Just finished...Dec. 1st, 2009....
The type of integrative analysis that I am going to conduct here spans about 85 years...and it starts with Adlerian Psychology which is not the chronological beginning of things here.
As I have mentioned in other essays, I was involved with The Adlerian Institute of Ontario for a period of two years and in that two years I learned some important things about the functioning and dysfunctioning of man's psyche from some of the best Adlerian psychologists in the business -- most notably Dr. Harold Mosak from The Adlerian Institute in Chicago.
From The Adlerian Institute, I learned that 'lifestyle memories' (i.e., conscious early memories before about the age of 7 years old) and 'lifestyle relationships' tend to go hand in hand -- they blend into each other, co-exist with each other, support each other, emphasize the same types of 'inferiority feelings' and the same type of 'compensatory superiority striving' (the lifestyle, lifestyle plan, lifestyle script, lifestyle goal, fictional final goal).
I carried this knowledge with me into both my studies at The Gestalt Institute of Toronto, and later into my self-studies in Freudian Psychoanalysis and post-Freudian Object Relations.
After a while -- in the mid to late 1980s -- I came up with a name for the kind of integrative theoretical work I was doing. I called my work 'GAP Psychology' -- GAP standing for 'Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalysis'. I was particularly fascinated with the Freudian concept of 'transference' and could see some 'transference-lifestyle' similarities and connections that wasn't being discussed in any of the literature that I was reading -- either Freudian or Adlerian.
The closest work that I could find that related to the type of work I was doing was Eric Berne in his best-selling book of the 1960s, 'Games People Play'. I immediately saw the 'transference connection' in Berne's work -- a book that could have been connected to Psychoanalysis (Berne was an ex-Psychoanalyst) and called 'Transference Games People Play'. Berne did talk about transference in his introduction, I believe -- I will have to go back and check that -- but he didn't make the type of transference connections that I was making as my work was also being influenced by Adlerian Psychology and Gestalt Therapy, and I also found out that two of the concepts that I was developing at the time -- the concept of 'narcissistic transferences' and the concept of 'the narcissistic ego' had already been explored and developed by Psychoanalysts before me, most notably Heinz Kohut (narcissistic transferences) and a Psychoanalyst that I cannot remember who had briefly explored the idea of a 'narcissistic ego' many years before me. (probably around the 1940s or 50s or 60s -- I will try to find this man's name in my Psychoanalytic archives.)
I was also doing some things that would probably please neither Adlerian Psychologists nor Freudian Psychoanalysts such as:
1. I removed the concept of 'lifestyle' from the Adlerian paradigm, put it in a Freudian paradigm, and called it 'transference' (I can hear Freudians and Adlerians both screaming from their particular side of the fence on this one;
2. I threw out the Freudian concept of 'repressed memories' and substituted the Adlerian concept of 'conscious early memories' for purpose of 'GAP Transference-Lifestyle Script Analysis';
3. I threw out the more complicated and convoluted Freudian transference analyses, and substituted the simpler Adlerian interpretations of conscious early memories which were now being called 'transference-lifestyle memories';
4. Later on, and some of this just recently, I added some Jungian ideas, Melanie Klein ideas, Object Relations ideas, and Transactional Analysis ideas into this mix which has left me playing around with such ideas as Melanie Klein's 'ego state positions' some of which I have kept and others that I have either modified or added such as: 'The Paranoid-Schizoid (Distancing) Position', 'The Paranoid-Aggressive Position', 'The Depressive Position', 'The Anxiety-Approval-Seeking Position', 'The Manic-Impulsive (Narcissistic-Dionysian Underdog) Position', 'The Righteous-Rejecting (Apollonian) Topdog Position', 'The Nurturing-Supportive Topdog Position', 'The Narcissistic-Dionysian Topdog Position', 'The Righteous-Rejecting (Rebellious, Deconstructive) Underdog Position'....
5. More recently, I have also taking steps to integrate Freud's marginalized 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' with his more dominant 'Fantasy-Oedipal Theory'...and in so doing, attempt to close the gap between Freud and Jeffrey Masson.
There are a lot of different theoretical integrations and modifications happening here. I will aim to go through each one of these 'GAP-DGB' modifications more concretely to show where it takes us.
I will only start this process here. My chief goal here is to show you how I got from the idea of 'lifestyle memories' to the idea of 'transference ideas' -- and how the two ideas mix.
Let us start with the Adlerian idea of 'lifestyle' and the 'wholeness and unity of the personality'.
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The Individual's Law of Movement (from Ansbacher and Ansbacher, 1956, 'The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler', pg. 195.)
Everyone carries within himself an opinion of himself and the problems of life, a life line, a law of movement which keeps fast hold of him without his understanding it or giving himself an account of it.
The law of movement in the mental life of a person is the decisive factor for his individuality. The declaration of this law was actually the strongest step that Individual Psychology has taken. Although it was necessary to freeze the movement in order to see it as form, we have always maintained the viewpoint that all is movement. We have found that it must be that way to arrive at the solution of problems and the overcoming of difficulties.
Early Recollections (Ibid, pg. 351)
1. Expression of The Style of Life (Ibid, pg. 351)
Among all psychological expressions, some of the most revealing are the individual's memories. His memories are the reminders he carries about with him of his own limits and of the meaning of circumstances. There are no 'chance memories': out of the incalculable number of impressions which meet an individual, he chooses to remember only those which he feels, however darkly, to have a bearing on his situation. Thus, his memories represent his 'Story of My Life'; a story he repeats to himself to warn him or comfort him, to keep him concentrated on his goal, and to prepare him by means of past experiences, so that he will meet the future with an already tested style of action.
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dgb cont'd...
Compare the Adlerian statements above which appear in books that he wrote between about 1929 and 1933 (The Science of Life, What Life Should/Could Mean To You) with the ones found below which can be found in probably Freud's best paper on transference: 'The Dynamics of The Transference' (1912). Not surprisingly, Freud sexualizes the concept of transference which can very well be done with the concept of 'lifestyle' as well in particular contexts where issues of sexuality are involved (which they often are).
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Excerpt from...'The Dynamics of The Transference' (1912, Sigmund Freud, 'The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud', Standard Edition, Edited by James Strachey, and 'Essential Papers on Transference', edited by Aaron Esman, 1990, pg. 28)
It must be understood that each individual, through the combined operation of his innate disposition and the influences brought to bear on him during his early years, has acquired a specific method of his own in his conduct of his erotic life -- that is, in the preconditions to falling in love which he lays down, in the instincts he satisfies and the aims he sets himself in the course of it. This produces what might be described as a stereotype plate (or several such), which is constantly repeated -- constantly reprinted afresh -- in the course of the person's life, so far as external circumstances and the nature of the love-objects accessible to him permit, and which is certainly not entirely insusceptible to change in the face of recent experiences.
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dgb, cont'd...
Notice Freud's use of the term 'stereotype plate' which can be translated into the idea of a 'transference script'....and the idea of looking for a love partner to 'play out' a particular 'transference complex and/or game'...
Furthermore, notice that the Freud's idea of transference here is not too far away from Adler's concept of 'lifestyle' aside from the numerous differences in terms of Adlerian vs. Freudian assumptions and philosophy -- what I am calling the particular 'philosophical paradigm' of each which underlies the respective use of each of the two concepts by their respective creators.
Still, there is enough of a strength in the similarities of the two concepts to dialectically integrate them which is exactly what I went ahead and did under the name of GAP-(DGB) Psychology.
But in order to make this essential connection, this essential dialectic integration, I had to introduce an idea that neither Freud nor any Psychoanalyst after him has ever introduced (to my knowledge anyway -- the closest theorist might be Arthur Janov in 'The Primal Scream'). And that is the idea of 'transference-(lifestyle) memories' which can be equated with Alfred Adler's focus on 'conscious early memories' -- only interpreted differently, in this case, under the roof or paradigm of my dialectically integrative -- and still evolving GAP-DGB Psychology.
The closest work to this idea -- other than Arthur Janov who I haven't even really seriously read but who seems to have developed Freud's earliest idea of 'repressed memories' and 'traumacy theory'...are the original creators of this approach themselves, specifically: Breuer, Charcot, Janet, and Freud in their earliest work in the 1880s and 1890s involving hypnosis and the 'return of a repressed memory' that -- once conscious -- according to Freud and Breuer in 'Studies in Hysteria' (1893-1895) through the process of 'abreaction' and 'emotional catharsis' tended to alleviate if not fully eliminate the particular neurotic symptom(s) associated with the previously and long repressed memory that was just brought back to the patient's consciousness through the process of hypnosis -- and later 'free association'.
The only problem with this methodology is that over time, Freud found that oftentimes the patients' symptoms came back which eventually prompted Freud to search for other answers to this problem and eventually led him out of his traumacy theory, out of his later seduction (sexual traumacy) theory -- and into the realm of 'sexual fantasy' theory.
Freud's basic argument here was that the reason the patients' symptoms came back was that -- at some unconscious level still -- the patient wanted these symptoms to come back. And the reason he or she wanted the symptoms to come back is that they -- in some still unconscious way -- were hedonistically, narcissistically, and/or sexually gratifying. (My interpretation)
Consequently, after much inner turmoil (and critics like Masson who said that Freud abandoned his traumacy-seduction theory for political and economic reasons -- to perhaps cover up the incestuous activities of many of the 'fathers' that Freud was working with who were very esteemed doctors and who had political and economic power over the future of his career), Freud after a number of years, finally abandoned his Traumacy-Seduction Theory and turned to his evolving Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Stages, Dream, and Oedipal Theory...And basically, to all extents and purposes, left his Traumacy-Seduction Theory behind.
I opt for perhaps some combination of these reasons...but mainly I opt for Freud behaving ethically and following his clinical and theoretical reasoning process which was taking him into the realm of Sexual Fantasy Theory.
Now for all of my readers who have watched the program on tv called 'Criminal Minds', you will probably know that the FBI serial profilers who use many Psychoanalytic interpretations in their efforts to track down the serial sex criminals who they are pursuing -- focus on the 'sexual fantasies' of these criminals; not on the criminals' early life and early memory traumacies. The early childhood traumacies of these sexual predators becomes a secondary focus of investigation -- if even that.
Thus, there is obviously at least some justification for what Freud did when he turned his investigation and his theorizing into the realm of 'sexual fantasies'.
In short, and in Psychoanalytic terminology, serial sexual predators are playing out their 'narcissistic sexual transference neuroses' through the particular 'signature fantasies' of their particular sexual pathology.
There is one very important idea that comes from this development of reasoning: specifically, Freud's abandoned traumacy and seduction theory could be -- in fact, are -- dialectically united with his later sexual fantasy theory. Unfortunately, Freud never clearly saw this connection. Or if he did, he didn't write about it (although I believe he is on record as having said that he never entirely abandoned his traumacy-seduciton theory. He certainly knew that some childhood sexual assaults still happened. But it seemed to be a matter of 'percentage' and Freud seemed to think that most alleged or supposed childhood sexual assaults were fantasized but didn't actually happen. This was arguably Freud's biggest clinical and theoretical mistake but in fairness to him, only Ferenzci continued to write about them as being 'real' and the issue of 'child abuse' and 'childhood sexual assault' didn't start to seriously enter political discussions again until the rise of the women's movement, partly in the 1960s, and more forcefully with Jeffrey Masson writing the book that effectively ended his career as a Psychoanalyst -- 'Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory' (1984).
There is a further idea that needs to be developed here.
We have talked about the case of the serial sexual predator as 'repetitively playing out' the sexual fantasies of his 'extremely pathological transference neurosis'.
One of the signature features of a 'transference neurosis' is the 'repetitive and/or rec-creative and/or mastery compulsion' component of the neurosis.
Now the question needs to be clinically and theoretically asked: what about the victim in a childhood rape and/or seduction? Does he or she also develop what might be called a 'repetitive narcissistic transference neurosis'.
This was perhaps one of the most difficult clinical problems that Freud had to deal with -- and I think it might have been crucial in his decision to abandon his seduction-sexual assault theory in favor of his sexual fantasy and Oedipal Theory.
And perhaps Freud asked the wrong clinical question.
It was obvious that Freud -- most of whose patients were women -- was going to hear a lot of women's sexual fantasies in the course of his evolving Psychoanalytic -- case by case -- analysis.
Again the question has to be asked (but never, to my knowledge, really has been): how many 'seduction' and even 'rape' fantasies did Freud hear in the course of his many Psychoanalytic investigations.
Because a 'rape fantasy' would definitely have thrown Freud -- and any other clinician who was not familiar with this type of thing -- for a serious loop. How would he account for it?
You have to remember that Freud was following the scientific principle of the 'pleasure principle' at this point in time in his theorizing (1895). So the prospect of a woman coming into therapy and 'fantasizing a forceful and/or painful seduction and/or rape' would definitely to Freud at this time sound like a 'human contradiction of the pleasure principle'. (But he hadn't gotten into 'sadism' and 'masochism' at this point in time and probably never clearly understood the phenomenon of 'masochism' anyway as he eventually used 'the death instinct' to explain it in 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' -- some 25 years later (1920).
So the question that Freud basically posed to himself (and to Fliess) was basically this: How could a woman who supposedly experienced a most terrifying and horrific seduction and/or rape as a small child later in her teenage and/or adult life experience this 'same type of supposedly horrific event' as a 'pleasurable sexual fantasy'. Freud's answer turned out to be basically this: the supposed 'seduction-rape' never happened; it was a figment of her unconscious imagination brought on by her combined 'normal' incestuous love and lust towards her father. But she had to deny 'personal responsibility' for this 'incestuous love/lust' so she 'unconsciously manipulated her false memory and real fantasy to make her father accountable for this love/lust'. In this way, she could avoid the obvious wrath of her 'Superego' and 'pleasure her Id' at the same time.
It's probably a 'bogus explanation'. A 'wrong explanation'. However -- for better or for worse -- it led Freud out of the realm of 'traumatic sexual memories' and into the realm of 'pleasurable sexual fantasies' -- and The Oedipal/Electra Complex.
Closer to the truth is probably my own 'narcissistic transference' explanation.
This explanation asserts that 'pleasurable adult sexual fantasies, fixations, and fetishes' often arise out of painful traumatic early childhood memories -- some sexual, others later sexualized in our teenage and adult years. And inherent in this explanation is a solution that Freud briefly came up with in 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' before he abandoned it in favor of his still controversial 'death instinct'. He should have stuck with his first explanation which he probably viewed as taking him too close to Adlerian Theory. This was Freud's idea of 'the mastery compulsion' which could be easily connected to Adler's ideas of 'inferiority feeling', 'compensation', and 'superiority striving'.
But Freud didn't go there.
I have.
What my explanation offers better than Freud's did, is an answer to the following type of question:
Why would a woman (some women, obviously not all women) -- sexually victimized as a child --
take up the activity of 'prostitution' later in life as either a teenager and/or adult (the same question can also be asked relative to sexually victimized boys)?
Now obviously, we could say that money and/or food and/or shelter and/or drugs could all be a factor in leading a teenage girl or boy onto the street as a 'commodity' trading 'sex' for 'money, food, shelter, and/or drugs'.
But this explanation remains insufficient in itself.
The question needs to be asked: What is the relationship between childhood sexual assault and teenage/adult prostitution?
And the relationship can be described at least partly as this: Firstly, an already sexually victimized child has learned to treat him or herself as a 'sexual commodity'. Furthermore, there is this basic truism about all traumatic childhood memories: 1. We 'introject' the memory into our 'transference psyche'; 2. we introject both our own role as the 'victim' in the memory AND the role as 'victimizer' as well. Ferenczi and Anna Freud called this phenomenon 'identification with the aggressor
(victimizer, rejector, abandoner, abuser...)
The difference I am suggesting between a 'transference sexual assault' and a 'non-transference sexual assault' is that in the former case there is a 'counter-phobia' involved, a type of 'attraction back to the metaphorical scene of the childhood crime'.
I will go no deeper than this other than to suggest that there is a difference between the type of woman who is victimized at a later age and will quite likely develop a severely traumatic and phobic reaction depending perhaps partly on the severity of the case as opposed to the type of woman who seems to become victimized over and over and over again throughout her life. In the latter case, we are probably dealing with a 'transference assault victim', someone who was assaulted in rather early childhood as opposed to at a later time in life. Nothing is being stated definitively here other than to make a distinction that requires further investigation or the clinical knowledge of someone who is used to dealing with these types of cases.
As far as traumatic childhood memories in general, there exists in all of us a 'bipolar, dialectical nature' where we are all totally capable of playing either the victim and/or the victimizer in the metaphorical repetition of our traumatic childhood memories.
Enter Freud's brief concept of 'the mastery compulsion' in combination with Adler's ideas of 'inferiority (victimized) feeling, 'compensation', and 'superiority striving'.
Out of this comes my own idea of 'transference-reversal' or the idea of 'abusing and/or traumatizing others in the same way that we were abused and/or traumatized as children' which is basically another way of rewording the principle of 'identification with the aggressor/victimizer'.
There is a final point to be made here.
If we use only Aristolean logic, then we are faced with the question of who was right? Freud and his abandonment of the traumacy-seduction theory? Or Masson in saying that Freud was wrong in abandoning a theory that was better than his later 'sexual fantasy-Oedipal theory'?
However, if we think dialectically, then we become capable of seeing that Aristotle in his 'either/or' logic left out the possibility of an 'excluded integrative middle'. Using this perspective, we see that perhaps there is a very real chance that both Freud's traumacy-seduction theory and his later sexual fantasy theory had elements of truth in them, and furthermore, perhaps men's and women's adult fantasies are spawned at least partly out of a wish to compensate for their childhood traumatic memories. Call this traumatic memory a 'narcissistic (self-esteem) injury' and call the adult fantasy a 'compensatory mastery compulsion' aimed at reversing the self-esteem damage of the narcissistic childhood injury.
I will leave you to ponder over these thoughts for a while.
-- dgb, Dec. 1st, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still In Process....
