The Deal That Got Away....

Don't assume a deal is done until the deal is finalized both verbally and on paper; otherwise, there are a myriad of reasons why one side or the other can back out at the last minute -- most notably perhaps, someone says the wrong thing at the wrong or the last moment, and capufff...the deal is gone...




Don't be presumptive and don't say something stupid in the heat of the negotiation, especially when it's coming down to the final lap. Otherwise, you'll be swinging at air, and going home with no signed cheque, nothing to celebrate, and the deal that got away...

-- dgb, April 19th, 2011,

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic Gap Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...

On 'Sound Bites', 'Writing Bites', and 'Action Bites'...

The things that we say, and the things that we do, are 'sound bites', 'writing bites', and 'action bites' of who we are... I think that we should all, in our own unique way, strive to be assertive but sensitive, and sensitive but assertive, liberally conservative, and conservatively liberal, open-minded and flexible but strong on our most important self-boundaries, not too impulsive, not too restrained, capable of evolving in new directions, but strong in our central 'essence' of who we are...

Nobody is ever going to do any or all of this perfectly...nor will we all even try....I can berate -- and have berated -- myself furiously and often lately when I think that I've been either 'too weak' or 'too strong'...

When you are not happy with the way that you have come across -- either with your words and/or with your actions -- shake your head a few time, shake it off, and move on...

-- dgb, April 19th, 2011,

-- David Bain,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations,

-- Are Still In Process...

How Do You Use Words? To Make Contact? Or To Build Illusions?

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.


Voltaire







 

Room 2212: Ten Different Types of 'Anal' Sub-Personalities...

Let's imagine 'oral character traits' as being like 'red blood cells' -- they are designed to bring 'nutrition' and 'energy' into the body and distribute this nutrition and energy to all the different cells and organs of the body.

In contrast, the 'anal character traits' are like 'white blood cells' -- they are designed to protect the mind and body -- protect The Self -- against any and all 'toxic or non-friendly intruders'.

With this in mind,  let's look at ten different 'anal-sub-personalities' and 'anal sub-personality traits' that are designed to help protect The Self. These are a combination of the Classical Freudian 'anal' personality-types -- namely the 'anal-retentive' personality and 'the anal-sadistic' personality -- and my extensions and/or modifications of these Classical Freudian 'anal sub-types'.

1. The Anal-Righteous Personality: Very rule-oriented, righteous people. Preachers, politicians, lawyers, some teachers, accountants, bookkeepers, some management people, protesters, social activists...

2. The Anal-Rejecting Personality: People who are very quick to judge -- and to reject -- other people;

3. The Anal-Schizoid Personality: Introverted, distancing people...afraid of, and/or angry at, other people...would prefer to stay far away from 'the madding crowd'...hermits...people who have fallen hard in love, been jilted, and enclosed their hearts in 'defensive, compensatory character armour', not letting most, or any, people close to their hearts, or sometimes, even near them at all...This is not only a 'social split' with other people but generally also a 'a cognitive-emotional split within The Self'...These are, for the most part, 'alienated' people who have 'lost contact with their Souls', and/or may partly compensate again with one or more pets -- usually, a cat, two cats, three cats...A cat -- more than a dog -- seems to share their 'solitary existence';


4. The Anal-Abandoning Personality: Quick to abandon other people in relationships, usually based on one or more childhood abandonments....Better to abandon others before they abandon me...


5. The Anal-Sadistic Personality: Cruel, mean people -- or people with a cruel, mean streak to them -- who like to hurt other people either verbally and/or physically, you can often pick this trait up in younger or older children based on how they treat younger children and/or animals...Again, this trait is usually a 'compensatory reaction' -- an 'identification with the aggressor' -- relative to a parent or older sibling, or bully at school, who has been mean and cruel to them...


6. The Anal-Retentive Personality: Neat, orderly, very organized, very punctual, parsimoinious (cheap) with money -- the 'Classic Freudian Anal-Retentive Personality';


7. The Anal-Phobic Personality: Same idea, very 'germaphobic' -- scared to death of germs and dirt and bad hygiene....to an extreme degree....to the point of wearing gloves to avoid contact with germs....understandable , even imperative, in a hospital, sometimes a little or lot extreme in the person's own impeccable, spotless home...


8. The Anal-Narcissistic Personality: The reverse of the last type -- loves to 'play in the dirt', to get 'down and dirty', 'wrestle in the mud', 'Pigpen', 'Diogenes', has essentially identified with 'The God of Dirt and Mess'....generally very disorganized...


9. The Anal-Rebellious Personality: Very 'anti-authoritarian'...hates authoritarian personality...a compensatory reaction usually to a very authoritarian, righteous parent...the rebel, the outcast, the protester, the social activist, the graffiti writer, the anarchist....wants to bring down power regimes...and symbols of righteous, political, legal, religious, and/or any other perceived 'freedom-limiting' institution of power...


10. The Anal-Explosive Personality: Very bad righteous temper...to go along with any and/or all of the personality types listed above...might be a fast or slow, overt or covert temper...but it is usually there to some greater or lesser degree depending on the extent of self-righteousness...


-- dgb, April 17th, 2011,

-- David Gordon Bain

Room 2211: Four Different Types of 'Oral' Sub-Personality Traits That You Are Likely To Bump Into, In Your Day-To-Day Life

Here is a list and a brief description of four different Freudian 'oral' personality types that you may or may not bump into in your day to day life...

1. The 'Oral-Nurturing' Personality Type: The 'nurturing motherly or fatherly' type...often become 'counsellors', 'therapists'', 'nurses', 'child care workers', 'community workers'...

2. 'The Oral-Biting (or Sadistic)' Personality Type: A little more 'sarcasm' and 'bite' in this personality....Watch out for the 'sharp teeth' in what these type of people say...

3. 'The 'Oral-Narcissistic (Addictive)' Personality Type: Like to 'consume' things -- often big eaters or big drinkers, or drug users, often like to 'buy' things, 'have' things, 'be catered to', 'treated like a king or queen', 'have people centre around them, and do things for them', good at 'demanding' things, and/or 'seducing' people in order to get what they want...but not always good at being independent and getting or doing things themselves without help...

4. The 'Oral-Receptive' Personality Type: Very 'approval-seeking', 'wanting to please', wanting to do things for other people, wanting to be liked/loved, don't like conflict/ confrontation, usually easy to talk to, easy to approach, not very protective of their self-boundaries, expect the best in people, expect good intentions, have trouble reading the 'bad' in people...often get 'used' and 'abused' by people because they don't adequately protect their self-boundaries...

 -- dgb, April 16th, 2011,

-- David Gordon Bain

Room 2210: The First True Case of Psychoanalysis...Updated April 11th, 2011

Hegel's Hotel: 50 Floors/50 Blogsites: An Evolving Table of Contents and Associated Links for Hegel's Hotel

http://hegelshotel-dgbn-history.blogspot.com/


.........................................................................................................

The First True Case of Psychoanalysis (Updated...April 11th, 2011)

We are about to take a 'post or neo-psycho-analytic' look at some of Freud's earliest clinical cases -- cases involving women who were diagnosed as 'hysterics'. (It should be noted here that Freud did come across a few cases involving men who were diagnosed as 'hysterics' so he didn't think that 'hysteria' was strictly a 'female disorder'.

We will look again at the Anna O. case in the fresh light of our 'SID Formation' concept, as well as a host of other cases written up by Freud and/or Breuer between 1894 and 1896.


Before this, we have one other important case to look at -- what I call 'The First True Case of Psychoanalysis'.
I will start with a small introduction before we turn our attention to this case.

Classical Psychoanalysis focuses on the clash between unconscious or repressed instinctual impulses (coming from 'the id') on the one hand, a concerted 'restraint or defense' against these impulses arising into consciousness on the other hand, let alone being acted on -- this defense comes from a combination of 'the activities of the superego' and/or 'the ego' -- until the ego can ideally find a more satisfactory and satisfying arrangement -- a 'compromise-formation' and/or a more complete release of the instinctual impulse in a more satisfactory place and/or at a more satisfactory time. This instinctual release ideally results in the temporary 'homeostatic/dialectic balance' between the id and the superego/ego until the arrival of a new instinctual impulse throws the person/organism/psyche out of balance again.


In human neurosis, a satisfactory compromise-formation between ego and id is never really achieved. Either the id overpowers the ego (which I call a Narcissistic-Dionysian Neurosis) or the superego and ego overpower the id to the point of an absence or lack of instinctual release in the organism, resulting in a 'deadening of the psyche/self/organism' (which I call an Apollonian Over-Self-Control Neurosis).

Within this 'neurotic bi-polarity spectrum', you can also get alternations between the two of them -- which is generally called 'bi-polar disorder' or 'manic depression'. You can also get different names for different subsets of neuroses in this bi-polar spectrum such as: distancing (anal schizoid) neuroses; anxiety neuroses, approval-seeking neuroses, phobias, obsessions, OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) Borderline Personality Disorder, and more...

Human neurosis can generally be summed up in the sentence: 'I am not wanted here, not invited, not liked, not accepted, not appreciated, not acknowleged, not relevant...

Transactional Analysis summed up the overarching idea above under two polar headings: 1. You're okay, I'm not okay'; 2. I'm okay, you're not okay'; or the two condensed together: 3. You're not okay, I'm not okay.


Freud once said that you had/have to be a psychoanalyst in order to properly understand what comes out of 'the depths of the unconscious' and particularly the 'dynamics of repression'. I say, Well, repression is still a very controversial concept and subject matter that sometimes (often) defies what most would call 'good rational-empiricism'. It can easily become a 'circular concept' with no apparent foundational basis except in the eyes and ears of the theorist who 'believes in the existence of repression'.

A psychoanalyist says, 'You are repressed.' You reply, 'I am not repressed.' And the psychoanalyst then uses your 'resistance' as further evidence that 'you are repressed'.


How do you ever 'prove' the existence of a 'repression' except for the psychoanalyst's 'interpretation' as such, and how do you distinguish it from a much more common and more easily validated concept/phenomenon of 'suppression' or even 'dissociation'?


All of the concepts of 'suppression', 'subconscious', and 'dissociation' have more 'tangible rational empiricism' attached to them than Freud's concept of 'repression' -- or even his concept of 'unconscious'. James Strachey, the main editor of Freud's Standard 24 Volume Edition, says that one of the main reasons that Freud introduced the concept of 'the id' in 1923 was to help avoid all the ambiguity of the concept of 'the unconscious'.

However, that depends on how loosely or tightly you define the terms 'repression' or 'unconscious'.


I use the term 'unconscious' but often hesitatingly, and generally speaking, I am much more comfortable with the concept of 'subconscious'. I don't think I will ever use the concept of 'repression'. I believe in 'the psychology of defense' but, generally speaking, I do not support the 'psychology of repression'.

Does this take me out of the 'domain of Psychoanalysis'? The Psychoanalytic Establishment would obviously say 'yes' immediately, further supported by the fact that I have no formal training in Psychoanalysis. But The Psychoanalytic Establishment and Institute is partly like 'Hotel California' -- once you get in, you become 'locked into their particular paradigm' which includes Freud's own 'transference neurosis relative to his father'.


When Freud was alive, you had to be like Melanie Klein (no one else was) -- female and perceived as non-threatening -- in order to 'break through the wall of Freud's paradigm' -- and no man has 'broken through the neurotic paradigm of Freud's father-transference neurosis in Classical Psychoanalysis' unless he has either left Psychoanalysis completely (Adler, Jung, Reich, Rank, Ferenczi, Horney, Sullivan, Erickson, Fromm, Perls, Masson...and many more...) or followed Melanie Klein's 'skirt' into the paradigm of Object Relations and Self-Psychology.

I do not mean this in a derrogatory sense to a whole host of good 'male psychoanalytic theorists' -- eg. Fairbarin, Winnicott, Guntrip, Kohut, Lacan -- who have strayed away from 'Classical' Psychoanalysis, and who are still called 'psychoanalysts'.

If my comment is meant to be 'derrogatory' to anyone, it is aimed at Freud for not being sufficiently 'open-minded' and 'flexible' to allow such 'derrivatives' of Classical Psychoanalysis as Jungian Psychology, Adlerian Psychology, Frommian Psychology, Horneyan Psychology, Transactional Analysis, Primal Therapy -- and even Gestalt Therapy -- to evolve and flourish within the boundaries of 'Diversified Psychoanalysis'. 

With all due respect to Freud, the idea of 'the splitting of the ego' which Freud finally acknowledged and accepted towards the end of his career -- and stated that the idea seemed both strangely old and new at the same time -- and the associated ideas of 'ego' and 'alter-ego' and the 'dissociation between opposing ego-states' -- all of these ideas were much more 'theoretically and therapeutically useful' (at least in my opinion) than Freud's rather 'stringently anal-retentive' concept of 'repression'.

A memory does not need to be 'repressed' -- or even 'unconscious' -- in order to be 'neurotic' and 'neurotically operative'.

Perhaps even 'the Id' should be viewed as having an 'ego-state' extension -- either 'The Dionysian Ego' and/or 'The Narcissistic Ego'. The 'Ego' can also be split 'horizontally' as well as 'vertically' -- giving us 'Topdog' and 'Underdog' (or 'Superego/Underego') splits as well as 'Apollonian', 'Dionysian', 'Narcissistic', and 'Altruistic' Ego States...giving us three 'generic ego splits' -- three vertical splits and one horizontal split, or visa versa, depending on how we want to visualize what a 'horizontal' vs. a 'vertical' split is.  Regardless, this leaves us with 'ten auxilliary ego states and functions'
to go with 'one Central Mediating Ego' (The CME), as listed below:
...........................................................................................................


The Gap-DGB (Quantum-Dialectic Integrative, QDI) Psychoanalytic Model of The Psyche


The DGB nine auxilliary ego-states are:

1. The Altruistic (Nurturing-Encouraging) Superego (The AS);

2. The Dionysian (Hedonistic) Superego (The DHS);

3. The Narcissistic (Self-Absorbed) Superego (The NSS);
4. The Romantic Superego (The RS);

5. The Apollonian-Righteous-(Rejecting) Superego (The ARS);
6. The Altruistic (Approval-Seeking, Co-operative, Compliant) Underego (The ACU);

7. The Dionysian (Hedonistic) Underego (The DHU);

8. The Narcissistic (Self-Absorbed) Underego (The NSU);
9 The Apollonian-Rebellious (Rejecting) Underego (The ARU);
10. The Romantic Underego (The RU);


And the main Decision-Making Ego...we shall call...


11. The Central Mediating Ego (The CMU);

Working 'downwards' now into the subconscious/unconscious, we have...
12. The Dream Catcher/Weaver (DCW);

13. The Shadow-Id (Secret Interests) Drive (SID) Chamber...or 'SIGGY's Cave';
14. The Transference-Lifestyle Template (The TLT);

15. The Mythological-Symbolic (Archetype) Template (The MST)

16.  The Genetic-Biological-(Hormonal) Self (The GBS)
17. The Homeostatically (Dialectically) Balanced (or Unbalanced) Self-(Spirit-Soul) (The HBS).



































































































................................................................................................


The difference between 'repression' and 'suppression' is extremely important because it is easy to conflate, condense, and confuse the two together.


I 'suppress' what I am afraid to ask or tell you -- the concept of 'suppression' is easily validated by self-experience. But 'suppression' implies that I know very well what I want to ask or tell you. In the case of a 'suppressed memory' as opposed to a 'repressed memory', I remember the 'memory' all too clearly -- I am just embarrassed and/or otherwise reluctant to share it with you.

In contrast, a 'repressed memory' implies that I don't remember the memory at all -- which raises doubts about its very existence or is it a 'conceptual construction' created by Freud to explain a phenomena that he couldn't otherwise explain (such as hysteria, or anxiety neurosis, or obsessional neurosis...)?


For much of Freud's career, Freud viewed 'repression' as 'the defense' associated with ALL human neurosis, until he finally realized -- or admitted -- that were many other 'psychological defenses' at man's disposal such as: introjection, identification, projection, displacement, denial, transference, dissociation, retroflection (which is used a lot in Gestalt Therapy) and one that Adler added which is much more important to the etiology of neurosis, and more pervasive than Freud's concept of repression -- and that is the concept of 'compensation'. But even more important and pervasive to the etiology of all neurosis is the concept of 'transference'.

I see 'transference' as the main over or under-riding 'defense mechanism' in all neuroses, and every other defense mechanism is a subset of transference.

I distinguish between: 'identification transferences', 'introjective transferences', 'projective transferences', 'compensatory transferences', 'positive transferences', 'negative transferences', 'oral transferences', 'anal transferences', 'genital transferences', 'distancing transferences', 'anal-schizoid transferences', 'anal-rejecting transferences', 'oral-nurturing transferences', 'narcissistic transferences', 'anti-narcissistic transferences', 'altruistic transferences', 'impulse-desire-fantasy transferences', 'impulse-restraint transferences' 'anxiety transferences', 'rebellious transferences', 'violent transferences'... and on and on we could go...


The concept of 'transference' is totally Psychoanalysis as are the concepts of 'narcissism', 'defense', 'projection', 'introjection', 'identification', and most of the other concepts listed above. So how can you call my work anything but 'psychoanalytic' other than perhaps the 'extensions' and 'disagreements' that I have with The Psychoanalytic Establishment...And oh yes, my 'lack of formal training' -- or shall we call that 'brain-washing'?




















So call me an 'underground psychoanalytic theorist' if you will -- operating outside the walls of The Psychoanalytic Establishment, and even operating outside of 'The Academic Establishment'. I admire Spinoza's philosophical attitude and lifelong approach: Don't lock me into any kind of 'Establishment' that is going to try to 'muzzle my thinking' -- or at least the 'public demonstration of my thinking' -- because then I have lost my own self-integrity and stature as an 'independently thinking philosopher (and/or psychologist and/or politician and/or businessman...)

Of course, that is easier to do if you are 'independently wealthy'....

If not, then we all generally have to make 'philosophical compromises' -- some further than we would like to bend, and still keep our self-integrity and self-respect.
As soon as you become affiliated with any kind of 'organization' or 'institution' or 'political party' or 'religious denomination' or 'corporation' or 'school of thought', you become subject -- and often a 'slave' -- to the organization's agenda and particular brand of 'group think'.

At times 'group think' can be 'enlivening' and 'multi-dialectically challenging and evolutionary'. But this is probably by far the exception rather than the rule. Much more often, 'group think' becomes synonomous with 'no think' or thinking inside a 'stagnant paradigm', or worse a 'dangerous or even evil paradigm'.

The worst cases of 'group think' that come quickly to mind are 'Nazi Germany', 'McCarthyism', 'Witch Hunting', 'The Reign of Terror', any form of 'racial cleansing', 'stereotyping', 'discrimination', 'reverse-discrimination', 'religious extremism', 'political extremism', 'righteous trash-talking', any form of 'supremacy thinking that is socially divisive and exclusionist, let alone violent', 'narcissistic collusions that are non-democratic and exclusionist', 'political and corporate conflict of interests', 'lobbyist special-interest groups that do not have to face up to their 'bi-polar, anti-special interest group' in an open, democratic forum. (All lobbyist groups should have to operate through public, open, democratic forums.)


Back to Psychoanalysis...


In the case of a 'conscious' memory, a 'conscious memory' can also be called a 'subconscious memory' if it is 'psychodynamically alive' in our subconscious (or even in our unconscious) and yet, if someone asks us to recall this particular memory, we can usually recall it within a few minutes, given the right 'prompter' and/or 'association'
So 'defining' the 'outer limits', the 'outer boundaries' -- and even the inner concepts and theories -- of Psychoanalysis can be, indeed, is, a very subjective, narcissistic-righteous matter. And the 'founder' of Psychoanalysis -- and his 'tightly identifying' daughter -- are no longer around to make the 'executive decisions' in this regard....leaving a potentially more 'open playground to play in'...


Freud had a very 'anal-retentive' habit of defining it 'extremely tightly' according to his own parameters (which paradoxically sometimes changed 180 degrees like his still controversial switchover from 'The Traumacy-Seduction Theory' to 'The Childhood Sexuality-Fantasy-Oedipal Theory'). With not too many Psychoanalysts seriously taking him to task his 180 degree 'seemingly overnight theoretical switches'. If Freud had said 'the world was flat', I am sure that this would probably still be included in 'The Freudian Bible of Classical Psychoanalysis'. Now that was a 'shot' intended for The Psychoanalytic Establishment as a whole...

Freud did a brutal job (meaning no job) of reconciling his pre-1897 Traumacy-Seduction Theory with his post 1897 evolving Childhood Sexuality-Fantasy-Symbolic-Oedipal Theory. He just 'dumped' the first theory as if it never existed -- like it came while a 'wicked witch' was 'unconsciously controlling and undermining' Freud's very clinical thought process -- you have to watch out for those 'hysterical women', you know, cause they can 'trick' you...'demonishly'....Freud once said...I have to find the reference again....and I am paraphrasing here....Women start to lie the moment they start to talk about sex...

So based on this 'female sexuality and lying' hypothesis, perhaps that was what led to Freud's abandoment of the traumacy-seduction theory in favor of his 'repressed sexual instinct and impulse' theory... Now, women were no longer 'sexual victims' -- instead, they were 'sexual demons'....hiding, repressing, suppressing, dissociating themselves from, manipulating...their own internal sexual impulses....A rather radical switch, I would say....Couldn't it have been a bit of both? Or opposite variables at work in different cases? Why did it have to be 'either/or'?

However, that is why you have me here: to integrate what Freud did not know how to properly integrate. Dialectically integrate. That is why you have me 'trumpeting' the metaphorical structure of Hegel's Hotel as a larger and more useful 'multi-dialectic-humanistic-existential, philosophical and psychological paradigm' -- than 'Freud's Classical Hotel'.


If I am coming down hard on Freud here -- like thousands before me -- it is not because I do not respect Freud. Because I do. Indeed, I believe that he was one of the creatively most brilliant thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries. But this still doesn't mean that he wasn't commonly -- wrong. And stuck inside a cultural Victorian paradigm, as well as 'rigid, black and white' theoretical paradigms of his own making. And this isn't even hi-lighting the possibility/probability of Freud doing his own 'narcissistic theoretical and therapeutic manipulating'.


In Victorian society, masturbation was commonly -- and/or at least publicly -- viewed as 'self-abuse'. So for Freud, stuck inside this Victorian paradigm, connecting such 'neurotic self-abuse' with clinical cases of  'neurasthenia' (chronic depleted energy) would logically involve 'stopping the client from self abuse' -- i.e., stopping masturbation. (Maybe the opposite prescription might have been more appropriate.)

In Victorian culture, 'castration anxiety' sounds like it was a very real -- and scary -- phenomenon, especially for a small boy growing up. 'If you keep wanking your thing there, little Siggy, daddy's going to cut it off!'

Personally, I think I partly understand Freud better than he understood himself -- and a thousand psychoanalysts after him have purported to understand him, such as the one and only Ernest Jones -- because such 'biographers' of Freud were all 'psychoanalyzing' Freud according to Freud's own theoretical parameters and assumptions. 'Towing the company' line if you will. 'Upholding the corporate image'. 'Giving Freud -- and all psychoanalysts -- what he and they wanted to hear.'


How can you possibly get any kind of significantly different understanding of Freud unless you have someone who is willing and/or able to see some of the 'deficiencies', 'liabilities', and 'limitations' of these same parameters and assumptions that Freud -- and all Classical Psychoanalysts -- have been locked inside for over 100 years?


I like 'Hegel's and Freud's Hotel' better than 'Freud's Classical Hotel' because 'Hegel's and Freud's Hotel' incorporates a better assortment of assumptions, parameters, paradigms, and 'glasses' than those that Freud was using at the time he was theorizing, and that essentially all, or most, Classical Psychoanalysts -- like 'good corporate employees' -- have been using since.

This is not to say that Classical Psychoanalysis has not evolved since Freud died -- it's just that some of the most important assumptions that Freud was using -- and that Classical Psychoanalysis continues to use with little to no modifications and/or updated extensions since Freud died -- are also some of his most flawed assumptions. Like 'Childhood Sexuality Theory' and 'Fantasy Theory' and 'Oedipal Theory'-- without their bipolar 'alter-ego' theory: 'Traumacy-Seduction-Assault Theory'.
The two theories are still clamoring to be integrated. And without trying to be arrogant, I am probably the only theorist with enough of the right type of 'outside knowledge' and (read Adlerian Theory, Gestalt Theory, Transactional Analysis Theory...) -- and internal focus and creativity -- to properly do it.


If this makes me an 'egotist' and/or a 'narcissist', I can live with that. So was Freud. So was Masson. So are most professional athletes. You have to be an 'egotist' to get to the top of whatever 'mountain' you are trying to climb -- or whatever 'hotel' you are trying to build...

Like Ayn Rand would write, that simply means that /I/you/we believe in the strength and power of my/your/our skills and abilities....the skills and abilities that can make us all 'Supermen' and/or 'Superwomen' to the upper threshold of how high these skills and abilities can take us, just as long as we work hard enough, persevere enough, and meet the challenge of any and all obstacles in order to to get to where we want to go...our 'end visualization', our 'end fantasy', whatever that might be...


Not too many 'classical psychoanalysts' had'have the courage to 'think outside the classical box' -- at least publicly -- and if they did/do, then they were/are no longer likely considered to be 'Classical Psychoanalysts'. In Spinozian style, they were/are 'ex-communicated'. They were/are -- 'excluded'. Just look at Masson's rebellion against Freud in the 1980s. Masson stood up for what he believed was right -- and for that -- he is no longer a 'Psychoanalyst', let alone 'The Project Director of The Freud Archives'.

But alas things can change. Resentments can smooth over. 'Dissociations' can 'melt away', given the right circumstances, over time -- and 'bridges' and 'integrations' can start to take their place.

This is Hegel's World. This is Hegel's Hotel. 'Thesis'. 'Anti-thesis'. And finally -- 'synthesis'...'integration'...'either/or', 'right or wrong' melting away into a more harmonious, dialectic union...Perhaps with an 'agreement to disagree'. Or perhaps with a 'compromise towards the middle'. But most importantly, with more 'tolerance' and 'acceptance' for the right of any individual to 'disagree' with 'group think'. And not to be condemned for this...ex-communicated...excluded...


Freud was The Great Excluder...


I wrote already that he got this 'transference-characteristic' from his dad...


How come Freud couldn't see this clearly? Or could he? How come most Classical Psychoanalysts 'minimized' the 'negative transference' relationship between Freud and his dad? Or couldn't see it -- and worse, what the negative repercussions on Classical Psychoanalysis were.


Why? Because most Psychoanalysts -- read in particular Ernest Jones (his biography of Freud) -- did what Freud did. And Freud 'minimized' his dad (until he died). Sigmund 'excluded' his dad like his dad excluded -- and minimized -- little Siggy.


Most academics agree that the case of 'Anna O' is the first 'case' of Psychoanalyis. I agree -- in part.


But the 'template' case -- the case on which all of Psychoanalysis rests -- is little Sigmund's first, early childhood -- conscious -- memory.


And Freud -- and thousands of psychoanalysts after him -- walked or continue to walk right around this first conscious memory of little Sigmund, like 'lemmings that follow their leader over a cliff'. I am partly sorry if I am coming across as being overly harsh here, or 'unfair to some more rebellious, individual thinking, psychoanalysts' but in the end we are all responsible and accountable for our own personal and collective 'transference neuroses' -- and doing something about them -- otherwise, why call 'Psychoanalysis' a 'first-rate form of psychotherapy'?

Psychoanalysts have to start thinking about 'conscious early memories' not as 'screen memories' that both hide and allude to other more important 'repressed memories and/or fantasies' but rather as important 'transference memories' in and by themselves. And for that, Psychoanalysts can thank Adler indirectly -- through me. Because what I am doing here is essentially turning 'Adlerian lifestyle and conscious early memory theory' back into an 'updated' form of 'Classical Transference Theory'. Which is so psychodynamically different than 'standard Freudian Classical Transference Theory' that many would ask, how can it possibly be called 'Classical' -- in which case I propose the alternative names of 'Quantum-Integrative Transference Theory' and 'Quantum-Integrative Psychoanalysis'.

'Screen Memories' (1899) is the worst paper that Freud ever wrote -- and Jones loved it....lap, lap, lap... while as Masson argued and I am paraphrasing, Freud was starting to 'conflate' and 'confuse' 'symbolic dream and fantasy material' with 'cold, hard, remembered reality'.
I am sure that Jones had his character strengths -- he did, I believe, support the growth and career of Fritz Perls when Freud wanted nothing to do with Perls because of the latter's 'rebellious' paper on 'Oral (as opposed to 'Anal') Resistances..

Freud excluded and excommunicated all significant 'male rebellers' just like his father 'excluded and excommunicated' little Sigmund...

Freud was a great rebel himself -- but once he achieved power -- he squashed all masculine rebellion in his ranks... This was a major part of his 'topdog/underdog transference bi-polarity and neurosis'... His 'excluding topdog' was his 'introjected dad'; and his 'rebellious underdog' was little Sigmund 'proving to his dad -- and to the world -- that he would find out all his dad's -- and his mom's -- private, most hidden sexual secrets -- with or without the help of his dad...and by transference extension -- with or without the help of his clients/patients, and the world at large.

Oh, yes. The memory. The conscious memory that has been so overlooked by so many psychoanalysts claiming to 'know all the hidden secrets of the mind'...And yet you all let Dr. Freud pull one over on you....as he pulled one over on himself...

Step out of Dr. Freud's 'false assumptive paradigm', gentlemen -- and gentlewomen.

Even Freud could -- and still continues to -- lead you down false corridors.
Even Freud could make serious 'false connections'.

Why would an 'archaeologist dig deep' if what he or she is looking for -- some 'supposedly hidden treasure' -- is sitting on the ground right in front of his or her eyes?

Why would you look all over the house, in every nook and cranny, if your car keys were in the top pocket of your coat? If you were paying someone $200 an hour to look all through your entire house for your keys, when the keys were in the top pocket of your coat -- you could run up a rather needless, hefty tab, don't you think?
Why would a psychoanalyst 'dig deep' into a client's unconscious if the answer to 'the riddle of the Sphynx' of the client's personality is lying right in front of the psychoanalyst's ears in an 'ignored', 'minimized', 'excluded' conscious early memory?
Note once again that I am partly Adlerian trained....and I would not have arrived at my own 'transference answer' to the riddle of the Sphynx of Freud's character if I had not been Adlerian trained. I have integrated 'Adlerian Lifestyle and Conscious Early Memory Theory' into Classical Psychoanalysis here.


Indeed, what I am doing here is superimposing the theoretical and therapeutic templates of all of Adlerian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Object Relations, Transactional Analysis, and Pre-Classical Freudian Theory -- right back where they belong on top of the template -- or inside of the template -- of Classical Psychoanalysis.

Because I am not -- at least in this essay -- and in Hegel's and Freud's Hotel in general -- an exclusionist. In the philosophy and psychology ideas, I am aiming to be much more of an inclusionist and an integrationist.

Now, obviously, I am going to exclude that which I do not believe to be important and/or value-laden. But most certainly, my flexibility, my liberal openess, is much greater than Freud's fixed, anal-retentive theoretical and therapeutic boundaries.

There is no one else in the world who is capable of doing what I am doing here for two reasons: 1. no one has exactly the same 'knowledge template' that I am carrying in my brain; and 2. just as importantly, no one is carrying exactly the same 'transference template' that I am carrying in my brain that demands that I push this story, that I push the integration of the history of Western Philosophy and Clinical Psychology to my vision and version of its evolutionary conclusion...push 'Hegel's and Freud's Hotel' to its evolutionary conclusion...which will only be fleeting, because all essays are 'thought bites' that have a context in time and place, and even Hegel's and Freud's Hotel which has already been in the works for 5 years since July, 2006, I believe, and I hope will be finished by March 3rd, 2013, will also be a seven year 'thought bite' by the time it is finished if my estimate is accurate...with part of it aging -- like me...


Regarding my own personal transference template, consisting of a network of associated transference 'complexes' and/or 'neuroses', two of them seem to have associative connections with Freud's 'network of transference complexes and neuroses': 1. his 'father-transference complex'; and 2. his 'first conscious memory transference complex' in which he was evicted from the doorway of his parents' master bedroom for 'intruding' at the wrong time. My first conscious memory was very similar although connected with my friend's mother who was very angry at me for pushing her front doorbell more times 'than I should have, too early in the morning'.

Add these two transference similarities to my partial Adlerian training in 'interpreting conscious early memories' from an Adlerian 'lifesyle' perspective, and you have the three most important ingredients that explain why I have been better able to interpret Freud's 'first conscious memory-transference complex' better than anyone before me, particularly any 'Inside The Freudian Box Classical Psychoanalyst'.

Freud copied (introjected, identified with) his dad's 'rejecting topdog/object/superego' around the issue of 'exclusionism'.
And in similar fashion, Classical Psychoanalysis copied (introjected, identified with) Sigmund Freud's 'rejecting topdog/object/superego around this same issue of 'exclusionism'. That makes Classical Psychoanalysis a product of Sigmund Freud's own 'exclusionism-abandonment transference neurosis'.

For those of you who are not familiar with little Sigmund's first conscious memory, he 'busted in on his parents in their bedroom while they were doing the nasty'....and little Sigmund's father screamed at him to get out...(just as the woman/mother in my first conscious memory screamed at me to leave her front door).

A pretty understandable reaction by Sigmund's father...given the circumstances and his likely embarrassment, but that sure didn't help little Siggy any...He needed an explanation..


Indeed, little Siggy ended up spending the rest of his life -- via his transference complex -- vicariously trying to understand perfectly what exactly had transpired in his parents' bedroom...and he was certainly no stranger years and years later to 'his patients' resistance to telling the truth about their sexual secrets'... Indeed, from a transference perspective, he entirely expected it...It was 'deja-vu' for little Siggy turned big Sigmund...the beginning of a very long 'repetition compulsion' and 'mastery compulsion'.

Freud unconsciously re-created his own transference projection scene...the surrogate scene of his earliest conscious memory...The bed was 're-created' as the couch, and the female hysterical patients had become 'transference surrogates' to his mother lying on the bed...Was this his own private 'Oedipal Complex' playing itself out? Freud's own 'narcissistic transference fantasy' relative to 'surrogates' of his mother? Well, part of the transference component was certainly attached to his mother.

At what point the 'erotic' component of transference enters into the picture is a point of debate. Is the erotic component early childhood based, or does it enter into the picture as puberty turns on our 'sexual hormones'?

In DGB conceptuology, 'sublimation' is a 'transference projection phenomenon' first and foremost, with the 'sexual component' being a subset of the transference complex.

'Truth' often has two 'dialectical polar halves' attached to it, and it is very, very common for most of us to miss one of these 'polar halves'...In the family...in our schools...in our ruling political party, in the court system, in philosophy, in psychology...'the squeeky wheel gets the oil while the silent wheel remains in the Shadows of Non-Attention'...the dominant paradigm gets the sunshine, gets the spotlight, gets the goodies, while the 'invisible paradigm' gets lost in The Shadows of Non-Attention...not getting its share of the 'goodies'...and/or the 'equal rights' in many cases...


This was the philosophical brilliance of Anaxamander who foreshadowed the philosophy of Hegel, Derrida, and Foucault over two thousand years before the latter three philosophers came into existence. and this Freud could not see very well before, during, and after his abandonment of his pre-1897 Traumacy-Seduction Theory. It is possible that Freud was at least partly 'overly naive' coming into 1896, or shortly thereafter...


Was he overly naive to believe that all his female hysterical patients had been either 'sexually assaulted' or 'manipulated' and 'seduced' as children? Or were some of his female clients manipulating and lying to him? Or both?


This could have been a significant part of Freud's theoretical and therapeutic dilemma back around 1896-1897. Was Freud right or wrong to take his female clients' assertions regarding their childhood history of sexual abuse at face value? And/or were some or all of his female clients hiding their own narcissistic sexual fantasies behind these assertions of childhood sexual abuse?


Or was there another over-riding disturbing network of political, economic, and professional factors? Did the men who had power over the future of Freud's career essentially intimidate and coerce Freud into 'shutting his story down, shutting his theory of childhood sexual abuse down'?


And what if Freud was getting a complicated and confusing mixture of clinical behaviors and symptoms? Freud's whole theory of 'repression' and 'the pleasure-unpleasure' theory hinged on the idea that his clients were 'hiding the unbearable past' from themselves through the process of 'repression' (excluding traumatic memories from their consciousness). Freud's whole theory leading up to 1896 rested on 'making these unconscious, repressed traumatic memories conscious'...And then presto, the 'hysterical symptom associated with the traumatic, repressed memory, now conscious again, disappeared!
However, there were complications to this nice, tidy story, with a happy ending...

For example, sometimes a 'hysterical' (neurotic) patient could keep a therapist busy for a lifetime with the continual creation of a vast array of new physical symtoms...Just read the Anna O. case, and see how busy she kept pooer Dr. Joseph Breur in what is generally viewed as the 'first psychoanalytic case'...Not to mention when she started to have 'erotic fantasies' of poor, Dr. Breuer, and told him that she was 'carrying his child'! (Presumably, she wasn't.)

Then there were an assortment of other cases where patients were fantasizing having 'romantic-sexual liasions' with bosses' and the like...Human, all too human...


So you can maybe start to see how Freud was getting into an entangled mess between trying to sort out the workings of 'human sexual traumacy' vs. the workings of 'human sexual fantasy'. The one certainly did not necessarily preclude or exclude the other. But Freud was building up an 'either/or' case for the stronger of the two theories.


1. Repression of sexual traumacy/seduction/assault? Or;


2. Repression of sexual fantasy.


3. (Or no repression at all -- my addition.)

It should be noted that not all of Freud's (or Breuer's) patients traumacies were of a 'sexual' nature. Anna O. stopped drinking liguids when she saw her dog drinking out of her cup or bowel. This memory was brought back to her awareness through 'hypnosis' and 'the talking cure' and she started drinking again. But Freud was locked into the 'sexual etiology'. Breuer was, for the most part, a much more cautious, rational-empirical scientist than Freud was, and thus, Breuer was far more careful than Freud with his 'jumping to radical generalizations and theories'...

However, no-one heard much from Breuer after he and Freud split company. Breuer's theoretical caution was less exciting and less shocking than Freud's dramatic exclamations and explanations...It wasn't as 'newsworthy' as Freud's brash statements, and to be fair to Freud, not as creatively brilliant in many cases...It was Freud who wrote the 24 volume Standard Edition, not Breuer.


Freud was perplexed -- and amazed -- by women's (and men's) sexual secrets.

Aren't we all oftentimes?


Sexual traumacy or sexual fantasy?


What was going on? Which way was Freud to go? Stuck inside Aristotlean logic, he set the whole dichotomy up as an 'either/or' choice. Big mistake. Perhaps the biggest mistate in Freud's career -- at least on the theoretical front. What he needed to do -- and what he didn't do -- was to 'dialectically embrace' the alleged dichotomy and figure out how both sides of the quandry contributed to a larger, 'Bi-Polar, Dialectic Truth', or 'Dialectic Bi-Polar Wholism'.


Freud could see the one 'polar truth' before 1897 but not the other; then, slowly, after 1897, Freud could see the 'opposite polar truth' (wishful fantasy) but not the original one (traumacy, seduction, assault) that he had spent the first 10 years of his professional career learning. What was that if it was not 'professional repression'? The irony of the whole matter is that both existed before 1897, and both existed after 1897.

You show, or tell me, of one person who has lived on this earth for even 5 years who has not experienced the twin polarities of 'traumacy' and 'fantasy', and I will agree to the Freudian concept of 'repression'!


Back between the summer of 1896 and say 1905, it was Freud who was 'The Grand Represser'. (After 1905, he became 'The Grand Excluder' -- as in excluding anyone -- or any male -- from Psychoanalysis who didn't agree with his 'childhood sexuality' , 'sexual fantasy' and 'Oedipal Theory').

Did political, economic, and professional 'convenience' or 'or perceived necessity' contort and distort and 'unobjectify' Freud's brain? Freud wouldn't be the first to succumb to such a pressure? I am not trying to make excuses for Freud, or even assert that this is what necessarily happened -- Masson put out such a 'theory' in the 1980s, and for this he lost his job and his career. Is it possible that Masson chose to not ethically back down -- where Freud did?

Not too many men or women (Freud had no huge 'women's movement' supporting him back then) wanted to hear publicly about 'child sexual abuse' in the 1890s. It was easier to blame the child than it was to blame the father, or the uncle, or the family friend...

Furthermore, the situation hadn't really changed much by the 1980s. It was obvious that The Psychoanalytic Establishment still did not want to publicly talk about child sexual abuse when Masson confronted Classical Psychoanalysis on this account. Worse still, Masson publicly put forward the 'theory' that Freud 'lost moral courage' in his 'suppression' of the Seduction Theory.

Meanwhile, there was a huge article in The Globe and Mail less than a week ago saying that women in prision were not getting the 'mental health' help that they needed -- whereas there were more avenues along this line already in place for men in prison.


I believe the estimates of 'childhood sexual abuse' I saw in the article amongst women in prison and/or amongst other women seeking psychiatric help was up in the 50 percentile, or probably even significantly higher. There was something that was bringing these 'hysterical women' or 'neurotic women with physical symptoms that seemed to go hand in hand with their mental processes' into Freud's practice in the 1890s, and it wasn't all about their 'repressed or suppressed erotic fantasies' (although this did seem to often play a part).

And still in the 1980s, The Psychoanalytic Establishment did not want to talk about how Freud's Oedipal Complex was leading analysts away from diagnosing 'real childhood sexual abuse', by labelling any such female childhood memories as 'Oedipal Fantasies' (of the little girl and/or later teenage girl having romantic/sexual fantasies towards her dad).
This might 'defame' Freud's character to say that Freud made such a huge theoretical, diagnostic, and therapeutic blunder! Is it any different today in 2011 or is The Psychoanalytic Establishment still hanging on with a 'Classical Freudian Oedipal hanging on pitbull bite'? Perhaps the more Psychoanalysts who move into Object Relations and Self Psychology, the less they have to stand up as an organization and actually publicly confront this 'ugly' problem.


I still like, and have no problem of using, The Oedipal Complex in my own theoretical work. But not to the 'literal' sense that Freud did. And not to the extent of 'diagnostically and therapeutically distorting a client's childhood reality'.

Economic, political, legal, and professional pressures can have a huge impact in all of us -- and turn us all away from 'the truth', at least as we personally believe in it.

How many of us don't engage in this type of practise every single day we go to work when we tell our boss 'what he or she wants to hear' or conversely, 'suppress' telling him or her what he or she doesn't want to hear?

How can we expect anyone to 'engage in freedom of speech' and 'tell his or her boss' what they really believe when the 'unemployment line' looms so large -- particularly in a bad recession -- as a 'very real factual possibility, a factual truth'?


It was very possible that Freud was no different. But since we are dealing with -- and 'speculating' about -- what 'was going through Freud's own mind at the time' -- none of us will ever know definitively. That is one secret -- his 'ethical innocence and/or guilt' -- that Freud probably took to the grave with him. Now, the 'ethical ramifications' of his decision still lies out in the open - - or at least partly in the open -- for all to see, and judge.

No-one -- other than a working pscyhoanalyst (and his or her clients) -- knows exactly what transpires behind closed psychoanalytic doors... and how many psychoanalysts may actually believe in the client experiential 'validity' of childhood and/or teenage sexual manipulation/assault, in this case, that case, or in many cases....and still 'tow the public company pathological anal-retentive Freudian Oedipal line'...


Not too many of us will ever know that realm of 'psychoanalytic-client privacy' as well...unless psychoanlysts and/or clients start going public with their personal stories... I'm not counting on it...


At best, Freud was too much an Aristotlean 'either/or' thinker, who couldn't get his head around 'dialectic engagement and integration'. He had the right idea with the concept of 'compromise formations'.


However, he didn't properly understand the dynamics of the transference except in his own 'tightly restricted, anal-retentive paradigm' of 'relationship transference between therapist and client'. Brian Bird hadn't written his paper on the 'universality of the transference' yet. That wouldn't happen until the 1960s.

Because of Freud's 'abandonment of the traumacy-seduction theory' and his evolving 'fixation' with 'fantasy theory', not Freud -- nor any psychoanalytic theorist since -- until me -- has centred on the concept of 'transference memory'. (Actually, I have to give significant creative and chonological credit to both Alfred Adler, founder of Adlerian Psychology and the creator of the idea of 'conscious early memories as lifestyle memomies', as well as Arthur Janov, author of 'The Primal Scream').

In Psychoanalysis, we hear of 'transference relationships' but we never hear about 'transference encounters' -- and by logical association -- 'transference memories' (concious and/or unconscious).


Yet here is the future of Classical Psychoanalysis -- if Classical Psychoanalysis is to have any future.


From the idea of 'dialectic engagement, negotiation, and integration' -- comes the name of 'Quantum' Psychaoanalysis -- just as previously, in the realm of Physics, and 'thermogenics' -- 'particle' theory was integrated with its anti-thesis, 'wave' theory, to get 'Quantum Theory'.


Likewise here, 'Traumacy-Seduction-Manipulation-Assault' Theory becomes integrated with 'Childhood Sexuality-Fantasy-Oedipal Theory' to become 'Quantum Psychoanalysis'.


We have heard that every 'killer returns to the scene of his crime'. I don't know how true it is or not. But the same idea applies here.


Because, metaphorically and symbolically speaking, every 'neurotically traumatized child' returns to the scene of his 'childhood traumacy-transference scene' over and over and over again...This is what Freud ended up calling the 'repetition compulsion'. But Freud didn't properly understand the repetition complulsion -- he almost did with his concept of 'the mastery compulsion' but perhaps thought he was getting too close to 'Adlerian Theory' (the inferiority complex and superiority striving). Instead, Freud made the mistake of connecting the repetition compulsion to his evolving idea of 'The Death Instinct' (Beyond The Pleaaure Principle, 1920).


The repetition compulsion is often tied to 'death', 'destruction', and/or 'self-destruction', but only in the context of a person 'psychologically fighting for his or her own life and closing unfinished childhood situations' -- the desired, even self-demanded, 'healing' of one's most critical 'traumatic-transference neuroses'.  In this regard, the 'repetitition' and/or 're-creation' compulsion become forever linked with the 'mastery compulsion' -- the desire/demand to gain control over those childhood situations that we had no control over growing up...


The traumatic-transference progression and/or regression goes like this: 1. chilhood traumacy; 2. 'Traumacy-tranference Memory'; 3. 'Compensation', 'Master Compulsion'; and 4. the creation of a 'Traumacy-Transference Fantasy Template' often 'cathected' with romantic and/or sexual energy of a supreme force; that is 5. 'Projected onto an adult 'surrogate transference figure' and this transference erotic love fantasy reigns supreme until one day, one's adult 'surrogate transference lover 'rejects us' in a style that unconsciously on purpose reminds us of our initial childhood traumacy-transference rejection, and childhood traumacy transference rejector (abandoner, betrayer, excluder, assaulter, manipulator...); and then 6. we suddenly and radically change 180 degrees in our thinking and feeling, like Freud did in 1896, and enter a 'heavy negative transference phase' of our 'transference love relationship' ,'heavily cathected with childhood negative energy'; and often end up 7. 'doing unto our rejector what our childhood and/or adult rejector did unto us, or we think our adult surrogate transference figure is about to do to us'...This is what I call 'negative transference identification', 'identification with the rejector, abandoner, betrayer, assaulter, aggressor, manipuator, excluder'.... and it often ends many 'transfernce relationships...

This is what I call our full 'transference complex, neurosis, and/or game'. (as in Berne's 'Games People Play' -- meaning for the most part, 'The Positive and Negative Transference Games That We Play'...To stop playing the game (which many people don't want to do because of its heavy romantic-sexual component), we have to come to a full conscious understanding of the psycho-dyanmics of our trnasference complex/neurosis/game, and be able to consciousl choose to 'get off the transference ferris wheel, off the transference roller coaster, off the transference merry-go-round', which by the time we finish our unique, particular good and bad ride is often not very 'merry'...
Freud never got here...although he came close sometimes in different ways...'The Aetiology of Hysteria', 1896; 'The Dynamics of The Transference', 1912; 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle', 1920.

The psycho-sexual secrets of men and women...


Did not usually come easy to Freud,


Nor to any psychotherapist,


Like a Christmas present from client to therapist, with a nice, neat, tidy ribbon and bow attached to it...


No, more often these secrets come together from different 'life experiences, built into psychological compensatory pieces -- woven together, subconsciously into a psycho-sexual transference whole'...
It is not only where we have come from with our childhoood transferences, but also, where we are trying to get to subconsiously or unconsciously, in order to 'subjectively feel more whole again'...

But Freud already knew this deep in his own subconscious,

He just couldn't quite completely figure out the psycho-dynamics of his own unconscious (or was unwilling to publicly share all of his private awenesses).
Regardless, for his clients too, he couldn't quite put all their different psychological pieces together,

Trying as hard -- indeed, obsessing as hard -- as he did....


Where did this 'transference obsession' come from?


From the first time he busted...


Into his parents' bedroom,


This is why Freud's first conscious memory can easily be declared...


The 'first true case of Psychoanalysis'.


-- dgb, Jan. 30th-31st, Feb. 1st, Feb. 3rd., April 11th, 12th, 2011,


-- David Gordon Bain


Posted by david gordon bain at 10:39 AM

Different Ways of Defining and Describing 'Neurosis'

Updated...Feb. 18th, 2012...dgb


The term 'neurosis' stems back at least to the beginning of Freud's work in Psychoanalysis in the early 1890s, back to the point where the science of neurology first started to overlap with the art and science of psychiatry, clinical psychology, and psychotherapy.

Perhaps the easiest and quickest association between the name 'neurosis' and what it it is/was used to define/describe is the idea and experience of  'nervousness' and/or 'bad nerves'. This is particularly relevant in what Freud referred to as 'anxiety neurosis'.

For the longest while -- many years -- Freud equated anxiety neurosis with the idea of 'blocked sexual excitement and energy' (or 'libido'). It wasn't until very late in his career that Freud finally relented this position and more appropriately defined anxiety as that feeling/emotion that can best be equated with the perception of danger. This doesn't totally reject Freud's previous postion of 'blocked sexual excitement' because who doesn't often/usually feel at least partly 'nervous' or 'anxious' when their mind-body is 'filling up with sexual excitement' particularly in the close proximity to a 'perceived sexual object/person'.


Here are some internet definitions/descriptions of 'neurosis'.
........................................................................................................

Neurosis

1. A relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety) but not usually a severe loss of touch with reality. Contrast with psychosis which does involve a more severe loss of touch with reality.



2. (in nontechnical use) Excessive and irrational anxiety or obsession.
 
3. Neurosis is a term generally used to describe a nonpsychotic mental illness which triggers feelings of distress and anxiety and impairs functioning.


4. Wikipedia....Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms.[1] It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic. The term essentially describes an "invisible injury" and the resulting condition, and is no longer in official use by the scientific, medical, and psychiatric communities.



....................................................................................................



Since most of my work here is Freudian and/or Psychoanalytically based, and Freud used the term extensively, and broke it up into sub-categories, I will do the same although my sub-categories will be partly different. I still think it is a useful term although the term 'disorder' generally replaces it today. 

 Three broad 'mental health disorders' that are commonly differentiated from each other are: 1. 'Bi-Polar Disorder' (which usually means 'Manic-Depression Disorder'); 2. 'Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder' (which usually refers to what Freud would have classified  as 'Anal' Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders; in contrast, the 'Oral' Obsessive-Compulsions are usually classified as 'Addictions' -- more on this distinction later); 3. 'Borderline Personality Disorder' which based on my understanding of this diagnostic category refers to a person who 'borders' between 'neurosis' and 'psychosis' and the only way that he or she can 'keep it together' is by subscribing to 'tight, anal-retentive, often obsessive-compulsive, defense mechanisms' that are designed to ward off 'extreme feelings of internal anxiety/panic'. High stress levels such as the loss of a job and/or the loss of a loved one are often likely to push this type of person 'over the top', resulting in the possibility of  a 'nervous (psychotic) breakdown', and perhaps even hospitalization. Of course, if the intensity of 'stressor(s)' is strong enough, we don't necessarily need to be diagnosed as a 'borderline personality' for something of this order to happen. It is just that borderline personality 'neurotics' tend to be more prone to these types of breakdowns....

  

Another way of defining and describing 'neurosis' is by using the principle of 'homeostatic (or dialectic) balance'.  This can be applied either 'culturally' or 'politically' or 'legally' or 'religiously' (which gets us into the problem of 'ethical relativism') or it can be applied 'trans-culturally' in terms of 'individual and social/civil needs and rights'.

Using the 'trans-cultural' -- in this case 'biological-medical' approach -- if a person has 'the flu', it doesn't matter what country or culture they live in; they still have 'the flu'. The 'bio-medical model or paradigm' works 'across different countries and cultures'.

In the case of 'psychological disorders', the 'bio-medical' approach doesn't always work as neatly and precisely. Schizophrenia is still schizophrenia but oftentimes -- indeed, almost always -- social, political, family, cultural, political, legal, economic, religious and/or philosophical factors all have to be taken into account in order to fully and properly understand this form of 'psychotic' illness as well as other forms of  non-psychotic illness  -- i.e., 'a non-psychotic, neurotic disorder' -- that we are dealing with.  Psychotic illnesses may involve genetics, drugs, brain-neurological dysfunction -- as well as social and internal psychological stressors.

Mental health issues need to be place in a 'socio-economic-political-legal context' in order to be understood properly. Sometimes it may be the particular 'society' or 'culture' or 'religion' or 'political-legal landscape' that is more 'neurotic' than a thousand or a million particular individuals within this socio-economic-political-legal context that are trying to adapt in 'dysfunctional' ways to a 'dysfunctional environment' -- and that includes particularly more than any othe relevant factor the context of the 'nuclear family' which is the source of the main 'cogntive-emotional templates' that we develop as we are 'evolving' and/or 'de-volving' as children.


On a cultural-historical level, in Freud's Victorian time, you have to factor in 'the different types of individual neurosis' with what might be called the 'Victorian culture's distorted and/or overly-restrictive, views on human sexuality' that created what might be called a 'Socio-Cultural Pathology of Sexual Normalcy' in this cultural and family environment.
More specifically, in Freud's time, there was a whole network of  'neurotic socio-cultural fears and negative socio-cultural judgments and defenses' -- some reflected by Freud himself -- concerning the phenomenon of masturbation. You had a whole set of negative perceptions, interpretations, judgments, values, and directives around this alleged 'social problem' of 'masturbation'.
We laugh at this now but back then, 'the negative perception regarding the dangers of masturbation' caused a whole host of negative 'individual and social neurotic problems'. If a mom caught her little boy 'playing with himself', she might say, 'Quit playing with yourself or your dad will cut it off!'  This, I would speculate, must have been something that Freud actually experienced and feared in his early childhood -- theoretically generalized many years later in his professional career under the concept and theory of 'castration anxiety'.  

The concept of castration anxiety doesn't work too well for me as a theorist today -- except perhaps in a metaphorical sense -- but similar, associated concepts like '(sexual) peformance anxiety'  (fear of not being able to sexually perform properly)  -- particularly relevent now amongst an 'aging masculine (and feminine) baby boomer population' -- i.e., fear of loss of one's masculine and/or feminine prowess and capabilities and a resulting loss of 'masculine or feminine self-esteem' connected often to an 'internal raging against aging'...) -- all of these 'inter-connected, neurotic anxieties' connected in turn to 'loss of self-identity' and/or 'loss of (sexual) self-esteem' do seem to be very relevant today...in partly similar, partly different ways, for both men and women....

Alfred Adler's abandoned concept of 'The Masculine Protest' (the perceived social and internalized self need and demand for a man to perceive and evaluate himself as  a 'real man') is still highly relevant today, and my extrapolation and extension of the above concept into 'The Feminine Protest' (the perceived social and internalized self need and demand for a woman to feel like a 'real woman') would seem to me to be equally just as currently relevant -- and a potential source of high level stress, distress, anxiety, rage, and/or depression...

Similarily, a seemingly outdated Freudian concept (that feminists have loved to hate) of 'penis envy' could/can be updated as well and fit into the syndrome of 'masculine and feminine protest neuroses'. Both men and women have 'sexually specific assets' that can be the 'lust' of the opposite (and/or same) sex. But 'lust' is not the same concept and phenomenon as 'envy'. 'Sexual envy' is more likely to be a 'same sex phenomenon, less so an opposite sex phenomenon'. Thus, a woman is more likely to 'lust' a penis, and 'envy' another woman's 'body shape', or 'breasts', or 'popularity among men'....It is actually more likely to be a man who is more prone to 'envy' another man's 'penis' or 'youth' or 'body shape' or 'popularity among women'....Thus, the 'long rejected Freudian concept and theory of women having 'penis envy' Freud equated mainly with the wrong sex...It is more likely to be a 'man's issue' rather than a woman's.  

Freud distinguished between the 'psycho-neuroses' (childhood neuroses) and the 'actual neuroses' (present-day, adult neuroses).  This distinction is still relevant today although I use different terminology -- 'the transference ('childhood' or 'there and then') neuroses vs. 'the existential ('here-and-now') neuroses. In most actual cases, transference neuroses and existential neuroses converge and join together into the 'same overall neurotic complex' -- in Freud's words, most neuroses (or neurotic complexes) are 'overdetermined'.


Freud's supposed 1896 'dilemma' regarding his 'conflict' between '(sexual and/or romantic traumacy' and 'instinct-fantasy' theory basically amount to 'opposite sides of the same coin' -- or the mythological image of 'Janus' -- one side looking back to the past, while the other side looks to the present and future. 'Sexual fantasies' are often 'narcissistic fixations/fetishes' and/or 'narcissistic-defensive compensations' against 'childhood ego-traumacies'.....

A 'childhood rejection and/or abandoment by a woman' might lead to the 'rejected child' -- as an adult -- becoming an 'abandoning philander' to 'internally prove to himself' -- symbolically speaking -- that his childhood rejector was wrong in rejecting him, and that he isn't/wasn't 'worthy of being rejected'....But then, this same 'rejected child syndrome' can lead to the phenomenon of 'identification with the childhood rejector' in which case the 'rejected child who was rejected by an adult woman (his mother or someone else)' becomes in the here-and-now a 'rejecting male adult who seduces women 'serially' -- and then promptly abandons them after he has seduced them'.... 

'Neurasthenia' was an interesting diagnostic category back in Freud's early, pre-1900 work. (He may have even used this category after 1900.) It can be equated with the idea of 'psychic lethargy and/or depression -- no energy, no libido, a lack of enthusiasm for life'...a technical word for a common human problem...

I think that the diagnostic category is still useful and can be sub-divided into 'transference neurasthenia' and 'existential neurasthenia'. The first is a 'carry-over' from our childhood life; the second is connected to 'here-and-now' factors such as: loss of love, loss of job, aging, health issues, 'lack of meaning in life', etc...

Freud had an interesting association between neurasthenia and sexual factors --  'too much masturbation', according to Freud, will leave a person 'burnt out and energy-deprived, lethargic' (but happy -- sorry, I couldn't resist). That's like the more recent question of whether or not an athlete should have sex before an athletic performance...If the athlete is 'exhausted' after the sexual performance -- and it's just before the game -- probably not. But if he is 'up and still full of energy' -- a 'pre-game warmup' so to speak -- then, why not? No over-riding 'generalization' seems appropriate...except perhaps...'whatever works'... 

Alternatively, a more logical and likely associative connection between neurasthenia and sexual factors ('sexual neurasthenia') would seem to me to be -- neurasthenia (lethargy, depression...) is more likely to be prevalent in situations where a person's life is 'sexless', i.e., not enough sensual and sexual touch...When the blood circulation is flowing properly, depression, apathy, lethargy, lifelessness -- neurasthenia -- generally is not likely to be an issue...unless the particular issues go deeper than simply a lack of 'touch' and 'hedonistic pleasure'... There may be underlying 'romantic' and/or 'spirituality' and/or 'more general self-esteem/self-identity, transference and/or existential issues'....

All neuroses -- like all medical disorders -- can generally be classified into either or both of these two types: 'too much of something'....and/or....'not enough of something'... the neuroses of 'toxic overload' and/or the neuroses of 'nutritional deficiency'...

This is based on our principle of 'homeostatic/dialectic balance and imbalance'...

Too much impulse or not enough impulse...too much restraint or not enough restraint...too much 'Apollonianism' or too much 'Dionysianism'....too much 'approval-seeking' or too much 'narcissism'...too much 'righteousness' or too much 'rebelliousness/anarchy'... Too much 'anal-retentiveness' or too much 'anal-explosiveness'...Too much 'oral receptiveness' or not enough 'oral receptiveness'...Too much protection of 'self-boundaries' or not enough protection of 'self-boundaries'... Too much living 'from the neck up'...or too much living 'from the neck down'... Too much 'giving'...or too much 'getting'....Too much 'anxiety and 'phobia' and/or too much'obsessive-compulsion' and/or 'avoiding'...
Too much 'agressiveness'...or not enough 'assertiveness'...Too much 'social sensitivity and empathy' or not enough 'social sensitivity and empathy'....Too much talking and not enough listening...or too much listening and not enough talking...Too much 'thinking' and not enough 'doing'...or too much 'doing' and not enough 'thinking'... Too much 'thinking' and not enough 'feeling' or too much 'feeling' and not enough 'thinking'... Too much 'eating' and not enough 'exercising' or too much 'exercising' and not enough 'eating'...

Another two distinctions can be made between the 'anxiety-avoidance' neuroses and the 'narcissistic' (social transgression) neuroses....as well as between the 'distancing' neuroses and the 'hanging on' and/or 'stalking' neuroses...

Finally, I will make the distinction between the 'impulsive neuroses' -- exploding impulses from 'The Shadow-Id Vault' up to the 'Central Ego'; vs. the 'overly-restraining, 'anal-defensive' neuroses of 'squashed impulses'...held back, or sent back, impulses from The Central Ego to the ego-defensive restraints of the 'Shadow-Id Vault'

What Charcot, Breuer, Janet, Freud, and other medical professionals called 'hysteria' back in their time -- a predominantly 'female neurosis' -- might best be viewed today as the 'cultural over-suppression of women -- and the sexuality of women' (and/or 'the masculine abuse' of the sexuality of women).  These women were often stuck in their homes, often nursing sick fathers, caught between biological and psychological sexual impulses and cultural -- predominantly 'patriarchal' -- sexual restraints, and too often sexual abuses...and often these 'transference and existential self-cultural neuroses' showed up in the form of 'strange bodily and/or medical symptoms' without any perceived 'organic medical cause'...After May 1896, Freud would come to believe that the 'primary cause' of these 'hysterical neuroses' was 'repressed childhood sexual activity, fixations, fetishes, and/or impulsive fantasy' as opposed to before May 1896 when he took the more or less opposite viewpoint -- that hysteria was primarily caused by 'repressed childhood sexual traumacy/manipulation/exploitation/assault'....There's a pretty wide gulf between the two theories -- a controversial issue that is still causing disagreement and grief, both inside and outside the psychoanalytic community today...An unresolved theoretical and therapeutic conflict issue of huge proportions that I have addressed, and continue to address, in many of my 'bi-polar, dialectic-integrative essays', yesterday, today, and tomorrow...

 Which theory was 'right'? Or were they both partly right and partly wrong? Or was one theory right in some cases; the other theory right in a different set of cases? Maybe they were both sometimes a part of the same 'neurotic complex and/or syndrome'.  All of these issues I have addressed in essays gone past, as well as new essays still coming in the future....

Freud kept fighting with his 'either/or' dilemma of 'which theory was right' and 'which theory was wrong' -- or so we are led to believe -- and my historical hindsight vision of the situation is that Freud should have integrated both 'partial theoies' into one bigger, more 'synthesized' bi-polar theory... where the 'clinical exposition of a particular case' dictated what part of the theory was most utilized; not choosing 'half a bi-polar theory' and using 'the same half' to dictate how a therapist/psychoanalyst should approach the opposite half......'Seek first to understand; then to be understood'. (This was one of Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 1989). Freud often lost his sense of seeking first to understand his clients -- especially after 1896 -- in the 'game' of trying to 'communicate, persuade, and enforce his own personal, theoretical and therapeutic understandings that had a propensity to overstate and overgeneralize the clinical facts, first in one direction (before May 1896) and then in the opposite direction (after April 1896)...

The difference between a 'learning disability' and a 'neurotic learning disorder' is that in the first case, a person has trouble making the necessary associations to constitute what we call 'learning' and/or the person has trouble 'remembering' these associations -- this may be because of a 'neurological-biochemical-brain dysfunction' (or it may be because of 'lack of interest and/or desire to make the associative connection'; in contrast, with a 'neurotic learning disorder', a person in effect 'learns too much', he or she puts together 'bad, dysfunctional, associations' or as Freud called them -- 'false connections' -- which come back to haunt and hurt the person in later situations that are deemed 'similar' or 'the same' but may be 'significantly different' in important ways that are essentially missed.  Freud was a significant, serial 'culprit' in generating his own 'associatively reductionistic and/or overly stated false connections'...

Transference 'counter-phobic', 'obsessive-compulsive' neuroses occur when we subconsciously take an adult scene that is partly similar, partly different than our 'earlier (usually childhood) traumacy scene' -- and we find ways of 'manipulating' the new scene until we have effectively turned it into a 'symbolic re-creation' of our earlier childhood scene. The 'transference goal or game' here is to 'turn this later scene into a re-creation of our earlier scene' so that we can use the present scene in an attempt to 'master' a 'surrogate adult transference figure' in a sexual and/or aggressive manner so as to attempt to 'undo the psychological message' that we keep repeating to ourselves courtesy of our childhood rejecting transference figure that we are 'weak, rejectable, helpless and/or not worthy' in the presence of our perceived more powerful, more worthy 'childhood/adult transference figure'...

With 'learning', we need a balance -- just like everything else in life -- between 'more than not enough' (of the 'right' type of learning) and 'less than too much' (of the 'wrong' type of learning).

The same goes for 'distinguishing differences' -- between 'not distinguishing enough differences' between different situations, different contexts, different people..., and 'distinguishing too many differences' between different situations, different contexts, different people...that or who may still hold a certain 'core commonality' that should be registered...relative to present and/or future interpretations, evaluations, and decisions...

That completes our little discussion about 'neurosis' today...

-- dgb, April 10th, 11th, 2011, updated Feb. 18th, 2012....

-- David Gordon Bain
  
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...