically and pathologically' affects the way that Classical Psychoanalysis is theorized, taught, and practised today.
It is not that fantasy theory is worthless, as I've already alluded to regarding a number of Freud's early cases; it's just that Freud's new fantasy theory was 'radically disconnected and dissociated' from its rightful context in the earlier foundation of Psychoanalysis -- reality-memory theory -- and the incompatibility of conflicting, seemingly irreconcilable ideas.
Or at least that is my perspective on this matter which I have been studying for quite a few years now -- since the 1990s, but more intensely over the last 3 or 4 years -- many of the details and interpretations which have slowly been gathering momentum here in Hegel's Hotel...
Classical Psychoanalysis needs to be made 'whole' again in order that it can 'regain its moral integrity' on a few deep-rooted issues that have left behind some 'psychological scabs and scars' that just won't heal unless they are properly faced and dealt with.
Right now, Classical Psychoanalysis still suffers from an 'Institutional Split Personality Stockholm Syndrome' -- it has since the spring of 1896. Different members have carefully avoided the problem by 'slipping out' of Classical Psychoanalysis over time and developing their knowledge and skills in other 'sub-schools' of Psychoanalysis such as Object Relations, Self Psychology, Lacanian Psychology, and Bionian Psychology.
But that doesn't solve the inherent, Freud-created, problems still existing in Classical Psychoanalysis.
I have stated all along here that my goal is to 're-instate Classical Psychoanalysis's Theoretical and Therapeutic Wholeness' -- which means integrating Freud's pre-1897 'Traumacy-Seduction' theory with his post-1896 'Fantasy-Impulse-Drive' Theory.
In this regard, I am lucky in that I have no Psychoanalytic Establishment to answer to in terms of 'supressing' my public thoughts, interpretations, and judgments. I know that this essay is not likely to be 'publicly and academically popular' but sometimes a philosopher and/or a psychological theorist simply...has to do what he or she has to do.....not cower in a corner....
4/ Two Different Types of 'Neurotic Pathology'
Our mind-brain (which includes the metaphysical, dialectic exchange between what we usually separately call our 'mind' and our 'brain') is ideally an integrative, synergizing, process-oriented 'computer-organ' that can work wonders, but often times too, under the wrong internal directions, can get caught up in an Aristolean 'either/or' conflict and impasse -- either intra-psychically or inter-relationship-wise, or both -- that brings all transactions, encounters, relationships to a grinding halt, or worse -- self-destructing inside a pool of toxic wasteland.
Two types of 'neurotic pathology' are particularly relevant in this regard: 1. 'dissociative pathology' where two or more parts of the personality are alienated from each other; and 2. 'associative pathology' where two or more people, things, objects, places...are associatively linked together as being 'the same' or 'similar' -- and they are not. In other words, there are important, unique, individual characteristics that are being 'missed' because of the 'false association or connection' that is being made between the two or more phenomena.
Freud was guilty of them both -- indeed, we all are guilty of them both to differing degrees at different times in different contexts. No matter how smart we are -- and Freud was very smart -- our mind-brains are not perfect, and we don't have the luxury of being able to say 'I make perfect conceptual and theoretical representations of the world that I live in.' Indeed, we are all guilty at different times in different contexts and differing degrees of what in science they call: 1. 'false positives' (believing that something exists that doesn't exist); and 2. 'false negatives' (believing that something doesn't exist that does exist).
In this regard, there is a point at which the issue of 'epistomology' and 'accurate knowledge' -- i.e., 'the truth' -- enters the clinical psychologist's therapeutic room, and can become a 'demon' in the room. How much of what my client is telling me do I believe? Do I believe what my client just told me? Or do I not? Do I believe that he or she was sexually assaulted as a child, or as a teenager, or as an adult? Or do I not?
A therapist's job is not one of being a judge or jury. But the therapist has existential -- and epistemological, and evaluative -- choices to make in the clinical setting, just as the client does. And a subset of the interpretive and evaluative choices that a therapist has to make relate to the question of: How accurate a picture of the client's internal and external world am I getting from the client? How good or bad is the client I am dealing with here at 'reality-interpreting'? And 'reality-evaluating'? And 'reality-testing'? For example, am I dealing with a 'paranoid' person here? Or does the person's so called 'paranoia' have some lesser or greater 'substance' in reality that may or may not make it legitimately believable -- or not -- but either way, it may actually have 'some lesser or greater grounding' in reality. This is one of the problems with Aristolean 'either/or' classification systems. (I hate to keep turning Aristotle into the 'epistemological bad guy' when he was a brilliant philosopher -- and a far better epistemologist than Plato. Plato, like Freud, had many of his ideas 'grounded' in the sky -- which is fine if we are talking about 'the sun' or 'the moon' or 'a star' but it isn't fine if we are talking about a 'childhood sexual assault'.)
Paradoxically, Freud was both a brilliant theorist and he was a terrible theorist. He was a brilliant theorist because almost every school of clinical psychology that exists today is a 'subset' -- a 'branch' -- of Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis. He was a terrible theorist because he was a terrible scientist -- meaning that there wasn't always, or even generally, a rock-solid, concrete connection between his clinical observations and his 'abstacted theories' that generally jumped ahead of, overgeneralized, and/or misrepresented the facts, generally in line with Freud's 'narcissistic-righteous bias'.
Freud had a bad habit of 'jumping ahead of his clinical observations' and asserting dramatic, even shocking, theories -- indeed, he preferred his theories to be shocking- astonishing rather than Breuer-like-boring-and-non-adventurous. Clearly, this was one of the main 'splitting points' between Freud and Breuer.
Even more than this, Freud's 'wish to be shocking-astonishing' was one of his personal 'transference memory complexes' (TMCs') that can be traced to one of his earliest memories with his mom. In the particular memory I am talking about, Freud saw his mom as being like a 'magician', and transference-wise, Freud would spend the rest of his life not only chasing and idealizing 'magician-like' people (Charcot, Fliess, Jung...) but was also striving to be one too -- 'a transference-identification' with his 'mom-the-magician' in the particular memory I am referring to which I now cite below:
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Another memory was of his mother assuring him at the age of six that we were made of earth and therefore must return to earth. When he exressed his doubts of this unwelcome statement she rubbed her hands together and showed him the dark fragments of epidermis that came there as a speciment of the earth we are made of. His astonishment was unbounded and for the first time he captured some sense of the inevitable. As he put it: I slowly acquiesced in the idea I was later to hear expressed in the words 'Thou owest nature (God) a death.'
Editorial transference interpretations: Freud spent his whole life looking for 'astonishing magician-like people' (Breuer, Charcot, Fliess, Jung...) as well as striving to become one as well....
One of Freud's letters to Fliess (April 26th, 1895) was opened with : 'Dear magician'
Also, in this memory, you can see the 'transference foundation' of Freud's later usage of the 'consevation of energy', 'the constancy principle', 'entropy', and finally, his 'death instinct theory'. Considering that this conscious early memory dated back to when Freud was six years old (1862) and the death instinct was created by Freud 58 years later in 1920 -- I think that I am rightfully supported in calling this a 'transference memory'.
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Freud would accumulate a 'data base' of particular clinical observations, and then he would choose a particular 'subset' of clinical observations from this data base, create a theory, but the theory would only be based on 'part of his clinical observations; not all of his clinical observations'. And he would try to make it seem to his audience that his theory was based on all of his clinical observations.
In this regard, his 'traumacy theory' was an overstated, overgeneralized theory; his 'seduction theory' was even more of an overstated, overgeneralized theory; and then, when he didn't like either of these theories anymore, he turned his theories upside down, created the theory of 'childhood sexuality' and the theory of 'The Oedipus Complex', and tried to make it seem like all of his clinical data supported these two theories -- and not the two preceding theories (the traumacy and seduction theories). But again he was overgeneralizing his latter two theories and overstating the clinical data that allegedly supported these latter two theories -- i.e., his respective (and intertwined) Childhood Sexuality and Oedipal Theory.
Sometimes there is just no cure for 'obstinate stubborness' -- or 'extreme anal-retentiveness' -- you can lead a small boy to the toilet but you can't necessarily make him 'dump'! And similarly, a man with his 'theories' like a boy building a sandcastle down at the beach. Don't mess with his 'sandcastle'! He'll protect it like he'll protect his 'poop' if, as a parent, you 'rail on him hard enough to dump a poop in the toilet'. Or so Freud believed. In Freud's case, I can't disagree with him. He knew 'very personally' what 'anal-retentive' meant.
Some people are better talkers and writers. Other people are better listeners and readers. Ideally, you want a 'homeostatic-dialectic balance' between both -- but it is rare that you find a 'perfect balance in any one person'. Certainly, Freud was no ideal mentor in this regard. Freud was 'righteously narcissistic' or 'narcissistically righteous' which was both a blessing and a curse. Usually, our greatest assets are also our greatest liabilities. This goes back to the Hegelian idea that every theory, every characteristic, carries within it the seeds to its own self-destruction. Worded in Freudian terminology, every theory, every characteristic, contains within it both 'the life instinct' and 'the death instinct'.
5/ Language, Labels, Concepts, Classification Systems, Theories -- and Their Inherent Dangers
Let me take a few minutes here to talk about 'language' and 'meaning'.
One of the most troubling words that Freud used was the word 'infantile'. When I think of 'infantile', I think of an 'infant' -- meaning a 'baby'. By my reckoning, that would refer to about the first year of life, or maybe a little longer. At times, it seems like Freud and/or other psychoanalysts like Jones use the word 'infantile' (or its German equivalent) to mean all of 'pre-puberty childhood'. This word, in its psychoanalytic usage, I find semantically confusing. 'Infantile sexuality' in my opinion shouldn't mean much more than a baby sucking on his or her mother's (or a substitute) nipple -- if that -- a combination of maternal nutrition and maternal comfort.
After 'infancy', we would generally use the word 'toddler' -- which by my interpretation would include the years 2, 3, and 4 (Freud might not have had an equivalent word in German to equate with the concept of 'toddler') -- from the age of about 5 to say about 9, 10, or 11 we might label a child as a 'pre-puberty child' -- and then after about 10, 11, 12, or 13,when puberty starts to kick in, we have a young 'teenager'. 14 to 17 we have an 'older teenager' and at 18 or 19 we have a teenager, who by law, is starting to be classified as an 'adult'.
Now, even this classification system is not 'rigidly anal-retentive' because it allows for the reality of different children growing at different rates, and reaching puberty at different ages. And this may all seem rather mundane to you, frivolous, unnecessary....but I would -- and am -- counter-arguing that this type of more precise clinical and empirical detail is hugely important for audiences in order to have a proper understanding of just what exactly is going on at what age, and in what percentage of case histories. For example, the age of a person's 'fantasized sexual object' can say a lot about the extent of the person's 'psychological health' or 'pathology'.
Obviously, factors like 'a consenting adult partner' (unless we are talking about two similar aged teenagers) and 'incest' are huge factors in a psychological diagnosis as well. And the factor of a 'real act' vs. a 'fantasized act' is also imperative in order to judge a person's degree of 'health' and/or 'pathology'.
As soon as you start to 'over-abstractify' labels, concepts, and theories, you start to 'sever ties' with their 'phenomenological-existential-empirical clinical data base'. And that is not a good thing. Again, more 'false positives' or in different cases, 'false negatives'....Which brings us to Freud.
You are likely to generate huge amounts of ambiguity and semantic confusion amongst your listeners or readers and this can create a conceptual-semantic nightmare. As a writer and a reader you need to recognize when this may be happening, and particularly when there is no 'dialectic communication', no 'dialectic feedback and exchange' between the writer and the reader, the danger of this actually happening increases many fold.
I have a way of using 'transference' that is both partly similar and partly different to any other theorist out there. A reader cannot be expected to have a 'direct window' into my mind. There is bound to be ambiguity and semantic confusion whenever I use this word until a motivated reader perhaps sees the use of this word in say a 'hundred different writing contexts' and/or I sit down one day and write an essay strictly on transference in which I do my best to delineate both its main 'focus of semantic usage' and 'the entire range of its different sub-usages'.
Both in a legal setting and in a clinical writeup of particular cases, 'labels', 'concepts' and their 'precise, concrete meaning' are hugely important -- obviously, particularly when the type of 'label' we are using can mean the difference betwen 'jail' and 'not jail' to someone we are 'diagnosing' and 'labelling'. Be aware, and beware of labels, ladies and gentleman because some of society's labels are precursors to 'walking existential death sentences' -- even without a conviction. In our 'over-exuberance' to get all 'the bad guys' -- or in Freud's time to 'exonerate the bad guy' -- we may be flushing human rights (both or either men's and women's) down the drain....and some poorly targeted good people ('false positives') may be increasingly 'witchhunted' whereas in other cases 'bad guys' (sexually assaultive fathers) may be falsely exonerated ....
It makes a huge difference whether we are talking about 'sexual assault' or 'sexual fantasy' both relative to a client/patient's own personal experience and/or traumacy, on the one hand, and relative to the 'justice' of her father being blamed and/or charged on the other hand.
How theoretically and therapeutically immoral can that be if we -- by 'abstract generalization and theory' -- ignore a woman's ever so cautious plea for help, maybe 30 or 40 years after the fact of her really having being sexually assaulted as a child by putting a 're-directing concept and label on it' where we call it her own 'Oedipal Fantasy', while inside she still feels 'existential dead' -- that her soul has been ripped from her heart.
I have no doubt in my own mind that Freud was much closer to 'getting it right' before 1897 than he was afterwards, and that arguably Freud lost a 'piece of his own soul' after he finished writing 'The Aetiology of Hysteria', his most passionate and compassionate essay towards trying to really help sexually victimized women, an essay that Freud soon afterwards 'started to disown, to dissassociate himself from', and an essay that shows Freud in a completely different light than the stereotyped image of him that we now carry around with us because of concepts like 'The Oedipal Complex' and 'penis envy'...
Freud eventually and essentially turned his back on the integrity of women after 1896 because he turned his back on the 'realness' of their memories, and in doing so, he ended up compromising his own moral integrity -- and legacy.
At the heart of Freud's loss of 'empathetic compassion' for women, was probably The Emma Ekstein Medical Scandal where Emma turned from being the object of Freud's considerable remorse, compassion, and guilt in the spring of 1895 to being a 'hysterical bleeder' in the spring of 1896.
'Hysterical bleeder' was probably the second worst concept that Freud -- with way too much 'creative help' from Fliess -- ever concocted.
The first worst -- was probably The Oedipal Complex because it essentially violated the rights of women to have their 'childhood story properly told -- and listened to' -- without 'creative (destructive?) sexual fantasy re-construction' on Freud's part. Like Emma, Freud was turning all of his female patients into 'hysterical fantasizers'. even when they had been, and/or still were being (Dora) sexually victimized by the 'sexual predators' in their lives, who often were their own fathers. Sad, tragic -- and morally disturbing on Freud's part.
6/ Which Way Do We Turn?
The essence of what I have just written above is that a good psychoanalyst -- whether theorist and/or therapist -- needs to also be a good 'cognitive-language-meaning' theorist and therapist as well.
Freud was wrong in claiming that from a psychological standpoint, it doesn't matter whether an event really happened or not, the psychological results were/are the same. Well, that may be true -- or at least partly -- but our psychological health -- and even our survival -- are dependent on the 'subjective representations' that we say are true, being true. Otherwise, we are talking about dream fantasy, paranoid fantasy, psychosis, and/or severe neurosis, assuming that our problem with determining 'the essence of objective reality' is acute enough, and/or chronic enough.
Dialectically speaking, in this regard, I use the term 'subjective-objectivity' -- meaning a dialectical congruence or essential similarity between our 'subjective reality' and our 'objective reality' where our subjective reality is supposed to 'accurately reflect' or be 'structurally and/or dynamically similar' to our 'objective reality'.
We will never be perfect in this regard, but still, our senses, our perceptions, our interpretations, our generalizations and abstractions, are still meant to capture the essence of our 'objective reality' or our survival and well-being is definitely likely to be compromised, depending on how significantly 'we have misinterpreted ('under-interpreted' or 'over-interpreted') the context of our situation.
7/ The Oedipal Complex
The Oedipal Complex can be used in a 'Classical Freudian' sense -- and this, I assert is a toxic, pathological way of using The Oedipal Complex, both theoretically and therapeutically. Alternatively, it can be used in a more Kleinian-Fairbairnian, Object Relations sense, that Freud, by 1923, in The Ego and The Id, had already partly moved towards, although he had still not let go of the Oedipal Complex Theory in its primal, instinctual, Classical Freudian sense -- and this, I am sorry to say, means that presumably, since no one in The Psychoanalytic Establishment has moved to 'fix' this problem, epistemologically, morally-ethically, and from a public relations standpoint, particularly relative to the ongoing 'equal rights' treatment of women, the 'toxic, pathological' use of The Oedipal Complex is still being taught, and still being practised, amongst 'Classical Freudian' psychoanalysts.
Those psychoanalytic theorists and therapists, who no longer buy into the 'full Freudian package', have the option of turning to another 'Psychoanalytic paradigm' -- such as Object Relations, Self Psychology, Lacanian Psychoanalysis (although Lacan insisted that he was a 'Classical Freudian' psychoanalyst), Bionian Psychoanalysis, and/or whatever other 'sub-paradigm' of Psychoanalysis is out there that I am unfamiliar with, and missing.
Clearly, The Psychoanalytic Establishment does not want to be associated with the idea of suppressing and/or covering up childhood sexual assault, including within the family.
And yet equally clearly, that is exactly what the Classical Freudian interpretation of The Oedipal Complex still teaches psychoanalysts to do.
Ethically standing up against this practice cost Dr. Jeffrey Masson his job and his career as Projects Director of The Freud Archives in the 1980s. In my editorial opinion, Masson was made a scapegoat for Freud's 'epistemological and moral-ethical pathology as both a psycho-theorist and as a psychotherapist'.
Masson obviously didn't help his cause much -- at least at the time -- with the bold, arrogant, shocking language that he used -- 'The Bull in The Psychoanalytic China Shop Syndrome'....
However, Masson had what he thought -- and I concur -- was a hugely important point to make, and in doing so, Masson didn't 'politically mince or fluff' his words... Rather, he went on the rhetorical attack...which at different times, in different essays, I have done too; it's just that I am still looking for some 'compromise formations' in terms of new Psychoanalytic Theory...
Masson accused Freud of 'losing moral courage' and obviously, that didn't sit very well with Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and the rest of the board members of The International Psychoanalytic Institute (Establishment). To paraphrase Kurt Eissler in a later interview, after the public scandal was over, how could you have The Projects Director of The Freud Archives challenging Freud's 'moral integrity'?
Well, it's like this. None of us are 'morally perfect' and obviously if you are Anna Freud -- Sigmund Freud's daughter -- or Kurt Eissler, one of Freud's most dedicated and loyal followers in the twilight of his career, and you are running 'The Psychoanalytic Establishment' all over the world -- 'The House that Sigmund Freud Built' -- you are going to have a very hard time admitting publicly that Sigmund Freud was at times (more times than any devoted Freudian follower would want to admit) 'ethically-morally challenged', even if the historical facts -- his 'cocaine misadventures', the Emma Ekstein nasal surgery scandal.....and his non-ethical usage of 'The Oedipal Complex Theory' as a conscious or non-conscious cover-up for childhood sexual assault in the family.
So -- if I am sitting in Anna Freud's shoes as the head of The International Psychoanalytic Institute back in 1981 or 1982 when this whole 'Masson-Freud Seduction Theory Scandal' started to go down, and Sigmund Freud is my father, and I know myself that I have 'screened out' some of Freud's most personal -- and 'ethically unfavorable' -- letters to Wilhelm Fliess in a previously 'edited, censored, and incomplete' rendition of these letters, well, I have to look at myself in the mirror and ask myself this: Is it better to try to maintain this 'public illusion' of my father's 'moral-ethical perfect integrity' while meanwhile women and particularly feminists all over the world are 'mocking my father's Victorian patriarchal bias against women' with his 'Oedipal Complex Theory' being the most troubling of all his concept-theories because it asserts that 'all female memories of childhood sexual assaults in the family by their father are not to be taken seriously but rather are to be 're-construed' as the woman's/daughter's/client's 'sexual fantasy' of wanting to have sex with her dad -- and then 'distorting and repressing this fantasy in the form of a false, distorted childhood memory of being assaulted' -- to repeat, is it better to continue to deny that my father made a huge moral-ethical blunder here, or is it best for me to be my own person doing what today I believe to be in the best moral-ethical interests of The International Psychoanalytic Institute and admit that my father made a bad ethical mistake, partly because he was the product of a 'male dominated Victorian, Austrian society', and now it is time to 'repair' that mistake by stating that, from now on, that masculine, narcissistic bias will be 'eliminated' by ensuring that in theory, in practisce, and in teaching Classical Psychoanalysis and/or The Oedipal Complex, we will no longer 'publicly or privately' dismiss any woman's private memories, but rather, female patients will be given the same type of equality, respect, and compassion that any male patient would likewise be given, and that means 'not re-construing' any memory in any fashion that could be used and abused to 'screen out' or 'cover up' a 'real childhood sexual assault memory'.
If Anna Freud had publicly announced something like what I have stated above, my respect for her would have been immensely higher -- and I think it would have 'cemented' her own emancipation and independence from her father in a way that she was never able to carry out -- never able to 'free herself from the stereotyped legacy and, in this regard, sometimes the 'pseudo-legacy' or 'mythological legacy' of her father.
Instead, we have Freud's words in 1916 (Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, S.E., V. 16, p. 370) still being 'treated like they were gold' or, if not, then 'swept under the carpet' and/or 'hidden in the closet'....
'...if in the case of girls who produce such an event (seduction) in the story of their childhood their father figures fairly regularly as the seducer, there can be no doubt either of the imaginary nature of the accusation or of the motive that has led to it.'...And he continues: ...up to the present we have not suceeded in pointing to any difference in the consequences, whether phantasy or reality has had the greater share in these events of childhood.'.....(I ask myself, when I read this, how would Freud recognize any such difference at this point in his career, because by this point, he has openly stated right above here that there is no reality in these memories -- that what may seem like real memories are to be re-construed as imagined fantasies.)
Now you tell me who has the stronger 'ethical leg to stand on' -- Freud or Masson who was claiming or at least speculating that 'Freud lost moral courage here because his medical peers and superiors didn't want to hear Freud's 'Seduction Theory' because it 'was not a politically correct or comfortable theory' for these established professional doctors of Vienna to want to deal with because there might have been, indeed quite possibly were, men amongst them or who they knew who were guilty of the types of childhood sexual assaults against their daughters that Freud was writing about in his very courageous and compassionate 1896 paper supporting sexually victimized women -- i.e. arguablly the most passionate and compassionate essay Freud ever wrote -- 'The Aetiology of Hysteria'.
I will let you make up your own minds on this matter. As you can probably ascertain, I come down more in support of Masson than I do in support of Freud. I think Freud 'blew an ethical call' -- partly coerced or 'influenced' by the medical community that was referring, or not referring, patients to him .
And in this regard, I think that The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society 'blew the same ethical call'. As did Anna Freud. And Kurt Eissler. And the rest of The Psychoanalytic Institute that stood around and watched this scandal go down without saying or doing nothing.
Call this a private joke of mine...although it really isn't very funny....
How many psychoanalysts does it take to 'screw in a lightbulb'?
Sorry, I can't answer that one.....but I can answer this one...
How many psychoanalysts does it take to 'screw Dr. Jeffrey Masson'?
Well, a board full of shareholders...
And a thousand private psychoanalysts to stand around and watch...
They all played the role of two words I heard another writer use a few weeks back in another context -- 'passive enablers'.
What are they 'passively enabling'? A toxic, pathological theory -- at least the way Freud insisted it be taught -- to continue to exist...
As Masson writes below, I am not saying that I have any 'window into Freud's brain' as to all the factors that were going through his mind when he chose to leave his traumacy and seduction theories behind...But like Masson, I can speculate based on the 'circumstantial evidence' surrounding this period of Freud's life as can be read in his uncensored letters to Fliess. And between the Emma Ekstein scandal and The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society calling 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' and Freud's Seduction Theory -- a 'scientific fairy tale', there was sufficient motivation for Freud to steer away from the 'politically incorrect' subject matter of childhood sexual abuse when this Society and everyone in it had power to make his career -- or break it.
This having been said, there are other factors that could have been, and probably were, at work here as well, most notably 'The Interpretation of Dreams' pounding through his creative mind, and the issues of 'childhood sexuality' and 'instinct theory' arriving with it. Through the winter of 1895/96 Freud could be caught using the word 'hysterical longing' to rationalize and deny what had happened to Emma Ekstein. Did that come from Fliess? Freud suggested that Fliess was the 'author' of this idea in one of his letters that spring. (I will check but I think it was the letter of May 4th, 1896. Correction: It was the letter of April 26th, 1896, where Freud wrote to Fliess: 'First of all Ekstein. I shall shall be able to prove to you that you were right, that her episodes of bleeding were hysterical, were occasioned by longing (emphasis Freud's), and probably occurred at the sexually relevant times (the woman out of resistance has not yet supplied me with the dates) (parenthesis Freud's). What was this from Freud other than a 'cover-up' -- and obvious collusion on Fliess' par as well, with Fliess' creating the initial 'fantasy-concept' of 'hysterical bleeding'! -- to protect both his career and Fliess' relative to a 'real surgical disaster and the bleeding consequences afterwards' that Freud now wanted to 'pin' on Emma Ekstein by labelling her a 'hysterical bleeder'
If that doesn't show a 'loss of moral courage' as clearly as the light of day (Freud showed much more moral guilt a year earlier in the direct aftermath of the surgical disaster but give 'the narcissistic self-survival impulse' enough time and it will often put 'moral guilt' to 'sleep'! Narcissistic reasons and creative theoretical reasons seemed to be converging to form a 'Sophisticated Ego-Defense' against 'The Most Perfect (or Imperfect) Double Moral Storm' -- 1. 'Freud's and Fliess' Manipulative Ego Defense Against Their Mutual Accountability and Blame in The Emma Ekstein Medical Scandal'; and 2. 'The Eventual Freudian-Psychoanalytic Manipulative Ego-Defense and Cover Up of Childhood Incest Through The Theoretical Interpretation and Therapeutic Practise of The Oedipal Complex' -- again, for 'narcissistic reasons that avoided a professional and political and legal can of worms'. You tell me how these two 'co-related ego-defenses' don't coincide with each other when they occur at the exact same time in Psychoanalytic history, specifically, conflating together in the letters from Freud to Fliess on April 26th, and May 4th, 1896!! When it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck....and personal and professional and political and legal and economic factors all seem very much to be front and central in the historical picture of what is going on at this time....along with both Fliess' and Freud's 'squirming with anxiety and guilt' and a mutual interest in 'protecting their mutual careers...'...i.e.' Freud's own postulated instinct of 'self-survival' (along with perhaps his 'sublimated sexual instinct' that may have 'un/subconsciously led Freud into the ill-fated 'nasal-sexual surgery' with Fliess and Emma Ekstein in the first place that has an eery similarity to both his first transference memory involving another 'menage-a-trois' (his father, his mother, and himself), and also an even more eery structural transference similarity to his 'screen memory' written up in 'Screen Memories' (1899) involving his nephew John and either his niece Pauline (according to Jones) or alternatively Gisela according to Strachey (another little girl living with John and Pauline in Freud's early childhood who Freud had a crush on)....
The supposed 'screen memory' (Freud's own) Freud interprets himself in this essay as an example of a repressed 'fantasy rape' (a bit of an abstractive stretch if you look at the original memory) but it did have 'strong structural and dynamic similarities' to both his first transference memory -- and the scandulous Emma Ekstein 'nasal-sexual surgery'.
So let Jones tell us a bit about this 'screen memory' episode...and the essence of Freud's and Jones' interpretations about it....
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In tracing, as best as we can, the genesis of Freud's original discoveries, we may therefore legitimately consider that the greatest of them -- namely, the universality of the Oedipus complex -- was potentially facilitated by his own unusual family constellation, the spur it gave to his curiosity, and the opportunity it afforded of a complete repression.
Freud never alluded in his writing to Emanuel's wife. Pauline, his niece (but a year older than little Siggy because Freud's eldest brother was 23 or 24 years older than him -- my addition from early in the Jones biography of Freud, 1953, 1981, p. 10) was, on the other hand of some emotional significance. In the screen memory that Dr. Bernfield unraveled (why would he have to unravel it if it was a 'screen memory'? -- my addition), an amorous attachment to her is manifest, and beyond that an unconscious phantasy of her being raped by John and himself together. Freud himself related how he and his nephew used to treat the little girl cruelly (John, was a couple of years older than Freud and one year older than his sister, Pauline -- according to what I can surmise from Jones), and one may assume that this included some erotic component -- whether manifest or not. the latter feature is the first sign that Freud's sexual constitution was not exclusively masculine after all, to 'hunt in couples' means sharing one's gratification with someone of one's own sex. (Jones' psychoanalytic interpretation, which in Freud's case, I don't disagree with.)
Sounds a lot like the Freud, Fliess, and Emma Ekstein affair -- 'sublimated' into a 'surgery debacle'....
It also sounds alot like 'the wishful, compensatory fantasy' part (my transference analysis) of Freud's first conscious early memory where little Siggy at 2 or 3 blew into his parent's bedroom only to see them in the 'heat of action', and then being irately ordered out of the bedroom by his (probably embarrassed) dad.
You can see how transference memories -- to use Freud's word -- 'co-operate' with each other, and how (transference) neuroses can be 'over-determined' to use another famous Freudian quote.
Finally, in Freud's earliest transference memory, we can also see the 'transference precursor' to both Freud's 'traumacy theory' (Freud being shockingly ejected out of his parents' bedroom by his dad), and also the precursor to Freud's Oedipus Complex (Freud wanting either his mom all to himself, or shared between him and his dad), which also integrates well with Freud's and/or Adler's theory of 'narcissistic injury', 'narcissistic fixation', 'inferiority feeling', and 'compensatory superiority striving' (in Freud's brief terminology -- 'the mastery compulsion' which because it is 'pleasurable' also turns into 'the obsessive-compulsive, repetition compulsion'....
This is the part of the Oedipus Complex that is theoretically and therapeutically useful; not the part that covers up 'real childhood sexual assaults'.
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When I come back, I will replay my interview with Dr. Jeffrey Masson from two years ago....
Think about it.....Sometimes we have to take an ethical stance against our employers who are feeding us if we want to maintain our own sense of ethical integrity.
Thanks for reading...and sorry if this essay has been partly redundant...I will fix that at a later date...
-- dgb, Feb. 26th, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Creations...
-- Are Still in Process....
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Regarding my email transactions and short interview with Dr. Jeffrey Masson below...
I started emailing Dr. Masson sometime last fall (2009) and let him know that I was following up on his work -- but with a more 'integrative perspective' than the position he was advocating which was a more 'either/or perspective. Basically I aimed to 'bridge the theoretical and therapeutic gap' between Freudian theory before 1897 and after 1896, although the winter of 1895/96 seem to be a point of 'theoretical fluctation' for Freud during which time he was vascillating back and forth between his 'traumacy-seduction theory' and his quickly evolving and brand new 'instinct-fantasy-childhood sexuality theory'. I was wondering if there might even be room for some form of 'reconciliation' and 'conflict resolution' between Masson and the current Psychoanalytic regime. We both agreed that this last possibility was highly unlikely and neither of us were in anyway, shape, or form, expecting this to happen. In the words of Bob Dylan, 'You were right from your side, I was right from mine. We're just one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind.'
Literarily, a thousand miles behind as Dr. Masson is now living in New Zealand and doing a wonderful job researching and writing about emotions in animals. He has written numerous books on this subject matter such as 'When Elephants Weep' and 'Dogs Don't Lie About Love'. Visit his website listed above.
Still 'integration' is the name of the game here in Hegel's Hotel (my network of blogsites on philosophy, psychology, politics, and more...), and that is my project relative to Psychoanalysis -- to integrate ALL 50 years of Freud's writing and theorizing. I want to 're-integrate the dissociative split' in psychoanalytic theory that happened in 1896.
To me, this year might be called the year of 'The Great Psychoanalytic Repression'.
And I intend to undo this 'repression', this 'dissociative split' in Classic Psychoanalytic Theory that separates -- and 'dissociates' -- the work of Freud before 1897 from his work after 1896.
How ironic that Psychoanalysis should 'mimic' the type of 'neurosis' that Freud spent so many years, in painstaking fashion, describing and explaining in his patients!!!
It is in this regard that Masson, in digging deep into the letters of The Freud Archive, became aware that he liked Freud's work better before 1897, rather than after. Masson argued that Freud 'lost moral courage' on the issue of 'childhood sexual abuse' after the spring of 1896 because of 'political' and 'economic' pressures being brought to bear on him from his medical peers and superiors, the most important leader of the meeting (Krafft-Ebing) where Freud first read his infamous, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' (1896) -- i.e., his most pivotal essay on 'The Seduction (Childhood Sexual Assault) Theory' -- saying that he thought the essay was a 'scientific fairy tale'.
In stating that Freud 'lost moral courage' after 1896, Masson alienated himself from Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter, and also, Kurt Eissler, the second most esteemed psychoanalyst at the time that this 'scandal in The Freud Archives' broke out in the early 1980s, and with a continuing snowball effect, Masson, quickly alienated himself from (or was alienated by) the entire Psychoanalytic Establishment...
I talked to Masson about a week ago by email...and got the following short interview as a culmination of a number of email transactions that we had exchanged.
It is on this note, with Dr. Masson's consent, that I introduce you to Dr. Masson today, via a select few email transactions over the past week or so, and 9 selected questions by myself that I asked him in a quick makeshift email interview which we had talked about doing before Christmas (2009).
His answers were 'short but sweet'...
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March 18th, 2010
1. Question from DGB to Dr. Masson:
DGB. What is your final take, good and bad, of Anna Freud? What would you say to her if you were in the room with her right now?
1. Answer from Dr. Masson to DGB:
JM. Well, I think she was a lovely woman, but very much in the thrall of her
great father. Never a good thing! The amazing thing for me is that after
our talks, she told somebody (and it was published - I saw it and even
referred to it in one of the later editions of The Assault on Truth) that
sexual abuse was the greatest trauma in the lives of children!!
2. Question.
DGB. What is your final take, good and bad, of Kurt Eissler? What would you say
to him if you were in the room with him right now?
2. Answer.
JM. I "loved" Kurt Eissler. I still think he was a most remarkable man. I have
not been able to get hold of his book about the seduction theory. But I
would ask him why he was so eager to defend the establishment in public,
whereas in private he could say that I was entitlted to my opinions. Did he
never encounter patients in his many years of practice, who had, indeed,
been abused? If so, why did he never write about it? If not, is that not
odd, considering how much abuse there is in the culture? Why was this such
a contentious issue for analysts, including him?
3. Question.
DGB. Did you ever meet Brian Bird to any significant extent? If so, what was
your impression of him?
3. Answer.
JM. I think we only met once, and I was very deeply impressed. A remarkable
man, I thought. I know nothing of what happened to him later in life.
4. Question.
DGB. If you had the whole 1980s to play over again, would you have played it out
differently? If so, how?
4. Answer.
J.M. I suspect I would. I would have written a much more scholarly book, that
is, I would not have allowed my editor to take out so many of my footnotes,
and text. I handed in a manuscript of some 1,000 pages. She reduced it. I
also would have make it VERY clear that I was only speculating as to why
Freud gave up his theory of seduction. I would also have given each and
every passage in the later Freud where the terms occur to show how he deal
with it later on. So many analysts believe, falsely I think, that Freud
stayed with sexual trauma. He did not, especially if the woman said it was
her father. That was unthinkable, literally, to the later Freud!
5. Question.
DGB. What was the time and primary motivating reason for your switchover to the
study of animal psychology and particularly the study of animal emotions?
5. Answer.
J.M. Well, I was a pariah in psychoanalysis, and had to find something else to
do. I had always been fascinated by animals, and by emotions, so it made
sense to investigate the emotions of animals.
6. Question.
DGB. Do you see any 'allusions to immediacy' in your own life, relative to the
titles of at least two of your books on animal emotions: specifically, 'Dogs
Never Lie About Love'; and 'When Elephants Weep'?
6. Answer.
JM. I am sorry, I do not know the terms allusions to immediacy. If you mean personal experiences, then yes, I had always lived with dogs and adored them (still do - my new book is called The Dog Who Couldn't Stop Loving).
7. Question.
DGB. You will forgive me for not yet having read any of your animal psychology
books -- I will find and read at least some of them -- but I see from your
website that your book 'The Pig Who Sang to The Moon' turned you into a vegan
and became a subject for another one of your books: The Face on Your Plate.
Can you briefly explain what happened in this regard?
7. Answer.
JM. Once I saw that farm animals had similar emotions to dogs (and us!), I could
no longer justify imposing suffering on them for my taste buds, milk,
chocolate, butter, eggs. The gulf between what happened to them to provide
this and the pleasure it gave me, was simply too great.
8. Question.
DGB. What is new on your list of books to come? I see again from your website
that you are writing a book on 'the psychology of apex predators' (humans,
orcas, wolves, bears, and the big cats'. I saw a tv program the other day on
how New Zealand orcas specialize in killing and eating stingrays. Any brief
comments here and perhaps most significantly on the similarities and
differences between human and animal predators? What does 'apex' mean in this
context?
8. Answer.
JM. I am attaching what I have written about this.
9. Question.
DGB. Any commendations and/or criticisms regarding my work in Hegel's Hotel?
Maybe I am being too bold here -- I expect you will be truthful. Have I
influenced your thinking at all? I see you have an interest in the 'Us and
Them' phenomenon which has been a central 'dialectic' focal point of writing
for me in Hegel's Hotel; and also, we at least used to share a common interest
in the topic of 'counter-phobias' (if Janet Malcolm's quote here is right)
which remains a central focal point of my Psychoanalytic investigations.
9. Answer.
JM. Well, I have only read your work sporadically and not in depth. I can sense
your sincerity, and I respect your attempt to fuse both trauma and the later
Freud. It is not easy, and you are making a concerted attempt. Analysts
would do well to pay attention to your work, but of course they won't,
because you are not part of the establishment. That is a pity.
10. Final DGB comments:
Jeff, I have the utmost respect for your work and your character. I know that we disagree on the 'integration' issue -- you skeptical that it will work, and me confident that I can make it work. But regardless, your work on The Seduction Theory has been a source of great inspiration to me, impassioned me to follow up on your work wherever it may take me, and to do the best job I possibly can to make sure that your exhausting work in Psychoanalysis has not been in vain, and that you take your rightful, respectful place in the history and ongoing evolution of Psychoanalysis.
It has been the greatest pleasure meeting you and I hope that we can maintain some degree of ongoing contact with each other.
Sincerely, David Gordon Bain
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Email Transaction From Jeffrey Masson Regarding The Interview... (after it was written up but before it was publicly published)
Sunday March 14th, 2010
(Dave),
I read what you wrote, and I appreciate the generous comments about me. It
was very kind. Like you, I do not expect any reconciliation. And the truth
is, I really have lost interest in psychoanalysis. Perhaps if they had
responded as you have, or as you wish they had, it would be different.
Surely Freud has written some wonderful papers, has had some amazing
insights, has given us valuable material to think about. But I do believe
he missed out on something terribly important. Now, as to why he did so, I
cannot pretend to know. My hunch, my theory, my belief, is that it was due
to a lack of moral courage. But I could easily be wrong. You might be
right: he may have been headed in that direction in any case. We will
probably never know. But he did abandon what was an important and
courageous theory, and the result is that women and children were
disbelieved and suffered as a consequence. I am amazed, like you, that not
a single analyst has been able to acknowledge this! I just can't really get
my mind around this. So I have to wish them godspeed, and be on my way.
Same with you. I appreciate what you do, but I am concerned now with other
things and cannot give much more attention to this matter. Sorry. You are
doing a fine job on your own! Best, Jeff
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Ph.D.
P.O.Box 25930, St. Heliers, Auckland 1740
New Zealand
www.jeffreymasson.com
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