A. Synopsis
This essay aims to accomplish two main tasks: 1. an integration of pre-Classical, Classical, and post-Classical Psychoanalytic thinking, including ideas from Object Relations Theory, Transactional Analysis, Adlerian Psychology, and Gestalt Theory; as well as; 2. integrate the pre-Classical Psychoanalytic (pre-1897) Traumacy-Seduction Theory with the (post 1897) Classical Psychoanalytic Oedipal-Childhood Sexuality-Fantasy Theory...and in so doing, offer a 'conflict resolution' to the very heated and still ongoing (for over 100 years now) 'Seduction Theory vs. Oedipal Theory' controversy.
.................................................................................................................................................
B. Opening Comments (Part 1)
One of the key questions that this essay brings out is that if you have an 'insatiable need for knowledge' -- in one particular field (like Freud in the field of psychology and sexuality) or anyone else in any other discipline for that matter -- is it possible that there is a 'core nuclear conflict' from early childhood that contains the 'underlying, unbridled, driving impulse behind this seemingly insatiable curiosity', modified and watered down into a more socially acceptable fashion that partly hides and partly alludes to the original uncensored impulse?
If the answer to this question is 'yes', then that does sound very 'Classical Psychoanalytic', doesn't it? Perhaps with some kind of childhood 'perversion' (to use Freud's word) or a 'narcissistic fixation' (to use mine) that underlies the more 'socially acceptable' search for abstract human knowledge -- even in the realm of 'sexuality' (but not necessarily).
Well indeed, the answer here does tend to support the Psychoanalytic generalization that there likely is a narcissistic fixation at work underlying all forms of 'work sublimation' -- i.e., we find a realm of work -- or a hobby -- that at least partly 'satisfies' our 'childhood narcissistic fixation' while partly 'hiding' this fixation as well...
In Freud's life, his driving ambition and insatiable need for knowledge involved his 'sexual curiosity' stemming from an 'ego-traumacy' involving his father in his first childhood early recollection... I will a 'DGB transference analysis' of this memory at the end of this essay...
It is virtually impossible to go through the first 5 or 6 years of life without experiencing some 'shocking ego-traumacy' to our our psyche, whether subjectively and/or objectively perceived as such.
The realm of 'subjectivity' is important here because what might be easily perceived as 'traumatic' for a 4 or 5 year old might not be thought of as such to an adult, or might even be partly smiled or laughed at from an adult's perspective... There are what practically all of us would call 'very serious childhood trauma' and then there are the less obvious 'embarrassments', 'rejections', and/or 'failure' that could be easily passed over by an adult while at the same time -- if we pay a little more careful attention -- become the most strongly motivating 'narcissistic fixation' in a child's/adults whole life...the 'centerpiece' around which all other aspects of his or her personality revolve or rotate....Such is the nature of 'transference complexes and/or neuroses' centering around a 'core nuclear conflict' -- and often the memory of an encounter -- in conscious early childhood (usually between 3 and 6).
This theory that I am asserting and extrapolating on, as best I can in one essay, steps out of anything that can be called 'Classical Psychoanalysis' -- indeed, anything that can be called any kind of 'orthodox' Psychoanalysis (Classical or Object Relations), pre-Psychoanalysis (Traumacy and/or Seduction Theory), or even any type of post-Psychoanalysis -- be it Adlerian Psychology, Jungian Psychology, Transactional Analysis, or Gestalt Therapy. The particular integrative theory that I am expounding on here is none of these -- and yet it is partly all of these. It is Psychoanalysis -- and yet by any current orthodox professional standards -- it is not.
What I am calling 'Quantum Psychoanalysis' here -- and I admit that I am taking some liberties with the name 'Quantum Psychoanalysis' in that I am not 'officially qualified' or 'trained' to call anything I write 'Psychoanalysis' -- but still, for anyone reading this paper, and for anyone knowledgeable in the history and evolution of Psychoanalysis, it would be hard to call the theory that I am extrapolating on below anything other than some new, integrative 'branch' or 'sub-school' of 'Psychoanalysis'....
Furthermore, it has become almost a cliche to say that oftentimes (if not most of the time), it is the theorists who 'think outside the box' who have the most new life, energy, and ideas to offer any theory -- and the field of study under investigation through the medium of the 'theory' -- 'inside the box'. Think Copernicus!
I use the label 'Quantum' to refer to the similarity between what I am doing here and what scientists did in integrating 'particle theory' and 'wave theory' to form 'Quantum Physics'...
The theory here could also be called 'Integrative Psychoanalysis' or 'Wholistic Psychoanalysis'...or 'DGB-GAP Psychology' -- the name 'GAP' coming from an integration of Gestalt Theory, Adlerian Theory, and Psychoanalysis, which I started to do way back in the 1980s...
Whatever the theory below ends up being called, it is still very 'strongly Psychoanalytic in its content' but at the same time 'welcomes back into the world of Psychoanalysis some top rate Psychoanalysts who were previously 'rejected' and 'excommunicated' by Freud or visa versa: theorists and therapists like Adler, Steckel, Jung, Reich, Rank, Horney, Fromm, Perls, Berne, with Jeffrey Masson probably being the last one, who ran into theoretical and therapeutic disagreements with the more modern day 'Keepers of The Freud Legacy' -- specifically, Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and the other board members who I am not familiar with in the 1980s...
Like Masson, I have problems with Freud's 'very tight -- and potentially pathological' -- conception of The Oedipal Complex Theory which Freud 'interpreted as the sexual fantasy of a growing girl towards her father masked within her distorted childhood memory or memories of sexual seduction and/or assault by her father'. What if these so called 'distorted childhood sexual assault memories' are actually real? Then we have a very, very unethical problem of a psychoanalyst actually 'suppressing' and 'reinterpreting' what might have been an actual sexual assault memory...and some 110 years later after Freud created this 'potentially pathological' Oedipal Theory in this way...the unbelievable fact remains that Classical Psychoanalysis is still teaching and adhering to this practice...and getting away with it...
I also have trouble with the Psychoanalytic concept of 'repression' which is an 'empirically unprovable' concept -- totally as 'metaphysical' as the concept of 'God' in some theoretical and/or therapeutic contexts...and I have trouble with the related concepts of 'repressed memories' and 'repressed fantasies'....
In this regard, I take Psychoanalysis the same way Freud started to do at the end of his professional career by talking about the 'splitting of the ego' rather than 'repression' proper...
A memory does not have to be 'unconscious' or 'repressed' in order to be 'pathological' or 'neurotic'... From my learning and my experience, I have come to the conclusion that some of our most 'neurotic' and/or 'pathological' memories are those that may be very easy to remember....particularly in our earliest childhood conscious memories....
Our 'earliest conscious childhood memories' can also be viewed as 'unfinished situations' or 'unfinished gestalts' which is Fritz Perls' territory, Gestalt Therapy Territory, and this too can help us in our integrative perspective here... Indeed, we will probably never 'finish these earliest childhood memories, these unfinished gestalts, to our complete satisfaction, over our entire lifetime... which makes these particular memories -- these symbolic memories of our 'whole life in a nutshell' -- utterly fascinating to study and interpret....
This is Alfred Adler's territory and his teaching....and I think I have learned some of Adler's lessons well while rejecting his overall approach, and instead taking what I learned from Adler and taking these ideas -- like 'lifestyle' and 'inferiority feeling' and 'superiority striving' and 'masculine protest' and 'compensation' and 'conscious early recollections' back into Psychoanalysis and re-applying these ideas there... The results are exciting...
Rather than looking for a 'repressed memory' that may or may not exist, DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis takes a partly Classical Psychoanalytic, partly Object Relations, partly Adlerian, partly Transactional Analysis, partly Gestalt approach (yeah, I know there is an awful lot of 'integrations' going on here and all coming back into one 'Grand Narrative Theory'....) but anyway, this is what I have done, but mainly, I have used the Adlerian approach to interpreting conscious early memories but with a more 'conflict model' approach involving a 'splitting of the ego', and a 'compromise-formation' between 'impulse' (desire, fantasy, wish, drive...) and a 'defense' (restraint, resistance, compensation, projection, etc...) against this same impulse from within.
Paradoxically, we can often find what Freud called our own signature 'childhood perversion(s)' or 'narcissistic fixations' mixed in to the same memory or memories as our earliest, or at least one of our earliest, childhood traumatic memories -- often easily recalled at a moment's notice...
Being partly taught and trained in Adlerian Psychology as well as Gestalt Therapy, I look for what I once heard called 'core nuclear conflicts' (see Virginia Satir, Psychodrama, another partial influence) in our 'earliest childhood memories' which often contain 'narcissistic (self-esteem) injuries (ego-traumacies, rejection, failures, etc.) and 'compensatory narcissistic fixations'...
It is this combination of ideas including most of Classical Psychoanalysis -- both before and after Freud's abandonment of The Seduction Theory (let us say between 1897 and 1905) -- that has propelled the birth of 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis' in this essay here...as it has been slowly evolving since the 1980s for me...
As well, the thesis presented in this essay argues that The Traumacy-Seduction Theory and The Childhood Sexuality-Fantasy-Oedipal Theory, far from being incompatible with each other and mutually exclusive, are actually mutually supportive of each other, often both stemming from the same conscious early memory. (Maybe many of the conscious childhood memories of 'hysterics' were repressed -- who professes to know today? -- or maybe they were simply 'suppressed' or 'out of awareness' and simply needed some kind of 'associative prompting' (hypnosis, free association) to bring them 'back into awareness'....either way...I can usually find what I am looking for in 'Adler's territory' -- the territory of 'conscious early childhood memories' often containing what I am calling here 'core nuclear conflicts' complete with 'impulses' and 'restraints'...and the 'compromise' between them...
The glue that sticks these two seemingly paradoxical and contradictory theories together is the combination of ideas and theories partly suggested above. Again, these include Narcissistic Transference Theory, Adlerian Theory, Object Relations Theory, and Transactional Analysis Ego-State Theory, presented to you by me in a manner that holds onto ALL of the most important ideas stemming from pre and post-1897 Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory (my perspective, of course), and at the same time, rebels against certain Classical Psychoanalytic assumptions and parameters such as over-idolizing 'repression' as the key to understanding 'neurosis', and thus 'over-focusing' on the significance of 'repressed memories' and their 'Oedipal wishful fantasy re-interpretation'.
In the place of 'repression' and 'repressed memories', I offer such interconnected and integrative cross-school concepts as: 'narcissistic (self-esteem) injury', 'narcissistic fixations', 'oral, anal, and genital obsessive-compulsions (addictions)', 'the projective re-creation compulsion', the 'mastery compulsion', and the 'repetition compulsion', 'phobic and counter-phobic transference complexes (both in the same neurotic package), 'the transference-lifestyle interpretation of conscious early memories', 'inferiority feelings', 'superiority striving' (the mastery compulsion), 'the lifestyle-transference goal', and 'the splitting of the ego' into five main 'ego-states': 1. the nurturing parent-ego (i.e., the 'good parent'); 2. the critical-rejecting (and exciting) parent-ego (i.e., 'the bad parent'); 3. The compliant child-ego (i.e., 'the good child') ; 4. 'the rebellious, defiant child-ego' (i.e., 'the bad child'); and 5. 'The Central-Mediating (Conflict-Resolving, Problem-Solving, Compromise-Formation) Ego'.
These are the concepts that we need to re-build Classical Psychoanalysis into a more wholistic 'Quantum Psychoanalysis' that integrates all 50 years of Freud's professional thinking including his supposedly 'mutually contradictory' pre-1897 Traumacy-Seduction Theory and his post 1897 Childhood Sexuality-Wishful Fantasy-Oedipal Theory.
Both of these theories come together -- fitting with each other like the left and right hands of a glove (or the left and right pontoons -- or even 'wings' -- of a 'pontoon plane') -- in what I am presenting below in its most definitive form -- as 'DGB (Multi-Integrative) Quantum Psychoanalysis'.
One last point...At least partly in agreement with Dr. Masson in his rebellion against Classical Oedipal Complex Theory, I am looking for 'real memories' in any 'transference analysis' that I do -- not memories that are deemed to be 'false' or 'distorted'....However, my argument runs like this: the 'traumacy' often 'causes' the 'fantasy' -- or at least triggers the beginning of it...The relationship of 'traumacy' to 'fantasy' is often one of 'cause' to 'effect'....From the traumacy, the fantasy is born -- not in the 'wish to repeat the worst nightmare ego-traumatic memory' (although this often happens) but rather in the 'counter-phobic wish and fantasy' to 'master' and 'overcome' the traumacy -- to give it a 'happy -- even scintillating and orgasmic ending' that it didn't have the first time around.
This is the paradoxical love-hate, phobic-counter-phobic, libidinous-anti-libidinous nature and essence of a 'Full-Blooded Transference Neurosis and Complex'...one that even Freud couldn't completely get his head around (He almost did when he started talking at different times in his writing about the 'mastery compulsion', particularly in 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle'...but he 'abandoned ship' here and instead opted for his controversial 'Death Instinct Theory' which may have some merit in another context (for example in the paradoxical 'birth' of new, functional cells vs. the 'death' of old, dysfunctional cells playing off against each other until...we all know what side is eventually going to win...
'Entropy' is always eventually going to win...particularly as we spend more and more time 'sitting' and 'lying' around, and less and less time 'moving'... I know something of which I speak...
In real estate, the key phrase is...'Location, location, location...'
In health, the key phrase is 'circulation, circulation, circulation...'
So my dear readers...Let's 'circulate and exercise some brain cells'...by reading the main body of my essay below...
B. Opening Comments (Part 2)
Every time I think I have written enough here to rhetorically, theoretically, and clinically support my case for an All-Inclusive brand of 'DGB Multi-Integrative Quantum Psychoanalysis', a day later something else pops up into my head that I deem important and that I believe will better explain and clarify the whole 'Traumacy-Seduction-Transference-Narcisisism-Fantasy-Impulse' case that I am putting forward here to describe the essence of what is being called 'transference neurosis' or 'transference-lifestyle neurosis' or 'transference-lifestyle-complex'.
Even the much maligned 'Oedipal Complex Theory' -- redefined -- has an important role to play in the theory about to be expounded here but not as a potential 'coverup' for Childhood Sexual Abuse. How many years need to pass by before Psychoanalysis is finally willing to admit that Freud made a colossal blunder -- both from a theoretical standpoint and from a public relations standpoint, particularly relative to women -- when he asserted that essentially 'all' female clients' childhood memories involving a sexual encounter between her and her father were/are 'false memories' both hiding and alluding to an underlying 'sexual fantasy wish' on the part of the woman (female client) wanting to be romantically-sexually seduced/possessed (and/or visa versa) by her father. When the idea of 'repressed, unconscious wishes, fantasies, desires...' is added to the theoretical explanation postulated here, how can you make any kind of a reasonable counter-argument against such a completely 'metaphysical' argument that can be used as a 'self-fulfilling prophecy' and/or 'circular reasoning'...to 'prove' their own case... We all know that a little girl is likely to have a certain range and/or focus of 'love' towards her father -- as with her mother too; and similarly, in the case of the little boy with his mother and father as well....It is just a matter of 'where do you want to draw the line' between a 'deep, and real, meaningful interpretation' vs. a 'deep and fictitious/fallacious interpretation'....especially, in the latter case, one that could theoretically and therapeutically cover up 'real child sexual abuse'.
Personally, I think it is long past overdue -- like at least 25 to 50 years overdue -- that Psychoanalysis 'cut its (narcissistic) losses' and admit to the world that Father Freud made a 'huge boo boo' in the way that he defined and described his pet theory, 'The Oedipal Complex'...
In fact, I will even offer the theory, that Freud, through 'sublimation' (by my definition, which isn't too far away from 'normal' psychoanalytic standards, 'sublimation' is the subconscious, creative and/or destructive process by which we 'project' our 'personal transference neuroses/complexes' into our work and/or hobbies), to repeat, through sublimation, Freud turned his 'main personal transference memory/complex/neurosis' into a world-wide, multi-generation, 'Psychoanalytic Neurosis'. And it is still going...
What is 'transference'? I cannot begin to adequately explain the concept of transference to you without you understanding the concept of 'narcissistic injury' or 'self-esteem injury' or 'ego-traumacy' or 'personalized rejection and/or failure'....that generally occurs in about the first five or six years of our life -- and leads to a profound effect on -- and 'split' in -- our individual psyche. There is not a person that this 'childhood narcissistic injury' effect -- and 'transference effect' -- does not occur in. Furthermore, the 'intimate connection' between 'childhood narcissistic injury', 'compensatory, often contradictory, attempts at 'self-healing', i.e., 'transference' is about as close to a life long process as anything else we have in our 'mind' and/or 'body'.
For better and/or for worse, we are more 'attached' to our transference neuroses/complexes than we are to our spouses (even though our spouses are invariably 'intertwined' into our transference complexes) -- and our transference complexes really are 'lifelong' whereas our 'marriages' only take up a part of our lifetime, and these days, often only a 'small' part of a lifetime. In fact, it can be abstractly stated that 'transferences' generally 'bring us together in our marriages' -- and also 'split us apart'. Because these same transferences, not only split our relationships apart; they also split us apart, until they are sufficiently 'healed' for us to lead what most of us would call a 'normal' life -- if that is at all possible. As Freud wrote, we all live a greater or lesser amount of 'psychopathology' in our so-called 'normal, day-to-day lives'. (Just as we are all 'schizophrenic' when we go to sleep and dream.) Furthermore, we are all 'serial rejectors' in one 'style' and/or another in the mold of our first childhood rejectors. Such is the essence of 'transference'....
Transference is like a 'psychic immune system reaction' that metaphorically, if not literally, 'floods' the area of the 'narcissistic (self-esteem) injury' with 'red' and 'white' blood cells...In a combination of my own words now, and Adler's in 1906, although neither Freud nor Adler saw the 'transference connection' at this point in time (from 'The Minutes of The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society', Nunberg and Federn, 1962), when there is a 'physical injury' and/or an 'organ inferiority' (Adler 'limped' when he was a child...I think, if I remember correctly, he had 'rickets'), then there is what Adler called 'supervalent, cerebral activity' -- a huge flood of cerebral activity -- to 'compensate' for this 'physical injury' and/or 'organ inferiority'....It only took a few more years in Adler's theoretical evolution to 'transfer' this idea to the realm of 'psychic (self-esteem) injuries' and 'psychic inferiority feelings/complexes'....
Unfortunately, by this time, Freud and Adler were becoming more and more distant from each other, and would eventually separate because of what I will call 'irreconcilable differences' (the 'typical marriage on its way to divorce')... I wish I had been back there in 1906 with the knowledge I have now to have been there 'marriage counselor and conflict mediator'....They both needed a more 'objective, creative Central Ego' to re-integrate their 'divisionism'...But alas, that is 'wishful, fantasy thinking', and from another perspective, their mutual and respective 'failures' has created the opportunity for me to 'succeed' where they both failed (even though neither of them would even admit that they failed -- nor likely will their present, respective 'schools of psychology' which they left behind as their legacy.
Let me add one final point before I stop today where I started and finished yesterday: Both Freud and Adler were brilliant, creative psychological thinkers -- 'superstars' in the world of psychology and in the history of clinical psychology and psychotherapy. But even 'superstars' have their weaknesses, be it their 'righteousness', their 'conceptual narcissism', and/or their 'individual childhood circumstances' that lead to 'over-developments' in one area of psychological thinking and 'under-developments' in another....
Regardless, of how people come to judge my own brand of 'psychological thinking', I am no different than either Freud or Adler in that my 'individual tranference complexes' have been 'projected into my work'. (One of my 'biggest professional weaknesses' -- as well as 'strengths' -- is that 'I do not follow corporate rules very well' -- a leftover 'transference characteristic' of my 'teenage, rebellious relationship' with my dad. You would think that 30 'adult' years working in the corporate world would 'mellow my rebellious spirit'...but here I am writing a very 'unorthodox, Un-Establishment essay -- if fact two of them combined into one where neither the Freudians nor the Adlerians may be happy with the 'integrative creative outcome of my work' -- but then again, maybe either school, or both schools, of psychology will 'surprise' me...in a way that I don't expect...
Having over 50 years of 'evolutionary advantage' over both Freud and Adler, I can see how both of their respective transference complexes influenced the respective schools of psychology that they created, as have mine...And I have moved into the 'minefield' of their differences in opinion at the same time, I believe that in integrating the respective work of two creative geniuses (with Fritz Perls being another whose work is integrated in here as well), I have found a theory here that is 'superior', evolution-wise, to the 'non-inclusive' individual theories of both men taken separately.
Obviously, there has been some 'compromises' that have had to be made along the way -- for example, do I use Freud's concept of 'transference' or Adler's concept of 'lifestyle'? (I have tried to use both as in 'transference-lifestyle complex'.) Do I use Freud's assumption of 'conflict in the personality'? Or Adler's assumption of 'unity in the personality'? Again, here I have integrated both assumptions together into the assumption of 'unified and/or un-unified conflict' in the personality (depending sometimes on the degree of the neurosis, sometimes not...A person can be 'very unified' in their 'symptomology' and 'presentation' of a 'distancing' or 'anal-schizoid' neurosis...and 'content not to change'...or alternatively, 'want to change'...
To repeat, neither school of psychology is likely to be totally happy with my integration package here....But then again, I may get some supporters from either or both schools of psychology as well...
Let us now continue this essay where I 'thought' I started and finished it yesterday.
-- dgb, June 29th, 2010.
...................................................................................................................................................................
C. The Great Psychoanalytic Split (Schism)
Freud was a brilliant, creative thinker -- both before and after 1897. This is apart from any ethical transgressions that Freud may have committed over the course of his 50 year professional career.
Ethically, Freud committed at least three major transgressions over the course of his medical/clinical psychology career: 1. using cocaine in his medical practise before he fully understood its properties; 2. the whole Emma Ekstein nasal surgery fiasco; and 3. theoretically and clinically, purposely and/or accidentally, covering up and/or ignoring the possibility/reality of childhood sexual abuse in his clinical practise due to his post 1897 Oedipal Complex Theory overshadowing and essentially 'wiping out' all of his previously valuable clinical and theoretical work culminating in his pre-1897 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory'.
Any one-sided concept, idea, characteristic, theory and/or philosophy is destined to be partly right and partly wrong, partly good and partly bad, because that is the inherent vulnerability and weakness of one-sided theories. They can never capture -- because they can never 'structurally fit' --the 'multi-bi-polar' nature of life's opposing possibilities.
These are what I call 'one-sided pontoon theories'...Try flying and/or landing a plane on water with only a 'left-sided' or 'right-sided' pontoon. The design of the plane is never going to be as good as a plane with both a 'left-sided' and a 'right-sided' double pontoon system -- for better overall balance of the plane. Freud's 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' was/is a 'left-handed pontoon theory', and his Childhood Sexuality-Wishful Fantasy-Oedipal Theory' was/is a 'right handed pontoon theory' -- and neither theory flies properly with only one left or right, out of balance, pontoon.
Both partial Freudian theories 'need' each other in order to properly balance and 'fly' the full Freudian Psychoanalytic plane properly.
But Freud couldn't see this -- and neither could any psychoanalyst after him.
Instead, between 1897 and 1905, Freud created a big black hole, a big schism, in Psychoanalysis -- like Humpty Dumpty split in two, and neither Freud, nor
'All of Freud's horses,
Nor all of Freud's men,
Could put Humpty Dumpty
Back together again...'
I will.
You don't need to belong to a Psychoanalytic Institution in order to be a creatively smart Psychoanalytic thinker and theorist.
In fact, belonging to a Psychoanalytic Institution -- indeed, any Institution -- can be a funeral for creative thinking. It encourages 'group think' or 'non-individualistic thinking'. 'Compliance' is rewarded. 'Theoretical rebellion' -- especially of a major sort -- can guarantee an individual thinker a one way ticket out the Institutional door...even more so if the integrity and character of the 'Guru-School Creator and/or Leader' is challenged.
Inside Psychoanalysis, there is obviously no bigger -- and more idealized (idolized) -- name than Sigmund Freud. Obviously, an institution needs to protect its good name and the integrity and reputation of its leaders (past and present).
However, if there is some 'assumption' that is 'dragging the good name of an institution down into the mud, essentially 'blackballing' the institution with at least half its potential customer/client base such that most women, particularly feminists -- and egalitarian men for that matter too -- outside the institution think of Freud's name -- and the words 'Patriarch' and Chauvinist' come to mind and such concepts as 'castration anxiety' and 'penis envy' are the first concepts they think of, and they think of Psychoanalysis as a 21st Century 'Anachronism'...with most people not even knowing what 'Object Relations' or 'Self Psychology' is....they only are familiar with the basic precepts and assumptions of a very 'Victorian Classical Psychoanalysis'....don't you think that someone inside Psychoanalysis at some point in the past 100 years -- or some group of 'pragmatic, egalitarian Psychoanalytic leaders' -- would finally get together and say: 'We have to change some of these archaic, outdated Victorian assumptions and beliefs.?
'We have to replace these old archaic Victorian assumptions, concepts, and beliefs with a set of assumptions, concepts, and beliefs that will improve the 21st Century Psychoanalytic image, get rid of the old, anachronistic Victorian stereotype (especially since we are still 'feeding' this stereotype), and introduce to the public a new set of integrated assumptions, concepts, and beliefs that are more egalitarian, less sexist, and that today's 21st century woman -- and feminist -- can accept and endorse.'
Wouldn't you think that this would have happened?
It hasn't.
D. The Danger Of The Misuse and Abuse of 'The Oedipal Complex Theory' and The Whole Clinical Practice of 'Re-interpreting' (Distorting, Brain-Washing) Clients' Memories
Psychoanalysis continues to carry the same skeletons in its cobwebby closet, the same emotional baggage, that has plagued it since about 1905, and nothing ever gets done about it...Psychoanalysts everywhere -- at least the ones that want to keep their jobs -- keep insisting that 'the king is not riding his Psychoanalytic horse -- (or plane) -- naked.'
'Abstractify the public to death -- or say nothing (like the politicians do) -- and just wait until the scandal blows away, again...hopefully forever, or for at least another 50 years or so...Just keep following Freud over the public relations cliff -- like lemmings -- and keep falling into the public relations abyss...losing about half your potential customers, maybe more -- women, more educated, business wise, and politically assertive women these days than they were a hundred years ago -- and just keep saying that 'what they remember from their childhood -- if it involved any kind of sexual/moral/legal transgression with their father -- isn't what really happened the way they think it happened...'
Once again, Freud's 'ultra-conservative -- ultra sexist' interpretation of his cherished Oedipal Complex is dysfunctioning inside Classical Psychoanalysis like a toxic poison -- like mold running along the ceilings and down the walls of The Psychoanalytic Institution...And still no one does anything about this toxic Psychoanalytic problem except hope that this problem -- this 1980s scandal -- will not be publicly be aired liked 'dirty laundry' by writers like myself, or worse, by journalists and/or ex-Psychoanalysts who have the clout to make the issue front page news...again...
Somehow, everyone in the Psychoanalytic Establishment seems to think that it is 'right' to support a theoretical -- and a clinical -- position that condones, indeed teaches and supports, Psychoanalysts to 're-interpret' a female client's childhood sexual assault/seduction memory (or series of memories) as her own childhood and/or teenage 'sexual wish and fantasy'!!
Institutionally -- and legally -- The Psychoanalytic Establishment continues to allow, indeed teach that it is okay to 'distort'/i.e., 're-interpret' the content of a woman's childhood 'assault' memory as her 'own sexual fantasy'. Anywhere else this would be called 'brainwashing'!!
And yet for over a hundred years now, Psychoanalysis continues to 'get away' with this practice. I am amazed that feminists have not protested the doors off Psychoanalytic Institutes everywhere! I am amazed that Supreme Courts everywhere in the world have continued to allow Psychoanalysts to continue to legally adhere to this practice. And let me be totally clear on this issue. I find this practice equally reprehensible amongst the 'new breed ' of 'Seduction Theorists' as well.
Be you 'Oedipal Theorist' or 'Seduction Theorist', I believe that it is equally unethical and reprehensible to 're-interpret' a client's childhood early memory....They do that in 'torture chambers'...Does that make hypnosis unethical to the extent that it 'modifies or changes' a person's old memories? I would say so...'Beliefs' --maybe not -- if they are 'pathological' but who is doing the judging?
Virtually all psychotherapists try to change 'pathological beliefs...and maybe values'...but 'memories'....when there might have been an 'assault' committed in the memory...Such a therapist is 'tampering with' what could be needed in a court of law as 'untampered evidence'...Any alleged 'assault' victim's court case, where the alleged victim has been to either an Oedipal Therapist's or, more likely in this case, a Seduction Therapist's 'repression reconstruction' office, should be thrown out of court....because who knows now what the 'original memory as it was remembered' is...'that's therapeutically induced 'False Memory Syndrome' -- and both therapeutically and legally -- there is no excuse for it.
1. 'Thou shalt not distort/i.e., 'reinterpret' a client's childhood memory, conscious or unconscious. Work with the memory you are given, as it is...'
The memory below that I have given a 'transference interpretation' of, is UNTOUCHED as it was consciously remembered by Freud. It can be found in Ernest Jones' famous biography of Freud. It is there now, and it will be still there when I am dead and gone. Again -- untouched and untampered with. Precious few subjective or concrete details but those can be 'interpretively reconstructed' in a way that doesn't touch 'the reality of the original memory'. If you don't like my 'transference interpretation', you can discard it -- and the original memory is still there. This is a far cry from a therapist who tells a client that his or her memory 'wasn't real', and that it was something different. This is 'playing mind-games' with the client's confidence in his or her own ability to recall memories. This is 'brain-washing' from the therapist's own theoretical, personal, and/or clinical agenda. A BIG, BIG ETHICAL NO, NO that should be a LEGAL NO, NO as well.
E. Think Inside and Outside The Classical Psychoanalytic Box
How many times have we heard the expression, 'Think outside the box.'
Sometimes -- indeed often -- in order to 'THINK outside the Psychoanalytic Box', you need to actually BE outside the Psychoanalytic Box.
Such is my case.
Or you need to be able to withstand a lot of 'professional and political heat' coming your way when you choose to have the courage to challenge any long-standing and/or deeply held Freudian ideas/assumptions that the Institution doesn't like you to challenge. Freud himself, changed more 'Freudian ideas' than any other Psychoanalytic/Freudian thinker. But he had special privileges in this regard...It was his show...
Others rebelled, confronted their leader...and either left...or were pushed out...mainly by the Master himself, but in Masson's case, in the 1980s, by his daughter Anna Freud (who was just as conservative), and by the elder statesman, Kurt Eissler...and by whoever was on the Voting Board of Decision Makers... Before Masson, there was Adler, Jung, Wilhelm Reich, Stekel, Rank, Ferenczi, Klein, Fairbairn, Berne, Perls, and whoever I have left out...
The world of clinical psychology, personality theory, and psychotherapy is a better world for not having become trapped inside an 'Orthodox Psychoanalytic Theoretical and Clinical Box'.
Conceptual diversity, psychological diversity, cultural diversity, philosophical diversity, religious diversity and political diversity are all just as important to the evolution of the human species as biodiversity.
Ideas come together, attracted to each other, and merge, before they start to conflict with each other, repel and rebel against each other, and finally split, only to merge again in the future with some other idea or in some other integrative format with the old idea...(That is what I am doing.)
Thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis...and start all over again....is the Hegelian (and my post-Hegelian) view of the basic structure of the evolution of life....Testosterone, estrogen, and the integration of testosterone and estrogen...sperm, egg, and the fertilized egg...male parent, female parent, and an offspring of mixed, integrative genes....'yin', 'yang' and 'yin-yang' -- in or out of balance with each other...This is the 'homeostatic-dialectic balance and evolution of life'...
One of the paradoxes -- and contradictions (there were many) of Freud's character -- was that he was a 'rebellious, liberal thinker' when it came to his own creative thinking, and a 'puritanical, anal-retentive conservative' when it came to anyone else's 'rebellious, liberal thinking' (except for Fliess' radical, extreme thinking...and a few other cases along the way...). Freud was at least partly a 'control freak' -- he didn't want anyone else messing around with his vision and conception of 'Psychoanalysis'...
Am I any different? Perhaps not. I encourage democratic-dialectic thinking in Hegel's Hotel -- and diverse, even opposing, ideas coming together in Hegel's Hotel.
But I still have my own vision and my own conception of the way I want 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis' to come together like that 'child's picture puzzle' or 'jigsaw puzzle' that Freud kept writing about... In my mind, at least at this point in time, there is only one way I can see it all coming together...And that is the way I am writing it down here...
I have no doubt in my mind, that if my work here attracts sufficient interest and attention, that others at some point will want to 'deconstruct' and/or 'reconstruct' it....But that is a good thing over time...and a necessary part of human conceptual evolution...
Now, I may not like the various 'deconstructions' and/or 'reconstructions'...but that is the nature of the ongoing, sometime co-operative and friendly, sometimes not, dialectic-democratic relationship between the theorist, the counter-theorist -- and the 'synthesist' or 'integrationist'.
Without such a process, there would never be any earth-shattering conceptual and/or theoretical gains -- no 'Copernican Revolutions'....
Quantum Psychoanalysis is a revolutionary change -- or modification -- in Psychoanalytic thinking, with almost all the main pieces still there/here; just put together in a radically different way so as to form a radically different jig-saw puzzle....that both functionally works better than the old theory, and at the same time, adheres to newer, more egalitarian, non-sexist principles, assumptions, concepts, beliefs, and theories...
To repeat, the main problem with Freud's 'second design' of Psychoanalysis (post-1897) is that he created the Oedipal Complex in such way that -- for either accidental or purposeful reasons -- had the capability within it to 'cover up real childhood sexual abuse'. One doesn't tell a female client that her childhood memory of being sexually assaulted by her father wasn't really a 'memory' but rather a 'normal distortion of a little girl's (and/or a teenage girl's) imagination and fantasy of wanting to be seduced by her father' -- and expect this 'theory' to go over too well with a 20th or 21st century feminist...
Amazingly, Freud was 'championing and trumpeting' these same feminists cause in 1896 when he traced the symptoms of hysteria to 'childhood sexual abuse' before he took a sudden, drastic turn in thinking at the end of 1896, and started to design his 'second Psychoanalytic Plane' with little or no more talk about childhood sexual abuse, and in its place, an emphasis on 'childhood sexuality', 'sexual instincts, drives, and impulses coming from the biological makeup of the human organism', the 'polymorphic perverse' child without a sexual morality or conscience, and -- the aforementioned 'feminist offensive, Oedipal Complex'.
Now the main question here is: Did Freud just 'blow an ethical gasket' at the end of 1896 in an effort to save his professional and economic career? Or was there something creatively, theoretically, and clinically important in the drastic change of direction that Freud chose to go?
Dr. Jeffrey Masson has rhetorically argued the first theory -- that Freud in essence 'blew an ethical gasket' in order to save his professional and economic career.
I am not prepared to say either 'yes, he did', or 'no, he didn't'. Being the 'rational empiricist' that I am, I can only say, 'I don't know; I wasn't there to see and/or hear what was going down. So I have to leave that theory to rest.'
Instead, I will pick up the cause of the second theory, and argue that with some minor and major modifications, there was enough 'good stuff' in Freud's post-1896 work to not only keep it but, more than this, to 'engineer a complete design overhaul' that will in effect, include essential elements of both Freud's 'first Psychoanalytic design' (i.e., his 'traumacy-seduction theory') and his 'second Psychoanalytic design' (i.e., his 'childhood sexuality theory', his 'impulse-drive-fantasy' theory', his 'Oedipal Theory', his 'Transference Theory', his 'Narcissistic Theory', his 'Repetition Compulsion Theory', his discarded 'Mastery Compulsion Theory', his 'Splitting of The Ego Theory'...and combine all of these with outside influences from Melanie Klein (Object Relations), Ronald Fairbairn (The 'Rejecting' and 'Exciting' Object), Kohut ('Narcissistic Transferences'), Eric Berne (Transactional Analysis and 'Ego States'), Adler and Adlerian Psychology ('conscious early memories', 'lifestyle', 'compensation', 'overcompensation', 'inferiority feeling and complex', 'superiority striving and complex', 'masculine and feminine protest', Freud and Adler together, 'narcissistic injury', 'hyper-vigilance against a return of the narcissistic injury', 'narcissistic fixation'), Perls and Gestalt Therapy ('the unfinished situation', 'opening and closing' or 'creating and destroying gestalts'), Masson's (and my) interest in the nature of the paradoxical interaction between 'phobias' and 'counter-phobias'...
In Hegel's Hotel, I welcome all past and present, orthodox and unorthodox, open-minded, democratic thinkers into my 'lobby and conference rooms'... All 'ex-psychoanalysts', dead and alive, are welcome back into the Wholistic-Quantum Psychoanalytic fold...and celebrated for what they contributed to the evolution of clinical psychology and psychotherapy -- both inside and outside of Psychoanalysis...
I would have loved to have been able to see Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and Jeffrey Masson all back in the same room together, embracing each other for all of the more positive, passionate and intimate moments that they had shared together (I like happy endings) -- not forever separated in the polar righteousness that blew them apart in the end, each believing that they were doing what was 'right' for the past, the present, and the future of Psychoanalysis.
But isn't that just another snapshot of how 'individual righteousness' kills more relationships than cancer...with tolerance, flexibility, democracy, creative negotiation and co-operation all being washed down the drain...Passion, attraction, mutual interests, empathy and co-operation bring people together... and polar righteousness and narcissism blow them apart...
Right now, Jeffrey Masson is the lone man still standing from that once dynamic trio...Anna Freud dying at 86 years old in 1982 when this Masson-Freudian scandal first broke out into the public's eye, while Eissler went on to live to the ripe old age of 91, dying in 1999.
Masson was 'ex-communicated' from Psychoanalysis not only for his criticism of Freud's 'second Psychoanalytic design' (particularly Freud's conception of the Oedipal Complex and its capability of 'covering up' childhood sexual abuse because of Freud's idea that repressed sexual memories, especially as regards a daughter's relationship with her father, actually represent 'disguised childhood and/or teenage sexual wishes' of the daughter wanting to be 'seduced' by the father); but probably more than this first criticism, Masson's belief that Freud, to use my earlier metaphor, 'blew an ethical and professional gasket' by (i.e., purposely) covering up childhood sexual abuse with his Oedipal Theory in order to save his professional and economic career. That belief was obviously too much for both Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler to handle, bringing to an aborted ending the relationship between Masson, Anna Freud, Eissler -- and Psychoanalysis.
I wish I'd been around -- and had enough professional credibility -- to have been able to make a difference when all this was going down...but in 1982 I was fresh out of undergraduate university and didn't even know what The Seduction Theory was. Maybe I had come across it briefly in university but not enough to grasp the full significance of it. Come to think of it, that is not exactly true. There was a point -- I believe somewhere in the early to mid 1980s -- that I read 'Screen Memories' and decided that this was a 'terrible essay', the 'worst' essay Freud ever wrote, probably because of what I was being taught differently about 'conscious early memories' in Adlerian Psychology.
Now here is the kicker: 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' remains one of my 'favorite' Freudian essays. However, if you read 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' and 'Screen Memories' in quick succession, then you can see an 'evolution' -- or rather a 'de-evolution' in Freud's thinking around the idea of 'memories co-operating with each other' -- which Adler believed as well -- all childhood memories tending to support each other as individual 'metaphors' or 'Stories of My Life' that, taken together, reflect a person's main 'transference-lifestyle complex'.
With two main differences between Freudian and Adlerian thinking: 1. the disagreement of 'conflict' vs. 'unity' in the personality; and 2. the difference around the 'realness' and/or the 'significance' of these conscious early memories that Freud called 'Screen Memories' that both hid and alluded to other more important 'repressed memories' and/or 'repressed fantasies'; whereas Adler referred to these same memories as 'extremely significant lifestyle memories'....I combine the two theorists and call these conscious early memories 'lifestyle-transference memories'.
The 'evolution' or 'de-evolution' in Freud's thinking from 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' and 'Screen Memories' is perhaps the biggest argument against Masson's theory that it was 'political and economic professional coercion that abruptly changed the direction of Freud's thinking. By reading in quick succession the two 'similar but changing' essays mentioned above, the first in 1896, the second in 1899, a good counter-argument can be made that Freud's thinking was going in the direction of 'fantasy' and 'screen memory' thinking even in the early part of 1896 before Freud's actual 'traumatic professional reading' of 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' paper to his professional peers and superiors. The 'proof' can be seen in 'the structure and similarity' between the 1896 and the 1899 papers -- with 'fantasy' taking over for 'reality' as Freud's focus on 'The Interpretation of Dreams' and 'symbolism' was becoming more and more central to his thinking between 1896 and 1899.
It would take Masson's books 'Final Analysis' and 'The Assault on Truth' to 'get me up to full speed' on 'The Seduction Theory' and to familiarize me with what was going on in this whole controversy, and by that time, in the early 90s, the greatest part of the Masson vs. Psychoanalysis scandal was over...at least the raging public side of it was over...Since then, the debate and the controversy has gone mainly underground again but at least with more people aware of it now, and its implications, and more people writing about it now, than was the case before Masson publicized the controversy to the newspapers, and the reading public. .
Masson's work will eventually bring down The Oedipal Theory -- at least as it was tightly construed and interpreted by Freud, with the potential -- whether this was on purpose or not -- for covering up 'real childhood sexual abuse'.
And I am finally ready to deliver the 'integrative goods' on this controversy that I have been building towards for the last 20 or 30 years...
Sigmund Freud provided both the 'thesis' (The Traumacy-Seduction Theory) and the 'anti-thesis' (The Childhood Sexuality-Impulse-Fantasy-Oedipal Theory), and I am delivering the 'Post-Hegelian, Post-Freudian, Post-Massonian Synthesis'.
Dr. Masson and I both share and differ in some of our respective theoretical beliefs -- Dr. Masson remaining a more or less hard-line 'Traumacy-Seduction Theorist' to the extent that he holds onto any Psychoanalytic beliefs at all; while I remain a much more integrative thinker, always looking to put together more and more different pieces of the larger and larger 'child's picture puzzle' (to use Freud's metaphor cited from 1896 down below here) that I am labelling as: 'Pre-and-Post 1897 Wholistic-Quantum Psychoanalysis'....
Having said this, I fully concur with Dr. Masson's metaphorical assertion -- and I am paraphrasing from my memory because I can't find the exact quote at this moment -- that he would 'open up the windows of the Freudian Mansion and let some fresh air finally breathe into the house'.
As I see it, Classical Psychoanalysis has two choices: 1. It can remain a 'structural prison' -- a 21st century prison without windows and doors because of the calcification of Freud's most conservative ideas....Or 2. Classical Psychoanalysis can be turned into a living, breathing, organism that both reflects and bends with human behavior -- as opposed to 'making human behavior bend to suit the calcification of Freud's most conservative, unbending ideas'.
I mean, why wouldn't Psychoanalysis want to 'bend' to a more integrative theoretical position that includes both memory and compensatory fantasy material?
Again, just think of how many present day feminists raise their individual and collective eyebrows at any talk of Freud's most 'chauvinist', male dominated ideas...and discard them immediately. These are potential Psychoanalytic customers who have rejected Psychoanalysis because Psychoanalysis basically marginalized and rejected the 'reality of women's childhood sexual abuse memories'.....
A new, integrative Traumacy-Fantasy Theory that better accepts feminine childhood sexual traumacy as 'being real' and 'memory based' -- unless otherwise overpowered by contradictory empirical and/or circumstantial evidence -- would go along way towards 'modernizing' Classical Psychoanalysis and creating a new, more positive Psychoanalytic image, especially amongst women, and even feminists...providing they believe that their 'childhood memories, especially those involving their father, for good and/or for bad' are being given the equal acceptance and respect to the childhood memories of men.
In this regard, I opt for the second choice -- turning Classical Psychoanalysis into the metaphorical equivalent of a living, breathing organism that changes with the diversity of constantly changing human behavior while, at the same time, seeking to preserve those Classical Freudian ideas, both before and after 1897, that are still important to the ongoing functionality of present and future 21st Century Psychoanalysis.
Get rid of the 'arbitrary boundary rigidity', the 'conceptual-righteous narcissism', and the 'either/or intolerance syndrome'...and good things can happen in terms of re-integrating past and present splits. That is true in internal dissociative neurosis as well as external, social dissociative neurosis...The dynamics and the mechanisms are the same...One pertains to 'internal object relations' and the other pertains to 'external object relations'...and they are both dialectically intertwined, interconnected...This is true of both individual human neurosis -- and the ongoing institutional neurosis that is still plaguing Psychoanalysis, and has been, since 1897.
In Freud's first conscious memory, cited below, when I do a 'transference interpretation' of it, I keep 'the reality of the memory intact'...and then quickly show that every part of the memory 'fits perfectly' with the creative and neurotic lifelong transference elements of Freud's personality and probably his main 'transference neurosis/complex'. There is no distortion, no bending, no twisting, no turning upside down, or turning inside out, the central reality of this memory. The memory is accepted for what it is...and all transference interpretations stem from this 'phenomenological and existential reality' -- no 'creative memory reconstructions' involved...which if I were a judge, I would never accept into a court of law...Both Oedipal Therapists and Seduction Therapists 'playing with the creative reconstruction of a childhood memory that is not accepted at face value' -- this I view as a very, very dangerous pastime and something that I will not engage in. Just think of the infamous cases of Dr. Smith putting numerous parents into jail for 'murdering their dead babies' through his 'professional (transference) misinterpretations, and you will get an idea of how dangerous I view this 'memory reconstruction' practice.
Now, let me describe more completely this 'great big black hole', this 'schism', in Psychoanalysis that was created by Freud himself between 1897 and 1905. Perhaps, non-coincidentally, this was the period in which his dad died (1897?). Freud's dad was the main protagonist in the junior Freud's most important 'transference memory-neurosis-complex' which the junior Freud (Sigmund), as an adult, both 'projected' and 'sublimated' into his creative masterpiece -- Psychoanalysis -- both theoretically and clinically -- with both good and bad functional results.
Psychoanalysis is the creative product of Freud's main 'transference complex and neurosis' -- a neurosis stemming from his own personality manifestations as particularly reflected in Freud's earliest conscious (transference-lifestyle) memory involving both his mom and his dad -- but most significant to this memory was his critical, rejecting dad. .
The fact that I just said 'conscious' here -- or perhaps in Freud's own words, we could use the term 'preconscious', or in Pierre Janet's words -- 'subconscious' as opposed to Freud's more troublesome words, 'unconscious' and/or 'repressed' -- in effect, marginalizes Freud's theory of 'repression' as being 'non-essential' to the etiology and evolution of most 'traumatic and/or narcissistic and/or anxiety-phobic and/or anal-schizoid and/or libidinous and/or anti-libidinous transference neuroses'. Wow! That was a mouthful...Don't ask me to repeat what I just wrote...
Have I confused you?
For those of my readers that are not familiar with all these different psychoanalytic terms like 'projection' and 'sublimation' and 'transference', and the other ones that I just used, I ask that you look up their different definitions on the internet until I can define them in my own terms at a later date. I have also defined these terms in earlier essays on Hegel's Hotel (if you can find them -- I need to do a better job of organizing and linking these older papers with the new ones here).
F. Defining Transference From A 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalytic' Perspective
Regarding the term 'transference'...
My logic regarding the use of the term transference is very simple...
If you can have a 'transference relationship' (a relationship say between you and your spouse that 're-awakens' childhood conflicts, issues, desires, restraints, feelings, jealousies.. that were relevant to your childhood relationship with one of your parents or siblings...)
Then you can also have a 'transference encounter'...
And if you can have a 'transference encounter',
Then you can also have a 'transference memory'....
A real memory -- subjectively biased and/or distorted though it may be to a greater or lesser extent -- based on a real encounter.
Actually, relative to transference, we can talk about at least two different encounters, and two different memories. The first encounter/memory is the childhood scene. The second encounter/memory is the adult scene that associatively mimics, simulates, or recreates the childhood scene.
And everything is real (except to the varying degrees that all of us are prone to subjective bias, distortion, and/or misinterpretation...This 'misinterpretation' doesn't usually go so far as to 'misinterpret' the essence of a 'physical' and/or 'sexual' assault...or even 'seduction' because these are likely to stand out very clearly in our minds...
Now let me describe more completely this 'great big black hole', this 'schism', in Psychoanalysis that was created by Freud himself between 1897 and 1905..
Between 1897 and 1905, Freud was like a man who severed 'Humpty Dumpty' (Psychoanalysis) in half, and was now looking at the two pieces he had of Humpty Dumpty sitting at the base of the wall (with a very sad face), and trying to put find a way to put him back together into one piece again.
Or put another way, it was like Freud was looking at 'two lovers' -- the 'old and faithful' vs. the 'new and exciting'. And the two opposing lovers didn't want to 'share' Freud's energy and attention. So Freud had to -- or at least thought he had to -- choose between the two of them.
Freud opted for the 'new and exciting lover' which was a combination of Childhood Sexuality, Fantasy Theory, Dream and Symbolism (Wish-Fulfillment) Theory, and The Oedipal Complex -- and threw out the 'old lover' (The Traumacy-Seduction Theory) -- and the rest is history.
In essence, in 1897, Freud had started to create his own 'Humpty Dumpty' in Psychoanalysis -- a 'Humpty-Dumpty Psychoanalysis' split into two pieces, one 'preferentialized' and the other 'marginalized' like a preferentialized and marginalized split in the personality which is perhaps the central feature of all neuroses.
In most, if not all forms of neurosis, there is a childhood 'external' rejection that becomes 'internalized' as a 'self-rejection' in the form of a 'dissociative splitting of the ego'. Repression does not have to be involved because the essential childhood transference encounter -- and memory -- is very often a conscious, early childhood memory of a 'traumatic, rejecting encounter'. Dad or mom or brother or sister or friend or stranger... criticizes the therapeutic client as a child who perceives this criticism as a traumatic rejection...internalizes it..causing a 'huge rift and split in the ego' -- the 'rejecting topdog ego' vs. the 'rejected, approval-seeking ego' and/or 'the rejected, defiant, rebellious underdog ego' and the different structural pieces and ego-dynamics of a 'traumatic-transference neurosis' are born....
Let us one more time trace Freud's evolution (or regression) in thinking...before I add my own integrative developments....
1. In 'Repressed Traumacy Theory' (Studies in Hysteria, 1893-1895), Freud and Breuer equated neurotic (hysterical, obsessional) symptoms with repressed past traumatic memories: using hypnosis and later free association, the therapeutic goal was to 'unlock the memory along with all the pent up emotion attached to the memory' (abreaction, catharsis)-- and presto, the 'neurotic (hysterical, obsessional) symptom(s)' equated with the repressed traumatic memory disappeared.
2. In 'Repressed Seduction/Sexual Assault Theory' (1896, The Aetiology of Hysteria), Freud alone advanced the theory that the 'repressed trauma' in hysteria and obsessional neurosis could invariably be traced back to a childhood 'seduction' -- or more forcefully -- a childhood 'rape'. In hysteria, the client tended to be the 'passive victim' of the assault whereas in 'obsessional neurosis' the client tended to be the 'chilhood victimizer' in an assault, say for example, an older brother who may have earlier been sexually victimized himself and was 'identifying with his earlier aggressor'.
3. In 'Repressed Childhood Sexuality (Perversion/Fantasy) Theory' (1905, My Views On The Part Played By Sexuality In The Aetiology of The Neuroses) the neurosis is 'the negative of perversion' (Standard Edition, Volume Vll, p. 277.) It can also be viewed as a 'compromise-formation' between the particular perversion and the defensive repression against the perversion. Or put another way still, the particular neurotic symptom both hides and alludes to the underlying sexual perversion. As a therapist, you simply need to be able to 'interpret the symbolic language' of the neurotic symptom in order to bring the underlying sexual perversion to 'consciousness'.
4. In Oedipal Theory -- and let me cut to the chase here in my own words here -- the little boy basically wants to emotionally, romantically, and sexually possess his mother while at the same time basically 'evict' his father from the parental bedroom and take over his father's role as the head of the family. Same with the little girl, only the little girl wants to emotionally, romantically, and sexually possess her father while at the same time basically 'evict' her mother from the parental bedroom and take over her mother's role. (How's that for cutting to the chase?)
....................................................................................................................................................
We are getting closer to where I want to be...setting you up for a scintillating climax here...
Now let us go back to 1896 and 'The Aetiology of Hysteria'.
These are some of the most important words ever written by Freud and he didn't even know that what he was writing about was 'transference' and 'transference neuroses'....a phenomenon and concept that he had just clinically 'discovered' a year previously in 'Studies in Hysteria', 1895, but still didn't know enough about..or alternatively didn't 'fit' within his definition of transference at this time -- nor would it ever -- as the role of childhood traumatic memories was about to take a gigantic slide downwards and out of most of his future thinking...
..................................................................................................................
Here we are in 1896, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria'...where Freud is talking about the 'reality of the childhood traumatic/sexual scenes' and writes...
'But another and stronger proof of this is furnished by the relationship of the infantile scenes to the content of the whole of the rest of the case history. It is exactly like putting together a child's picture puzzle: after many attempts, we become absolutely certain in the end which piece belongs in the empty gap; for only that one piece fills out the the picture and at the same time allows its irregular edges to be fitted into the edges of the other pieces in such a manner as to leave no free space and to entail no overlapping. In the same way, the contents of the infantile scenes turn out to be indispensable supplements to the associative and logical framework of the neurosis, whose insertion makes its course of development for the first time evident, or even, as we might often say, self-evident. (S.E. Vol. 111, p. 205.)
...........................................................................................................................................
How similar this paragraph is to what Alfred Adler would write many years later about 'consious early memories' and their 'structural and psycho-dynamic connection' (my words, not his) to Adler's concept of 'lifestyle'. Only with Adler, there was no talk about 'repression' and there was no talk about 'conflict in the personality'. I split the difference -- and basically 'booted repression out of my thinking' -- while at the same time seeing the obvious similarity and connection between Freud's thinking in 1896 and Adler's thinking years later. Here is the exact Adlerian quote I am referring to...that sounds so much like what Freud wrote in 1896 only about 'repressed' memories as opposed to 'conscious early memories'...
...............................................................................................................
G. Concscious Early Recollections, Lifestyle, Transference -- and 'Lifestyle-Transference Complexes'
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 (his 'lifestyle goal', my addition) and to prepare him by means of past experiences, so that he will meet the future with an already tested style of action. (Alfred Adler, What Life Should Mean To You, 1931, p. 73-75.)
.....................................................................................................................................
It was through my combined studies in Psychoanalysis and Adlerian Psychology that I came up with the integrative concept of: ' transference-lifestyle complexes' -- and/or 'neuroses' that can be interpreted in combined Psychoanalytic-Adlerian style from our conscious early memories.
.......................................................................................................................................
The closest Freud and Adler came in their respective individual thinking was back in November of 1906 (Nov. 7th and 14th., in two meetings of 'The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society'.)
There was a powerful meeting of minds here that for these 2 weeks in Psychoanalytic History could have revolutionized Psychoanalytic Theory -- in the same way that the years 1897 to 1905 did -- but it was not to be...as 'righteous differences in opinion' started to gather force between Freud and Adler over the next number of years before Freud instigated their breakup in 1911 over what might be called 'irreconcilable differences'
I will 'reconcile these same differences' (in a way that neither of them can say 'boo' about it).
What I am doing here then, at least partly, is going back to those two fateful weeks in 1906 and 'mediating the creative integration' that needed to be further developed back then -- but wasn't. I am quoting the 'Minutes of The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society' (Volume 1, 1906-1908, edited by Nunberg and Federn, translated by Nunberg, published New York, International Universities Press Inc. by Nunberg and Federn, 1962) on page 42...
He (Freud) attributes great importance to Adler's work; it has brought his own work a step further. To judge from the immediate impression, much of what Adler said may be correct. (Reference 5)
(Refererence 5...Editors comments.. With these remarks Freud acknowledges the stimulation he received from these discussions. Over and over again, we can see how glad he was to give recognition.)
He (Freud) singled out two leading ideas as significant and fertile: (1) the concept of compensation, according to which an organic inferiority is counterbalanced by a supervalent cerebral activity (Reference 6), and (2) that the repression is accomplished by the formation of a psychic superstructure. A similar formulation had occurred to him (Reference 7)
(Reference 6, comments by the editors...It seems that Freud had in mind what was later characterized as overcompensation or counterbalance for a narcissistic 'injury' although he uses anatomical language here.)
I can hear a thousand psychoanalyts screaming...'You can't have a neurosis without a repression!....And without the concept of repression, there is no psychoanalysis!'
(Reference 7, comments by the editors...This may refer to the formulation that repression is accomplished by the ego.)
Earlier in the evening, Adler had asserted:
'There seems to be a direct relationship between this increased activity of the central nervous system in childhood and the developent of childhood defects. In neurotics, childhood defects seem to be the rule, and the effort to compensate for these childhood defects marks the entire life of the individuals concerned.' (p. 40)
(My notes...Later in Adler's thinking, the concept of 'organic defects' would be expanded to include 'perceived psychic defects, i.e., 'inferiority feelings' that were 'compensated for' by 'superiority striving' in the direction of the person's 'unique lifestyle goal'....'Psychic defects' and inferiority feelings' can be viewed as stemming from 'childhood narcissistic (self-esteem) injuries' or 'traumacies' which initially cause a 'phobic-like avoidance reaction' but then can be 'overcompensated for' and turned into 'counter-phobic behavior' (obsessive-compulsions) led by what can be referred to as either 'superiority striving' or alternatively 'the mastery compulsion'....which is also connected to a 'transference re-creation compulsion' and -- in Freud's later terminology a 'repetition compulsion' -- fed by the 'death instinct' -- which I discard in favor of the more Freudian-Adlerian conception of the 'mastery compulsion' and the 'obsessive compulsion' to overcome a perceived 'psychic defect' or 'childhood narcissistic injury'.
Did you catch all that?
Freud and Adler were almost there together -- the creative integration between Freudian and Adlerian thinking was almost there together in these two weeks of 1906 -- before once again, a combination of growing righteous indignation and conceptual narcissism conspired to eventually break the two brilliant psychologists apart from each other.
Say it ain't so, Joe....It's so...
But I can go back in time...and reverse things today...
......................................................................................................................................................
H. A 'DGB Lifestyle-Transference Analysis' of Freud's Earliest Conscious Memory
I have done this 'tranference-lifestyle interpretation' several times before in previous essays in Hegel's Hotel...but this is my 'tour de force'....It brings everything collectively together in Freud's own words between 1896 and 1905...as well as Adler's in 1906...
All we have to do is make one GIGANTIC Psychoanalytic modification. And that is...for our purposes here...throw 'REPRESSION' out the Psychoanalytic door...and instead, as Freud started to do around the end of his career in the 1930s, start talking about the 'splitting of the ego'...
That is what happens -- for all extents and purposes the 'ego splits' -- in these early 'traumatic-transference memories' -- even the conscious ones that are remembered all too well. The personality splits into what I am categorizing as 5 different ego states: 1. 'The Internalized Rejecting (And Exciting) Topdog (Transference Figure and Ego-State)'; 2. 'The Compliant, Rejected Underdog (Self-Transference Figure and Ego-State)'; 3. 'The Rebellious, Defiant Underdog (Counter-Self Transference Figure and Ego-State); 4. 'The Internalized 'Nurturing' (Non-Exciting) Topdog (Transference Figure and Ego-State); and 5. The Central Mediating (Conflict-Resolving) Ego.
And my reply is this....
'Get by repression....all you 'anal-retentive' Classical Psychoanalyts....because your concept of repression is the biggest obstacle you have to the 'proper' 21st century evolution of Psychoanalysis.. You are like lemmings still following the old man off the cliff....You don't know where to get off the Freudian ride...because you can't or won't think for yourself....or, more likely, you simply won't publicly declare your innermost clinical and theoretical thoughts...
You don't know how to separate Freud's 'trash from his treasure'...or again, you are publicly unwilling to make such a distinction....Like so many corporate and political men and women, you will always remain 'politically correct' to keep your job regardless of how many people are hurt by you maintaining your 'political correctness'...the 'deafening silence' of your 'Own Private, Theoretical and Clinical Thinking'...is killing your profession...slowly poisoning it from the inside out...
.............................................................................................................................
But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him.
-- Bob Dylan, It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
............................................................................................................................................................
'Don't follow leaders, watch the parkin' meters.' -- Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues
...................................................................................................................................................
I have the greatest respect for EVOLVING Psychoanalysts -- Psychoanalysts who are alive and breathing, and passionate about what they say and do for a living.
But I turn my back on crotchety old, calcified Psychoanalysts who have long ago forgotten how to think and feel for themselves!
Now let me give you my own definition of an 'evolving psychoanalyst':
A evolving psychoanalyst is a psychoanalyst who is able to integrate new ideas with old, and/or who is able to 'step outside normal conceptual and/or therapeutic boundaries and parameters' and bring something new into the fold that brings increased functionality and efficiency to the psychoanalytic educational and therapeutic process as a whole.'
And now for the 'coup de grace'....
Here is how important the conscious memory I am interpreting as the most important 'transference memory' in Freud's personality and character structure is in the mind of Ernest Jones as depicted in Jones' most widely recognized biography of Freud's life...
..............................................................................................................................................
'Freud had only a few conscious memories of his first three years, as indeed of the first six or seven, but in his self-analysis he undoubtedly recovered a great many of the important ones that had been forgotten; he mentions that he was forty-two when he did so. Among the forgotten ones was some knowledge he then had of the Czech language. Among the (consciously) remembered ones 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 an irate father.' (Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 1953, 1981, p. 6-7.)
.....................................................................................................................................
Hold on! Double take! Instant replay! What was that memory again? Did I miss something here? Did Ernest Jones just say that this memory was 'banal' and 'of little interest except in a sea of amnesia'-- as in coming from the supreme court interpretive analysis of one of Freud's most trusted 'lemmings' -- the ultimate orthodox 'anal' psychoanalyst, Ernest Jones, adding a 'b' on 'anal' to get 'banal'!!
Let's hear that memory again...
Among the (consciously) remembered ones 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 an irate father.'
Well, didn't we just hit the 'transference jackpot'....
This memory has all the earmarkings of perfectly exemplifying everything that Freud wrote between 1895 and 1905 as if he never 'disavowed' the traumacy-seduction theory' and simply added them on -- and integrated them -- to his Childhood Sexuality Theory, his Oedipal Theory, his Fantasy Theory, his Narcissistic Theory, and his Transference Theory!!!
The major schism of his work -- Freud's abandonment/minimalization/suppression of the traumacy-seduction theory after 1896 -- and the fuel for all of this academic and professional harping and clammoring and debating and mutal ridiculing and exclusionism (of which I am adding more fuel to the fire) -- never had to happen!!!
The two bi-polar theories -- in my own words, Freud's traumacy ('narcissistic injury') theory and his later 'narcissistic impulse and fixation' theory -- were/are not mutually contradictory at all....Indeed, the two theories feed off each other!!! The one is not completely understandable without the other!! They are 'two peas in the same pod' -- two parts of the same transference neurosis and complex!!! From the 'narcissistic injury'...the 'narcissistic fixation', the 'repetition compulsion', the 'mastery compulsion', and the 'transference neurosis' are born!!
Now all I have to do is give you an example to show you how this all comes together -- in one jig-saw puzzle...as the 'master' said...(and then you can tell me that I too, am creatively brilliant!!...no humility there...bragging rights go to those who can 'deliver the goods'...)....
The memory...has everything in it that Freud wrote about between 1895 and 1905...except the 'repression'....it does have the 'splitting of the ego' that Freud would write about at the very end of his career...it also has the 'traumacy-rejection', the 'sexual etiology', the 'perversion', 'The Oedipal Complex', the source of Freud's own 'transference repetition compulsion'...and 'mastery compulsion'....this tiny little memory -- even without the details which basically can be interpretively reconstructed in front of you all -- has everything we need to show that ALL 50 years of Freud's work -- with all his different theories and sub-theories, concepts and sub-concepts -- are indispensibly interconnected and tied together cohesively in one package...including Object Relations and Adlerian Psychology too...as if Adler had never left....and as if Melanie Klein's work just melted in with Freud's work...or at least key components of it...
..................................................................................................................
Among the (consciously) remembered ones 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 an irate father.'
1. The 'Traumacy-Rejection (Narcissistic Injury) Theory': Freud evicted from his parents' bedroom by his irate father for what essentially would have been an act of 'voyeurism' (the 'perversion') on the part of the little Freud...The rejection by his father becomes 'internalized' into the little Freud's 'Superego' (Internal Object Relations, Melanie Klein, 'The Rejecting -- and Exciting -- Object', Ronald Fairbairn...). 'The 'compliant' little Freud leaves his parents' bedroom ('the adapted child', Erich Berne, Transactional Analysis), while the 'rebellious, defiant' little Freud ('the free child', Eric Berne, Transactional Analysis) vowed to 'find out what was happening in his parents' bedroom -- and...here comes the 'transference complex'....in the bedrooms of all living parents and children...
2. The Sexual Etiology: Freud's first conscious early memory was effectively 'the primal scene' -- the little Freud crashing in on his parents only to witness his father probably perched over his mother -- doing God only knows what! -- and then his father screaming at him (the 'rejection-traumcy') to get out of their bedroom....NOW!!! The poor little Freud was devastated -- devastated but defiant that he would get to the bottom of this 'cover up', this 'suppressed mystery'...he would find out what his father was doing to his mother...What was he doing to her? Was he peeing on her?....
3. The Oedipal Complex: There is no doubt about the effect of this on the little Freud's evolving personality. Little Freud wanted 'the old man' gone...out of the master bedroom...Little Freud wanted 'possession' of the master bedroom and his mother...and he wanted to do to his mother what he saw his father doing to her...whatever that was....('identification with the aggressor')
Here is what internet website has to say about Freud's relationship with both his parents...
.........................................................................................................................................
Although Freud's father had several children from a previous marriage, he was the first child of his mother. As such, it is reported that he was her favorite. He was given special attention and was the only of her children to have his own room and a reading lamp for studying at night. Their relationship was very close although his relationship with his father was described as cold and perhaps even hostile.
..................................................................................................................................
Indeed, most, if not all, of Freud's early memories involving his father are basically mutually hostile and rejecting...and certainly highly traumatic -- and 'self-splitting' -- for the ambitious little Sigmund....
Here is more from Ernest Jones...
...............................................................................
"At the age of two he would still wet his bed and it was his father, not his indulgent mother, who reproved him. He recollected saying on one of these occasions: 'Don't worry, Papa. I will buy you a beautiful new red bed in Neutitschein.' (the chief town of the district). It was from such experiences that was born his conviction that typically it was the father who represented to his son the principles of denial, restraint, restriction, and authority; the father stood for the reality principle, the mother for the pleasure principle."...(Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 1953, 1981, p. 7.)
And a few pages later...
"Another incident refers to the conscious recollection of having urinated (deliberately) (my addition: probably the little Freud really did believe that his father was peeing on his mother in the first transference memory...as he seemed to be taking things one step further in this memory here...more rebelliousness and defiance...against his father...and the beginning of one rendition of his 'mastery compulsion' in this regard) in his parents' bedroom at the age of seven or eight, and being reprimanded by his father, who testily permitted himself the exclamation: 'That boy will never amount to anything.' an estimate alien to his father's usal pride in his son. He wrote about it: 'This must have been a terrible affront to my ambition, for allusions to this scene occur again and again in my dreams, and are constantly coupled with enumerations of my accomplishments and successes, as if I wanted to say: 'You see, I have amounted to something after all.'"
...................................................................................................................................
So what have we seen in Freud from these memories so far...
A marked hostility against his father and his father's rejections and put-downs (internalized for the rest of his life to add all the fuel he needed to ignite his already strong defiant ambition).
And a yearning to basically 'posess' his mother...
But more than this, we can see the origin of Freud's main 'transference complex and neurosis' stemming from a seemingly innocent enough 'conscious early memory' that Ernest Jones barely included in his biography of Freud...
And we see how Freud's earliest 'primal scene' -- his walking or charging into his parents' bedroom while they were having sex, his being 'evicted' from the bedroom by his dad in a fashion that the little Freud would 'mimick' in the way that he basically 'evicted' many men from Psychoanalysis....out of his 'Secret Circle'....and wanting the same type of 'privacy' from other people that the father Freud wanted from his young son -- but didn't get. One of the main bi-polarities and contradictions in Freud's character then was between his 'defiant, rebellious child ego' which wanted basically to 'invade people's privacy' to get to the 'sexual information that he wanted, and indeed craved for' and in contrast, on the other hand, his 'rejecting, distancing paternal superego' that wanted all other people to 'to respect his privacy' and to 'keep out of his private life'. Even regarding 'watching' there was a contradiction between the adult Sigmund Freud who 'intently watched others' while 'hating to be watched himself' (thus, the patient on the couch who, in lying down, could not see the analyst who created this 'design' -- the adult Sigmund Freud who hated being watched.
We come more intently now to the confines of the Psychoanalytic Room...the projective product of his 'subconscious transference complex', 'repetition compulsion' and 'mastery compulsion' where his clients lay down on the 'Psychoanalytic Couch' like Freud recreated in the image of his mom and dad lying in bed together in his 'primal scene', his 'primary transference memory'...the same combination of 'impulse' and 'resistance' existing in his client as originally existed in his dad's behavior where his 'dad's resistance' 'covered up' the 'underlying narcissistic pleasure', 'sexual impulses' and/or 'perversion(s)' that his dad was trying to hide from his young son....
Freud's 'perversion' in this case, if you want to call it that -- I prefer to use the term 'narcissistic fixation' -- was his 'sexual voyeurism'...which was defensively hidden behind his 'medical degree, professional credentials, and more 'abstractified sexual curiosity'...which was 'sublimated' into his work -- in effect, a 'compromise formation' between his 'narcissistic fixation (his sexual voyeurism)' and his 'defense' against this narcissistic (sexual) fixation -- or 'perversion' in Freud's 1905 words.
Allusions to the psychological importance of this 'conscious early (transference) memory occur throughout Freud's 50 years of writing.
As an example, here is a small sample of what he wrote in his famous paper of 1905 (Three Essays on Sexuality):
.............................................................................................................................................
Sadistic View of Sexual Intercourse
If children at this early age (3 or 4, my addition) witness sexual intercourse between adults -- for which an opportunity is provided by the conviction of grown-up people that small children cannot understand anything sexual -- they inevitably regard the sexual act as a sort of ill-treatment or act of subjugation: they view it, that is, in a sadistic sense. Psychoanalysis also shows us that an impression of this kind in early childhood contributes a great deal towards a predisposition to a subsequent sadistic displacement of the sexual aim. Furthermore, children are much concerned with the problem of what sexual intercourse -- or, as they put it, being married -- consists in: and they usually seek a solution of the mystery in some common activity concerned with the function of micturition (urination, my addition) or defaecation. (S.E. Vol. V11. p. 196.)'
DGB note...This symbolic and/or childhood 'false connection' between 'sexual intercourse' and 'urination' occurs throughout Freud's writing and can only be traced to Freud's 'own early childhood confusion' in his first conscious early (transference) memory as depicted above. Also, we see above how 'neurotic symptoms' can display -- or at least partly display -- themselves through 'creative fictional and/or non-fictional writing'. In the passage above, the 'neurotic symptom' -- Freud's 'abstract comments' on how naive children can 'confuse' sexual intercourse with sadism, subjugation, urination, or defecation' pertains directly to his own 'conscious early transference memory' -- his 'abstract, non-personal, third person writing' both 'hiding' and 'alluding' to his underly transference 'neurotic' complex, and its source encounter/memory involving his dad 'ejecting' him from his parents' bedroom.
In the memory below -- from Fritz Perls' 'subjective memory recall', not Freud's but involving both Perls and Freud in their one time short meeting together at the Psychoanalytic Convention in Czechoslovakia in 1936 -- we can see how Freud has 'evolved' -- or 'devolved' -- in the 77 years separating his early transference memory from when he was about 3 years old to the Fritz Perls memory when he was about 80 years old. This latter memory shows the phenomenon of 'transference identification with one's childhood rejector' (which then becomes 'internalized' as one's own personal 'rejecting/exciting topdog').
I now quote Perls' memory of this latter event from his autobiography, 'In and Out of The Garbage Pail', First Printing 1969, 6th Printing 1979, Bantam Books, p. 56...
'The Master (Sigmund Freud, my addition) was there, somewhere in the background. To meet him would have been too presumptious. I had not yet earned such a privilege.
In 1936 I thought I had. Was I not the mainspring for the creation of one of his institutes and did I not come 4000 miles to attend to his congress? (I am itching to write His congress.)
I made an appointment, was received by an elderly woman (I believe his sister) and waited. Then a door opened about 2 1/2 feet wide and there he was, before my eyes. (Do you see the structural and psycho-dynamic similarity between this memory and Freud's first transference memory starting to unfold? my addition.) It seemed strange that he would not leave the door frame, but at that time I knew nothing about his phobias.
"I came from South Africa to give a paper and to see you."
"Well, and when are you going back?" he said. I don't remember the rest of the (perhaps four-minute long conversation. I was shocked and disappointed.
(DGB Transference Editorial Comments: Not quite the yelling rendition of Freud's father evicting him from his parents' bedroom, but still, a pretty terse and cutting rejection and eviction of the younger, just starting up Perls, from the grown-up Freud's rather sarcastic mouth. Same net effect as Freud's father's rejecting rendition to which the 'baby Sigmund' from 77 years ago obviously now subscribed (three years before his death in 1939). The 'sexually curious, and defiant' toddler Sigmund, had now become the 'anally tight', privacy-seeking, rejecting image of his dad. In effect, 'what goes around, comes around'. The 'rejection' -- and the 'style' by which we do it (our 'rejecting transference signature', shall I say -- that we 'receive' from the world as a child, we 'spread back to the world', thousands of times over and over again as an adult....This is our 'rejecting transference calling card'.)
.......................................................................................................
I. A DGB Summary on The Paradoxical (Approach-Avoidance, Love-Hate, Seduction-Abandonment) Nature of Transference as 'The Psychological, Obsessive-Compulsive Bridge' Between 'Traumacy' and 'Fantasy'.
Some examples of 'narcissistic (obsessive-compulsive) transference neuroses' (or 'Dionysian' transference neuroses') can be extremely dangerous....for example...
The 'pedophile' who becomes a boy scout leader...where 'the boy scout leader' -- in this case is both a 'red flag' and 'neurotic narcissistic symptom' that 'hides' and 'alludes' to the underlying 'perversion' or 'narcissistic sexual obsessive-compulsion...
Same with the 'sadist' who becomes a prison guard....
'Transference sublimation' can be either good or bad -- or both...
Transference -- and transference sublimation -- at its best involves the 'intertwining of narcissistic and anti-narcissistic (altruistic, loving) impulses' -- like two people making love together who love each other...
Transference -- and transference sublimation -- at its worst involves narcissistic and/or self-denying psychopathology that is detrimental to anyone who gets into the middle of this type of complex, including of course, the person who it stems from...
There are many ways of classifying and sub-classifying transferences, some of which I will just lightly touch on below here..
...............................................................................................................................
Twelve Different DGB Quantum Psychoanalytic Classifications or Types of Transference
By my 'working definition' of transference, a transference can only be a transference if it is an adult behavior (impulse, restraint, 'fixation'), attitude, thought, feeling, relationship, complex, and/or scene that can be shown to be connected to a 'structurally and/or dynamically similar' childhood behavior, attitude, thought, feeling, relationship, complex, and /or scene...For our purposes here, let us define 'childhood' as under the age of 8 (which is partly arbitrary but the general rule of thumb that Adlerian psychologists use in interpreting childhood conscious early memories).
'Infantile' I would define as under the age of 2 which is again partly arbitrary but seems to fit the image that comes to my mind when Freud uses this term even though Freud gives no 'age definition' that I know of relative to what he means by 'infantile'. I find this ambiguous and confusing, and would prefer to use the term 'childhood transferences' to refer to any event or behavior happening before the age of 8...
'Infantile' I would define as under the age of 2 which is again partly arbitrary but seems to fit the image that comes to my mind when Freud uses this term even though Freud gives no 'age definition' that I know of relative to what he means by 'infantile'. I find this ambiguous and confusing, and would prefer to use the term 'childhood transferences' to refer to any event or behavior happening before the age of 8...
1. 'Oral' transferences and/or fixations of an 'obsessive compulsive and/or 'addictive' nature and/or extreme (smoking, eating, drinking...)...and the 'defenses' against these 'oral-sensory impulses'...
2. 'Anal' transferences of both a 'narcissistic, sensory, and/or sexual' nature such as 'anal sex'...and/or the wide assortment of 'defenses' against 'anal fetishes' and 'anal explosiveness' (disorganization fetishes, hoarding, mud wrestling...getting 'down and dirty'...) and on the other side of the ledger such classified phenomena as 'anal-righteousness', 'anal-distancing', 'anal-schizoid', 'anal-retentive', 'anal-phobic', 'germ phobias', 'neat freaks', 'punctuality', 'organizational obsessive-compulsions', 'counting obsessions', 'locking doors over and over again'....
3. 'Genital' transferences of both a healthy and unhealthy, normal and abnormal nature...pertaining particularly to extreme levels of 'genital obsessive-compulsive behavior' (often called 'sexual addiction')...
4. Power and/or revenge obsessive-compulsions...often mixed with sex (serial rapists, serial killers, sado-masochism, torturers, 'thrill killers'...)
5. 'Voyeurism' and 'Exhibitionism'...
6. Other 'fetishes' and 'fixations'...(clothing, spanking, feet, shoes, sex in a public place...)
7. Seduction-Abandonment Obsessive-Compulsions (Often called 'sexual addictions')...
Not too much has changed since Victoria times in the area of sexuality except a more general 'liberalized' attitude towards sexuality and thus less need for some of the more 'extreme forms of defense against internal narcissistic impulses' like may have existed in the cases of 'repressed memories' and/or hysteria...Perhaps more 'violent transferences' exist today than back then...such as in 'serial rapes and killings'....but I don't profess to be an expert in Victorian culture and history...
8. Monetary obsessive-compulsions (gambling, business...)...
9. Five Different Primary 'Ego-State' Transferences: a. 'The Nurturing (Non-Exciting) Topdog/Superego; b. 'The Rejecting (Exciting) Topdog/Superego; c. 'The Approval-Seeking (Compliant, Co-operative) Underdog Ego; d. 'The Rebellious-Defiant Underdog Ego'; e. 'The Central Mediating (Conflict-Resolving, Problem-Solving) Ego
10. 'Projective', 'Introjective', 'Identification', and 'Compensatory' Transferences...
11. 'Emotional-Behavioral (Psychiatric-Diagnostic)' Transferences....'anxiety-phobia transferences', 'paranoid transferences', 'manic-depressive transferences', 'anger-rage transferences', 'anti-emotional' and/or 'anti-touch' transferences (autistic, anal-schizoid, distancing transferences...
12. 'Psychotic-Schizophrenic' Transferences...
....................................................................................................................
J. Final Words on The Paradoxical Nature of 'Core Nuclear Transference Conflicts'
As a final note, two 50 million dollar questions, from my DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis perspective, become this:
1. How does 'transference' become a 'paradoxical, phobic-counter-phobic, approach-avoidance, love-lust-resentment-hate, seduction-abandonment, libidinal-anti-libidinal, lifelong 'recurring phenomenon' -- or 'repetition compulsion' in Freud's words? ...And;
2. Or worded differently, how do our childhood traumacies -- whatever they may be (and we all have childhood rejections and traumacies of similar and/or widely different sorts and magnitudes, but still, all early rejections are usually traumatic for a child...'The first cut is the deepest.'... -- to repeat, how do these childhood rejections and traumacies intertwine with our adult egotistical (narcissistic) and hedonistic (pleasurable, sexual...) thoughts, emotions, fantasies, impulses, and actions in a way that both real memories and their resulting compensatory fantasies become significant 'co-factors' in the etiology of the 'evolving paradoxical traumacy-fantasy transference neurosis'?
And my primary answer to this (these) question(s) (mainly Adlerian in its perspective) is that in becoming 'hyper-vigilant' and 'over-focused' on our perceived traumacies, rejections, and deficiences, we 'compensate' and become 'obsessive-compulsive' in our pursuit of the 'mastery compulsion'(striving to overcome our perceived deficiencies), with our resulting 'repetition compulsions', 'serial behavior patterns', and 'counter-phobic' behavior that we repeat over and over again, ad nauseum to a hoped for better ending.
Or worded otherwise, we strive to 'undo' and/or 'overcome' our childhood rejections by reliving them over and over again metaphorically and symbolically in other relationships and encounters that 'simulate' the 'traumatic childhood scene'..
We try to give a 'happier' ending to an 'unhappy' childhood rejection or traumacy scene.
And in the hundreds or thousands of times that we 'replay' this childhood scene over and over again in our adult lives,
Sometimes we do...(get a happier ending),
And sometimes we don't...
Our transference complexes usually stay with us for our lifetime...
A 'fixated' product of both our memories and our 'compensatory imaginations'...
To sometimes good,
Sometimes bad,
And sometimes ugly conclusions...
And that, my friends is transference -- and the transference connection -- between 'traumacy and 'fantasy'.
...................................................................
Here is a poem I just read by Fritz Perls for the first time this morning (or at least I cannot 'remember' reading it before although I may have read it before because I know I read the book, 'In and Out of The Garbage Pail' by Fritz Perls at some point in the 1980s -- and this poem 'opens' the book...
'When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.' (Buddhist proverb)
...........................................................................
In and out the garbage pail
Put I my creation,
Be it lively, be it stale,
Sadness or elation.
Joy and sorrow as I had
Will be re-inspected;
Feeling sane and being mad,
Taken or rejected.
Junk and chaos, come to halt!
'Stead of wild confusion,
Form a meaningful gestalt
At my life's conclusion.
-- Frederick ('Fritz') S. Perls
.......................................................................................................................
A poem that I may not have been 'ready' for in the 1980s...
I can certainly find significant meaning in it today...
This essay here has been a 'slow train coming' -- it has taken over 30 years from my graduation in psychology in 1979, and the beginning of my more 'specialized' studies and/or training in Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, and Psychoanalysis to get from 1979 to where I am now in this essay in 2010, but it has been a work of passion -- to be sure, intertwined with my own personal transference complexes. And I perceive this essay to be my most important one so far.
I will give a particularly heart-felt tribute to the provocative, controversial, and inspirational work of Dr. Jeffrey Masson, which was the main starting point and focal point of this essay.
Don't ask me where we are going from here.
Because I am not sure...
I will probably take a little break and then come back to tackle some other problem or project that is gnawing at my psyche.
Have a great day!
And a great Canada Day soon to come!
-- dgb, June 20th, modifications and expansions...June 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th, July 1, 3, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are still in process...
.......................................................................................................
Feedback from one of my readers...
Exciting Results!
It is shocking to me, every time I read your words supporting the fact that in today's day a Psychoanalyst would not feel the need to unravel the truth when presented with a patient reporting memories of childhood sexual abuse? They would automatically put on their Oedipal Theory glasses?
Not often considered, yet so true....'transference' is about as close to a life long process as anything else we have in our 'mind' and/or 'body'.
So clever you are... Looking at early self-esteem injuries, rejections - splitting of the ego, and connecting the memories of these traumas to our fantasies, obsessions, repetitive behaviours.
A 'fixated' product of both our memories and our 'compensatory imaginations'...
Cheers to 'DGB (Multi-Integrative) Quantum Psychoanalysis!'
Wishing you an abundance of energy, interest and positive movement with this essay.
N.
