Beware your righteous, theoretical boundaries because theoretical boundaries set up an arbitrary self-contradiction from which we cannot escape as long as we cling to that boundary with no flexibility for movement...
Every perspective, every theory, has its own particular strength...
And every perspective, every theory, has its own particular liability...
Why should we limit ourselves to the inevitable weakness of every one-sided theory?
Like a good husband and wife team working in harmony with each other,
Opposing theories can be used harmoniously and integratively to supplement each other's weakness...
To provide a more balanced, wholistic perspective...
When it comes to theories,
The only boundaries that should dictate,
Are those governed by subject-matter, ethics, and integrity...
And even here there is going to be ambiguity and plenty of room for debate,
For example, the subject matter is going to be influenced by 'outside factors',
That can change the nature of the discussion,
Or the boundaries of the subject matter,
Thus, we get 'bio-chemistry', and 'bio-physics',
And an essay like Freud's 'The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence' (1894).
Some boundaries are inherent to the subject-matter under investigation,
But many are simply man-made, conceptual-classification-label boundaries,
That are meant to make thinking and understanding easier,
And oftentimes, these can come back to haunt us,
And cause us endless grief,
Until we finally figure out that we have created a man-made conceptual-semantic trap.
Boundaries are meant to be broken...(especially when we make them in places that we shouldn't have made them in the first place).
Giving proper respect to ethical and legal boundaries that are there for good reason.
And organizational boundaries that give us some semblence of an idea of where to start our study and where to end it...
Usually when we start to draw near the end of our subject matter, we start to feel the encroachment of other subject matters surrounding it, each with their own sphere of respective influence...
It was in this manner, and through a famous quote by Jung, that I bumped into the philosophy of Hegel, and in passing from Jung to Hegel, I had jumped over the boundary from psychology to philosophy...
And then I had a whole new discipline to study...
A whole new world of information and knowledge to learn,
Years and years of further study...
To add more depth and historical context, as well as subject matter context, to that which I had already learned in psychology...
And the same could apply to the spheres of business and economics,
And politics and spirituality and religion,
And art and literature...
Inside the 'box' of psychology, we have different 'sub-categories' of study such as 'clinical psychology' and 'research psychology' and 'industrial psychology'...
Inside the 'box' of psychology, we also have different 'schools' of psychology, each with their different perspective, their different slant on things, like 'psychoanalysis' and 'gestalt therapy' and 'adlerian psychology' and 'jungian psycholgy', 'cognitive therapy' and 'client-centered therapy' and 'transactional analysis'...
To go with all the boxes or spheres that we mentioned outside the box of psychology...
In both cases, we need to keep thinking 'inside and outside the box'.
Ascertaining how inside and outside factors influence each other,
Co-determine each other,
Add contextual depth to each other,
Attract and repel each other...
This is what Hegel called 'dialectic thinking'.
I sometimes call it 'dialectic-democratic thinking'.
Or the 'dialectic-integrative evolution of theories'...
Which constantly looks for 'win-win solutions and conflict resolutions'...
To seemingly unsolvable and unresolvable paradoxes, dichotomies, impasses, and riddles...
When a theory becomes too self-limiting by the constriction of its own self-boundaries...
Think outside the boundary...
And then come back to integrate...
What is inside and outside the boundary...
You might be amazed at where it takes you, and what it brings back to you!
New life, new depth, new integrations!!
To that which had become hopelessly self-entangled,
By its own limitations and self-restrictions...
With theorists screaming at each other from each side of their own limited vantage point and self-perspective...
Broaden your horizons everyone...
And reap the benefits from doing this...
The world is a big, big place...
And you are only seeing part of the picture...
Two opposite halves generally make a whole...
-- dgb, Feb. 26th, 2010; updated March 19th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still In Process...
Friday, March 19, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
A Short, Exclusive Email Interview With Dr. Jeffrey Masson, Former Projects Director of The Freud Archives
March 18th, 2010
For those of you who may not know who Dr. Jeffrey Masson is, and/or who have not been following my most recent essays on the subject matter of Freud's post-1896 abandonment of the seduction (childhood sexual assault) theory, I offer you this introduction to him and his work in Psychoanalysis during the 1970s and 80s -- and his banishment from Psychoanalysis in the 1980s because of his very outspoken comments about Freud making a big, morally wrong, mistake in having abandoned the seduction theory in favor of his later Oedipus Theory.
These comments below are taken off the back cover of his very provocative, controversial, and readable book published in 1990, 1991, Final Analysis.
...........................................................................................................................
"A powerful work, especially important for its warning about the power psychoanalysts can wield over patients." -- Los Angeles Times
Through an astonishingly candid account of his own life as both patient and therapist, Jeffrey Mousssaieff Masson offers an eloquent if scathing critique of the cult of psychoanalysis. Masson, a one time member of the Freudian 'inner circle' who rose to the pinnacle of psychoanalytic power, reveals the inner workings of his prestigious and profitable profession as no other analyst could -- or would. In Final Analysis -- the first insider expose of psychoanalytic training -- Masson lets the reader through the door of his own analysis and his first sessions with patients of his own, showing how the training process poisons the entire discipline. He also provides penetrating portraits of Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and other gurus of psychoanalysis he came to know during his tenure in the profession's inner sanctum as projects director of the Freud Archive. Finally, Masson relates the dramatic tale of his banishment from that same sanctum.
Masson's frankly recounted experiences speak compellingly for themselves, and against the exalted status that psychoanalysis has established for itself.
"A lively, juicy account...A fascinating insider's view." -- Kirkus Reviews
"As provocative as might be expected from so controversial a figure, (this) is a fascinating and very readable book." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is the author of the highly controversial The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory, and Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing, among other books. He completed a training program at the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute from 1970 to 1978 and in 1980 was projects director for the Freud Archive in London. He now lives in Berkeley, California (1991). Updated, Jeffrey Masson now lives in Aukland, New Zealand (2010) and is an animal psychologist who has written numerous books on emotions in animals.
http://jeffreymasson.com/
.......................................................................................................................................
Regarding my email transactions and short interview with Dr. Jeffrey Masson below...
I started emailing Dr. Masson sometime last fall (2009) I believe 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 basically aimed to 'bridge the theoretical and therapeutic gap' between Freud before and after 1897, between Masson and Freud (after 1897), and possibly even between Masson and the current Psychoanalytic regime if there was any room for reconciliation and 'conflict resolution' with the powers that currently be. 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, and that is my project here relative to Psychoanalysis -- to integrate ALL 50 years of Freud's writing and theorizing, not just the work he did after 1896. I want to 're-integrate the 'dissociative split' in the psychoanalytic personality 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 alienates -- the work of Freud before and after 1897.
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 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'...
......................................................................................................
1. 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?
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. 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?
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. Did you ever meet Brian Bird to any significant extent? If so, what was
your impression of him?
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. If you had the whole 1980s to play over again, would you have played it out
differently? If so, how?
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. What was the time and primary motivating reason for your switchover to the
study of animal psychology and particularly the study of animal emotions?
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. 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'?
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. 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?
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. 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?
I am attaching what I have written about this.
9. 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.
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.
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
.......................................................................................................................................
Recent Email Transactions To and From Jeffrey Masson Regarding My Most Recent Essays...
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
.....................................................................................................................................
Wednesday March 17th, 2010.
OK, I read your latest. I think you got Malcolm right, and you are correct
in the way you dismantle her "arguments" (they are somewhat less than that).
Juliet Mitchell, by the way, is a psychoanalyst! So I agree with all you
have to say that is historical. Where I disagree is in your passion for
synthesis. I just don't think a little of this and a little of that will do
it, certainly not for me. But then, this is no longer my world. Jeff
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Ph.D.
P.O.Box 25930, St. Heliers, Auckland 1740
New Zealand
www.jeffreymasson.com
.....................................................................................................................
Wednesday March 17th, 2010
Thanks for the feedback again Jeff,
I am going to clean up the interview and release it tomorrow.
As far as the 'synthesis', I know we still disagree there...
But it will take me a while to develop the whole synthesis and I will make sure that it isn't 'ragged'...
Whatever doesn't properly 'fit' won't be in the final synthesis...
And it is still very much evolving although much of it is mainly worked out in my head, if not on computer yet...
I will email you when it is finished and/or you can just check the website again about this time tomorrow evening or sooner...
I would like to check in with you from time to time but maybe once every month or two so as not to disrupt whatever is on your agenda these days...
Best wishes,
dave
P.S.
In my next essay, incidentally, I intend to develop the thesis, alluded to earlier, that Freud started his fantasy theory before 1896 in the 'shadow' of his traumacy theory...and that actually the two theories were evolving hand in hand in the same client cases...a significant number of clients, starting with Anna O. in effect, being 'traumatized to a greater or lesser extent by their own erotic fantasies'...
One of the things I have a very hard time understanding is how and why Freud's Seduction Theory seemed to come out of nowhere...I have to go back and read 'Studies in Hysteria' again, but I can't remember there being any cases of 'childhood sexual assault' in this book of client cases...where are the cases that his theory in 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' came from? I know that you postulated that part of his influence may have come from The French Morgue...but I don't think this would have been anything more than a possible secondary influence...
d
.................................................................................................................................................
Thursday March 18th, 2010
Well, Freud read a great deal of the French research, especially Tardieu, a
copy of whose book he had in his house, which talked specifically about
child sexual abuse. And if you read Studies on Hysteria you will find A LOT
of material there dealing with the same topic. Jeff
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Ph.D.
P.O.Box 25930, St. Heliers, Auckland 1740
New Zealand
www.jeffreymasson.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday March 18th, 2010
Good Morning Jeff,
Yeah, I just skimmed over the Katharina case last night...and it looks like it was a case of the uncle jumping into bed with her when he was drunk...
I have to go back and read all of the early cases leading up to 1896, and itemize them one by one, cases of childhood sexual abuse vs. not...and look at the percentage...
I've got to read all the early publications, including both the 'Neuro-Psychoses of Defence' (1894, 1896). There is one that I skimmed over last night, 'Heredity and The Aetiology of The Neuroses', also written in 1896, that seems to lay out Freud's main 'Seduction' ideas even better than 'The Aetiology of Hysteria'.
And there is a paper that I haven't read called 'Sexuality in The Aetiology of The Neuroses', written in 1898 which I will be very interested to read to see how it compares to 'Screen Memories'.
If I find as many cases of childhood sexual abuse as it looks like I am probably going to, then you are right, it will be almost impossible to find any excuse or justification for what Freud did. It will be a pretty strong case of 'Freud turning his back on the clinical evidence that he himself had experienced and gathered from his therapeutic sessions. You would never do that. I would never do that. It boggles the mind that there are thousands of Psychoanalysts out there, who go to work every day, supposedly prepared to do that in the name of what they have been taught is 'proper therapy'.
You took a hard, hard ride and fall for being brazen enough to claim that you thought Freud 'lost moral courage'. From my vantage point, it looks to me like that was the 'killer phrase' that cost you your job and career.
And yet based on my research over this next month or so, if I find as many cases of childhood sexual abuse in his early cases as it looks like I might, as you are telling me I will, then it will be very hard -- if not impossible to justify any other conclusion.
All you need is ONE case of real childhood sexual abuse -- and I already have one, Katherina, from Studies in Hysteria -- and that has got to tell a theorist and a therapist that you have to start watching for this sort of thing. Once the number of cases start to climb higher to 5, 10, 20 for one theorist/therapist, then this clinical information is telling you that you can, in no way, 'dump' this theory for a different or opposite one. Depending on the percentage of 'sexual assault victims' vs. 'not', you need a theory or a 'polar set of theories' that will accommodate ALL different types of clinical cases and information.
This is why I am always looking for 'sliding, bi-polar, dialectical theories' that will accommodate 'both sides of the theoretical and therapeutic spectrum or pendulum swing'. For example, a 'sliding, bi-polar, dialectic theory that will handle cases of childhood sexual assault on the one hand and also cases of 'narcissistic, sexual fantasy' on the other hand. In some of these cases leading up to 1896, in a very sexually stringent Victorian society, I am sure that I am also going to find numerous cases where it is, or was, simply a matter of a grown woman being afraid of -- and 'neurotically' defending against -- the onset of her own sexual feelings, desires, and fantasies. These types of cases also need to be accounted for, and distinguished from the first type of actual childhood sexual assault cases. Then finally, I am sure that I will also find a number of 'mixed cases'.
But I am getting ahead of myself....
I will get back to you when I have completed my investigation, and 'classified' the cases, and come to my own conclusions.
Or if I have any perplexing issues along the way, I hope that I might still be able to turn to you from time to time as an invaluable feedback resource.
Thanks again for all your time and help here.
dave
P.S.
And then there are the cases, or instances, of 'neurotic symptoms' caused, or at least partly caused, by 'non-sexual' factors.....such as Anna O. refusing to drink until, in therapy under Breuer, she remembered a scene from her memory where a dog was drinking water out of a 'bowl meant for humans, not for dogs'.
(Although, I'm sure the later Freud could have put a 'sexual spin' on that incident as well.)
...................................................................................................................................................
Thursday March 18th, 2010.
BTW, Katharina, in Studies on Hysteria, was abused by her father, not her
Uncle, as noted in the SE of the text. Freud kept that out, for
understandable reasons. Your idea of tallying up how many cases, say before
1900, were abuse, is an excellent one. Let me know your results. Do you
practice any form of therapy? Jeff
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Ph.D.
P.O.Box 25930, St. Heliers, Auckland 1740
New Zealand
www.jeffreymasson.com
...................................................................................................................
Thursday March 18th, 2010.
No, I don't practice any therapy but I was connected off and on with the Gestalt Institute of Toronto between 1979 and 1991 as well as with The Adlerian Institute between 1980 and 1981. Plus I was involved with a lot of group therapy situations in University so I have seen and experienced different Gestalt approaches, Adlerian approaches, Cognitive Therapy approaches, and Client-Centered Therapy (i.e., Rogerian) approaches.
The interview is done and released...you can check it out now...
I will finish it up with this transaction right here....
Hopefully, you have no problems or issues with it.
If you do, please let me know.
dave
For those of you who may not know who Dr. Jeffrey Masson is, and/or who have not been following my most recent essays on the subject matter of Freud's post-1896 abandonment of the seduction (childhood sexual assault) theory, I offer you this introduction to him and his work in Psychoanalysis during the 1970s and 80s -- and his banishment from Psychoanalysis in the 1980s because of his very outspoken comments about Freud making a big, morally wrong, mistake in having abandoned the seduction theory in favor of his later Oedipus Theory.
These comments below are taken off the back cover of his very provocative, controversial, and readable book published in 1990, 1991, Final Analysis.
...........................................................................................................................
"A powerful work, especially important for its warning about the power psychoanalysts can wield over patients." -- Los Angeles Times
Through an astonishingly candid account of his own life as both patient and therapist, Jeffrey Mousssaieff Masson offers an eloquent if scathing critique of the cult of psychoanalysis. Masson, a one time member of the Freudian 'inner circle' who rose to the pinnacle of psychoanalytic power, reveals the inner workings of his prestigious and profitable profession as no other analyst could -- or would. In Final Analysis -- the first insider expose of psychoanalytic training -- Masson lets the reader through the door of his own analysis and his first sessions with patients of his own, showing how the training process poisons the entire discipline. He also provides penetrating portraits of Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and other gurus of psychoanalysis he came to know during his tenure in the profession's inner sanctum as projects director of the Freud Archive. Finally, Masson relates the dramatic tale of his banishment from that same sanctum.
Masson's frankly recounted experiences speak compellingly for themselves, and against the exalted status that psychoanalysis has established for itself.
"A lively, juicy account...A fascinating insider's view." -- Kirkus Reviews
"As provocative as might be expected from so controversial a figure, (this) is a fascinating and very readable book." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is the author of the highly controversial The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory, and Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing, among other books. He completed a training program at the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute from 1970 to 1978 and in 1980 was projects director for the Freud Archive in London. He now lives in Berkeley, California (1991). Updated, Jeffrey Masson now lives in Aukland, New Zealand (2010) and is an animal psychologist who has written numerous books on emotions in animals.
http://jeffreymasson.com/
.......................................................................................................................................
Regarding my email transactions and short interview with Dr. Jeffrey Masson below...
I started emailing Dr. Masson sometime last fall (2009) I believe 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 basically aimed to 'bridge the theoretical and therapeutic gap' between Freud before and after 1897, between Masson and Freud (after 1897), and possibly even between Masson and the current Psychoanalytic regime if there was any room for reconciliation and 'conflict resolution' with the powers that currently be. 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, and that is my project here relative to Psychoanalysis -- to integrate ALL 50 years of Freud's writing and theorizing, not just the work he did after 1896. I want to 're-integrate the 'dissociative split' in the psychoanalytic personality 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 alienates -- the work of Freud before and after 1897.
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 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'...
......................................................................................................
1. 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?
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. 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?
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. Did you ever meet Brian Bird to any significant extent? If so, what was
your impression of him?
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. If you had the whole 1980s to play over again, would you have played it out
differently? If so, how?
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. What was the time and primary motivating reason for your switchover to the
study of animal psychology and particularly the study of animal emotions?
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. 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'?
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. 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?
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. 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?
I am attaching what I have written about this.
9. 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.
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.
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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Recent Email Transactions To and From Jeffrey Masson Regarding My Most Recent Essays...
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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Wednesday March 17th, 2010.
OK, I read your latest. I think you got Malcolm right, and you are correct
in the way you dismantle her "arguments" (they are somewhat less than that).
Juliet Mitchell, by the way, is a psychoanalyst! So I agree with all you
have to say that is historical. Where I disagree is in your passion for
synthesis. I just don't think a little of this and a little of that will do
it, certainly not for me. But then, this is no longer my world. Jeff
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Ph.D.
P.O.Box 25930, St. Heliers, Auckland 1740
New Zealand
www.jeffreymasson.com
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Wednesday March 17th, 2010
Thanks for the feedback again Jeff,
I am going to clean up the interview and release it tomorrow.
As far as the 'synthesis', I know we still disagree there...
But it will take me a while to develop the whole synthesis and I will make sure that it isn't 'ragged'...
Whatever doesn't properly 'fit' won't be in the final synthesis...
And it is still very much evolving although much of it is mainly worked out in my head, if not on computer yet...
I will email you when it is finished and/or you can just check the website again about this time tomorrow evening or sooner...
I would like to check in with you from time to time but maybe once every month or two so as not to disrupt whatever is on your agenda these days...
Best wishes,
dave
P.S.
In my next essay, incidentally, I intend to develop the thesis, alluded to earlier, that Freud started his fantasy theory before 1896 in the 'shadow' of his traumacy theory...and that actually the two theories were evolving hand in hand in the same client cases...a significant number of clients, starting with Anna O. in effect, being 'traumatized to a greater or lesser extent by their own erotic fantasies'...
One of the things I have a very hard time understanding is how and why Freud's Seduction Theory seemed to come out of nowhere...I have to go back and read 'Studies in Hysteria' again, but I can't remember there being any cases of 'childhood sexual assault' in this book of client cases...where are the cases that his theory in 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' came from? I know that you postulated that part of his influence may have come from The French Morgue...but I don't think this would have been anything more than a possible secondary influence...
d
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Thursday March 18th, 2010
Well, Freud read a great deal of the French research, especially Tardieu, a
copy of whose book he had in his house, which talked specifically about
child sexual abuse. And if you read Studies on Hysteria you will find A LOT
of material there dealing with the same topic. Jeff
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Ph.D.
P.O.Box 25930, St. Heliers, Auckland 1740
New Zealand
www.jeffreymasson.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday March 18th, 2010
Good Morning Jeff,
Yeah, I just skimmed over the Katharina case last night...and it looks like it was a case of the uncle jumping into bed with her when he was drunk...
I have to go back and read all of the early cases leading up to 1896, and itemize them one by one, cases of childhood sexual abuse vs. not...and look at the percentage...
I've got to read all the early publications, including both the 'Neuro-Psychoses of Defence' (1894, 1896). There is one that I skimmed over last night, 'Heredity and The Aetiology of The Neuroses', also written in 1896, that seems to lay out Freud's main 'Seduction' ideas even better than 'The Aetiology of Hysteria'.
And there is a paper that I haven't read called 'Sexuality in The Aetiology of The Neuroses', written in 1898 which I will be very interested to read to see how it compares to 'Screen Memories'.
If I find as many cases of childhood sexual abuse as it looks like I am probably going to, then you are right, it will be almost impossible to find any excuse or justification for what Freud did. It will be a pretty strong case of 'Freud turning his back on the clinical evidence that he himself had experienced and gathered from his therapeutic sessions. You would never do that. I would never do that. It boggles the mind that there are thousands of Psychoanalysts out there, who go to work every day, supposedly prepared to do that in the name of what they have been taught is 'proper therapy'.
You took a hard, hard ride and fall for being brazen enough to claim that you thought Freud 'lost moral courage'. From my vantage point, it looks to me like that was the 'killer phrase' that cost you your job and career.
And yet based on my research over this next month or so, if I find as many cases of childhood sexual abuse in his early cases as it looks like I might, as you are telling me I will, then it will be very hard -- if not impossible to justify any other conclusion.
All you need is ONE case of real childhood sexual abuse -- and I already have one, Katherina, from Studies in Hysteria -- and that has got to tell a theorist and a therapist that you have to start watching for this sort of thing. Once the number of cases start to climb higher to 5, 10, 20 for one theorist/therapist, then this clinical information is telling you that you can, in no way, 'dump' this theory for a different or opposite one. Depending on the percentage of 'sexual assault victims' vs. 'not', you need a theory or a 'polar set of theories' that will accommodate ALL different types of clinical cases and information.
This is why I am always looking for 'sliding, bi-polar, dialectical theories' that will accommodate 'both sides of the theoretical and therapeutic spectrum or pendulum swing'. For example, a 'sliding, bi-polar, dialectic theory that will handle cases of childhood sexual assault on the one hand and also cases of 'narcissistic, sexual fantasy' on the other hand. In some of these cases leading up to 1896, in a very sexually stringent Victorian society, I am sure that I am also going to find numerous cases where it is, or was, simply a matter of a grown woman being afraid of -- and 'neurotically' defending against -- the onset of her own sexual feelings, desires, and fantasies. These types of cases also need to be accounted for, and distinguished from the first type of actual childhood sexual assault cases. Then finally, I am sure that I will also find a number of 'mixed cases'.
But I am getting ahead of myself....
I will get back to you when I have completed my investigation, and 'classified' the cases, and come to my own conclusions.
Or if I have any perplexing issues along the way, I hope that I might still be able to turn to you from time to time as an invaluable feedback resource.
Thanks again for all your time and help here.
dave
P.S.
And then there are the cases, or instances, of 'neurotic symptoms' caused, or at least partly caused, by 'non-sexual' factors.....such as Anna O. refusing to drink until, in therapy under Breuer, she remembered a scene from her memory where a dog was drinking water out of a 'bowl meant for humans, not for dogs'.
(Although, I'm sure the later Freud could have put a 'sexual spin' on that incident as well.)
...................................................................................................................................................
Thursday March 18th, 2010.
BTW, Katharina, in Studies on Hysteria, was abused by her father, not her
Uncle, as noted in the SE of the text. Freud kept that out, for
understandable reasons. Your idea of tallying up how many cases, say before
1900, were abuse, is an excellent one. Let me know your results. Do you
practice any form of therapy? Jeff
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Ph.D.
P.O.Box 25930, St. Heliers, Auckland 1740
New Zealand
www.jeffreymasson.com
...................................................................................................................
Thursday March 18th, 2010.
No, I don't practice any therapy but I was connected off and on with the Gestalt Institute of Toronto between 1979 and 1991 as well as with The Adlerian Institute between 1980 and 1981. Plus I was involved with a lot of group therapy situations in University so I have seen and experienced different Gestalt approaches, Adlerian approaches, Cognitive Therapy approaches, and Client-Centered Therapy (i.e., Rogerian) approaches.
The interview is done and released...you can check it out now...
I will finish it up with this transaction right here....
Hopefully, you have no problems or issues with it.
If you do, please let me know.
dave
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
A Short Critique of Janet Malcolm's Book: 'In The Freud Archives' (1983,1984,1985)
Let me say this at the outset. For those of you who might be interested in reading the whole story behind The Seduction Theory Controversy and how it affected the lives of Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, Jeffrey Masson, and the ongoing evolution of Psychoanalysis -- Janet Malcolm's book, 'In The Freud Archives' (1983, 1984, 1985) is a good, albeit very pro-Freudian biased, read.
I finished it very quickly the first time I read it in the late 1980s or early 1990s and didn't even really notice the Freudian bias. Masson's character and integrity came out intact for me as a 'rebeller against certain stagnant and/or pathological ideas and treatment procedures within Classical Psychoanalysis -- which was significantly why I wanted to delve deeper into the whole Seduction Theory controversy. Some of Masson's anti-Freudian sentiments also rang true with some issues that I was having with Freudian thinking from earlier in the 1980s.
I had never liked Freud's small paper, 'Screen Memories' (1899) since I think I first read it in the early to mid 1980s, mainly because it collided and conflicted with what I had learned from Adlerian Psychology about 'conscious early memories'. Here again, was/is a situation where the way we 'label' a particular phenomenon can make all the difference in the world as to how we interpret and evaluate the same phenomenon based on the label we attach to it.
If we call a conscious early memory a 'screen memory' like Freud did in 1899, meaning that Freud believed such a memory was both 'hiding' and 'alluding' to a deeper 'unconscious, repressed' memory that held/holds 'far greater etiological significance as far as understanding and treating the symptomology of the person's neurosis', then you pass over such a 'screen memory' very quickly, paying little, if any, attention to it, and 'go digging deeper into the client's memory bank, and/or elsewhere'.
However, if you call a conscious early memory a 'lifestyle memory' like the Adlerians do, or a 'transference memory' like I do, then you stop on a dime and pay the greatest atttention to this same memory. Because it is viewed as being much more etiologically and/or metaphorically important in terms of the essense of the person's 'neurotic difficulties'. By 'neurotic difficulties' here, I am referring to 'self-sabotaging' thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and/or behavioral symptomology that continue, over and over again, to cause 'serially repetitive' problems in living for us. Now such 'serial behavior patterns' can also be an 'obsessive driving force' behind our motivational tendencies and be the 'foundation of our creative genius' as well...or both....it all depends on how we use our particular 'neurotic transference complex' in any particular context.
Such is the case, with Freud's first conscious early memory where he burst into his parents' bedroom at the age of 3 or 4 and caught his parents having sex with each other which the little Freud could not at all comprehend at the time. Furthermore, when his father yelled at him and told him to get out of the bedroom immediately (normal for probably the way most fathers would spontaneously react in such a circumstance), the little Freud was now not only shocked beyond belief but also felt rejected (and 'shut out') by his father as well. (Years and years later, by the end of Sigmund Freud's career, the 'little Freud' turned 'old Freud', would have 'shut out a lot of historically esteemed men' in his life in the 'identification-transference rejecting style' of his father as consciously remembered in this first memory...)
That is partly why I find the following passage by Janet Malcolm at the end of Chapter 2 in, 'In The Freud Archives' particularly offensive and just blatantly biased in a Classical Freudian manner, as she seemed to be brushing off, and intellectually demeaning each and ever Freudian revisionist who accused Freud of being wrong or 'pansexual', or simply one-sided in his evolving Classical Psychoanalytic theoretical presentation...Some of these men who she is basically brushing off as having more or less 'second class intellects' compared to Freud have gone on to become some of the greatest clinical psychologists and theorists in the history of Western psychology (Adler, Jung, Rank, Sullivan, Fromm, Perls, Berne...)
In my editorial opinion, Malcolm is being extremely hypocritical when she writes:
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'Writings about psychoanalysis from outside the field (with a few notable exceptions, such as Philip Rieff's Freud: The Mind of the Moralist and Juliet Mitchell's Psychoanalysis and Feminism are as a rule, uncomprehending, naive, off the point, and biased.' (In The Freud Archives, p. 26)
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I don't think there is a sentence in Malcolm's book that is more 'uncomprehending, naive, off the point, and biased' than this one. Unless it is the passage that she follows it with... But let's stick to this sentence above for a moment.
On the one hand, Malcolm trumpets Juliet Mitchell's book Psychoanalysis and Feminism as being one of a few examples of fine work written by an author writing about Psychoanalysis from outside of Psychoanalysis.
And yet on the other hand, Malcolm is supporting the Classical Psychoanalytic status-quo and the most 'anti-feminist' idea and theory that Freud ever wrote about: specifically, that a woman entering Psychoanalysis who reported being sexually assaulted by her dad when she was a child, would have this report immediately rejected without any further discussion on the grounds of an archaic, outdated (it was never in date) narcissistic, patriarchal male chauvanist assumption, i.e., The Oedipal Complex, where Freud claimed that such reports should be immediately re-interpreted by the Psychoanalyst as a 'young girl's repressed wishful fantasy of wanting to have sex with her dad'.
Talk about hypocritical!! What I find particularly hypocritical and almost laughable are the two lines Malcolm wrote leading up to the sentence above.
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'Writers on psychoanalytic theory or history who come from other fields are regarded with suspicion and skepticism by those within the field. The worst is expected from them -- and the worst very often comes.' (In The Freud Archives, p. 26.)
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I guess Malcolm is talking about herself because she is not a trained Psychoanalyst. And she was very 'prophetic' in the passage above because Malcolm did indeed deliver 'the worst' of editiorial opinions in the passages that followed it in terms of supporting an 80 year old 'anti-feminist theoretical assumption' -- i.e., The Oedipal Complex -- that remains epistemologically and ethically very hostile and suppressive if not repressive towards female Psychoanalytic clients, particularily Classical Psychoanalytic female clients who would have the nerve to walk in there in the first place...Why? To be told that she didn't know what she was talking about, and that the Psychoanalyst 'knew better'....not to mention the fact that Janet Malcolm seemed to think that she knew better than some of the greatest psychologists and psycho-theorists who ever lived!!!
What Freudian arrogance and a 'superiority complex' coming from a woman who wasn't even trained in psychology, let alone Psychoanalyis. Janet Malcolm was far over her head in her editiorial comments that are cited here...Forgive me if I am doing an 'emotional burn' here...
Furthermore, contrary to what Malcolm suggests above about Psychoanalysts treating 'outsiders' with 'suspicion' and 'skepticism', The Psychoanalytic Establishment were obviously very happy with Malcolm's 'slant on things' in 'In The Freud Archives' because it was 'Classic' Freudian arrogance and then some... upholding the main Freudian assumption that is pathologically one-sided and needs to be squashed...i.e., The Oedipal Complex.
Meanwhile, Masson, in defense of women and children and their rights not to have their reports of their own experiences re-interpreted until they are distorted completely away from a potential childhood crime -- 'Now, now dear, you didn't really get sexually assaulted as a child; that was just your erotic fantasy of wanting to have sex with your dad'-- for rebelling against this blatant anti-feminine Freudian assumption, Masson was being metaphorically 'burned at the Psychoanalytic Stake' or 'outcast to Psychoanalytic Siberia' (at least Masson chose what I am sure is a much warmer and nicer country to live in when he moved to New Zealand) even though he was an 'Psychoanalytic insider' at the time of his being outcast, and Malcolm was the 'outsider' who thought she knew what she was writing about...
So, in effect, all of Malcolm's so-called 'logic' goes flying out the window in the face of the 'paradoxical reality of what was happening at this time'. The truth is that Malcolm's viewpoint was supported by The Psychoanalytic Establishment because it 'upheld' the legitimacy and idealization of Freud's legacy whereas Masson was being 'outcast' because his editorial opinions about The Seduction Theory -- and mainly about Freud's integrity and character, i.e., Freud's 'loss of moral courage' as speculated by Masson -- didn't...
Masson has said himself that one of the things he most regrets about his comments in the 1980s is that he did not make it VERY, VERY CLEAR that he was SPECULATING regarding his historical interpretation of 'the loss of Freud's moral courage'...I'm not sure it would have made any difference...Once the comment was out there, Masson was probably a Psychoanalytic goner...And the thing is, Masson could still be right on this interpretation. If people in power were threatening you with 'the loss of your career' if you didn't change your theoretical and/or editorial perspective, isn't it fair to say that many of you, probably most of you -- including myself -- would have 'caved'. Masson didn't cave in the 1980s, and he lost his Psychoanalytic career in the process...
Who's to say that the same thing -- the same type of coercive pressure -- wasn't facing Freud in 1896? And maybe, Freud did indeed 'ethically cave'...because he certainly steered away from the issue of 'childhood sexual abuse' for most of, if not all of, the rest of his career...It takes a lot of philosophical and ethical courage to confront social, economic, political, professional, and legal 'taboos'....Given a particular cultural climate, and our economic and professional life at stake, probably most of us would ethically cave and not confront 'organizational pathologies, corruptions, tyrannies, and poisons'. We watch this kind of stuff happen around us -- each and everyone of us -- each and every day.
So everyone was holding onto their own 'partly narcissistic, partly righteous bias', their own particular version of 'historical and theoretical truth', and Malcolm in my own editorial opinion, comes out looking very, very poor in the way that she ethically evaluated what was happening here...She couldn't see and/or report her own narcissistic-righteous bias in this whole matter if she was standing, looking at herself in the mirror...
'How do you sleep at night'? -- John Lennon
Read Janet Malcolm as she rants off her Classical Freudian diatribe...Who was coaching her? Anna Freud? Kurt Eissler? I can't believe that this stuff came from her alone...Maybe it did...
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'From the beginning of psychoanalysis to the present -- from Adler, Jung, Rank, and Stekel to Fromm, Sullivan, Horney, Alexander, and, possibly, Kohut -- there have been people within psychoanalysis to whom psychoanalysis was never really congenial. After sojourning for a while in the chilly castle of psychoanalysis, they pass on to smaller, cozier habitations. In The Freud Archives, p. 27. (DGB: Counter-editorially, I would say that these psychologists -- all of them 'all stars' in their own right, in the history and evolution of Clinical Psychoanalysis -- longed for 'a larger castle than Classical Psychoanalysis', not 'smaller'. It was generally Freud's 'theoretical reductionism' that they were trying to escape from such as his 'pansexualism' and 'The Oedipal Complex', which strongly limited them in the scope of their thinking and Freud left no room for 'compromise' or 'alternative, counter-theories'. That is why they all left, not because they were looking for 'smaller, cozier habitation'. (In The Freud Archives, p. 27)
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Continuing on with Malcolm's 'pro-Psychoanalytic rant'...
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'The present day proponents of the seduction theory are new versions of those old revisionists. (In The Freud Archives, p. 27.) (DGB: Counter-editorially I say this is partly true, partly false. Some of the old Psychoanalysts, most particularly Ferenczi, didn't like Freud's rejection of the seduction theory any more than Masson did, and many of them didn't like 'The Oedipal Complex' -- or at least Freud's way of using and abusing the Oedipal Complex to potentially 'cover up' childhood sexual abuse'.)
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Continuing in the same passage...
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They are people in whom the germ of psychoanalytic thought has never caught hold. (DGB editorial comment: For good reason as Freudian Theory was so 'tightly constricted' at the time, that the other theorists, particularly the ones who left, were 'strangling in the tightening noose' of Classical Psychoanalysis...)
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And again, continuing in the same passage...
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'Masson's repudiation of psychoanalysis is hardly a new story to students of defections from the fold; nor is the idea that Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler were 'taken in' by Masson a startling one. Here, too, there is a venerable precedent. It has become a kind of cliche about Freud that he was "no Menschenkenner". Throughout his life, he was beset (as who isn't?) by the affliction of overestimation. Breur, Fliess, and Jung, is a cautionary tale whose moral seems so obvious that there may be another, more subtle one hidden behind it.' (In The Freud Archives, p. 27.)
DGB: Counter-editorial comments: Please tell us, dear Ms. Malcolm what this so-called 'moral' is that is so obvious to yourself, and assumedly to your reader, that you don't even need to state it!!
Because I am missing your moral. And I will most certainly identify the 'hidden moral' that you are missing that is hidden behind your 'undisclosed mystery moral'. Firstly, Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler were not 'taken in' by Jeffrey Masson in the 'manipulative' way that you are implying here. One of the 'underlying subtle morals' that you, Ms. Malcolm, missed here, is the fact that often, the higher that you rise in an organization, the more you can clearly see the 'toxicity', 'corruption', 'narcissism', and/or 'stagnant status-quo' of the organization.
Or let me put it this way: the closer you get to knowing someone, the more you learn about their vulnerabilities, their weaknesses, and their 'stringent pathological beliefs and values'. This applies to all of the past Freudian revisionists cited above who the better they came to know Freud, and some of the weaknesses and liabilities of his various theories, even some of the 'pathological toxicities' of these theories, particularly his 'pansexualism' and the way he used and abused The Oedipal Complex, the more that they 'rebelled' -- like any intelligent, independent person would -- against these 'problems' that were inherent and fundamental in Freud's theories -- that he wouldn't change or even contemplate modifying. The main problem behind Freud's theories was the man himself and his particular 'transference neurosis' and 'anal-retentiveness' such that no one in his 'fold' could persuade him to modify some of his theories and/or tinker with his own 'theoretical control fetish'.
Meanwhile, Freud was a genius when it came to creatively modifying and re-building his own theories...Just not let another male theorist or therapist significantly disagree with him...And Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler stood in well for Father Freud when they took over and ruled the 'Psychoanalytic Roost'...for a lot of years including the beginning of the years that we are talking about here in 1981-1982 until Anna Freud died in 1982 and Eissler presumably took over as Masson was outcast...
Relative to Freud's 'theoretical control fetish', the main exception to this rule was Melanie Klein who 'got away' with what none of the 'male Psychoanalytic theorests' could get away with under Freud's most watchful and judgmental eye. It was mainly from Melanie Klein's most provocative and controversial work, that the predominant 'alternative school of Psychoanalysis' to Classical Psychoanalysis was born -- 'Object Relations'...It is no more similar to Classical Psychoanalysis than any of Jungian Psychology, Adlerian Psychology, Transactional Analysis, or Gestalt Therapy...
It is most unfortunate that Freud hadn't been sufficiently 'liberal and democratic' enough in his approach to the evolution of Psychoanalysis, that he could have let Adler create 'Alderian Psychoanalyis', Jung create 'Jungian Psychoanalyis', Reich create 'Reichian Psychoanalysis, Fritz Perls create 'Gestalt Psychoanalysis', and Masson could have perhaps worked to create a 'Traumacy-Seduction Psychoanalysis' (probably in many, if not all of these different psychologiess, not even the 'famous or infamous couch' would have remained sacred...)
Now let me get real wild in my own narcissistic fantasy here and suggest that if Dr. Jeffrey Masson was still firmly entrenched somewhere near the top of, if not at the top of, The Psychoanalytic Establishment, and helping to transform Classical Psychoanalysis into a more 'reality-based' as opposed to 'fantasy based' theory of psychology...(remember, I am a more 'integrative theorist' here and wish to bridge the gap between the two polar theories...dgb)
And perhaps, in the context of this 'self-fantasized', more 'liberal-minded, egalitarian spirit of evolutionary Psychoanalytic thinking', with the powers at the top of The Psychoanalytic Establishment, including Masson, knowing that important evolutionary Pychoanalytic ideas can be born not only 'inside' the Psychoanalytic Fold/Box but also from 'outside' the Psychoanalytic Fold/Box....
Perhaps in this type of environmental context, a theorist like myself with no formal Psychoanalytic training but plenty of self-taught knowledge form what I have learned from my own books and my own research, and my own background in both Adlerian Psychology and Gestalt Therapy, to go with my Honours B.A. in Psychology and my own Honours Thesis which was a precursor (30 years ago) of 'Hegel's Hotel'....
Perhaps in such an environment, if I was to so boldly make my presence known, and say in effect:
'Hey, gentlremen (and ladies), I can contribute to your theory-building. I can do what you people do...in fact, perhaps, arguably, I can go one step better than you...because if there is one talent, one skill, one ability that God seems to have given me more than anything else, it seems to be an ability to integrate multiple ideas and theories..together...and bring them all under one roof...'
So here is what I can do: I can take all of Freud's 50 years of theorizing -- even his work before 1897 including both The Traumacy Theory and The Seduction Theory -- and I can take parts of Jungian Psychology, and parts of Adlerian Psychology, and parts of Gestalt Therapy, and parts of Object Relations, and parts of Transactional Analysis....
Or to put it another way, I can take 130 years of evolutionary thinking in Clinical Psychology and Personality Theory and Psychotherapy...and bring everything together into one integrative symphony, one collosal painting, one Grand Narrative in the template and spirit of Hegel's 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' and Nietzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy'...
And speaking of tragedies....
What happened in the 1980s was a tragedy; a Psychoanalytic -- and a human -- tragedy...
Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and Jeffrey Masson were all great, passionate people caught in a theoretical and therapeutic impasse that they could not break out of...Each did what they thought was right, Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler, loyal to the end, trying to protect the legacy and integrity of Anna's historical father's character...Jeffrey Masson seeing things differently and wanting to do what he thought was right for the ongoing evolution of Psychoanalysis.
To repeat, Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler were not 'taken in' by the 'ambitious manipulations' of Jeffrey Masson. They were mesmerized -- most rightfully so -- by Masson's intellect, his passion, his righteousness, his charisma, his integrity, and his courage to say what other Psychoanalysts were afraid to say...
And that is why what happened through this whole Freudian scandal in the 1980s was nothing less than a dramatic, existential and Psychoanalytic tragedy -- for all of us.
I practically cry when I think about how Psychoanalysis could have evolved differently -- and didn't.
And when I think of how Psychoanalysis could have been -- and still could be -- but isn't.
And when I think of the man who could have been right at the top of the Psychoanalytic hierarchy right now -- leading a more 'liberated, democratic, egalitarian, feminine-friendly Psychoanalysis'
-- and isn't.
Am I over-idealizing Masson just like Malcolm claims that both Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler over-idealized him?
Perhaps.
But I have gone on record as saying that I don't agree with everything Masson wrote about The Seduction Theory. I have opted all along for a more 'integrative' as opposed to 'either/or', 'Us vs. Them' approach.
Politically at least, Masson was often his own worst enemy, charging around like a 'stomping bull in The Psychoanalytic China Shop'... the way he would summarize his editiorial comments with a 'coup de grace' that was meant, probably usually by design, to be 'provocative' and 'ruffle the feathers of The Psychoanlytic Establishment', if not more. 'More' is the operative word here...
Comments like 'the sterility of present day Psychoanalysis' and particularly 'Freud's loss of moral courage' would not endear him to most, if any, members of The Psychoanalytic Establishment, most notably to Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler in the last example.
Wrote Sarah Boxer in The New York Times, Kurt Eissler, 90, Director of The Freud Archives, on February 20th,1999, in a column citing Eissler's long, esteemed career as a Psychoanalysist shortly after his death:
The fatefulness of that decision became clear to Dr. Eissler in 1981, when Dr. Masson, who was projects director of the archives, delivered a shocking paper to the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society, in New Haven. Dr. Masson said Freud had abandoned his ''seduction theory'' -- the idea that adult neurosis is caused by childhood sexual abuse -- for personal rather than scientific reasons. By dropping the seduction theory, Dr. Masson concluded, ''Freud began a trend away from the real world that, it seems to me, has come to a dead halt in the present-day sterility of psychoanalysis throughout the world.'' (my emphasis)
Wow, Eissler ruling the Freudian empire til he was 90. What a remarkable man!! I wonder how many times Eissler might have laid in bed at night and thought to himself,
'Jeffrey, my prodigal son, why aren't you here helping me right now? You're the man with all the passion and energy... You could have been running this whole show now -- with me, of course, overseeing your activities and holding the reins on you tightly to make sure you didn't do anything else so crazy and stupid as what you did in the 80s. Why did you have to shoot your mouth off the way you did? Why couldn't you have played it a little more coolly and diplomatically, especially while Anna Freud was still alive? Why couldn't this whole Psychoanalytic play have gone down so much differently and had a much better ending to it, and to my life? Why aren't you here right now?
There comes a time when we all must choose beween 'political correctness or incorrectness' vs. 'self-integrity and organizational ethics'...even if that hurts us dearly in the pocketbook and bank account...Masson opted for 'self integrity' and 'organizational ethics' at what would become the expense of his Psychoanalytic career...and whether or not he knew the end of his Psychoanalytic career was coming to an end at this point, he was still going to punctuate his statements with a series of exclamation marks and a flair for the dramatic, even if partly overstated, generalization rather than the 'white washed' and/or 'sugar coated' one...
As Eissler would finally say in exasperated frustration in the 1980s, and I am paraphrasing here, until I can find the exact quote,
What else was Eissler to do once the situation had publicly skyrocketed so far out of control...Was he to let The Raging Bull Destroy The China in The The Psychoanalytic China Shop... or to use another analogy, let the 'inmate rule the asylum' like Jack Nicholson took over the assylum in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'. Jeffrey Masson was like the Jack Nicholson of Psychoanalysis.
The character Jack Nicholson played in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' did 'therapeutic wonders' in that crazy asylum...Maybe the 'Freudian asylum' was not a lot different...Every organization needs a 'rebeller', a 'deconstructionist', a 'bad boy' or 'bad girl' to clear out the stagnancy and sterility of paralyzed bureaucracy, status-quo thinking, toxicity, corruption, and lack of new passion...and 'new, fresh air in the organization'....like a fresh breeze circulating through the Freud House...
Anyway, here is the exact quote I was looking for above, which can be found in the same article as the one I cited above, written by Sarah Boxer of The New York Times on Feb. 20th, 1999, when Eissler died at the age of 90 years old.
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The fallout followed quickly. Dr. Eissler led the 13-member board of the Freud Archives into a vote to remove Dr. Masson from his position as projects director of the archives. In explanation of his action, Dr. Eissler said: ''Would you make director of the archives someone who writes plain nonsense?'' Then the legal tango began. Dr. Masson sued the Freud Archives for $13 million. Dr. Eissler sued Dr. Masson to get back his audio tapes and Freud's letters. And after Ms. Malcolm wrote an article on the affair, she too was sued by Dr. Masson. One matter at the heart of Malcolm trial involved a quotation in which Dr. Masson describes Dr. Eissler begging him not to tell Anna Freud about the scandal. Dr. Eissler attended that trial. ''There was about him,'' Gwen Davis wrote in The Nation, ''the poignance of old Geppetto, who had carved himself a son, only to discover, to his profound chagrin, that Pinocchio was a naughty boy.''
George Gross, a psychoanalyst and friend of Dr. Eissler, saw Dr. Eissler's emotions in a slightly different light. Dr. Eissler, he said ''was disappointed that he had not found a person who understood Freud the way he did.'' In that, he was a little like Freud. Mr. Gross said, ''Freud was constantly disappointed.''
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/20/arts/kurt-eissler-90-director-of-sigmund-freud-archives.html?pagewanted=1
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I continue to look at things differently than both warring factions at the time of this unfolding 1980s Psychoanalytic existential drama...
I'm still looking for a reconciliation and an integration. That is the essence of my work here in Hegel's Hotel -- to build integrative theoretical bridges.
Do I think a 'reconciliation' between The Psychoanalytic Establishment and Masson is ever likely to happen?
Probably not.
But never say never. Sometimes, people -- even warring factions -- can surprise you.
Who would have thought that there would have ever been a 'peace agreement' between the Protestants and The Roman Catholics in Ireland, as fragile as it might still be?
In the broader picture, a modified, metaphorical version of The Oedipal Complex needs to be brought into 'bi-polar, dialectic harmony' with The Seduction Theory and both included and respected as partial elements of a 'newer, much broader, integrative version' of Psychoanalysis.
This is the foundation and beginning of what I am calling 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis'.
-- dgb, March 17th, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
I finished it very quickly the first time I read it in the late 1980s or early 1990s and didn't even really notice the Freudian bias. Masson's character and integrity came out intact for me as a 'rebeller against certain stagnant and/or pathological ideas and treatment procedures within Classical Psychoanalysis -- which was significantly why I wanted to delve deeper into the whole Seduction Theory controversy. Some of Masson's anti-Freudian sentiments also rang true with some issues that I was having with Freudian thinking from earlier in the 1980s.
I had never liked Freud's small paper, 'Screen Memories' (1899) since I think I first read it in the early to mid 1980s, mainly because it collided and conflicted with what I had learned from Adlerian Psychology about 'conscious early memories'. Here again, was/is a situation where the way we 'label' a particular phenomenon can make all the difference in the world as to how we interpret and evaluate the same phenomenon based on the label we attach to it.
If we call a conscious early memory a 'screen memory' like Freud did in 1899, meaning that Freud believed such a memory was both 'hiding' and 'alluding' to a deeper 'unconscious, repressed' memory that held/holds 'far greater etiological significance as far as understanding and treating the symptomology of the person's neurosis', then you pass over such a 'screen memory' very quickly, paying little, if any, attention to it, and 'go digging deeper into the client's memory bank, and/or elsewhere'.
However, if you call a conscious early memory a 'lifestyle memory' like the Adlerians do, or a 'transference memory' like I do, then you stop on a dime and pay the greatest atttention to this same memory. Because it is viewed as being much more etiologically and/or metaphorically important in terms of the essense of the person's 'neurotic difficulties'. By 'neurotic difficulties' here, I am referring to 'self-sabotaging' thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and/or behavioral symptomology that continue, over and over again, to cause 'serially repetitive' problems in living for us. Now such 'serial behavior patterns' can also be an 'obsessive driving force' behind our motivational tendencies and be the 'foundation of our creative genius' as well...or both....it all depends on how we use our particular 'neurotic transference complex' in any particular context.
Such is the case, with Freud's first conscious early memory where he burst into his parents' bedroom at the age of 3 or 4 and caught his parents having sex with each other which the little Freud could not at all comprehend at the time. Furthermore, when his father yelled at him and told him to get out of the bedroom immediately (normal for probably the way most fathers would spontaneously react in such a circumstance), the little Freud was now not only shocked beyond belief but also felt rejected (and 'shut out') by his father as well. (Years and years later, by the end of Sigmund Freud's career, the 'little Freud' turned 'old Freud', would have 'shut out a lot of historically esteemed men' in his life in the 'identification-transference rejecting style' of his father as consciously remembered in this first memory...)
That is partly why I find the following passage by Janet Malcolm at the end of Chapter 2 in, 'In The Freud Archives' particularly offensive and just blatantly biased in a Classical Freudian manner, as she seemed to be brushing off, and intellectually demeaning each and ever Freudian revisionist who accused Freud of being wrong or 'pansexual', or simply one-sided in his evolving Classical Psychoanalytic theoretical presentation...Some of these men who she is basically brushing off as having more or less 'second class intellects' compared to Freud have gone on to become some of the greatest clinical psychologists and theorists in the history of Western psychology (Adler, Jung, Rank, Sullivan, Fromm, Perls, Berne...)
In my editorial opinion, Malcolm is being extremely hypocritical when she writes:
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'Writings about psychoanalysis from outside the field (with a few notable exceptions, such as Philip Rieff's Freud: The Mind of the Moralist and Juliet Mitchell's Psychoanalysis and Feminism are as a rule, uncomprehending, naive, off the point, and biased.' (In The Freud Archives, p. 26)
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I don't think there is a sentence in Malcolm's book that is more 'uncomprehending, naive, off the point, and biased' than this one. Unless it is the passage that she follows it with... But let's stick to this sentence above for a moment.
On the one hand, Malcolm trumpets Juliet Mitchell's book Psychoanalysis and Feminism as being one of a few examples of fine work written by an author writing about Psychoanalysis from outside of Psychoanalysis.
And yet on the other hand, Malcolm is supporting the Classical Psychoanalytic status-quo and the most 'anti-feminist' idea and theory that Freud ever wrote about: specifically, that a woman entering Psychoanalysis who reported being sexually assaulted by her dad when she was a child, would have this report immediately rejected without any further discussion on the grounds of an archaic, outdated (it was never in date) narcissistic, patriarchal male chauvanist assumption, i.e., The Oedipal Complex, where Freud claimed that such reports should be immediately re-interpreted by the Psychoanalyst as a 'young girl's repressed wishful fantasy of wanting to have sex with her dad'.
Talk about hypocritical!! What I find particularly hypocritical and almost laughable are the two lines Malcolm wrote leading up to the sentence above.
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'Writers on psychoanalytic theory or history who come from other fields are regarded with suspicion and skepticism by those within the field. The worst is expected from them -- and the worst very often comes.' (In The Freud Archives, p. 26.)
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I guess Malcolm is talking about herself because she is not a trained Psychoanalyst. And she was very 'prophetic' in the passage above because Malcolm did indeed deliver 'the worst' of editiorial opinions in the passages that followed it in terms of supporting an 80 year old 'anti-feminist theoretical assumption' -- i.e., The Oedipal Complex -- that remains epistemologically and ethically very hostile and suppressive if not repressive towards female Psychoanalytic clients, particularily Classical Psychoanalytic female clients who would have the nerve to walk in there in the first place...Why? To be told that she didn't know what she was talking about, and that the Psychoanalyst 'knew better'....not to mention the fact that Janet Malcolm seemed to think that she knew better than some of the greatest psychologists and psycho-theorists who ever lived!!!
What Freudian arrogance and a 'superiority complex' coming from a woman who wasn't even trained in psychology, let alone Psychoanalyis. Janet Malcolm was far over her head in her editiorial comments that are cited here...Forgive me if I am doing an 'emotional burn' here...
Furthermore, contrary to what Malcolm suggests above about Psychoanalysts treating 'outsiders' with 'suspicion' and 'skepticism', The Psychoanalytic Establishment were obviously very happy with Malcolm's 'slant on things' in 'In The Freud Archives' because it was 'Classic' Freudian arrogance and then some... upholding the main Freudian assumption that is pathologically one-sided and needs to be squashed...i.e., The Oedipal Complex.
Meanwhile, Masson, in defense of women and children and their rights not to have their reports of their own experiences re-interpreted until they are distorted completely away from a potential childhood crime -- 'Now, now dear, you didn't really get sexually assaulted as a child; that was just your erotic fantasy of wanting to have sex with your dad'-- for rebelling against this blatant anti-feminine Freudian assumption, Masson was being metaphorically 'burned at the Psychoanalytic Stake' or 'outcast to Psychoanalytic Siberia' (at least Masson chose what I am sure is a much warmer and nicer country to live in when he moved to New Zealand) even though he was an 'Psychoanalytic insider' at the time of his being outcast, and Malcolm was the 'outsider' who thought she knew what she was writing about...
So, in effect, all of Malcolm's so-called 'logic' goes flying out the window in the face of the 'paradoxical reality of what was happening at this time'. The truth is that Malcolm's viewpoint was supported by The Psychoanalytic Establishment because it 'upheld' the legitimacy and idealization of Freud's legacy whereas Masson was being 'outcast' because his editorial opinions about The Seduction Theory -- and mainly about Freud's integrity and character, i.e., Freud's 'loss of moral courage' as speculated by Masson -- didn't...
Masson has said himself that one of the things he most regrets about his comments in the 1980s is that he did not make it VERY, VERY CLEAR that he was SPECULATING regarding his historical interpretation of 'the loss of Freud's moral courage'...I'm not sure it would have made any difference...Once the comment was out there, Masson was probably a Psychoanalytic goner...And the thing is, Masson could still be right on this interpretation. If people in power were threatening you with 'the loss of your career' if you didn't change your theoretical and/or editorial perspective, isn't it fair to say that many of you, probably most of you -- including myself -- would have 'caved'. Masson didn't cave in the 1980s, and he lost his Psychoanalytic career in the process...
Who's to say that the same thing -- the same type of coercive pressure -- wasn't facing Freud in 1896? And maybe, Freud did indeed 'ethically cave'...because he certainly steered away from the issue of 'childhood sexual abuse' for most of, if not all of, the rest of his career...It takes a lot of philosophical and ethical courage to confront social, economic, political, professional, and legal 'taboos'....Given a particular cultural climate, and our economic and professional life at stake, probably most of us would ethically cave and not confront 'organizational pathologies, corruptions, tyrannies, and poisons'. We watch this kind of stuff happen around us -- each and everyone of us -- each and every day.
So everyone was holding onto their own 'partly narcissistic, partly righteous bias', their own particular version of 'historical and theoretical truth', and Malcolm in my own editorial opinion, comes out looking very, very poor in the way that she ethically evaluated what was happening here...She couldn't see and/or report her own narcissistic-righteous bias in this whole matter if she was standing, looking at herself in the mirror...
'How do you sleep at night'? -- John Lennon
Read Janet Malcolm as she rants off her Classical Freudian diatribe...Who was coaching her? Anna Freud? Kurt Eissler? I can't believe that this stuff came from her alone...Maybe it did...
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'From the beginning of psychoanalysis to the present -- from Adler, Jung, Rank, and Stekel to Fromm, Sullivan, Horney, Alexander, and, possibly, Kohut -- there have been people within psychoanalysis to whom psychoanalysis was never really congenial. After sojourning for a while in the chilly castle of psychoanalysis, they pass on to smaller, cozier habitations. In The Freud Archives, p. 27. (DGB: Counter-editorially, I would say that these psychologists -- all of them 'all stars' in their own right, in the history and evolution of Clinical Psychoanalysis -- longed for 'a larger castle than Classical Psychoanalysis', not 'smaller'. It was generally Freud's 'theoretical reductionism' that they were trying to escape from such as his 'pansexualism' and 'The Oedipal Complex', which strongly limited them in the scope of their thinking and Freud left no room for 'compromise' or 'alternative, counter-theories'. That is why they all left, not because they were looking for 'smaller, cozier habitation'. (In The Freud Archives, p. 27)
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Continuing on with Malcolm's 'pro-Psychoanalytic rant'...
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'The present day proponents of the seduction theory are new versions of those old revisionists. (In The Freud Archives, p. 27.) (DGB: Counter-editorially I say this is partly true, partly false. Some of the old Psychoanalysts, most particularly Ferenczi, didn't like Freud's rejection of the seduction theory any more than Masson did, and many of them didn't like 'The Oedipal Complex' -- or at least Freud's way of using and abusing the Oedipal Complex to potentially 'cover up' childhood sexual abuse'.)
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Continuing in the same passage...
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They are people in whom the germ of psychoanalytic thought has never caught hold. (DGB editorial comment: For good reason as Freudian Theory was so 'tightly constricted' at the time, that the other theorists, particularly the ones who left, were 'strangling in the tightening noose' of Classical Psychoanalysis...)
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And again, continuing in the same passage...
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'Masson's repudiation of psychoanalysis is hardly a new story to students of defections from the fold; nor is the idea that Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler were 'taken in' by Masson a startling one. Here, too, there is a venerable precedent. It has become a kind of cliche about Freud that he was "no Menschenkenner". Throughout his life, he was beset (as who isn't?) by the affliction of overestimation. Breur, Fliess, and Jung, is a cautionary tale whose moral seems so obvious that there may be another, more subtle one hidden behind it.' (In The Freud Archives, p. 27.)
DGB: Counter-editorial comments: Please tell us, dear Ms. Malcolm what this so-called 'moral' is that is so obvious to yourself, and assumedly to your reader, that you don't even need to state it!!
Because I am missing your moral. And I will most certainly identify the 'hidden moral' that you are missing that is hidden behind your 'undisclosed mystery moral'. Firstly, Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler were not 'taken in' by Jeffrey Masson in the 'manipulative' way that you are implying here. One of the 'underlying subtle morals' that you, Ms. Malcolm, missed here, is the fact that often, the higher that you rise in an organization, the more you can clearly see the 'toxicity', 'corruption', 'narcissism', and/or 'stagnant status-quo' of the organization.
Or let me put it this way: the closer you get to knowing someone, the more you learn about their vulnerabilities, their weaknesses, and their 'stringent pathological beliefs and values'. This applies to all of the past Freudian revisionists cited above who the better they came to know Freud, and some of the weaknesses and liabilities of his various theories, even some of the 'pathological toxicities' of these theories, particularly his 'pansexualism' and the way he used and abused The Oedipal Complex, the more that they 'rebelled' -- like any intelligent, independent person would -- against these 'problems' that were inherent and fundamental in Freud's theories -- that he wouldn't change or even contemplate modifying. The main problem behind Freud's theories was the man himself and his particular 'transference neurosis' and 'anal-retentiveness' such that no one in his 'fold' could persuade him to modify some of his theories and/or tinker with his own 'theoretical control fetish'.
Meanwhile, Freud was a genius when it came to creatively modifying and re-building his own theories...Just not let another male theorist or therapist significantly disagree with him...And Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler stood in well for Father Freud when they took over and ruled the 'Psychoanalytic Roost'...for a lot of years including the beginning of the years that we are talking about here in 1981-1982 until Anna Freud died in 1982 and Eissler presumably took over as Masson was outcast...
Relative to Freud's 'theoretical control fetish', the main exception to this rule was Melanie Klein who 'got away' with what none of the 'male Psychoanalytic theorests' could get away with under Freud's most watchful and judgmental eye. It was mainly from Melanie Klein's most provocative and controversial work, that the predominant 'alternative school of Psychoanalysis' to Classical Psychoanalysis was born -- 'Object Relations'...It is no more similar to Classical Psychoanalysis than any of Jungian Psychology, Adlerian Psychology, Transactional Analysis, or Gestalt Therapy...
It is most unfortunate that Freud hadn't been sufficiently 'liberal and democratic' enough in his approach to the evolution of Psychoanalysis, that he could have let Adler create 'Alderian Psychoanalyis', Jung create 'Jungian Psychoanalyis', Reich create 'Reichian Psychoanalysis, Fritz Perls create 'Gestalt Psychoanalysis', and Masson could have perhaps worked to create a 'Traumacy-Seduction Psychoanalysis' (probably in many, if not all of these different psychologiess, not even the 'famous or infamous couch' would have remained sacred...)
Now let me get real wild in my own narcissistic fantasy here and suggest that if Dr. Jeffrey Masson was still firmly entrenched somewhere near the top of, if not at the top of, The Psychoanalytic Establishment, and helping to transform Classical Psychoanalysis into a more 'reality-based' as opposed to 'fantasy based' theory of psychology...(remember, I am a more 'integrative theorist' here and wish to bridge the gap between the two polar theories...dgb)
And perhaps, in the context of this 'self-fantasized', more 'liberal-minded, egalitarian spirit of evolutionary Psychoanalytic thinking', with the powers at the top of The Psychoanalytic Establishment, including Masson, knowing that important evolutionary Pychoanalytic ideas can be born not only 'inside' the Psychoanalytic Fold/Box but also from 'outside' the Psychoanalytic Fold/Box....
Perhaps in this type of environmental context, a theorist like myself with no formal Psychoanalytic training but plenty of self-taught knowledge form what I have learned from my own books and my own research, and my own background in both Adlerian Psychology and Gestalt Therapy, to go with my Honours B.A. in Psychology and my own Honours Thesis which was a precursor (30 years ago) of 'Hegel's Hotel'....
Perhaps in such an environment, if I was to so boldly make my presence known, and say in effect:
'Hey, gentlremen (and ladies), I can contribute to your theory-building. I can do what you people do...in fact, perhaps, arguably, I can go one step better than you...because if there is one talent, one skill, one ability that God seems to have given me more than anything else, it seems to be an ability to integrate multiple ideas and theories..together...and bring them all under one roof...'
So here is what I can do: I can take all of Freud's 50 years of theorizing -- even his work before 1897 including both The Traumacy Theory and The Seduction Theory -- and I can take parts of Jungian Psychology, and parts of Adlerian Psychology, and parts of Gestalt Therapy, and parts of Object Relations, and parts of Transactional Analysis....
Or to put it another way, I can take 130 years of evolutionary thinking in Clinical Psychology and Personality Theory and Psychotherapy...and bring everything together into one integrative symphony, one collosal painting, one Grand Narrative in the template and spirit of Hegel's 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' and Nietzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy'...
And speaking of tragedies....
What happened in the 1980s was a tragedy; a Psychoanalytic -- and a human -- tragedy...
Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and Jeffrey Masson were all great, passionate people caught in a theoretical and therapeutic impasse that they could not break out of...Each did what they thought was right, Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler, loyal to the end, trying to protect the legacy and integrity of Anna's historical father's character...Jeffrey Masson seeing things differently and wanting to do what he thought was right for the ongoing evolution of Psychoanalysis.
To repeat, Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler were not 'taken in' by the 'ambitious manipulations' of Jeffrey Masson. They were mesmerized -- most rightfully so -- by Masson's intellect, his passion, his righteousness, his charisma, his integrity, and his courage to say what other Psychoanalysts were afraid to say...
And that is why what happened through this whole Freudian scandal in the 1980s was nothing less than a dramatic, existential and Psychoanalytic tragedy -- for all of us.
I practically cry when I think about how Psychoanalysis could have evolved differently -- and didn't.
And when I think of how Psychoanalysis could have been -- and still could be -- but isn't.
And when I think of the man who could have been right at the top of the Psychoanalytic hierarchy right now -- leading a more 'liberated, democratic, egalitarian, feminine-friendly Psychoanalysis'
-- and isn't.
Am I over-idealizing Masson just like Malcolm claims that both Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler over-idealized him?
Perhaps.
But I have gone on record as saying that I don't agree with everything Masson wrote about The Seduction Theory. I have opted all along for a more 'integrative' as opposed to 'either/or', 'Us vs. Them' approach.
Politically at least, Masson was often his own worst enemy, charging around like a 'stomping bull in The Psychoanalytic China Shop'... the way he would summarize his editiorial comments with a 'coup de grace' that was meant, probably usually by design, to be 'provocative' and 'ruffle the feathers of The Psychoanlytic Establishment', if not more. 'More' is the operative word here...
Comments like 'the sterility of present day Psychoanalysis' and particularly 'Freud's loss of moral courage' would not endear him to most, if any, members of The Psychoanalytic Establishment, most notably to Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler in the last example.
Wrote Sarah Boxer in The New York Times, Kurt Eissler, 90, Director of The Freud Archives, on February 20th,1999, in a column citing Eissler's long, esteemed career as a Psychoanalysist shortly after his death:
The fatefulness of that decision became clear to Dr. Eissler in 1981, when Dr. Masson, who was projects director of the archives, delivered a shocking paper to the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society, in New Haven. Dr. Masson said Freud had abandoned his ''seduction theory'' -- the idea that adult neurosis is caused by childhood sexual abuse -- for personal rather than scientific reasons. By dropping the seduction theory, Dr. Masson concluded, ''Freud began a trend away from the real world that, it seems to me, has come to a dead halt in the present-day sterility of psychoanalysis throughout the world.'' (my emphasis)
Wow, Eissler ruling the Freudian empire til he was 90. What a remarkable man!! I wonder how many times Eissler might have laid in bed at night and thought to himself,
'Jeffrey, my prodigal son, why aren't you here helping me right now? You're the man with all the passion and energy... You could have been running this whole show now -- with me, of course, overseeing your activities and holding the reins on you tightly to make sure you didn't do anything else so crazy and stupid as what you did in the 80s. Why did you have to shoot your mouth off the way you did? Why couldn't you have played it a little more coolly and diplomatically, especially while Anna Freud was still alive? Why couldn't this whole Psychoanalytic play have gone down so much differently and had a much better ending to it, and to my life? Why aren't you here right now?
There comes a time when we all must choose beween 'political correctness or incorrectness' vs. 'self-integrity and organizational ethics'...even if that hurts us dearly in the pocketbook and bank account...Masson opted for 'self integrity' and 'organizational ethics' at what would become the expense of his Psychoanalytic career...and whether or not he knew the end of his Psychoanalytic career was coming to an end at this point, he was still going to punctuate his statements with a series of exclamation marks and a flair for the dramatic, even if partly overstated, generalization rather than the 'white washed' and/or 'sugar coated' one...
As Eissler would finally say in exasperated frustration in the 1980s, and I am paraphrasing here, until I can find the exact quote,
What else was Eissler to do once the situation had publicly skyrocketed so far out of control...Was he to let The Raging Bull Destroy The China in The The Psychoanalytic China Shop... or to use another analogy, let the 'inmate rule the asylum' like Jack Nicholson took over the assylum in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'. Jeffrey Masson was like the Jack Nicholson of Psychoanalysis.
The character Jack Nicholson played in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' did 'therapeutic wonders' in that crazy asylum...Maybe the 'Freudian asylum' was not a lot different...Every organization needs a 'rebeller', a 'deconstructionist', a 'bad boy' or 'bad girl' to clear out the stagnancy and sterility of paralyzed bureaucracy, status-quo thinking, toxicity, corruption, and lack of new passion...and 'new, fresh air in the organization'....like a fresh breeze circulating through the Freud House...
Anyway, here is the exact quote I was looking for above, which can be found in the same article as the one I cited above, written by Sarah Boxer of The New York Times on Feb. 20th, 1999, when Eissler died at the age of 90 years old.
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The fallout followed quickly. Dr. Eissler led the 13-member board of the Freud Archives into a vote to remove Dr. Masson from his position as projects director of the archives. In explanation of his action, Dr. Eissler said: ''Would you make director of the archives someone who writes plain nonsense?'' Then the legal tango began. Dr. Masson sued the Freud Archives for $13 million. Dr. Eissler sued Dr. Masson to get back his audio tapes and Freud's letters. And after Ms. Malcolm wrote an article on the affair, she too was sued by Dr. Masson. One matter at the heart of Malcolm trial involved a quotation in which Dr. Masson describes Dr. Eissler begging him not to tell Anna Freud about the scandal. Dr. Eissler attended that trial. ''There was about him,'' Gwen Davis wrote in The Nation, ''the poignance of old Geppetto, who had carved himself a son, only to discover, to his profound chagrin, that Pinocchio was a naughty boy.''
George Gross, a psychoanalyst and friend of Dr. Eissler, saw Dr. Eissler's emotions in a slightly different light. Dr. Eissler, he said ''was disappointed that he had not found a person who understood Freud the way he did.'' In that, he was a little like Freud. Mr. Gross said, ''Freud was constantly disappointed.''
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/20/arts/kurt-eissler-90-director-of-sigmund-freud-archives.html?pagewanted=1
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I continue to look at things differently than both warring factions at the time of this unfolding 1980s Psychoanalytic existential drama...
I'm still looking for a reconciliation and an integration. That is the essence of my work here in Hegel's Hotel -- to build integrative theoretical bridges.
Do I think a 'reconciliation' between The Psychoanalytic Establishment and Masson is ever likely to happen?
Probably not.
But never say never. Sometimes, people -- even warring factions -- can surprise you.
Who would have thought that there would have ever been a 'peace agreement' between the Protestants and The Roman Catholics in Ireland, as fragile as it might still be?
In the broader picture, a modified, metaphorical version of The Oedipal Complex needs to be brought into 'bi-polar, dialectic harmony' with The Seduction Theory and both included and respected as partial elements of a 'newer, much broader, integrative version' of Psychoanalysis.
This is the foundation and beginning of what I am calling 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis'.
-- dgb, March 17th, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
The Struggle in The Personality Between Narcissism and Altruism, Between Self and Social Interest, Between Self-Identity and Social Inclusion
An extreme narcissistic person is a 'self-a-holic'.
An extreme approval-seeking person -- or 'pleaser' -- is a 'victim-a-holic' or a 'martyr-a-holic'.
The extreme approval-seeker falls victim or prey to anyone and everyone with a stronger 'will-to-power' than him or her. Which is probably almost everyone except for maybe another approval-seeker...
Somewhere in between these two extreme types of people, or extreme 'bi-polar types', or extreme 'ego-states',
Lie the rest of us...battling between self-assertiveness or even self-preservation on the one hand, and social sensitivity and caring and real, old-fashioned 'altruism' towards one's fellow man on the other hand.
This can be viewed as one of a number of 'dialectic paradoxes or dichotomies' in the existence of man: the dialectic struggle between narcissism and altruism, or between self and social interest, or between self-identity and social inclusion.
Which way are we going to move?
Or can we find that balance in the middle that makes us happy?
Once again, dialectic-democratic integration becomes imperative to a healthy existence.
-- dgb, March 16th, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still In Process...
An extreme approval-seeking person -- or 'pleaser' -- is a 'victim-a-holic' or a 'martyr-a-holic'.
The extreme approval-seeker falls victim or prey to anyone and everyone with a stronger 'will-to-power' than him or her. Which is probably almost everyone except for maybe another approval-seeker...
Somewhere in between these two extreme types of people, or extreme 'bi-polar types', or extreme 'ego-states',
Lie the rest of us...battling between self-assertiveness or even self-preservation on the one hand, and social sensitivity and caring and real, old-fashioned 'altruism' towards one's fellow man on the other hand.
This can be viewed as one of a number of 'dialectic paradoxes or dichotomies' in the existence of man: the dialectic struggle between narcissism and altruism, or between self and social interest, or between self-identity and social inclusion.
Which way are we going to move?
Or can we find that balance in the middle that makes us happy?
Once again, dialectic-democratic integration becomes imperative to a healthy existence.
-- dgb, March 16th, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still In Process...
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Re-Uniting The 'Split Personality' of Psychoanalysis: Ramifications for The Women's Rights Movement and Philosophical/Therapeutic/Theoretical Foundations for The Beginning of DGB (Democratically Dialectic) 'Quantum Psychoanalysis'
It is a common assumption in Psychoanalysis, and in Psychoanalytic history, that Freud and Breuer started Psychoanalysis with 'The Traumacy Theory' (1893, Preliminary Communications, Studies on Hysteria); then Freud alone moved on to 'The Traumacy-(Repression-Defense) Theory (1894, The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence). Then, in 1896, came Freud's stunning paper on the connection between hysteria and childhood sexual abuse of which we will focus in on this paper and this year, in this essay here.
Afterwards, came Freud's equally stunning abandonment and reversal of The Seduction Theory (after 1896) and the beginning of 'Fantasy and Childhood Sexuality Theory (1897 to 1905), Screen Memories (1899), Dream Theory (1899-1900) and The Psycho-Sexual Stages of Development (oral stage, anal stage, latent stage, genital stage) and The Oedipal Complex (1905). Part of the usual assumption regarding the timeline on Freud's development of his 'Fantasy Theory', I will challenge in a soon to come essay (I believe it started before 1895), but here, let us just stick primarily with the evening of April 21st, 1896.
On the evening of April 21st, 1896, Freud threw a real 'zinger' at the Psychiatric and Neurological Community when he read probably his most controversial essay in his entire 50 year professional career, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria', and declared in front of these psychiatrists and neurologists that 'hysteria' cannot happen without the patient having been sexually seduced and/or assaulted (i.e., raped)' at a very early age, around 4 or 5 years old that is 'blocked out of consciousness', 'split off from the normal growth of the personality', harboring itself in a 'closed closet of the memory' as it were, as an 'unconscious or repressed memory' -- i.e., the idea of 'repressed' signifying that there is or was a 'conscious or unconscious act of defensive willpower' at the time of the original event to psychologically 'bury the event, and/or the memory of the event, in a closed closet of the personality', as if to say, in effect, 'I don't want to remember this skeleton in my closet ever again.'
Now, I think it is important to make a distinction here that Freud partly alluded to, and perhaps partly 'abstracted into confusion', or perhaps it was some theorist and/or Psychoanalyst after Freud who created the 'semantic confusion'.
An act (or acts) of 'seduction', in the romantic and/or sexual sense, can refer to either a healthy and normal type of, and/or set of, behaviors that a man presents to a woman who attracts him, a woman presents to a man who attracts her, or even a man to a man, or a woman to a woman; or an act of seduction can also used in a different sense, to refer to a more negatively viewed type of 'one-sided, manipulative exploitation'.
For example, in the general realm of 'prostitution', depending on the context of the situation, the particular culture and time of history, and whose doing the judging, an act of prostitution if it involves 'human trafficking and/or kidnapping' can be viewed as a very criminal act of one-sided exploitation, or in the case of a 'prostitute' who is deemed to be more in control of his or her own 'choice-making decisions', it could be viewed as a transaction of 'two-sided exploitation', the prostitute getting money, the 'customer', sex. Or in this latter type of case, the whole encounter could even be viewed as a transaction of 'mutual adult consent'. Numerous different legal, moral, cultural, and historical factors can play into this whole 'classifying process' of at least one, two, three, or even more possibilities all of which may be given the same name of 'seduction'.
The same goes for the label of 'sexual assault'. And 'child abuse'. And 'domestic abuse'. The label 'child abuse' could be used to refer to anything and everything between: 1. scolding and/or disciplining a child; 2. spanking a child; 3. physically battering a child; 4. 'mentally battering a child'; 5. sexually assaulting a child. This type of labeling process can cause a nightmare of semantic confusion followed by moral, ethical, legal, social, political, and/or economic derailment fraught with both deserved and/or undeserved blame in connection with ruined lives.
One thing that I am trying to do here, that I have only lightly touched upon in past essays, is to make a 'connecting bridge' to what was happening back in Freud's time when Freud was mentally battling and struggling with some of these same issues, and what is happening today in our own justice courts regarding the very controversially interpreted (connected or unconnected) issues of sexual assault (abuse), child abuse, and domestic abuse.
These 'socio-semantic, philosophical, and legal issues' -- if we ever fully philosophically and semantically investigate and analyze all of these partly different, partly interconnected issues the way we should be doing -- have the potential of 'shaking to the very ground the very assumptive and philosophical foundations of not only Psychoanalysis but also our whole Canadian and American Systems of Justice. Inappropriate labeling and classifying, semantic confusion, assumptive generalizations, and false accusations can all cause big problems. So too can ignoring legitimate and real accusations.
I believe that on the eve of April 21st, 1896, Freud touched upon 'the powder keg of this potential political-socio-economic-legal explosion'. Or at least the portion of it that was connected to childhood sexual abuse back in 1896.
Quite bluntly and simply, the community of male psychiatrists and neurologists were stunned by the reading of Freud's most recent paper in 1896, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria'.
Now it is easy to look back at 1896 with a 21st century mentality of supposedly more 'democratic egalitarianism' in our collective consciousness. In this regard, one can ask the question: Where was at least some semblance of a 'scientific open mindedness' amongst all of these psychiatrists and neurologists who were supposedly some of the most intelligent men in Vienna at the time, to at least entertain the idea that there could be some 'clinical truths' -- or at least 'partial truths' -- contained within this new essay that Freud had just read to them. They were obviously not expecting what they got.
Were they all that naive and ignorant of the possible 'childhood sexual abuse and hysteria connection'? Was this connection just too far out in left field and too unexpected for them to entertain on a moment's notice?
Or were there other factors at stake? Was this whole subject matter just too 'politically hot to handle', and too 'politically incorrect' for them to deal with?
And/or was there something more sinister and 'self-defensive' going on in the 'narcissistic minds' of any, or some, of these men?
Were there any 'child sexual predators' in this community of male psychiatrists and neurologists who simply did not want this theoretical and therapeutic connection to be made?
Possibly. We will probably never know.
Was Freud politically and economically 'coerced' to give up this 'theoretical position' of 'childhood sexual abuse'?
Possibly. We will probably never know.
The head of the meeting that night, and the head of the Psychiatric Department at The University of Vienna, Krafft-Ebing, called Freud's paper a 'scientific fairy tale'.
Did Freud 'lose moral courage' after that night due to political and/or economic pressure exerted on him -- perhaps fearing for the very real possibility of his professional and economic career being destroyed if he continued his theoretical position of 'hysteria being caused, or at least partly caused, by childhood sexual abuse'?
Possibly. We will again probably never know.
What we do know is this...
After this reading of his paper on the eve of April 21st, 1896, Freud slowly between the end of 1896 and 1905 with the publication of both 'A Case of Hysteria' (The Case of Dora) and 'Three Essays on Sexuality', moved towards a partial or total abandonment of his very controversial 'Seduction Theory' and into the theoretical and clinical realms of 'Childhood Sexuality', 'Fantasy Theory', 'Screen Memories', 'Dream Theory', 'The Psycho-Sexual Stages of Childhood Development', and 'The Oedipus Complex'.
Arguably the most controversial of all of the 'post-1896' Freudian theories listed above was his theory of The Oedipus Complex. Some Freudian critics, most notably Masson again in the 1980s, have argued that Freud used and abused the Oedipus Complex Theory to essentially cover up childhood sexual abuse.
Did he? Possibly. How do you get into each and every one of his Psychoanalytic sessions to find out?
How can we determine, who, if any, Freud might have 'falsely used and abused' his Oedipus Complex Theory on (the idea that a child tends to generally be romantically and erotically attracted to, and attached to, the parent of the opposite sex in the normal course of 'psycho-sexual development') in the case of a patient who may have actually been sexually assaulted by the parent of his or her accusation?
On the eve of April 21st, 1896, Freud could, and can, easily be historically viewed as a 'champion of the women's rights movement'.
After April 21st, 1896, Freud could, and can, easily be historically viewed as one of the worst enemies of the women's rights movement. That is quite a switch in historically viewed significance.
And then there is, or was, Dr. Anna Freud -- Sigmund Freud's daughter. In the 1970s and particularly in the first two years of the 1980s, Anna Freud was faced with an extremely difficult 'professional choice' that would probably cause great grief and indecision for most of us: she could choose to protect her father's historical legacy through the support of his main ideas and theories; or she could choose to 'correct or modify' some of Freud's main ideas and theories by making them more 'democratically fair', 'customer friendly', and less 'culturally and historically anachronistic' to the whole women's rights movement by changing the strongest ideas connected to Freud's 'masculine, narcissistic cultural bias'. She chose to protect Freud's name and character and his good or bad legacy (or both) by supporting the 'status quo' of Freud's main ideas and theories, right or wrong, masculinely and narcissistically biased or not.
Was Anna Freud 'brainwashed' by her father and his 'one-sided potential interpretive danger of using and abusing The Oedipal Complex Theory'? Or did she actually legitimately support the use of The Oedipal Complex Theory on its own epistemological and ethical merits? Another one or two of those epistemological-historical questions that we will probably never know the full and proper answer to.
And then there is Janet Malcolm, author of a very entertaining and informative -- albeit editorially slanted and arguably containing numerous misquotations and/or misrepresentations of Jeffrey Masson -- book about the whole Seduction Theory Controversy as it re-surfaced publicly in the 1980s. Malcolm too, could have been more of a 'champion' for the women's rights movement on this particular Psychoanalytic controversy, by perhaps more fairly representing Masson and what he was trying to do in defense of both women and children, but alas, she chose to support Anna Freud and The Psychoanalytic Establishment Status-Quo. Very disappointing in my eyes. At the very least, she could have kept her most flagrant partisan and editorial comments out of her book. (Or made better editorial opinions. I will soon write a short essay in defense of this editorial comment of my own.)
And where was the women's rights movement as a whole to stand up in defense of what Dr. Jeffrey Masson was arguing for on their behalf? They seemed strangely and inappropriately quiet while this whole controversy was raging in The New York Times in the early 1980s.
And where were all the more 'liberalized and egalitarian' psychoanalysts at this time? Again, strangely and inappropriately quiet if what they believed and what they were not saying were 'hypocritically juxtaposed' against each other -- while Jeffrey Masson took 'the fall' for what many probably agreed with him on?
With all of this being the case, can we really believe that the 'social and self suppression/repression of Psychoanalysis' which seems to have at least partly begun on April 21st, 1896, was any less in existence in the late 1970s and early 1980s with Anna Freud on the Psychoanalytic throne but getting closer and closer to her deathbed? How about the seeming 'Social and Political Suppression/Repression of Childhood Sexual Abuse' in the public consciousness (or unconsciousness) as a whole?
Masson took an unfair 'Psychoanalytic hit' -- even if he did throw fuel onto his own partly self-lit fire while he 'burned at the stake' for saying that Freud 'lost moral courage' after April 21st, 1896. I at least partly agree with Masson on this opinion -- there was not much written about child sexual abuse after 1896, especially in regards to a father sexually seducing and/or more forcefully assaulting his daughter. This all became 'reinterpreted' under his post 1897 Oedipal Complex Theory with 'alleged real assaults' belonging to the territory of a young girl's pre-puberty and/or post-puberty imagination and sexually distorted memory/fantasy.
In other words, any alleged sexual assaults between a father and his daughter didn't really happen; rather, they were a product of the daughter's 'normal erotic imagination'. How's that for 'women's equal rights? Her words and concrete experience don't mean anything except through the re-interpretation of a predominantly 'masculine Psychoanalytic narcissistic bias?
I am not saying that there are not 'legitimate truths' and 'legitimate criticisms' on both side of the theoretical fence here. What I am saying is that generalizations are generalizations which means that they have no right to be called '100 per cent locked in truths', but rather, only 'clinical probabilities' or 'clinical possibilities'.
A clinician's/therapist's concrete experience with a particular client should always rule over abstractified, generalized theory, even if that is to say in any particular situation: 'Epistemologically and historically with this particular client -- or with any particular client -- I cannot say for absolute certainty what did or did not happen in the particular memory or set of memories that she describes. I can only offer what I think happened, or what I speculate happened, but I don't have any more God-given telepathic abilities to decipher 'Unequivocal Epistemological Truth' than anyone else does...I am paid to be a therapist, not a judge and jury, which means that I am here to help my client in the best way I believe possible, and for me, that means to believe in the 'epistemological truth' of what my client is saying to me unless and/or until there is strong circumstantial and/or empirical evidence to the contrary to put my client's credibility in question...And I am fully aware that narcissistic bias can and often does run deeply in both sexes...'
In a hundred years plus, Classical Psychoanalysis still hangs on with a 'Pit Bull Hanging on Bite' to a theory that has a deeply Freudian narcissistic bias attached to it. This is the Oedipal Complex and how the Oedipal Complex can be used and abused in Classical Psychoanalysis to hide and cover up potentially very real childhood sexual abuse.
There is no excuse for this and no justifiable explanation for this other than a hundred years plus of 'ethical impropriety'.
For a woman to walk into Psychoanalysis and tell her analyst that she was sexually assaulted as a child (or for this to come up in a 'repressed childhood memory'), and for the analyst to, without epistemologically investigating this matter any further, and without question, re-interpret this alleged 'assault' as the client's 'childhood sexual fantasy' is basically the equivalent of a judge telling all women who enter his or her courtroom that if they are coming to see him or her with an accusation of 'date rape' against a particular man, then they either 'asked for what happened', 'consented to what happened', have 'distorted what happened', and/or 'erotically fantasized what happened'.
And yet, unbelievably, today, even in the midst of millions of active feminists, the Oedipal Complex as it was originally created and theorized by Freud between 1897 and 1905, still stands.
I shake my head.
In its simplest metaphorical use as a transference concept, I subscribe to The Oedipal Complex.
For example, the woman I have been dating for the past 10 plus years, shares many, if not all, of the deepest family values of my mother. Is this a coincidence? I don't think so. Did I see this 'shared value system' when I first met her? I don't think so. And yet it is there.
This aspect of the Oedipal Complex is a fully justifiable, general clinical probability.
Men and women, more often than not, become involved with love partners who either resemble one of, or both of, their parents -- and/or the opposite. Call this latter phenomenon, if you will, the 'Reverse-Oedipal Complex'.
This having been said, I in no way support, or ever will, the potential use and/or abuse of The Oedipal Complex as a means of 'covering up real childhood sexual abuse', most notably between a father and his daughter.
This is a potential Psychoanalytic ethical atrocity waiting to happen...
And it will never go away until someone, somewhere high up in the Psychoanalytic Establishment, finally formally stands up and publicly either clarifies and/or apologizes deeply on this matter for any and/or all possible ethical and/or public relations improprieties to any and/or all clients over the past 105 years.
Until then, Classical Psychoanalysis, no matter how else or how fast it may or may not be evolving, remains at its basic philosophical foundation, a Theoretical and Therapeutic Construction teetering on the verge of collapse, and/or non-relevance in the 21st Century, due mainly to the fact that it rightly deserves to be associated with a 'Narcissistic Old Victorian Boy's Club', of which, most unfortunately, both Anna Freud and Janet Malcolm were also non-critical, pro-Psychoanalytic Establishment, 'lost in father Freud', members.
Anna Freud is dead. So too is Kurt Eissler. Janet Malcom, other than as a story teller, is irrelevant.
These were the 'heavy hitters' inside and outside the Psychoanalytic Establishment who 'blew Jeffrey Masson away' when he accused Freud of 'losing moral courage' after April 21st, 1896 when Freud predominantly or totally abandoned The Traumacy-Seduction Theory in favor of his quickly evolving Fantasy-Childhood Sexuality-Oedipal Theory' between 1897 and 1905.
Anna Freud was too overly protective of her dad. So too was Kurt Eissler. These were the two main twin guardians of Father Freud and Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis in the early 1980s. They both had a chance to support the opportunity, through the work of Masson, to update and modify Classical Psychoanalysis in a way that would not rule out the possibility of father-daughter sexual abuse. They both passed on this opportunity to 'update and modernize Classical Psychoanalysis' in order to protect what was left of Sigmund Freud's already largely battered reputation and credibility (mainly because of his outdated Victorian assumptive biases). That was too bad. An Psychoanalytic ethical impropriety could have been corrected. But it wasn't. Some 30 years later, this ethical impropriety still hasn't been corrected.
It still needs to be.
Like a political party, that believes that if it continues to say or do nothing bout a particular party scandal, the scandal will simply 'eventually blow away', so too it remains with 21st century Classical Psychoanalysis.
Maybe they believed -- at least partly rightly so -- that the scandal would eventually blow itself out in the 1980s and early 1990s.
But it here it is back again. In 2010. Being addressed and confronted by another theorist.
It won't go away.
Until someone from Classical Psychoanalysis finally steps up to the plate and says something different than anything and everything that has been said, or not said, before.
To be or not to be,
To become or not to become,
To correct an ethical impropriety, or not to correct an ethical impropriety,
That is the question....
In this case, silence is not golden.
Rather, silence is mummifying.
Silence has mummified, or is mummifying, Classical Psychoanalysis.
Does Classical Psychoanalysis still have a heart beat?
Yes, but it needs to make some theoretical and therapeutic modifications,
Before it becomes extinct.
And for this to happen,
Someone of Psychoanalytic power,
Needs to step up to the plate....
And in the meantime, probably long before that happens,
I will integrate pre-1897 and post 1897 Freudian theory into one big 'wholistic theory'.
In effect, I will restore Classical Psychoanalysis' repression and 'split personality'.
-- dgb, modified March 14th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Afterwards, came Freud's equally stunning abandonment and reversal of The Seduction Theory (after 1896) and the beginning of 'Fantasy and Childhood Sexuality Theory (1897 to 1905), Screen Memories (1899), Dream Theory (1899-1900) and The Psycho-Sexual Stages of Development (oral stage, anal stage, latent stage, genital stage) and The Oedipal Complex (1905). Part of the usual assumption regarding the timeline on Freud's development of his 'Fantasy Theory', I will challenge in a soon to come essay (I believe it started before 1895), but here, let us just stick primarily with the evening of April 21st, 1896.
On the evening of April 21st, 1896, Freud threw a real 'zinger' at the Psychiatric and Neurological Community when he read probably his most controversial essay in his entire 50 year professional career, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria', and declared in front of these psychiatrists and neurologists that 'hysteria' cannot happen without the patient having been sexually seduced and/or assaulted (i.e., raped)' at a very early age, around 4 or 5 years old that is 'blocked out of consciousness', 'split off from the normal growth of the personality', harboring itself in a 'closed closet of the memory' as it were, as an 'unconscious or repressed memory' -- i.e., the idea of 'repressed' signifying that there is or was a 'conscious or unconscious act of defensive willpower' at the time of the original event to psychologically 'bury the event, and/or the memory of the event, in a closed closet of the personality', as if to say, in effect, 'I don't want to remember this skeleton in my closet ever again.'
Now, I think it is important to make a distinction here that Freud partly alluded to, and perhaps partly 'abstracted into confusion', or perhaps it was some theorist and/or Psychoanalyst after Freud who created the 'semantic confusion'.
An act (or acts) of 'seduction', in the romantic and/or sexual sense, can refer to either a healthy and normal type of, and/or set of, behaviors that a man presents to a woman who attracts him, a woman presents to a man who attracts her, or even a man to a man, or a woman to a woman; or an act of seduction can also used in a different sense, to refer to a more negatively viewed type of 'one-sided, manipulative exploitation'.
For example, in the general realm of 'prostitution', depending on the context of the situation, the particular culture and time of history, and whose doing the judging, an act of prostitution if it involves 'human trafficking and/or kidnapping' can be viewed as a very criminal act of one-sided exploitation, or in the case of a 'prostitute' who is deemed to be more in control of his or her own 'choice-making decisions', it could be viewed as a transaction of 'two-sided exploitation', the prostitute getting money, the 'customer', sex. Or in this latter type of case, the whole encounter could even be viewed as a transaction of 'mutual adult consent'. Numerous different legal, moral, cultural, and historical factors can play into this whole 'classifying process' of at least one, two, three, or even more possibilities all of which may be given the same name of 'seduction'.
The same goes for the label of 'sexual assault'. And 'child abuse'. And 'domestic abuse'. The label 'child abuse' could be used to refer to anything and everything between: 1. scolding and/or disciplining a child; 2. spanking a child; 3. physically battering a child; 4. 'mentally battering a child'; 5. sexually assaulting a child. This type of labeling process can cause a nightmare of semantic confusion followed by moral, ethical, legal, social, political, and/or economic derailment fraught with both deserved and/or undeserved blame in connection with ruined lives.
One thing that I am trying to do here, that I have only lightly touched upon in past essays, is to make a 'connecting bridge' to what was happening back in Freud's time when Freud was mentally battling and struggling with some of these same issues, and what is happening today in our own justice courts regarding the very controversially interpreted (connected or unconnected) issues of sexual assault (abuse), child abuse, and domestic abuse.
These 'socio-semantic, philosophical, and legal issues' -- if we ever fully philosophically and semantically investigate and analyze all of these partly different, partly interconnected issues the way we should be doing -- have the potential of 'shaking to the very ground the very assumptive and philosophical foundations of not only Psychoanalysis but also our whole Canadian and American Systems of Justice. Inappropriate labeling and classifying, semantic confusion, assumptive generalizations, and false accusations can all cause big problems. So too can ignoring legitimate and real accusations.
I believe that on the eve of April 21st, 1896, Freud touched upon 'the powder keg of this potential political-socio-economic-legal explosion'. Or at least the portion of it that was connected to childhood sexual abuse back in 1896.
Quite bluntly and simply, the community of male psychiatrists and neurologists were stunned by the reading of Freud's most recent paper in 1896, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria'.
Now it is easy to look back at 1896 with a 21st century mentality of supposedly more 'democratic egalitarianism' in our collective consciousness. In this regard, one can ask the question: Where was at least some semblance of a 'scientific open mindedness' amongst all of these psychiatrists and neurologists who were supposedly some of the most intelligent men in Vienna at the time, to at least entertain the idea that there could be some 'clinical truths' -- or at least 'partial truths' -- contained within this new essay that Freud had just read to them. They were obviously not expecting what they got.
Were they all that naive and ignorant of the possible 'childhood sexual abuse and hysteria connection'? Was this connection just too far out in left field and too unexpected for them to entertain on a moment's notice?
Or were there other factors at stake? Was this whole subject matter just too 'politically hot to handle', and too 'politically incorrect' for them to deal with?
And/or was there something more sinister and 'self-defensive' going on in the 'narcissistic minds' of any, or some, of these men?
Were there any 'child sexual predators' in this community of male psychiatrists and neurologists who simply did not want this theoretical and therapeutic connection to be made?
Possibly. We will probably never know.
Was Freud politically and economically 'coerced' to give up this 'theoretical position' of 'childhood sexual abuse'?
Possibly. We will probably never know.
The head of the meeting that night, and the head of the Psychiatric Department at The University of Vienna, Krafft-Ebing, called Freud's paper a 'scientific fairy tale'.
Did Freud 'lose moral courage' after that night due to political and/or economic pressure exerted on him -- perhaps fearing for the very real possibility of his professional and economic career being destroyed if he continued his theoretical position of 'hysteria being caused, or at least partly caused, by childhood sexual abuse'?
Possibly. We will again probably never know.
What we do know is this...
After this reading of his paper on the eve of April 21st, 1896, Freud slowly between the end of 1896 and 1905 with the publication of both 'A Case of Hysteria' (The Case of Dora) and 'Three Essays on Sexuality', moved towards a partial or total abandonment of his very controversial 'Seduction Theory' and into the theoretical and clinical realms of 'Childhood Sexuality', 'Fantasy Theory', 'Screen Memories', 'Dream Theory', 'The Psycho-Sexual Stages of Childhood Development', and 'The Oedipus Complex'.
Arguably the most controversial of all of the 'post-1896' Freudian theories listed above was his theory of The Oedipus Complex. Some Freudian critics, most notably Masson again in the 1980s, have argued that Freud used and abused the Oedipus Complex Theory to essentially cover up childhood sexual abuse.
Did he? Possibly. How do you get into each and every one of his Psychoanalytic sessions to find out?
How can we determine, who, if any, Freud might have 'falsely used and abused' his Oedipus Complex Theory on (the idea that a child tends to generally be romantically and erotically attracted to, and attached to, the parent of the opposite sex in the normal course of 'psycho-sexual development') in the case of a patient who may have actually been sexually assaulted by the parent of his or her accusation?
On the eve of April 21st, 1896, Freud could, and can, easily be historically viewed as a 'champion of the women's rights movement'.
After April 21st, 1896, Freud could, and can, easily be historically viewed as one of the worst enemies of the women's rights movement. That is quite a switch in historically viewed significance.
And then there is, or was, Dr. Anna Freud -- Sigmund Freud's daughter. In the 1970s and particularly in the first two years of the 1980s, Anna Freud was faced with an extremely difficult 'professional choice' that would probably cause great grief and indecision for most of us: she could choose to protect her father's historical legacy through the support of his main ideas and theories; or she could choose to 'correct or modify' some of Freud's main ideas and theories by making them more 'democratically fair', 'customer friendly', and less 'culturally and historically anachronistic' to the whole women's rights movement by changing the strongest ideas connected to Freud's 'masculine, narcissistic cultural bias'. She chose to protect Freud's name and character and his good or bad legacy (or both) by supporting the 'status quo' of Freud's main ideas and theories, right or wrong, masculinely and narcissistically biased or not.
Was Anna Freud 'brainwashed' by her father and his 'one-sided potential interpretive danger of using and abusing The Oedipal Complex Theory'? Or did she actually legitimately support the use of The Oedipal Complex Theory on its own epistemological and ethical merits? Another one or two of those epistemological-historical questions that we will probably never know the full and proper answer to.
And then there is Janet Malcolm, author of a very entertaining and informative -- albeit editorially slanted and arguably containing numerous misquotations and/or misrepresentations of Jeffrey Masson -- book about the whole Seduction Theory Controversy as it re-surfaced publicly in the 1980s. Malcolm too, could have been more of a 'champion' for the women's rights movement on this particular Psychoanalytic controversy, by perhaps more fairly representing Masson and what he was trying to do in defense of both women and children, but alas, she chose to support Anna Freud and The Psychoanalytic Establishment Status-Quo. Very disappointing in my eyes. At the very least, she could have kept her most flagrant partisan and editorial comments out of her book. (Or made better editorial opinions. I will soon write a short essay in defense of this editorial comment of my own.)
And where was the women's rights movement as a whole to stand up in defense of what Dr. Jeffrey Masson was arguing for on their behalf? They seemed strangely and inappropriately quiet while this whole controversy was raging in The New York Times in the early 1980s.
And where were all the more 'liberalized and egalitarian' psychoanalysts at this time? Again, strangely and inappropriately quiet if what they believed and what they were not saying were 'hypocritically juxtaposed' against each other -- while Jeffrey Masson took 'the fall' for what many probably agreed with him on?
With all of this being the case, can we really believe that the 'social and self suppression/repression of Psychoanalysis' which seems to have at least partly begun on April 21st, 1896, was any less in existence in the late 1970s and early 1980s with Anna Freud on the Psychoanalytic throne but getting closer and closer to her deathbed? How about the seeming 'Social and Political Suppression/Repression of Childhood Sexual Abuse' in the public consciousness (or unconsciousness) as a whole?
Masson took an unfair 'Psychoanalytic hit' -- even if he did throw fuel onto his own partly self-lit fire while he 'burned at the stake' for saying that Freud 'lost moral courage' after April 21st, 1896. I at least partly agree with Masson on this opinion -- there was not much written about child sexual abuse after 1896, especially in regards to a father sexually seducing and/or more forcefully assaulting his daughter. This all became 'reinterpreted' under his post 1897 Oedipal Complex Theory with 'alleged real assaults' belonging to the territory of a young girl's pre-puberty and/or post-puberty imagination and sexually distorted memory/fantasy.
In other words, any alleged sexual assaults between a father and his daughter didn't really happen; rather, they were a product of the daughter's 'normal erotic imagination'. How's that for 'women's equal rights? Her words and concrete experience don't mean anything except through the re-interpretation of a predominantly 'masculine Psychoanalytic narcissistic bias?
I am not saying that there are not 'legitimate truths' and 'legitimate criticisms' on both side of the theoretical fence here. What I am saying is that generalizations are generalizations which means that they have no right to be called '100 per cent locked in truths', but rather, only 'clinical probabilities' or 'clinical possibilities'.
A clinician's/therapist's concrete experience with a particular client should always rule over abstractified, generalized theory, even if that is to say in any particular situation: 'Epistemologically and historically with this particular client -- or with any particular client -- I cannot say for absolute certainty what did or did not happen in the particular memory or set of memories that she describes. I can only offer what I think happened, or what I speculate happened, but I don't have any more God-given telepathic abilities to decipher 'Unequivocal Epistemological Truth' than anyone else does...I am paid to be a therapist, not a judge and jury, which means that I am here to help my client in the best way I believe possible, and for me, that means to believe in the 'epistemological truth' of what my client is saying to me unless and/or until there is strong circumstantial and/or empirical evidence to the contrary to put my client's credibility in question...And I am fully aware that narcissistic bias can and often does run deeply in both sexes...'
In a hundred years plus, Classical Psychoanalysis still hangs on with a 'Pit Bull Hanging on Bite' to a theory that has a deeply Freudian narcissistic bias attached to it. This is the Oedipal Complex and how the Oedipal Complex can be used and abused in Classical Psychoanalysis to hide and cover up potentially very real childhood sexual abuse.
There is no excuse for this and no justifiable explanation for this other than a hundred years plus of 'ethical impropriety'.
For a woman to walk into Psychoanalysis and tell her analyst that she was sexually assaulted as a child (or for this to come up in a 'repressed childhood memory'), and for the analyst to, without epistemologically investigating this matter any further, and without question, re-interpret this alleged 'assault' as the client's 'childhood sexual fantasy' is basically the equivalent of a judge telling all women who enter his or her courtroom that if they are coming to see him or her with an accusation of 'date rape' against a particular man, then they either 'asked for what happened', 'consented to what happened', have 'distorted what happened', and/or 'erotically fantasized what happened'.
And yet, unbelievably, today, even in the midst of millions of active feminists, the Oedipal Complex as it was originally created and theorized by Freud between 1897 and 1905, still stands.
I shake my head.
In its simplest metaphorical use as a transference concept, I subscribe to The Oedipal Complex.
For example, the woman I have been dating for the past 10 plus years, shares many, if not all, of the deepest family values of my mother. Is this a coincidence? I don't think so. Did I see this 'shared value system' when I first met her? I don't think so. And yet it is there.
This aspect of the Oedipal Complex is a fully justifiable, general clinical probability.
Men and women, more often than not, become involved with love partners who either resemble one of, or both of, their parents -- and/or the opposite. Call this latter phenomenon, if you will, the 'Reverse-Oedipal Complex'.
This having been said, I in no way support, or ever will, the potential use and/or abuse of The Oedipal Complex as a means of 'covering up real childhood sexual abuse', most notably between a father and his daughter.
This is a potential Psychoanalytic ethical atrocity waiting to happen...
And it will never go away until someone, somewhere high up in the Psychoanalytic Establishment, finally formally stands up and publicly either clarifies and/or apologizes deeply on this matter for any and/or all possible ethical and/or public relations improprieties to any and/or all clients over the past 105 years.
Until then, Classical Psychoanalysis, no matter how else or how fast it may or may not be evolving, remains at its basic philosophical foundation, a Theoretical and Therapeutic Construction teetering on the verge of collapse, and/or non-relevance in the 21st Century, due mainly to the fact that it rightly deserves to be associated with a 'Narcissistic Old Victorian Boy's Club', of which, most unfortunately, both Anna Freud and Janet Malcolm were also non-critical, pro-Psychoanalytic Establishment, 'lost in father Freud', members.
Anna Freud is dead. So too is Kurt Eissler. Janet Malcom, other than as a story teller, is irrelevant.
These were the 'heavy hitters' inside and outside the Psychoanalytic Establishment who 'blew Jeffrey Masson away' when he accused Freud of 'losing moral courage' after April 21st, 1896 when Freud predominantly or totally abandoned The Traumacy-Seduction Theory in favor of his quickly evolving Fantasy-Childhood Sexuality-Oedipal Theory' between 1897 and 1905.
Anna Freud was too overly protective of her dad. So too was Kurt Eissler. These were the two main twin guardians of Father Freud and Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis in the early 1980s. They both had a chance to support the opportunity, through the work of Masson, to update and modify Classical Psychoanalysis in a way that would not rule out the possibility of father-daughter sexual abuse. They both passed on this opportunity to 'update and modernize Classical Psychoanalysis' in order to protect what was left of Sigmund Freud's already largely battered reputation and credibility (mainly because of his outdated Victorian assumptive biases). That was too bad. An Psychoanalytic ethical impropriety could have been corrected. But it wasn't. Some 30 years later, this ethical impropriety still hasn't been corrected.
It still needs to be.
Like a political party, that believes that if it continues to say or do nothing bout a particular party scandal, the scandal will simply 'eventually blow away', so too it remains with 21st century Classical Psychoanalysis.
Maybe they believed -- at least partly rightly so -- that the scandal would eventually blow itself out in the 1980s and early 1990s.
But it here it is back again. In 2010. Being addressed and confronted by another theorist.
It won't go away.
Until someone from Classical Psychoanalysis finally steps up to the plate and says something different than anything and everything that has been said, or not said, before.
To be or not to be,
To become or not to become,
To correct an ethical impropriety, or not to correct an ethical impropriety,
That is the question....
In this case, silence is not golden.
Rather, silence is mummifying.
Silence has mummified, or is mummifying, Classical Psychoanalysis.
Does Classical Psychoanalysis still have a heart beat?
Yes, but it needs to make some theoretical and therapeutic modifications,
Before it becomes extinct.
And for this to happen,
Someone of Psychoanalytic power,
Needs to step up to the plate....
And in the meantime, probably long before that happens,
I will integrate pre-1897 and post 1897 Freudian theory into one big 'wholistic theory'.
In effect, I will restore Classical Psychoanalysis' repression and 'split personality'.
-- dgb, modified March 14th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
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