June 26th, 27th, 2015
Finished!
I am going to do a little 'time-traveling' in this essay.
Sometimes the most important ideas in human philosophy are the ones
that go the furthest back in human history. In this regard, the idea of
'bipolarity' goes back about as far in human philosophy as recorded
human philosophy goes.
For good reason. Look around you and the phenomenon of
polarity or bipolarity can be found almost anywhere you look. Male and
female. Old and young. Or old and new. Big and small. Alive and dead.
Left and right. Conservative and Liberal. Up and down. Air and earth.
Fire and Water...
On and on we could go both with these 'polar phenomena'
in themselves, and with the words that I use to represent them -- words
generally being used to 'represent' the phenomena that we 'see' or
'infer' or 'value' in the world we live in, in the same sense that a
'map' is used to 'structurally represent' the 'real territory' that this
map is supposed to (but sometimes doesn't accurately) represent.
(Koryzybski, General Semantics).
Now I view Korzybski's work (Science and Sanity) in the
1930s as being some of the best work on Language, Meaning, Philosophy,
and Psychology that Western history has ever seen. Korzybski's work
overlaps with Wittgenstein's philosophy/epistemology, the latter of whom
wrote about some of the same core ideas as Korzybski relative to
'accurate representation' (you could probably put Bertrand Russell in
that group as well) but not in the same kind of drawn out 'treatise-like
detail (General Semantics) that Korzybski did. Stretching back further
into history than these three philosopher-epistemologists was Kant who
basically claimed that we 'kant know anything' -- a rather provocative,
controversial statement when Kant finally finished writing 'The Critique
of Pure Reason'.
Based on epistemological scepticism of an only slightly
lesser degree than his predecessor, David Hume -- the ultimate
empiricist who said 'if you can't see it, don't believe it -- Kant
posited a 'sensory-perceptual-conceptual-theoretical bubble' between
man's 'intake' of 'knowledge' (the 'phenomenal' world) and the world of
'things-in-themselves' (the 'noumenal world) which man could never truly
'know' without 'perceptual-conceptual distortion'.
From this rather 'distressing' idea of Kant's (at least
to some), and the fact that I like to think in terms of metaphors and
symbolism and mythologies as well as 'juxtaposing bipolar ideas'
together in rather odd, unorthodox, 'post- Hegelian dialectic ways' --
comes my own bipolar dialectic concepts of 'fictional facts' or 'factual
fictions' or 'functional mythologies' of which this developing work
here is likely going to be full of them.
I like to develop functional clinical metaphors and
mythologies -- which involve comparisons between different realms of
human study such as between biology, mythology, cosmology, philosophy,
psychology, spirituality -- with psychoanalysis being at the centre of
this comparative, associative universe -- where, for example, biology,
psychology, and bio-psychology can be viewed as involving the
'introjection' of certain mythological-spiritual and philosophical
schools of thought (Greek Mythology, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao tse,
Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Korzybski...) and conversely -- and
dialectically -- human mythology-spirituality, and philosophy can be
viewed as involving the 'projection' of man's inner biology and
'bio-psychology'.
It is upon this idea, this assumption that I started
building my 'multi-bipolar model of the human psyche' with Anaximander,
Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Korzybski, and
Cannon providing much of the unconscious, bio-psychological base of this
model. Specifically, as Anaximander was postulating a universe that
started with 'Chaos' or 'The Apeiron', so too, I was postulating an
'internal bio-psychology' that started with an 'internal Abyss' and a
'Chaotic-Disorganized-Mystifying-Needful-Driving-Passionate Dionysian
Id-Ego' (Freud's Id) which starts to evolve and develop with a
combination of internal 'God-Nature-Genetic-Given-Capabilities-or-Gifts'
and the onset/onslaught of 'life experiences' of a new-born baby being
'evicted' from the womb -- and thrown out into an 'Abyss' of 'Chaos'.
Here -- unlike Freud, but more like Lacan -- I postulate a
more 'organized and organizing, associating, differentiating,
classifying, bipolarizing Apollonian Id-Ego'. Family and culture start
to play a bigger and bigger influence on the evolving development of the
'id-ego' as from a more 'uncivilized state' it moves -- in most cases
-- to a more and more 'civilized-id-restraining state of consciousness.
As our more 'uncivilized' and 'civilized' id-ego states
clash with each other -- much like hundreds or thousands or millions of
bipolar phenomena clash with each other in different ways -- for
dominance in a way that is beautifully described by Anaximander back
somewhere before 550 BC in his 'chaos-bipolarity-conflict' theory that
nets a 'winning, dominant' polarity' and a 'losing, submissive polarity'
-- the first taking over 'the limelight' of cosmic existence, the
second being relegated to 'the shadows' of cosmic existence -- and what
Anaximander was describing philosophically in this manner, I am
describing as a 'factual fiction' inside our human body, mind, and
'bio-psychology'.
In this regard, extrapolating from Anaximander's ancient
philosophy, I time-travel again and borrow from Jung when Jung says that
what is dominant in our conscious mind (the limelight) tends to be
submissive in our unconscious mind (the shadows), and what is dominant
in our unconscious mind (the shadows) tends to be submissive in our
conscious mind (the limelight).
Thus, in this respect, our subconscious
or unconscious mind tends to both support and compensate for the 'gaps'
in our often 'one-sided', conscious mind. In other words, the human mind
-- and body -- is built -- created -- on what might be called
'dialectic-bipolar evolutionary growth'.
Now, it is this dialectic-bipolar-evolutionary-growth
principle that is the fundamental principle of Anaximander's brilliant
'Chaotic-Bipolar-Conflict-and-Evolution' philosophical theory from
sometime before 550 BC that stretches and time-travels (as well as
distance-travels but we will get to this shortly) all the way to Hegel's
classic philosophical work -- arguably the most important philosophical
treatise and grand narrative in Western human history -- 'The
Phenomenology of Spirit' (1806?) -- that I now 'introject
bio-psychologically into the 'essence of the human soul' that becomes
the most important component of the
humanistic-existential-psychoanalytic-spiritual-pantheistic model that I
am trying to communicate to you -- or with you.
It is this model that I call 'Hegel's Hotel' which can be
viewed as a metaphor that we can either 'project externally into a
philosophy and/or even build as an architectural
philosophy-psychology-spiritual institute, and/or alternatively it can
be 'introjected' into a 'model of the personality' that is meant to
describe in a 'mindful way, the splitting or dividing up of the inside
of our mind in such a fashion that, once we learn this model, can allow
us to follow our cognitive-emotional activities into whatever
'ego-state' or 'ego-position' that these activities may take us (as
classified by the model which can be viewed as a
'fictional-factual-spiritual-mythology').
Still with me? We have already done a lot of
time-traveling. I have a few more places that I would like to go such as
firstly -- Nietzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy'.
This fabulous little book -- Nietzsche's first work that
was a brilliant extrapolation of Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit but
shortly afterwards rejected by Nietzsche himself as being 'too
Hegelian' -- adds another dichotomous, paradoxical, bipolar element to
'Hegel's Hotel'.
Nietzsche's thesis in this important but largely
overlooked philosophical work, adds a 'tragic' element to Hegel's
dialectic philosophy that harks back also to Anaximander's philosophy of
'clashing, warring opposites' -- and that is that what can 'lead us to
spiritual human bliss in terms of either a
'homeostatic-dialectic-philosophical-psychological-spiritual balance'
and/or a 'celebration of extreme human achievement and self-empowerment'
(which we can call 'Nietzsche's or Zarathustra's Mountain') can also
end tragically and horrifically in human despair when we can't get to
this place of human accomplishment and/or human balance -- when the
clash between Dionysus and Apollo, between the more civilized and less
civilized man, between polar opposites -- between superego and id,
between persona and shadow, between inferior and superior, secure and
insecure self -- doesn't reach harmony at all but rather -- 'drops off
of Nietzsche's Existential Rope' -- and back down into our deepest
abyss, either death or the closest thing to it -- Chaos -- which we can
either perish in, or climb our way back out of again...like we did when
we were born into this existence -- unknowing of anything, until we
start to exercise our 'gifts', our 'capabilities' -- or not.
So here I will postulate the meeting of Freud's life and
death instinct -- in man's phenomenology of spirit -- or phenomenology
of tragedy. 'To be or not to be -- that is the question.' (Hamlet,
Shakespeare).
More time traveling. Let's travel back to ancient China
at about the same time that Anaximander was philosophizing in that part
of Europe that would now be called Turkey. Asian Turkey Back then, it
was a part of Greece. Miletus, Ionia. Right on the borderline between
Europe and Asia and close to Persia as well.
Should we consider it entirely coincidental that one of
the forefathers of ancient Chinese philosophy -- Lao tse -- one of the
main creators of one of the main schools of Chinese philosophy --
Daoism/Taoism -- developed a school of philosophy that can easily be
compared to the philosophy of Anaximander from Miletus, Ionia?
Both created 'dialectic bipolar philosophies'. The
biggest difference between the two schools of philosophy is that
Anaximander's philosophy was mainly one of 'dialectic competition and
conflict' -- the opposite bipolarities in a dialectic, bipolar spectrum
taking turns 'dominating' each other and 'submitting' to each other, the
first dominating the limelight, the second dominating the shadows;
whereas in Lao tse's school of Daoism the two 'conflicting parts in a
bipolar spectrum' -- 'yin' 'and 'yang' -- can be balanced in
'co-operation' and 'dialectic harmony' or in biological language --
'homeostatically balanced' -- to create 'The Path' with 'qi energy'
being labelled as the 'essential life energy force'.
In this regard, Anaximander's dialectic philosophy can be
viewed as a 'dualistic-dialectic competition and conflict for power'
model of philosophy which if not 'dialectically balanced
towards equilibrium and harmony' in a Lao-tse/Daoist type manner of
'balancing yin and yang' can result in what Nietzsche labeled as 'The
Birth of Tragedy' and what Freud labeled as 'the death instinct'.
Hegel straddles the middle -- determininstically in a
historical manner-- arguing (my extrapolation) that whether the
dialectic conflict within any bipolar spectrum is balanced peacefully
(Lao tse), or whether it is balanced over time by competition, power,
war and strife, is a moot point -- either way, 'dialectic evolution'
is going to take place through the dialectic process of what we can now
view as a 'triadic' or 'triangular' model of: 1. 'thesis';
2. 'anti-thesis'; and 3. 'synthesis'.
However, ideally for mankind, it is better to aim to
achieve dialectic evolution or 'trialectic equilibrium and synergy' the
Lao tse (democratically dialectic way) as opposed to the Anaximander
(power-driven, dualistic, take no prisoners, leave no survivors, way).
The history and evolution of mankind can be viewed as an
oscillation between the Anaximander-power-driven, conquest and conquer,
approach to dialectic evolution as opposed to the more 'yin-yang',
democratic-negotiation, let's aim for peace and harmony, equilibrium and
harmony, approach to dialectic evolution.
The dichotomy and paradox of the oscillation of these two
opposing approaches to dialectic evolution -- dictatorship vs.
democracy -- can be viewed as constituting the essential paradox of
man's internal 'phenomenology of spirit' as can also be construed as an
internal playoff between what Freud called 'the life instinct vs. the
death instinct' -- because the power and war-driven dictatorship vs.
rebellion and anarchy approach is invariably going to lead to much more
'pre-mature and violent death'.
What we have here is the essence of a 'TOE' theory -- a
'Theory of Everything' that -- philosophically speaking -- can be viewed
as being bigger than the Persian or Macedonian or Mongolian Empire --
all put together -- that can be viewed as connecting, Cosmology,
Mythology, Spirituality, Religion, Science, Biology, Chemistry, Physics,
Neurology, Psychology, Bio-Psychology and Philosophy, Politics....
Normalcy vs. Pathology...and The Pathology of Normalcy...
What we have here could quite possibly be viewed as 'The Grandest of all Grand Narratives'.
What other connecting links can I make here? Lao tse and
Jung. Lao tse's 'qi energy' being linked to Jung's definition of
'libido' as 'life energy'.
Now to bring Freud back into the picture, we need to do a
little more 'energy translating'. Freud's 'id energy' can be construed
either more concretely as 'sexual energy' when compared and contrasted
to Lao tse's qi energy and Jung's life energy, and/or Freud's id energy
could be construed as a 'mixture of life and death energy (Eros and
Thanatos) in man's 'Phenomenology of Life vs. Death Spirit' as construed
by man's oscillation between the drive for control and power vs. the
drive for democracy and egalitarian civil rights and participation in
the democratic.
The resulting 'direction of this dialectically and/or
trialectically charged Path' can take us towards either 'Nietzsche's
Birth and Path of Tragedy' or it can take us towards 'Nietzsche's
Celebration of The Synthesis and Synergy of The Apollonian-Dionysian
Spirit and Achievement of man' whether this be on the metaphorically
'tallest mountain' or whether this be in 'the re-integration of Apollo
and Dionysus in 'the caves of our unconscious'.
What we now need to do in terms of defining 'The
Pathology of Normalcy' is to describe the different types of 'blockages
of energy' whether this be construed as 'qi energy', 'life
energy', and/or 'sexual energy'.
And in order to do this, we need to return to Freud's
'old brand of bio-psychology -- and his supposedly outdated, and often
dismissed hydraulic model'.
We will do this in the next essay.
Have a great day!
-- dgb, June 27th, 2015,
-- David Gordon Bain
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Capitalism As The Titanic
Above all else, ethics and humans caring about humans is the key to
repairing the Titanic -- Capitalism -- before it sinks with millions
of people inside it.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Essay 2: A Tribute To Jeffrey Masson's Re-Emphasis Of Trauma Theory in Psychoanalysis
Updated and re-written November 6th-8th, 2014, and Feb. 25th, 2015; originally written on March 14th, 2014.
I have told this story online in different parts and different ways in different essays and other transactions.
However, this rendition probably covers most of the essentials of what I want to communicate about the major influence that Dr. Jeffrey Masson had on my life in terms of: 1. becoming deeply involved in 'The Seduction Theory Controversy'; 2. meeting Dr. Masson by email, and interviewing him by email in March, 2010; and 3. becoming 'obsessed' with integrating early Freudian 'reality-trauma-seduction theory' (pre-1897) with his partly simultaneously (1895-1938) evolving 'impulse-drive-childhood sexuality-Oedipus-fantasy theory'.
I remember walking into a Queen Street East bookstore in Toronto, I think around 1994 or 1995 and walking over to the psychology section, and seeing three books jump out at me by an author who I was totally unfamiliar with.
The titles of the books, respectively, in about the order that they caught my attention were: 1. 'Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst'; 2. 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory'; and 3. 'The Unabridged Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904' -- the first two written, the third edited, by the unknown writer (at least to me at that time), Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.
I believe I bought the first two books and left the bookstore; the third one I bought at a later date. Somewhere in this mix, I also bought Janet Malcolm's highly entertaining (but I learned later editorially skewed) 'In The Freud Archives' -- all four books dealing with the same controversial subject matter: Freud's (1896 to 2014...still ticking...) Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory vs. his later Oedipus (Childhood Sexual Fantasy) Theory.
Basically the controversy boiled down to 'which was more right' and 'which was more wrong' relative to the childhood etiology/causality of hysteria and obsessional neurosis -- it was like a 'Copernican 180 degree shift' in how Freud viewed the cause of neurosis -- and it all further boiled down to what Freud was and was not thinking in 1895-1896, which of course, will never be definitively known or proven other than in the leftover circumstantial evidence that can be found in Freud's letters to Fliess during these two psychoanalysis-revolutionizing years. And Freud was the primary revolutionary deconstructionist and reconstructionist (with assistance from Fliess) during these two most controversial years of the building of psychoanalysis.
Did Freud get it 'more right' in his first theory (his trauma-seduction theory) or in his 'second theory' (his childhood sexuality fantasy theory) -- or were there elements of 'right' and 'wrong' in both of these respective bipolar opposite theories that Freud didn't know how to bring 'under the same roof' -- like, for example, the way physicists were able to unite the 'particle' and 'wavelength' theories into one bipolar 'particle-wavelength' theory of matter and energy that was 'stronger' than both the 'partially right' theories previously.
If you think about it, all theories are inherently reductionistic and generally one-sided, pointing in 'this' direction but not in 'that' direction, unless or until you start to unite opposing bipolar theories into one package. This is how we get to the Hegelian idea that all theories (or at least the biased, one-sided theories) are inherently self-destructive as soon as they try to explain what they can't properly explain because what needs to be explained 'lies outside of the theoretical box' of what is trying to be explained.
If we have a case of 'innocent childhood sexual exploration' we don't want to confuse this with 'childhood sexual abuse' unless there is an adult or older child exploiting the situation; whereas if we have a case of 'real childhood sexual abuse, manipulation, exploitation', we don't want to confuse this with 'innocent childhood sexual exploration'. Certainly, we don't want to confuse theoretically interpreted sexual fantasies with real memories of childhood sexual abuse anymore than we want to confuse false or distorted memories with real ones.
A one-sided theory cannot explain everything on both sides of a bipolar issue that the one-sided theory takes a one-sided stance on. In contrast, a two-sided dualistic-dialectic theory can.
For example, people can initiate their own sexual impulses, whether child or adult, AND people can also be sexually manipulated, coerced, exploited, forced... by someone who has more power than them. Stated differently, sexual trauma and sexual fantasy, desire, and drive are not necessarily mutually exclusive phenomena. A two-sided dualistic-dialectic theory can account for this. A one-sided unilateral theory can't.
Capitalism and socialism both have 'human value' and 'dis-value' attached to them, depending on how and to what extent each of them they are applied, and to what extent they are connected to 'humanistic ethics' (allowing for the fact that there is still plenty of room for debate and human disagreement). Often, you see a right wing political ideology following on the footsteps of a left wing political ideology and visa versa because over time a one-sided ideological theory is going to expose itself as narcissistically favoring one side of the political ideological equation while neglecting and suppressing the other side of the equation that needs to be 'homeostatically balanced' with a more left wing-right wing dialectically integrative ideology that addresses both side of the political and ideological equation.
In this same fashion, after 1896, we have a Freudian ideology that emphasized 'human and childhood sexuality and drive' as opposed to 'human and childhood sexual abuse', and both theories were partly right, partly wrong which is why we are still arguing about them and which is 'more right' than the other.
.............................................................................................................
Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.
Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.
Education is the art of making man ethical.
Thus, the one-sided idealist and/or ideologist is always going to be partly 'right' and partly 'wrong', partly ethical and partly unethical -- the 'unethical' part being attached to that part of his or her one-sided theory that does not cover the 'blind spot' of the 'territory' that is covered by his or her dualistic and dialectic opponent -- the idealist and/or ideologist who is covering that part of the 'wholistic territory' that is not covered by the first idealist and/or ideologist.
Thus, every theory -- or at least every one-sided theory -- is going to be at least partly 'neurotic' -- it is going to try to explain that part of reality that is its 'blind spot', and the blind spot is the other side of the fence of the unilateral theory.
Two opposing partial truths -- or at least the theories that represent these opposing partial truths -- when synthesized together make for a better all-encompassing theory than either theory working unilaterally by itself trying to cover a part of reality that is just not covered by the unilateral, one-sided theory.
I plan to fix this problem with a united Freudian and Post-Freudian 'reality-trauma-defense-fantasy-impulse-drive theory' that covers all of Freud's psychological work from 1893 to 1938 -- 45 years -- not the 39 years that is called 'Classical' Psychoanalysis. It should be called 'Classical One-Sided Psychoanalysis'.
-- dgb, Nov. 8th, 2014, updated, Feb. 25th, 2014,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations and Creations...
-- Are Still in Process...
I have told this story online in different parts and different ways in different essays and other transactions.
However, this rendition probably covers most of the essentials of what I want to communicate about the major influence that Dr. Jeffrey Masson had on my life in terms of: 1. becoming deeply involved in 'The Seduction Theory Controversy'; 2. meeting Dr. Masson by email, and interviewing him by email in March, 2010; and 3. becoming 'obsessed' with integrating early Freudian 'reality-trauma-seduction theory' (pre-1897) with his partly simultaneously (1895-1938) evolving 'impulse-drive-childhood sexuality-Oedipus-fantasy theory'.
I remember walking into a Queen Street East bookstore in Toronto, I think around 1994 or 1995 and walking over to the psychology section, and seeing three books jump out at me by an author who I was totally unfamiliar with.
The titles of the books, respectively, in about the order that they caught my attention were: 1. 'Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst'; 2. 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory'; and 3. 'The Unabridged Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904' -- the first two written, the third edited, by the unknown writer (at least to me at that time), Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.
I believe I bought the first two books and left the bookstore; the third one I bought at a later date. Somewhere in this mix, I also bought Janet Malcolm's highly entertaining (but I learned later editorially skewed) 'In The Freud Archives' -- all four books dealing with the same controversial subject matter: Freud's (1896 to 2014...still ticking...) Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory vs. his later Oedipus (Childhood Sexual Fantasy) Theory.
Basically the controversy boiled down to 'which was more right' and 'which was more wrong' relative to the childhood etiology/causality of hysteria and obsessional neurosis -- it was like a 'Copernican 180 degree shift' in how Freud viewed the cause of neurosis -- and it all further boiled down to what Freud was and was not thinking in 1895-1896, which of course, will never be definitively known or proven other than in the leftover circumstantial evidence that can be found in Freud's letters to Fliess during these two psychoanalysis-revolutionizing years. And Freud was the primary revolutionary deconstructionist and reconstructionist (with assistance from Fliess) during these two most controversial years of the building of psychoanalysis.
Did Freud get it 'more right' in his first theory (his trauma-seduction theory) or in his 'second theory' (his childhood sexuality fantasy theory) -- or were there elements of 'right' and 'wrong' in both of these respective bipolar opposite theories that Freud didn't know how to bring 'under the same roof' -- like, for example, the way physicists were able to unite the 'particle' and 'wavelength' theories into one bipolar 'particle-wavelength' theory of matter and energy that was 'stronger' than both the 'partially right' theories previously.
If you think about it, all theories are inherently reductionistic and generally one-sided, pointing in 'this' direction but not in 'that' direction, unless or until you start to unite opposing bipolar theories into one package. This is how we get to the Hegelian idea that all theories (or at least the biased, one-sided theories) are inherently self-destructive as soon as they try to explain what they can't properly explain because what needs to be explained 'lies outside of the theoretical box' of what is trying to be explained.
If we have a case of 'innocent childhood sexual exploration' we don't want to confuse this with 'childhood sexual abuse' unless there is an adult or older child exploiting the situation; whereas if we have a case of 'real childhood sexual abuse, manipulation, exploitation', we don't want to confuse this with 'innocent childhood sexual exploration'. Certainly, we don't want to confuse theoretically interpreted sexual fantasies with real memories of childhood sexual abuse anymore than we want to confuse false or distorted memories with real ones.
A one-sided theory cannot explain everything on both sides of a bipolar issue that the one-sided theory takes a one-sided stance on. In contrast, a two-sided dualistic-dialectic theory can.
For example, people can initiate their own sexual impulses, whether child or adult, AND people can also be sexually manipulated, coerced, exploited, forced... by someone who has more power than them. Stated differently, sexual trauma and sexual fantasy, desire, and drive are not necessarily mutually exclusive phenomena. A two-sided dualistic-dialectic theory can account for this. A one-sided unilateral theory can't.
Capitalism and socialism both have 'human value' and 'dis-value' attached to them, depending on how and to what extent each of them they are applied, and to what extent they are connected to 'humanistic ethics' (allowing for the fact that there is still plenty of room for debate and human disagreement). Often, you see a right wing political ideology following on the footsteps of a left wing political ideology and visa versa because over time a one-sided ideological theory is going to expose itself as narcissistically favoring one side of the political ideological equation while neglecting and suppressing the other side of the equation that needs to be 'homeostatically balanced' with a more left wing-right wing dialectically integrative ideology that addresses both side of the political and ideological equation.
In this same fashion, after 1896, we have a Freudian ideology that emphasized 'human and childhood sexuality and drive' as opposed to 'human and childhood sexual abuse', and both theories were partly right, partly wrong which is why we are still arguing about them and which is 'more right' than the other.
.............................................................................................................
Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.
Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.
Education is the art of making man ethical.
............................................................................................................
Thus, the one-sided idealist and/or ideologist is always going to be partly 'right' and partly 'wrong', partly ethical and partly unethical -- the 'unethical' part being attached to that part of his or her one-sided theory that does not cover the 'blind spot' of the 'territory' that is covered by his or her dualistic and dialectic opponent -- the idealist and/or ideologist who is covering that part of the 'wholistic territory' that is not covered by the first idealist and/or ideologist.
Thus, every theory -- or at least every one-sided theory -- is going to be at least partly 'neurotic' -- it is going to try to explain that part of reality that is its 'blind spot', and the blind spot is the other side of the fence of the unilateral theory.
Bipolar, dualistic-dialectic theories -- like 'the particle-wave theory' or
'quantum theory' -- do much better at capturing the blind spots that are missed by each
respective unilateral theory that needs the opposite side of the united bipolar theory to cover its unilateral 'blind spots'. Dare I say that it is often a lot like marriage. Opposites attract for a reason. Each helps to alleviate the other's blind spots.
Thus, the need for a 'reality-fantasy' theory in Classical Psychoanalysis that unites Freud's work both before and after 1896 -- something that Freud couldn't see, something that The Psychoanalytic Establishment (most notably Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler) in 1982 couldn't see, and something that even Jeffrey Masson couldn't see. They all had their 'psychoanalytic blind spots' that were reinforced by the nature of their opposing one-sided Freudian theories that each righteously adhered to and defended while declaring that the opposite theory was 'wrong'.
Thus, the need for a 'reality-fantasy' theory in Classical Psychoanalysis that unites Freud's work both before and after 1896 -- something that Freud couldn't see, something that The Psychoanalytic Establishment (most notably Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler) in 1982 couldn't see, and something that even Jeffrey Masson couldn't see. They all had their 'psychoanalytic blind spots' that were reinforced by the nature of their opposing one-sided Freudian theories that each righteously adhered to and defended while declaring that the opposite theory was 'wrong'.
.........................................................................................................
You were right from your side, and I was right from mine,
We're just one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind...- Bob Dylan
..........................................................................................................................
Two opposing partial truths -- or at least the theories that represent these opposing partial truths -- when synthesized together make for a better all-encompassing theory than either theory working unilaterally by itself trying to cover a part of reality that is just not covered by the unilateral, one-sided theory.
I plan to fix this problem with a united Freudian and Post-Freudian 'reality-trauma-defense-fantasy-impulse-drive theory' that covers all of Freud's psychological work from 1893 to 1938 -- 45 years -- not the 39 years that is called 'Classical' Psychoanalysis. It should be called 'Classical One-Sided Psychoanalysis'.
-- dgb, Nov. 8th, 2014, updated, Feb. 25th, 2014,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations and Creations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Essay 1: An Introduction To DGB Multi-Integrative Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis
Essay 1: An Introduction To DGB Multi-Integrative Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis
Good day!
Please read my profile on Linked In to see how I came to meet Dr. Jeffrey Masson by email, to the point where I became 'obsessed' with generating my own conclusions regarding the still very controversial 'Seduction Theory Controversy' that led to Dr. Masson going public with his complaints about his perspective on Freud's alleged 'suppression' of his early (1896) Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory.
On a fateful meeting on April 21st, 1896, Freud read his highly provocative theory on 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' to The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society connecting early childhood sexual abuse with hysteria (passive sexual abuse) as well as to obsessional neurosis (active childhood sexual abuse).
After the reading of his paper, the leader of the Society, Dr. Krafft-Ebing, called Freud's paper a 'scientific fairy tale' -- and Freud walked off into the evening, writing Fliess a few days later and calling the members of the Society 'jackasses' for rejecting his paper. Freud still wrote up the paper and had it published later in May of 1896.
However, Freud seemed to be waffling on his childhood sexual abuse theory, even as early as January, 1896, calling hysteria a mixture of, and conflict between, pleasurable and unpleasurable early childhood sexual experience, of either the passive (hysteria) or active (obsessional neurosis) type..
Over the next few years, say from the beginning of 1896 to the end of 1899, and even up to 1905, (Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality), Freud basically turned his early theory of trauma and childhood sexual abuse upside down, creating a new 'fantasy-drive-libido' theory' where 'infantile and childhood sexuality' was viewed as the breeding ground for much later 'adult perversions', 'fixations', 'regressions', 'obsessive compulsions' and the like that separated the 'neurotics' sexual behavior from what might be called the more 'centrally based adult sexual behavior' that more 'normal-neurotics' engage in. Still, we all have our 'signature fantasies' based on early childhood experience.
Today, this second take on human neurosis and sexual behavior stands out as as what is usually called : Fantasy, Drive, Childhood Sexuality, and Ego-Defense Theory which collectively is usually referred to as Classical (Freudian) Psychoanalysis whereas as his early trauma and childhood sexual abuse theory (and the beginning of ego-defense theory) are usually referred to collectively as Freud's 'Pre-Psychoanalytic theories' (meaning they were written and believed in pre-1897, before later being largely rejected).
Classical theory started to take its early shape in 1896 and 1897 as Freud began to trumpet the ideas of 'wish fulfillment', 'instincts' or 'drives', 'infantile and childhood sexuality', and the beginning of 'The Oedipus Complex' in a private letter to Wilhelm Fliess in October of 1897 -- . 'Screen Memories' and 'The Interpretation of Dreams would not be finished and published until 1899, although the publication date listed on The Interpretation of Dreams was, and still is1900, to freshly bring in the 20th century with a new Copernican-like, Darwin-like conception of the human mind and unconscious psycho-dynamics controlling our conscious thoughts and behavior much more than we previously believed. Bringing in this new conceputalization of the mind both before and after 1896 remains Freud's legacy as being one of the most creative and provocative minds of the late 19th and early 20th century..
Relative to Masson in the 1980s, he probably would not have lost his very high profile job as The Projects Director of The Freud Archives if he hadn't brought into question the very moral integrity of Freud's character.
However, he did, and for this Masson paid with his short but very charismatic career, claiming in interviews in the early 1980s that Freud during and/or after 1896 started to 'lose moral integrity' as he began to 'suppress' his earlier findings and theories on the causal/etiological relationship between hysteria and his Trauma-Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory which later took the limelight off of adult male sexual abusers, and instead shone the light on 'childhood sexual instinct' to the point of even 'inventing' allegedly 'false or distorted memories' that were allegedly created, according to the later Freud, by underlying childhood erotic desires which turned into adult unconscious/repressed adult erotic desires of the same basic childhood background combing genetic instinct with 'environmental coincidences' or 'accidents'.
Masson argued publicly in the 1980s that Freud's 'instinct, fantasy, childhood sexuality, and Oedipus Complex theories were all part of Freud's 'loss of moral integrity' in terms of his post 1896 insisting that many of his previous female patients had not been sexually abused at all but were simply unconsciously relating to Freud the childhood desires of The Oedipus Complex and childhood sexual fantasies woven into what he now called 'distorted memories' of incestuous fantasies which he had previously insisted were real cases of childhood sexual abuse.
Masson lost his high profile job in the fall of 1982 -- and indeed began to leave or be evicted from all the different psychoanalytic societies he was involved in.
After writing a series of 'anti-theory', 'anti-psychiatry' and 'anti-psychoanalysis' books in the mid 1980s and early 1990s, Masson eventually pulled away from this scene altogether, became an animal psychologist specializing on 'emotions in animals', and around the mid 1990s, left for New Zealand with his wife to raise a family and to continue to study animal psychology and emotions, publishing a series of very popular books in this domain.
Masson still resides in New Zealand today, and did his 2010 interview with me by email from New Zealand.
Who was right? Freud and The Psychoanalytic Society on their mutual defense of the 'clinical legitimacy' of Freud's 180 degree change in theory starting in 1896?
Or Masson and his claim that Freud 'lost moral courage' in order basically not to be blackballed and thrown out of his profession by his surrounding members of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society?
This subject matter still remains a very controversial -- albeit now largely 'dormant' but still very sensitive -- subject matter both within and outside of Psychoanalysis today.
More and more psychoanalysts, for their part, have probably left Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis for now less controversial theories such as 'Object Relations' Theory (Klein, Winnicott, Fairbairn, Guntrip...), 'Attachment Theory', 'Self-Psychology (Kohut and others...), Lacan, Bion -- none of these theories which contain Freud's arguably 'most controversial theory' -- the Oedipus Theory (as well as his later 'Life and Death Instinct Theory' (1920 and onward) which contains the sometimes huge epistemological problem of 'real' vs. 'distorted and/or entirely false' conscious and/or unconscious memories -- but especially unconscious ones.
I aim to integrate, re-work, and expand all 45 years of Freud's professional theorizing (1893 to 1938), both relative to Freud's early trauma and seduction theories as well as his later fantasy theories, and then on to largely post-Freudian Object Relations, Self Psychology, and Neo-Psychoanalytic, Adlerian Psychology, Stekel's Psychology, Ferenczi's, Rank's, Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Fromm, Horney, Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis, my own modified brand of Nietzsche's early and later Humanistic-Existentialism, and elements of Korzybski's and Hayakawa's ideas from General Semantics, and other forms of 'Cognitive-Emotional-Behavior Theory and Therapy (Ellis, Beck, Kelly, Maxwell Maltz, Nathaniel Branden, and Donald Meichenbaum who I wrote my final thesis for in 1979 at The University of Waterloo, to get my Honours B.A, in Psychology before getting involved with both The Adlerian Institute of Ontario (1980-81), and The Gestalt Institute of Toronto (off and on between 1979 and 1991), hearing the famous Dr. Harold Mosak speak from The Adlerian Institute in Chicago, and training under two of the last three Directors of The Gestlt Institute of Toronto (Jorge Rosner and JoAnne Greenham).
After spending a lot of time investigating -- and drawing my own integrative conclusions -- on Freud's infamous Seduction Theory, my 'obsessional interest' in psychoanalysis became more than this, leading to what I am calling a full integrative and unique brand of 'DGB Neo-Psychoanalysis'.
Incidentally, I tend to side more with Masson's side of the argument although unlike Masson, I have found a way to integrate Freud's early reality and trauma theory with his later fantasy theory whereas Masson believed that Freud's early (pre-1897) reality-trauma-seduction theory was simply a superior brand of psychoanalysis to his later fantasy (Classical) theory.
I found and offer a 'peace bridge' between Masson and The Psychoanalytic Establishment as unlikely as that is to happen some 30 years after this conflict resulted in a rather nasty 'psychoanalytic divorce'.
'You're right from your side; I'm right from mine. We're both just one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind.' -- Bob Dylan
Welcome aboard for those of you who wish to follow my re-working of all 45 years of Freud's theorizing (1893 to 1938); not just the last 38 years (1900 to 1938).
Cheers!
-- dgb, David Gordon Bain, October 31st, 2014.
Dr. Ewa Carlton 1st
Please read my profile on Linked In to see how I came to meet Dr. Jeffrey Masson by email, to the point where I became 'obsessed' with generating my own conclusions regarding the still very controversial 'Seduction Theory Controversy' that led to Dr. Masson going public with his complaints about his perspective on Freud's alleged 'suppression' of his early (1896) Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory.
On a fateful meeting on April 21st, 1896, Freud read his highly provocative theory on 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' to The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society connecting early childhood sexual abuse with hysteria (passive sexual abuse) as well as to obsessional neurosis (active childhood sexual abuse).
After the reading of his paper, the leader of the Society, Dr. Krafft-Ebing, called Freud's paper a 'scientific fairy tale' -- and Freud walked off into the evening, writing Fliess a few days later and calling the members of the Society 'jackasses' for rejecting his paper. Freud still wrote up the paper and had it published later in May of 1896.
However, Freud seemed to be waffling on his childhood sexual abuse theory, even as early as January, 1896, calling hysteria a mixture of, and conflict between, pleasurable and unpleasurable early childhood sexual experience, of either the passive (hysteria) or active (obsessional neurosis) type..
Over the next few years, say from the beginning of 1896 to the end of 1899, and even up to 1905, (Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality), Freud basically turned his early theory of trauma and childhood sexual abuse upside down, creating a new 'fantasy-drive-libido' theory' where 'infantile and childhood sexuality' was viewed as the breeding ground for much later 'adult perversions', 'fixations', 'regressions', 'obsessive compulsions' and the like that separated the 'neurotics' sexual behavior from what might be called the more 'centrally based adult sexual behavior' that more 'normal-neurotics' engage in. Still, we all have our 'signature fantasies' based on early childhood experience.
Today, this second take on human neurosis and sexual behavior stands out as as what is usually called : Fantasy, Drive, Childhood Sexuality, and Ego-Defense Theory which collectively is usually referred to as Classical (Freudian) Psychoanalysis whereas as his early trauma and childhood sexual abuse theory (and the beginning of ego-defense theory) are usually referred to collectively as Freud's 'Pre-Psychoanalytic theories' (meaning they were written and believed in pre-1897, before later being largely rejected).
Classical theory started to take its early shape in 1896 and 1897 as Freud began to trumpet the ideas of 'wish fulfillment', 'instincts' or 'drives', 'infantile and childhood sexuality', and the beginning of 'The Oedipus Complex' in a private letter to Wilhelm Fliess in October of 1897 -- . 'Screen Memories' and 'The Interpretation of Dreams would not be finished and published until 1899, although the publication date listed on The Interpretation of Dreams was, and still is1900, to freshly bring in the 20th century with a new Copernican-like, Darwin-like conception of the human mind and unconscious psycho-dynamics controlling our conscious thoughts and behavior much more than we previously believed. Bringing in this new conceputalization of the mind both before and after 1896 remains Freud's legacy as being one of the most creative and provocative minds of the late 19th and early 20th century..
Relative to Masson in the 1980s, he probably would not have lost his very high profile job as The Projects Director of The Freud Archives if he hadn't brought into question the very moral integrity of Freud's character.
However, he did, and for this Masson paid with his short but very charismatic career, claiming in interviews in the early 1980s that Freud during and/or after 1896 started to 'lose moral integrity' as he began to 'suppress' his earlier findings and theories on the causal/etiological relationship between hysteria and his Trauma-Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory which later took the limelight off of adult male sexual abusers, and instead shone the light on 'childhood sexual instinct' to the point of even 'inventing' allegedly 'false or distorted memories' that were allegedly created, according to the later Freud, by underlying childhood erotic desires which turned into adult unconscious/repressed adult erotic desires of the same basic childhood background combing genetic instinct with 'environmental coincidences' or 'accidents'.
Masson argued publicly in the 1980s that Freud's 'instinct, fantasy, childhood sexuality, and Oedipus Complex theories were all part of Freud's 'loss of moral integrity' in terms of his post 1896 insisting that many of his previous female patients had not been sexually abused at all but were simply unconsciously relating to Freud the childhood desires of The Oedipus Complex and childhood sexual fantasies woven into what he now called 'distorted memories' of incestuous fantasies which he had previously insisted were real cases of childhood sexual abuse.
Masson lost his high profile job in the fall of 1982 -- and indeed began to leave or be evicted from all the different psychoanalytic societies he was involved in.
After writing a series of 'anti-theory', 'anti-psychiatry' and 'anti-psychoanalysis' books in the mid 1980s and early 1990s, Masson eventually pulled away from this scene altogether, became an animal psychologist specializing on 'emotions in animals', and around the mid 1990s, left for New Zealand with his wife to raise a family and to continue to study animal psychology and emotions, publishing a series of very popular books in this domain.
Masson still resides in New Zealand today, and did his 2010 interview with me by email from New Zealand.
Who was right? Freud and The Psychoanalytic Society on their mutual defense of the 'clinical legitimacy' of Freud's 180 degree change in theory starting in 1896?
Or Masson and his claim that Freud 'lost moral courage' in order basically not to be blackballed and thrown out of his profession by his surrounding members of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society?
This subject matter still remains a very controversial -- albeit now largely 'dormant' but still very sensitive -- subject matter both within and outside of Psychoanalysis today.
More and more psychoanalysts, for their part, have probably left Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis for now less controversial theories such as 'Object Relations' Theory (Klein, Winnicott, Fairbairn, Guntrip...), 'Attachment Theory', 'Self-Psychology (Kohut and others...), Lacan, Bion -- none of these theories which contain Freud's arguably 'most controversial theory' -- the Oedipus Theory (as well as his later 'Life and Death Instinct Theory' (1920 and onward) which contains the sometimes huge epistemological problem of 'real' vs. 'distorted and/or entirely false' conscious and/or unconscious memories -- but especially unconscious ones.
I aim to integrate, re-work, and expand all 45 years of Freud's professional theorizing (1893 to 1938), both relative to Freud's early trauma and seduction theories as well as his later fantasy theories, and then on to largely post-Freudian Object Relations, Self Psychology, and Neo-Psychoanalytic, Adlerian Psychology, Stekel's Psychology, Ferenczi's, Rank's, Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Fromm, Horney, Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis, my own modified brand of Nietzsche's early and later Humanistic-Existentialism, and elements of Korzybski's and Hayakawa's ideas from General Semantics, and other forms of 'Cognitive-Emotional-Behavior Theory and Therapy (Ellis, Beck, Kelly, Maxwell Maltz, Nathaniel Branden, and Donald Meichenbaum who I wrote my final thesis for in 1979 at The University of Waterloo, to get my Honours B.A, in Psychology before getting involved with both The Adlerian Institute of Ontario (1980-81), and The Gestalt Institute of Toronto (off and on between 1979 and 1991), hearing the famous Dr. Harold Mosak speak from The Adlerian Institute in Chicago, and training under two of the last three Directors of The Gestlt Institute of Toronto (Jorge Rosner and JoAnne Greenham).
After spending a lot of time investigating -- and drawing my own integrative conclusions -- on Freud's infamous Seduction Theory, my 'obsessional interest' in psychoanalysis became more than this, leading to what I am calling a full integrative and unique brand of 'DGB Neo-Psychoanalysis'.
Incidentally, I tend to side more with Masson's side of the argument although unlike Masson, I have found a way to integrate Freud's early reality and trauma theory with his later fantasy theory whereas Masson believed that Freud's early (pre-1897) reality-trauma-seduction theory was simply a superior brand of psychoanalysis to his later fantasy (Classical) theory.
I found and offer a 'peace bridge' between Masson and The Psychoanalytic Establishment as unlikely as that is to happen some 30 years after this conflict resulted in a rather nasty 'psychoanalytic divorce'.
'You're right from your side; I'm right from mine. We're both just one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind.' -- Bob Dylan
Welcome aboard for those of you who wish to follow my re-working of all 45 years of Freud's theorizing (1893 to 1938); not just the last 38 years (1900 to 1938).
Cheers!
-- dgb, David Gordon Bain, October 31st, 2014.
Dr. Ewa Carlton 1st
Teacher of Psychology and Health and Social Care at Great Marlow School
I am a huge fan of Jeffrey Masson. Insofar, this is my favourite piece of your writings. I like your realistic depiction of Psychoanalysis.
Friday, December 19, 2014
The First True Case of Psychoanalysis (Revised, Edition, Dec. 18th, 2014)
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Name of Theory
3. Foundational Influences
4. Theory
5. Application: The First True Case of Psychoanalysis
..............................................................................................
This essay is driving me crazy. Sometimes the best essay you write is your first edition. Ten editions later, something has been lost relative to the freshness and spontaneity of the essay. And yet you can't go back -- or don't feel like you can go back. Four or five years have passed since I first wrote this essay in 2009 or 2010.
A lot of theoretical evolution has happened in my mind in those 4 or 5 years. And yet this remains one of my potentially most important essays -- my signature essay that separates my integrative work in psychoanalysis and neo-psychoanalysis from anything else that is out there on the market.
How can I most succinctly and simply 'mark my territory' here in a way that defines the essence of my work?
The range of my integrative brand of psychoanalysis-neo-psychoanalysis is extensive yet how can I communicate this range in as clear and simple a manner as possible? Obviously, I can't do it all in one essay.
So let's start with the name of this -- about the 1000th evolutionary mutation of psychoanalysis.
2. Name
Full Name: GAP (Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic) -DGB (Dialectic Gap-Bridging) Neo-Psychoanalysis;
Abbreviated Name: DGB Neo-Psychoanalysis;
Parallel, Synonymous Name: TIME (Transference-Immediacy-Mediation-Engagement) Theory and Therapy
3. Main Foundational Influences
a) Philosophical Influences
i) Dialectic Influences: Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Hegel, Derrida;
ii) Wholism and Pantheism: Spinoza;
iii) Epistemological Influences: Sir Francis Bacon, Locke, Kant, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida;
iv) Humanistic-Existential Influences: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Fromm;
v) Economic Influences: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Erich Fromm, Ayn Rand;
b) Psychoanalytic Influences:
i) Freud before 1897 (Pre-Classical Freudian Theory);
ii) Freud after 1896 (Classical Psychoanalysis);
iii) Object Relations, Self Psychology;
iv) Self-Psychology;
c) Neo-Psychoanalytic Influences:
i) Alfred Adler;
ii Carl Jung;
iii) Otto Rank;
iv. Wilhelm Reich;
v) Fritz Perls;
vi) Eric Fromm;
vii) Erich Berne;
viii) Karen Horney;
ix) Carl Rogers;
x) Arthur Janov
d) Cognitive-Behavioral Influences
i) Immanuel Kant;
ii) Wittgenstein and Alfred Korzybski
iii) S.I. Hayakawa;
iv) Albert Ellis;
v) Aaron Beck;
vi) George Kelley;
vii) Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden;
viii) Donald Meichenbaum
4. Theory
I am going to summarize in this essay 40 years of work in one sentence: an emphasis on transference-lifestyle(lifeline), immediacy; Oedipal trauma, splitting, defenses, and fantasies; intimacy in relationships, humanistic-existential meaning and striving in work, blockages in intimacy, blockages in humanistic-existential meaning and striving, gaps in personality wholism, obsessions, compulsions, fixations, dialectic engagement and bipolar integrations back towards personality wholism.
5. A Transference-Lifeline Interpretation of a Conscious Early Childhood Memory: The First True Case of Psychoanalysis
Little Siggy, about 3 years old, burst into his parents bedroom and was shocked by what he saw. His mom and dad were obviously having sex together and we can only imagine what little Siggy saw -- his dad probably perched over his mom like he was 'peeing' on her -- interrupted in whatever they were doing, Siggy's dad yelled at him to get out of the room and close the door behind him.
This was not a repressed memory. It was one of Sigmund Freud's earliest -- probably the earliest -- conscious childhood memory that he could remember.
Ernest Jones, Freud's first main biographer, viewed the memory 'flippantly' because it was not a 'repressed' memory.
......................................................................
Among the (consciously) remembered ones (memories) are a few, banal enough in themselves, which are of interest only in standing out in the sea of amnesia. One was of penetrating into his parents' bedroom out of (sexual) curiosity and being ordered out by his irate father. (Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, p. 7).
............................................................................................
In contrast to Jones's casual perspective on this memory -- biased undoubtedly by Freud's own perspective on the relative non-importance of conscious early childhood memories except as possible 'screen memories' to other 'unconscious, repressed memories and/or fantasies' (Freud, Screen Memories, 1899) -- my perspective on this memory is 100 percent different. I believe that upon its 'template' in Freud's network of 'conscious transference memories', rests the whole foundation of psychoanalysis. This would make Freud, in contrast to Anna O., the first true case of psychoanalysis. Let us see how I get there.
Stepping into Adlerian Theory, our conscious early childhood memories are like 'metaphors -- or Stories -- of our lives. Bringing Adlerian Theory back into Psychoanalysis, these conscious early memories -- generally passed over lightly in psychoanalysis as being 'screen memories' to other more important 'repressed' memories and/or fantasies -- become the crux of psychoanalysis. They become 'narcissistic transference fixations, repetition compulsions, and defensive-fantasy mastery compulsions'. Both Oedipal trauma and the foundational basis for later Oedipal fantasies can be found in the same memory, assuming it has a traumatic base.
The ego and the id are mainly 'non-differentiated' at this point in the young child's development (2 to 6 years old) and thus, can be called 'the ego-id' (or 'the id-ego') (Freud, 1938, Outline of Psychoanalysis).
Trauma strikes in the Oedipal period and thus I call this trauma 'Oedipal Trauma' (which it is to a child of that young an age even though it might not be to a fully grown adult). The trauma is often (but not always) represented in one of a person's main conscious early chidhood memories -- often the first one recalled, or the one of youngest age.
Trauma causes 'personality splitting' or 'ego-id splitting' at this young an age. In Adlerian terminology, the 'inferiority feeling' -- under the stress of trauma -- is cemented for a lifetime.
The young ego-id rushes in to defend the young child against such trauma happening again in the future. Compensatory defenses -- and later Oedipal fantasies -- are established. The personality splitting begins:
1. The Assertive Ego-Id (Before the Oedipal trauma);
2. The Sensitive-(Approval-Seeking-Disapproval-Avoiding) Ego-Id (After the Oedipal trauma);
3. The Depressive Position (Mom or Dad -- or someone else -- doesn't love me for what I did);
4. The Phobic-Schizoid Position (I make sure I stay away from repeating the type of action that led to my mom or dad's disapproval and my traumatized ego-id);
The four positions above can all be classified as 'under-ego positions' that follow the formula of: I'm not okay; you are okay.
5. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic (Dionysian) Position: Pleasure-Seeking ego-id impulses;
6. The Paranoid-Schizoid (Passive-Aggressive) Position: I suppress or repress my angry feelings towards you but get my 'digs' in through passive aggressive behavior);
7. The Paranoid-Confrontational Position: My anger, my rage, is coming at you overtly, directly or indirectly, but explosively ('anal-righteous-explosiveness');
These last three positions all follow the formula of: I'm okay, you're not okay.
The first position can be viewed as being either/or 'identity-seeking', 'object-attachment seeking', and/or self-esteem seeking.
The next three positions can be viewed as 'object-attachment and self-esteem seeking'.
The last three under-ego positions can be viewed as 'identity-and-self-esteem seeking'.
All seven ego-positions or ego-states or ego-compartments can be -- and generally are -- duplicated as 'superego' or 'over-ego states'. These 'over-ego states' can often also be viewed as 'defensive fantasy ego-states' -- to be striven for.
We now have 14 defensive-fantasy ego-states.
To this, I add 7 more 'middle zone' ego-compartments:
15. The Social Persona Ego;
16. The Central-Mediating-Synthesizing Ego;
17. The Private Shadow-Id-Ego;
18. The Fantasy Ego;
19. The Body (Symptom) Ego;
20. The Projective-Displacement-Sublimation Ego;
21. The Introjective-Identification-Assimilation Ego;
And to this, I add 7 more preconscious-subconscious ego-structures and processes:
22. 'Unbound' transference-immediacy complexes and superego-id-ego complexes;
23. The Main Superego-Id-Ego Vault (Containing 'Bound' Complexes);
24. The Transference Memory and Fantasy Complex-Templates
25. The Subconscious Ego-Id;
26. The Abyss Ledge;
27. Nietzsche's Abyss;
28. The Rope and The Climb;
29. The Genetic-Existential-Mythological Self;
30/1. Nietzsche's (Zarathustra-Apollo-Dionysus) Mountain.
...............................................................................................
How do I work this metaphorical, metaphysical, and mythological model?
The memory -- Freud's conscious early childhood memory described above -- can be viewed as a metaphor -- a metaphor or story of Freud's Life. It can be viewed as his 'transference-lifeline', his main 'transference memory-fantasy complex'.
Freud's main transference self-esteem issue was with his father -- of which this issue was 'bundled into a transference complex' and 'transferred' onto most of his adult, male working partners. If you view Psychoanalysis as being Freud's 'Secret Society' where you were either 'in' or 'out', the number of 'evicted' or 'departed outcasts' of male working partners grew in repetitive, significant number over time -- Breuer, Fliess, Adler, Jung, Stekel, Rank, Ferenczi, Reich, Perls....all 'transference surrogates' of either Freud's father -- or Freud himself -- spread over the course of his lifetime, evicted or departed like little Siggy was evicted and departed from him parents' 'Secret Society' -- 'the primal scene' -- 'the transference bedroom' -- projected some 35 to 40 years later into both 'the psychoanalytic room with its couch like a bed and the patient lying prone on the couch'; and 'The Vienna Society' which would eventually evolve into 'Psychoanalytic Societies' all over the world, and 'The International Psychoanalytic Society' linking them all together.
Freud had an 'erotic transference fixation' relative to 'triadic psychological interactions and formulas' and 'threesomes'. The template was his primal transference scene.
1. The impulsive-desire-drive, and/or fantasy; 2. The object; and 3. The resistance-defense to the impulse-drive-fantasy. Missing from this equation after 1896 was 4. The traumatic-transference scene and recalled memory of the scene.
In the psychoanalytic room, the patient (usually a woman) played the transference surrogate of his mom lying on the bed/couch, the 'resistance' was the projection of his dad's resistance into the psychoanalytic transference scene, and Freud played the role of 'little Siggy' who subconsciously or unconsciously wanted to 're-live his primal transference scene through his 'repetition and mastery compulsion' of fantasizing the original transference scene to a more erotically and voyeuristically satisfying conclusion (with Freud inside, not outside the primal room, finding out what was 'really going on inside the room' via transference projection into the psychoanalytic room -- and breaking through the woman's (Freud's internalized dad's) resistance/defense, to the 'Impulse-Desire' (ID).
Psychoanalytic Transference-Sublimation Fantasy completed (in his cases that worked well -- obviously, he didn't like the 'Dora' case but provided a negative transference explanation afterwards).
Freud's 'hankering' for threesomes -- a man, a woman, and Freud -- as found in the template of his primal transference scene-memory he projected later into his 'Screen Memories' essay (1899) where he describes a 'screen memory-fantasy' of a 'threesome' involving his older male cousin, a girl cousin, and himself. This 'Oedipal Fantasy' would play itself out in a transference-sublimation-fantasy in Freud's adult professional life (Freud, Fliess, and Emma Ekstein) unfortunately with a traumatic-tragic-scandalous ending.
Freud's worst failures and darkest hours can be captured by the idea of 'Nietzsche's Abyss' -- and his best successes can be captured by the idea of 'Nietzsche's Mountain'.
I would have to say that Freud's full exposition of psychoanalysis has to be viewed as a steep climb to the top of Nietzsche's Mountain.
And his first conscious, early childhood (transference) memory -- and its transference interpretation -- has to be viewed as....
The First True Case of Psychoanalysis.
-- David Gordon Bain (Revised Edition, December 18th, 2014).
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Some Points of Distinction Between Freud's Concept of The Id and My Modified Freudian Concept of 'The Id-Ego'
Is it worth the time and energy required to try to re-define and re-describe Freud's concept of 'the id' as 'the id-ego' or 'the narcissistic ego' or the 'narcissistic id-ego'?
This would go against the grain of 91 years (1923 to 2014) of 'Classical Freudian' teaching and training.
Having said this, there are probably a good proportion of practicing Object Relations Psychoanalysts out there who don't even use the concept of the id anymore, or if they do, they use it sparingly, cautiously, perhaps as an adjective more than a noun, to the point where in many psychoanalytic circles it may have already become like a spare tire on an old, used car.
If you look at the Object Relations psychoanalysis of Fairbairn and Winnicott in particular, they have tried to move Psychoanalysis -- or at least Object Relations Psychoanalysis -- from an 'Instinct and/or Impulse-Drive Psychoanalysis/Psychology' (it is nice how ID Psychology could/can be used as an acronym for 'Impulse-Drive Psychoanalysis/Psychology) to an 'Object-Attachment-Seeking Psychoanalysis/and Psychology' (where the term 'object' is used technically to mean 'person' or 'image of a person' although it could mean 'image of a non-person object' as well).
This would go against the grain of 91 years (1923 to 2014) of 'Classical Freudian' teaching and training.
Having said this, there are probably a good proportion of practicing Object Relations Psychoanalysts out there who don't even use the concept of the id anymore, or if they do, they use it sparingly, cautiously, perhaps as an adjective more than a noun, to the point where in many psychoanalytic circles it may have already become like a spare tire on an old, used car.
If you look at the Object Relations psychoanalysis of Fairbairn and Winnicott in particular, they have tried to move Psychoanalysis -- or at least Object Relations Psychoanalysis -- from an 'Instinct and/or Impulse-Drive Psychoanalysis/Psychology' (it is nice how ID Psychology could/can be used as an acronym for 'Impulse-Drive Psychoanalysis/Psychology) to an 'Object-Attachment-Seeking Psychoanalysis/and Psychology' (where the term 'object' is used technically to mean 'person' or 'image of a person' although it could mean 'image of a non-person object' as well).
Saturday, August 9, 2014
From 'Classical (Fantasy) Psychoanalysis' to 'Greater Classical (Reality-Fantasy) Psychoanalysis'
Modified and updated Aug. 19th, 29th, Sept 7, 2014...dgb
Change the way you conceptualize something -- thinking outside the box to use the now common expression -- and you change the direction of your thought process.
Freud changed the direction of psychoanalysis when he rejected after 1896 his hard-earned reality-memory-trauma-seduction (childhood sexual abuse) theory which is often now referred to as 'Pre'-Psychoanalysis (1893-1896) in favor of the freshly evolving theory in his mind at the time that would carry his thinking the rest of his life -- i.e., his 'instinct-fantasy-drive-childhood sexuality-Oedipal' theory that Freud is now mainly famous (or infamous) for, which, together, is generally referred to as 'Classical' Psychoanalysis (1897-1939).
But what if Freud made a mistake rejecting his early reality theory to the extent that he did, which is a question that many serious analysts and non-analysts alike have asked themselves over the years -- especially when it came down to Freud choosing 'imagined' childhood sexual abuse (The Oedipus or Electra Complex in young girls) over the 'real' childhood sexual abuse that Freud was hearing about from is clients in his earliest years of investigation (1893-1896, and even before)?
This is the question that basically triggered the Psychoanalytic Scandal of the early 1980s involving
The Projects Director of The Freud Archives at the time -- Dr. Jeffrey Masson -- telling the whole world that Freud had turned his back on, and 'suppressed', childhood sexual abuse after 1896 with a growing strength of inflexible dogma the more years he put behind him after 1896, and that he did this as an act of 'moral loss of courage' in order to perhaps save his job and career, and not clash swords with the people who had power over his destiny -- the members (all men) of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society.
This paints a less than idealistic picture of Freud and his possible moral choice at the time. It could be that he was under a lot of duress from The Society -- basically being blacklisted by them, while Freud had a rapidly growing family to feed, Anna Freud having just been born in December, 1895. Or we can choose to believe what Psychoanalysis has told us to believe, and that is that Freud basically rejected his trauma-sexual abuse theory because it was an 'inferior' theory to his evolving fantasy theory, and/or that Freud never really completely abandoned his trauma theory -- it just played a subsidiary role in his thinking after 1896.
But how often do we hear of a theorist-therapist making such a radical 180 degree turn in theory in such a very short time -- proclaiming in the spring of 1896 that ALL of his cases of hysteria and obsessional neurosis had at their roots a history of childhood sexual abuse -- and that the members of The Vienna Society were 'jackasses' for not listening to him; and then turning around within the next year and a half and saying that he was wrong -- that the number of childhood sexual abuse theories that he had before believed were 'real', could not have possibly been real, that there were too many such cases to be 'credibly' deemed real, all the things that the Society had thrown at Freud a year and a half earlier, calling his theory a 'scientific fairy tale' -- Freud although initially rebelling against them and calling them 'jackasses' for not believing in the reality of his theory, well, it seems that Freud, between 1896 and 1897 basically internalized their argument, as well as finding an alternative set of theories that would take Psychoanalysis in a whole new direction -- for better, and/or for worse.
Looking back at it now, doesn't this whole series of events seem highly suspicious -- Freud basically going from rebelling to succumbing to the what The Society wanted to hear from him? This is what Masson argued throughout the 1980s and early 1990s (and still believes now) although The International Psychoanalytic Institute would not have anything to do with such an argument -- especially the part about Freud 'losing moral courage' -- and still will not to this day, although silently 'childhood trauma' has re-emerged as a heavy factor in contemporary psychoanalytic theory, whether that be from an Object Relations perspective, and Attachment Theory perspective, or a Self-Psychology perspective -- just not from Freud's original 1893 to 1896 perspective, which in my opinion, remains the proper foundation of ALL psychoanalysis, and, in large part, most brands of non-psychoanalytic therapy. Did patriarchal Vienna politics change psychoanalysis in 1896?
It certainly looks like it to me -- especially when you factor in the February, 1895 Emma Ekstein nasal surgery fiasco, and the birth of Freud's (and Fliess's?) 'wish fulfillment' theory between the rest of 1895 and 1896 -- small snippets of it visible in Freud's April-May, 1896 essay on hysteria being caused by childhood sexual abuse, foreshadowing the 180 degree radical turn of psychoanalysis to shortly come, the part about childhood sexual abuse being left behind, and the rise of The Oedipal Complex and the 'little girls erotic fantasies towards her dad 'allegedly distorting' her 'allegedly real' memories of childhood sexual abuse -- taking the place of the former childhood sexual abuse theory.
Looking back at this whole sequence of events from my 2014 historical pedestal, as Masson was in the 1980s, I am more inclined to support the opinion of Masson than The International Psychoanalytic Institute that 'something still smells rotten in the town of Vienna in the year of 1896.
Freud could have been a very early and brave women's and children's social activist around the implementation of better political and legal services to protect against the abuse of women and children in the family. For a very brief period in history -- April-May, 1896 -- he was. And then everything turned around and folded like a house of cards -- and now Freud remains heavily criticized -- rightly so -- for being the creator of a set of patriarchal assumptive biases that were built into (the poisoned?) heart and soul of Classical Psychoanalysis. How often after 1896 has real childhood sexual abuse been overlooked, ignored, suppressed in Classical Psychoanalytic offices around the world? That is a very scary question. Masson was quoted as saying that Psychoanalysis would have to recall all patients starting in 1900 (maybe earlier) like Ford had to recall all its Pintos!
Couldn't Freud have worked out an integrative 'reality-fantasy' theory that was at least more reality based than what he ended up creating? Or that wouldn't have satisfied the narcissistic demands of The Vienna Society who, it would certainly seem, didn't want to hear any more theories about childhood sexual abuse?
Psychoanalysis, over the years, became more and more criticized as being an 'Old Boys Club' -- a proponent of Victorian Patriarchal Bias as opposed to the proponent of 'Women's and Children's Civil Rights and Protections' that it could have become if Freud had stayed on his original path -- blowing the whistle on childhood sexual abuse, and continuing to blow it until changes were made in the rights and protections of women and children in abusive family settings.
Now, the opposite might have happened if Freud had persisted in the direction he was going in his April-May 1896 essay on childhood sexual abuse. He might have lost patients -- which in the letter of May 4th, 1896 to Fliess, Freud said that he had -- that his waiting room was empty and that he had been blackballed by The Vienna Society, doctors no longer referring patients to him. If this had continued, he would have been out of business, perhaps his career destroyed, and we might have never heard from Freud again. All speculation of course. But worthy of strong consideration -- the circumstantial, historical evidence, especially in the unabridged Freud to Fliess letters edited by Masson, seems strong enough to suggest that Freud purposely steered clear of any more serious talk about childhood sexual abuse. The 'erotic fantasies of children' took its place -- some might say a little too 'coincidentally' so.
Well, I intend to integrate the two bipolar opposite theories -- trauma theory and fantasy theory -- that Freud never integrated.
Masson said that he didn't believe it could be done although he liked my seemingly passionate spirit in trying. That was back in 2010. Probably, he would be less generous if he were to comment today -- although I am only surmising.
In one sense, this would require a rather massive integration -- connecting Freud's work of 1893 to 1896 harmoniously and logically with the rest of his work from 1897 to 1939.
But in another sense, it is a relatively easy integration -- or at least the crucial part of it.
Let us say that 'hysterics' -- a label that is not used much anymore (perhaps replaced in good part by the label of 'borderline personality') -- as well as almost all other 'neurotics' (another label that is not much used today but I will continue to use it) -- suffer from what might be called 'Early Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder' (EPTSD). Well, a part of the customary 'fallout' of this disorder is something that might be called 'Post-Traumatic-Fantasy-Defense and/or Compensation' (PTFDC).
And right there -- in that paragraph above -- is the essence of the main idea that we need to integrate Freudian early trauma theory with his later fantasy theory.
On this note, we will stop for today, and continue on this path, in the essays that follow.
-- dgb, Sept 7th, 2014.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging...
-- Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process....
Change the way you conceptualize something -- thinking outside the box to use the now common expression -- and you change the direction of your thought process.
Freud changed the direction of psychoanalysis when he rejected after 1896 his hard-earned reality-memory-trauma-seduction (childhood sexual abuse) theory which is often now referred to as 'Pre'-Psychoanalysis (1893-1896) in favor of the freshly evolving theory in his mind at the time that would carry his thinking the rest of his life -- i.e., his 'instinct-fantasy-drive-childhood sexuality-Oedipal' theory that Freud is now mainly famous (or infamous) for, which, together, is generally referred to as 'Classical' Psychoanalysis (1897-1939).
But what if Freud made a mistake rejecting his early reality theory to the extent that he did, which is a question that many serious analysts and non-analysts alike have asked themselves over the years -- especially when it came down to Freud choosing 'imagined' childhood sexual abuse (The Oedipus or Electra Complex in young girls) over the 'real' childhood sexual abuse that Freud was hearing about from is clients in his earliest years of investigation (1893-1896, and even before)?
This is the question that basically triggered the Psychoanalytic Scandal of the early 1980s involving
The Projects Director of The Freud Archives at the time -- Dr. Jeffrey Masson -- telling the whole world that Freud had turned his back on, and 'suppressed', childhood sexual abuse after 1896 with a growing strength of inflexible dogma the more years he put behind him after 1896, and that he did this as an act of 'moral loss of courage' in order to perhaps save his job and career, and not clash swords with the people who had power over his destiny -- the members (all men) of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society.
This paints a less than idealistic picture of Freud and his possible moral choice at the time. It could be that he was under a lot of duress from The Society -- basically being blacklisted by them, while Freud had a rapidly growing family to feed, Anna Freud having just been born in December, 1895. Or we can choose to believe what Psychoanalysis has told us to believe, and that is that Freud basically rejected his trauma-sexual abuse theory because it was an 'inferior' theory to his evolving fantasy theory, and/or that Freud never really completely abandoned his trauma theory -- it just played a subsidiary role in his thinking after 1896.
But how often do we hear of a theorist-therapist making such a radical 180 degree turn in theory in such a very short time -- proclaiming in the spring of 1896 that ALL of his cases of hysteria and obsessional neurosis had at their roots a history of childhood sexual abuse -- and that the members of The Vienna Society were 'jackasses' for not listening to him; and then turning around within the next year and a half and saying that he was wrong -- that the number of childhood sexual abuse theories that he had before believed were 'real', could not have possibly been real, that there were too many such cases to be 'credibly' deemed real, all the things that the Society had thrown at Freud a year and a half earlier, calling his theory a 'scientific fairy tale' -- Freud although initially rebelling against them and calling them 'jackasses' for not believing in the reality of his theory, well, it seems that Freud, between 1896 and 1897 basically internalized their argument, as well as finding an alternative set of theories that would take Psychoanalysis in a whole new direction -- for better, and/or for worse.
Looking back at it now, doesn't this whole series of events seem highly suspicious -- Freud basically going from rebelling to succumbing to the what The Society wanted to hear from him? This is what Masson argued throughout the 1980s and early 1990s (and still believes now) although The International Psychoanalytic Institute would not have anything to do with such an argument -- especially the part about Freud 'losing moral courage' -- and still will not to this day, although silently 'childhood trauma' has re-emerged as a heavy factor in contemporary psychoanalytic theory, whether that be from an Object Relations perspective, and Attachment Theory perspective, or a Self-Psychology perspective -- just not from Freud's original 1893 to 1896 perspective, which in my opinion, remains the proper foundation of ALL psychoanalysis, and, in large part, most brands of non-psychoanalytic therapy. Did patriarchal Vienna politics change psychoanalysis in 1896?
It certainly looks like it to me -- especially when you factor in the February, 1895 Emma Ekstein nasal surgery fiasco, and the birth of Freud's (and Fliess's?) 'wish fulfillment' theory between the rest of 1895 and 1896 -- small snippets of it visible in Freud's April-May, 1896 essay on hysteria being caused by childhood sexual abuse, foreshadowing the 180 degree radical turn of psychoanalysis to shortly come, the part about childhood sexual abuse being left behind, and the rise of The Oedipal Complex and the 'little girls erotic fantasies towards her dad 'allegedly distorting' her 'allegedly real' memories of childhood sexual abuse -- taking the place of the former childhood sexual abuse theory.
Looking back at this whole sequence of events from my 2014 historical pedestal, as Masson was in the 1980s, I am more inclined to support the opinion of Masson than The International Psychoanalytic Institute that 'something still smells rotten in the town of Vienna in the year of 1896.
Freud could have been a very early and brave women's and children's social activist around the implementation of better political and legal services to protect against the abuse of women and children in the family. For a very brief period in history -- April-May, 1896 -- he was. And then everything turned around and folded like a house of cards -- and now Freud remains heavily criticized -- rightly so -- for being the creator of a set of patriarchal assumptive biases that were built into (the poisoned?) heart and soul of Classical Psychoanalysis. How often after 1896 has real childhood sexual abuse been overlooked, ignored, suppressed in Classical Psychoanalytic offices around the world? That is a very scary question. Masson was quoted as saying that Psychoanalysis would have to recall all patients starting in 1900 (maybe earlier) like Ford had to recall all its Pintos!
Couldn't Freud have worked out an integrative 'reality-fantasy' theory that was at least more reality based than what he ended up creating? Or that wouldn't have satisfied the narcissistic demands of The Vienna Society who, it would certainly seem, didn't want to hear any more theories about childhood sexual abuse?
Psychoanalysis, over the years, became more and more criticized as being an 'Old Boys Club' -- a proponent of Victorian Patriarchal Bias as opposed to the proponent of 'Women's and Children's Civil Rights and Protections' that it could have become if Freud had stayed on his original path -- blowing the whistle on childhood sexual abuse, and continuing to blow it until changes were made in the rights and protections of women and children in abusive family settings.
Now, the opposite might have happened if Freud had persisted in the direction he was going in his April-May 1896 essay on childhood sexual abuse. He might have lost patients -- which in the letter of May 4th, 1896 to Fliess, Freud said that he had -- that his waiting room was empty and that he had been blackballed by The Vienna Society, doctors no longer referring patients to him. If this had continued, he would have been out of business, perhaps his career destroyed, and we might have never heard from Freud again. All speculation of course. But worthy of strong consideration -- the circumstantial, historical evidence, especially in the unabridged Freud to Fliess letters edited by Masson, seems strong enough to suggest that Freud purposely steered clear of any more serious talk about childhood sexual abuse. The 'erotic fantasies of children' took its place -- some might say a little too 'coincidentally' so.
Well, I intend to integrate the two bipolar opposite theories -- trauma theory and fantasy theory -- that Freud never integrated.
Masson said that he didn't believe it could be done although he liked my seemingly passionate spirit in trying. That was back in 2010. Probably, he would be less generous if he were to comment today -- although I am only surmising.
In one sense, this would require a rather massive integration -- connecting Freud's work of 1893 to 1896 harmoniously and logically with the rest of his work from 1897 to 1939.
But in another sense, it is a relatively easy integration -- or at least the crucial part of it.
Let us say that 'hysterics' -- a label that is not used much anymore (perhaps replaced in good part by the label of 'borderline personality') -- as well as almost all other 'neurotics' (another label that is not much used today but I will continue to use it) -- suffer from what might be called 'Early Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder' (EPTSD). Well, a part of the customary 'fallout' of this disorder is something that might be called 'Post-Traumatic-Fantasy-Defense and/or Compensation' (PTFDC).
And right there -- in that paragraph above -- is the essence of the main idea that we need to integrate Freudian early trauma theory with his later fantasy theory.
On this note, we will stop for today, and continue on this path, in the essays that follow.
-- dgb, Sept 7th, 2014.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging...
-- Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process....
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