Just finished...Jan. 11th, 2010
In some of my most recent essays, I have come down hard on Classical Psychoanalysis -- and rightly so -- because they cannot keep believing in, and applying, a one-sided Freudian clinical theory and assumption that is blatantly pathological -- at least in its potential abuse of a client's real life traumatic history, especially a female patient's real life traumatic history who may have been sexually assaulted/seduced by her father.
A psychotherapist should be like a good squash player (or tennis player or racquetball player or table tennis player...) in that a good squash player, once he or she has made a shot, will always do his or her best to get back to the 'center of the the court'. The center of the court can be viewed as the 'point of homeostatic or dialectic-democratic balance' between the 'four polar extremes of the court' -- the front, the back, the left side, and the right side.
Furthermore, the good squash player will try as best as possible to not only get back to the center of the court, but also to be 'equally balanced on both feet' so that he or she can move in any of the four directions mentioned above: front, back, left, or right.
This is what you might call 'court objectivity': being 'non-biased' and willing and able to move in any direction on the court, depending on where the next return shot from your opponent/partner ends up going to: again, the front or back of the court, and/or the left or right side of the court.
To be sure, you can 'guess' where the next shot is going to end up, and thus try to 'cheat' in one direction or the other to get an 'advantage' in time and space. But if you 'guess wrong', then you have 'taken yourself out of the play' and probably lost either your serve or the point.
The same can be said about psychotherapy. A psychotherapist is not a judge. Nor is he or she a jury. Furthermore, the minute that a psychotherapist believes that he or she has 'a 100 per cent lock on either epistemological truth and/or ethical-legal justice', this psychotherapist should probably stop practicing psychotherapy.
Let us be clear on this next point: Generalizations are not 'concrete, epistemological, case to case, truths'. David Hume has been down this epistemological path long before me. Generalizations are 'rules of thumb' and deal with 'the abstract likelihood of something happening the way we predict it to happen'. But life is always 'subject to change', throwing 'curve balls' at us -- or to use my earlier metaphor, 'sending the ball spinning into a quadrant of the court that we were least expecting...'
There are some very thorny ethical-legal issues that, at times, a psychotherapist may have to face, some of which the law regulates directives in terms of how to handle these issues -- issues such as the extent of a client's 'right to confidentiality': to what extent does this right apply if the therapist believes that his or her client could be a danger to either him or herself, and/or to society?
Then there is this equally thorny issue of 'The Infamous Freudian Seduction Theory Controversy'...
In its most narrow, 'anal-retentive' interpretation, Freud's 'Oedipal Complex Theory (or 'Assumption' may be a better choice of words)' stipulates to a Psychoanalyst (and to the public at large) that if a woman comes into Analysis and starts making 'allegations that she was sexually assaulted/seduced/manipulated/exploited by her father when she was a child', then this 'clinical phenomenon' should be viewed by the therapist as a client 'fantasy' relative to the client/daughter experiencing a 'normal developmental fantasy-wish' in relation to her father and wanting to have a 'romantic-sexual relationship' with him -- and 'masking this 'fantasy' as a so-called memory that never actually happened.'
But what if the woman who entered Psychoanalysis to be treated for some type of 'psychological disorder' actually had been sexually assaulted by her father as a child?
The psychoanalyst -- unless he or she is personally rebelling against the 'Institute's training rules' -- would have been instructed to, in effect, 'walk all over the client/daughter's real-life experience' by re-interpreting it as an 'Oedipal Fantasy'. And in so doing this, the Psychoanalyst might be committing a grievous and pathological therapeutic error of 'epistemological omission and commission': 'omission' in the sense of 'neglecting a childhood sexual assault that really happened'; and 'commission' in the sense of 're-interpreting a real-life traumatic event' as a 'therapist-imagined client's sexual fantasy.'
This potentially pathological assumption, the Psychoanalysts have been holding onto with a 'Pit Bull's hanging on bite' for 110 years! These are supposed to be smart men with PhDs in science and medicine, most of them -- and pitiful few women coming into an essentially 'Patriarchal, Closed-Door, Male-Dominated Society' to help move Classical Psychoanalysis forward in healthier and less anachronistic, sexist directions.
Even the late Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud, and the most powerful Psychoanalyst of the 1970s, felt that it was more important to protect the legacy and the 'unscientific, male-biased, beliefs and assumptions of her father' rather than to help Psychoanalysis move forward in the 20th and 21 century in a way that was more 'harmonious' with the rights, the differences, and the egalitarianism of women -- in short, the feminist movement of the 20th century as it played itself out through the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and onwards.
Jeffrey Masson , the third most politically powerful Psychoanalyst in the late 1970s (behind only Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler), with Anna Freud's and Kurt Eissler's blessing, after digging deep into The Freud Archives, into Sigmund Freud's most private, unpublished letters, and those around him at the time who were in his closest circle of influence (such as Fliess), came to a most shocking and unpopular ('politically incorrect') conclusion: specifically, that Freud had abandoned his 'traumacy-seduction-child sex abuse' theory for 'political and economic reasons'; not 'scientific' ones.
Probably the most cutting remark that Masson made to the Psychoanalytic Establishment and the public in general was that, Freud, in effect, 'lost (the) moral courage' necessary to stand up to his Psychiatric superiors and peers relative to the issue of 'child sex abuse' back in 1896-97 after an important paper ('The Aetiology of Hysteria', 1896) that he read to them in a scientific meeting was essentially ridiculed and called a 'scientific fairy tale' after he had read the paper .
I believe this. Or at least partly. Freud didn't talk much about childhood sexual abuse the rest of his professional career and particularly through his advancement of 'The Oedipal Complex Theory (and Assumption)', Freud, through this 'template generalization' for all future Classical Psychoanalysts to abide by,' essentially denied the existence of any and all 'father-daughter sexual assaults'.
Whether Freud 'lost moral courage' -- either fully or partly -- and/or whether there were other 'clinical and/or theoretical extenuating factors' such as his 'fantasy theory' and 'screen memories' and 'interpretation of dreams' all coming down the chute (part of which can even already be seen to be evolving in 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' if you read it closely enough), still, one way or the other, Freud didn't act as a good 'squash player' or 'clinician' or 'theorist' or 'therapist' or 'scientist': specifically, he didn't 'go back to the center of the court of human behavior'.
When Freud advanced his 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory', Freud was 'playing psychotherapy from the left side of the court of human behavior'.
When Freud did a 180 degree 'theoretical switcheroo' around 1897-1899, and started introducing his ideas about 'fantasy theory', and 'screen memories', and 'fantasies disguised as memories', and 'interpreting memories like you might interpret a dream', and 'The Oedipal Complex' -- when Freud started doing all of this, he was no longer playing on the 'left side of the court of human behavior'; he was now 'playing on the right side of the court of human behavior'. The essential factor here being the idea of 'fantasy-motivated human behavior as opposed to traumacy-motivated human behavior'.
In both cases -- before and after 1897 -- Freud was not being an 'objective scientist, clinician, and theorist'. Before 1897, Freud was guilty of 'left sided Psychoanalytic bias'; after 1897, Freud was guilty of 'right-sided Psychoanalytic bias'.
And after 1897 -- or more like after about 1935 -- Freud had too many 'lemmings' in his 'Psychoanalytic cult' -- including his own daughter, Anna -- who were ready to 'go over the cliff with him' on the issue of only playing 'right-sided Psychoanalysis'.
Others opted out -- many others: Adler, Jung, Rank, Ferenczi, Reich, Klein, Horney, Fromm, Fairbairn, Perls, Berne....
But throughout the 60s and 70s, and heading into the 80s, Anna Freud was still much too 'emotionally cathected' to her father -- and to her father's legacy -- to 'play anything but right-sided Psychoanalysis'. She was essentially 'blind to left-sided, pre-1897, Psychoanalysis'.
And that is when Masson blind-sided Classical Psychoanalysis at the end of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s...with his 'Psychoanalytic bulldozer' act, or, to use the metaphor I used in my last essay on this topic: 'The Raging Bull in The Psychoanalytic China Shop' act...
The Psychoanalytic Establishment finally got the Massonian Bull out of the Psychoanalytic China Shop, and replaced the china....
And things at least partly returned to 'normal' in The Psychoanalytic Establishment....As Erich Fromm would say, 'The Pathology of Normalcy'...
Different authors -- both inside and outside of Psychoanalysis --have had their say on this controversial issue..
Some authors have stated -- rightly so -- that The Seduction Theory by itself was never strong enough to carry all of Psychoanalysis.
True. 'Left-sided Psychoanalysis' has the potential -- when practiced in the extreme -- to be just as pathologically one-sided as 'right-sided Psychoanalysis' does.
I need to do more research in this latter area, and in particular read one book. But I have already written one essay on the 'extreme danger and potential pathology' of playing 'left-sided Psychoanalysis to the extreme'.
Specifically, I find it just as appalling to think of the prospect -- and the reality -- of today's 'modern day Seduction Theory Evangelists' to 'push and prod a therapeutic client' in a particular, 'pre-ordained direction, to supposedly 'reconstruct repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse in their adult clients' -- that never happened. If some poor father gets dragged into court because some 'overzealous Seduction Theorist/Therapist' went a little 'overboard' on his or her 'memory reconstructing', this, my friends, is just as sickening as the opposite case scenario -- a woman whose 'real life childhood sexual assault' gets re-interpreted as a 'sexual fantasy'.
Psychoanalysis -- and all psychotherapy -- needs to practice its trade from a 'centre court perspective' -- 'evenly balanced, and willing and able, to move anywhere in the court of human behavior at a moment's notice...'
I have said this before -- and it is just as relevant today as it was back in 1896 -- politics and money often 'squash (professional) ethics'.
But so too can 'theoretical and therapeutic blinders' -- assumptive over-generalizations -- used and abused by therapists who do not have an open, flexible, 'full court' theoretical and therapeutic mind...
Memories are not 'epistemological truths' anymore than 'generalizations' or 'perceptions' or 'interpretations' or 'value judgments' are...
Memories can hold epistemological truths...
But memories can also hold epistemological fictions...
And anything and everything in between...
Memories are subject to the 'aging process'... (like my eyesight, my memory is getting worse with age, not better...)
Memories are subject to the full range of potential and actual 'narcissistic bias'...
Everything we say and do, perceive and interpret, judge and not judge, assume and don't assume, remember and don't remember, is subject to human narcissistic bias...Nietzsche explained to us in no uncertain terms that nothing in the field of human perception is unaffected and/or untainted by human bias -- and 'subjective interest'. 'There are no such things as facts, only interpretations.' -- Nietzsche
This having been said, some memories have a better claim to 'epistemological truth' than others.
Some memories come more clearly into focus than others do.
I may not remember what I did one day last week.
But if i had ever been sexually assaulted at an age i could remember, I would still remember it.
There is likely to be a much greater 'clarity of memory focus' around 'sexual memories' -- good and/or bad. But again, this is just my own generalization. Nothing is written in stone.
I can remember a person near and dear to me 'remembering a memory' where he was not there to experience the memory. But the memory had been shared with him a number of times in a period where he was undergoing a lot of emotional stress -- and then, presto, all of a sudden it was 'his' memory too, not the memory of my brother and I who were the only ones there, and who just looked at each other and shook our heads while this 'third party' magically claimed that he had been there too...
Repressed memories in particular can be 'very slippery slopes'. Quite frankly, I don't trust them. I acknowledge them in 'case examples in books' that certainly seem real enough...But only if the memory comes to the person through his or her own 'associations' in which case whose to say that we are not better calling this memory a 'suppressed memory' or a 'pre-conscious memory that through a dramatic or not so dramatic association suddenly enters 'consciousness'...
I have 'red flags' being waved and 'alarm bells' going off in my head every time I come into contact in a book with the idea of a 'reconstructed memory'...The same with 'pushing and prodding therapists'... If 'brainwashing' can be done in a 'torture chamber' or in a 'school or church with young children', or in a 'family home', it can most certainly also be done in a 'therapist's office'...
That is why I like to work with 'conscious memories' -- plain and simple. In general, I trust them and what they may say in terms of 'transference-lifestyle conflicts and complexes' about the person who is remembering the memory...especially if it is an early childhood memory around 3-7 years old.
I've already worked with Freud's earliest 'conscious' memory.
I trust the memory, and I trust my 'transference-lifestyle conflict analysis' of it.
More on memories at a later date...
As I said previously, we may be leaving this subject matter here shortly and heading in another direction for awhile...
I still have to mull this over a bit...We have not quite exhausted The Seduction Theory Controversy...But we have examined it here and elsewhere from a number of different perspectives...Opposing perspectives...which are both important..
Traumacy -- and traumatic memories -- can influence 'messed up thinking and emotions'.
But so too can 'messed up thinking and emotions' influence the development of further trauma.
In a 'strange and paradoxical way', traumacy -- and traumatic memories -- can sometimes (oftentimes?) stimulate the development of 'sexual and egotistic (narcissistic) fantasies'...
And conversely, 'sexual and egotistic/narcissistic fantasies' can also stimulate the development of further trauma -- traumatic encounters, traumatic relationships, and further traumatic memories...
Call this the 'repetition and/or mastery compulsion' at work if you will...
More on this as we continue...
The important point here is to once again emphasize the process of 'dialectic (two way causal, bi-polar, integrative) thinking' as opposed to the more problematic, Aristolean, 'either/or' brand of thinking...and missing the excluded 'integrative middle zone'....
And also for a therapist to stay 'evenly balanced', in the 'middle zone', prepared to move in any direction his or her client takes him or her, with a 'theory that is evenly balanced as well', and not pre-designed to take the the therapist and client in this direction, or that direction, against the will of the client, and against the 'esssence' of what has actually happened -- or not happened -- in the client's life history, and what is actually happening -- or not happening -- in the client's 'here and now experience'.
My own rule of thumb for all therapists:
'Don't push the river; let it flow.' (from my learnings in Gestalt Therapy)
The two most dangerous mistakes that a psychotherapist can potentially make come from the opposite extremes of therapeutic bi-polar dysfunctioning: 1. missing, avoiding, neglecting a real childhood sexual traumacy in a therapeutic client; and/or 2. 'reconstructing' a fabricated childhood sexual traumacy that never happened in a therapeutic client.
Or a third way of viewing both the two potentially pathological and tragic epistemological and ethical mistakes distinguished above is this: 3. The therapist being 'too narcissistically infatuated with, wrapped up in, and fixated on', the particular model/theory/paradigm of the personality he or she is working with, and in the process 'missing' the very real, live, pulsing, thinking, emoting, acting and/or not acting, human being who is right before the therapist's eyes who needs to be understood in his or her full, complex uniqueness; not according to some 'assembly-line, robotic, generic theory' that may or may not 'miss the boat of real life human experience and humanistic-existentialism'.
-- dgb, Jan. 11th, last paragraph added Jan. 17th, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
