Under construction...October 8th, 2011...
Introduction
Back when I first approached this subject matter around June 2011 (if not before) of 're-defining the id', I asked the question: How would Freud have defined the 'id' differently if he had created the concept in 1893 as opposed to 1923? Once I had my answer to this question, then the next logical step was to integrate this new 'pre-1897' definition of the id with Freud's much later 1923 definition of the id.
If you think about it, Freud was already 'half way towards this integration' when he created 'the life and death instincts' in 1920, and then followed up this classic paper (Beyond The Pleasure Principle) with 'The Ego and The Id' in 1923. Because once Freud 'deposited' the life and death instincts in 'the id', then the id became the 'depository' or 'reservoir' of all 'psychic energy' -- some of which would later be 'transposed' to 'the ego' and 'the superego' -- such as 'the ego instincts'.
In effect, what Freud did in 1920 with his creation of the death instinct was he substituted the death instinct for his pre-1897 'traumacy theory'.
For example, one of the 'new series of clinical phenomena' that Freud had to deal with leading into 1920 is what today we would call 'post-traumatic stress syndrome'. Specifically, in the 1910 to 1920 era, Freud had to deal with 'war shocked' soldiers who had 'recurring nightmare dreams' that could not logically or realistically be viewed in accordance with Freud's 1900 thesis that 'all dreams were wish-fulfillments'. Enter 'the death instinct' to provide an alternative explanation. His pre-1897 'traumacy theory' would have provided a better explanation.
I can accept 'the death instinct' in a limited capacity. Indeed, I like to use the death instinct integratively with traumacy theory.
The thesis here is that 'significant traumacy in a person's life can lead to toxic, death forces or energy (worded otherwise, toxic, destructive, and/or life-inhibiting energy) formulating in a person's personality, specifically, in that part of the personality that I have come to refer to as 'The Shadow-Id Vault' -- or 'The Dissociated It Box'.
Let us see how I first began to develop this thesis in the following June 1st, 2011 essay (which I forgot I even wrote) that provides the assumptive and logical foundation for some of the essays that I am still writing today....as well as elements of my October thinking...
-- dgb, October 7th, 2011...
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If we assume that the brilliance of Freud's creative thought was in the 'entirety of his thought' -- say from 1893 (which is the beginning of his early psychoanalytic publications) to 1939 (when he died) -- and that Freud made a big theoretical and clinical mistake in 1896 (which I know that some, or many, of you may not agree with me here) -- then the logical follow-up to this 'Freud made a big mistake in 1896' assumption -- is to 'fix' what Freud could or would not fix himself over the remainder of his career: i.e., integrating his post-1896 'fantasy-impulse' work with his pre-1897 'real memory' and 'traumacy-seduction' work.
It remains a matter of significant debate -- but one that probably never will be definitively resolved because no one has access to everything Freud was thinking back in 1896 (The 'Freud-Fliess Letters' are the closest historical artifacts we still have in this regard) -- whether Freud made this 'postulated big theoretical and clinical mistake' intentionally, non-intentionally, and/or 'neuroticly and/or erotically' and/or somewhere in between. More on this to come.
The critical Freud to Fliess letter in my opinion is the letter of May 4th, 1896 as Freud hashed over with Fliess the two critical professional mishaps that were 'eating at him' during the composition of this letter.
Coincidentally or non-coincidentally, Freud largely 'wiped out' much of his thinking between the years 1893 to 1896 in his post-May 4th, 1896 'revolutionized' thinking, in what I believe to have been a 'neurotic display' of his own personal defense mechamism at work as he basically tried to 'cover up' and 'smooth over' the two hugely stressful professional events in his life at this time, mentioned above: 1. the Emma Ekstein medical fiasco that he and Fliess were involved in, in the spring of 1895; and 2. the Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology meeting of April 21st, 1896, in which Freud seems to have been basically 'professionally ostracized' for writing 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' in which, Freud linked the phenomenon of hysteria to 'childhood sexual seduction and/or more violent sexual assault'.
This essay -- looking back at it now from the hindsight mirror of the 21st century -- seems to have hit a very sensitive nerve among the strictly male audience making up The Vienna Society for Psychiatry and Neurology.
Unless you want to try to argue that Freud's essay that was read this night was very 'clinically unempirical' (which I don't think it was although it was probably 'overgeneralized') -- then otherwise, it seems to have been the case that Freud had hit on a 'professional taboo'. He had entered into the realm of what today we would call 'professionally and politically incorrect subject matter' -- and/or simply 'professionally and politically avoided subject matter'. Like a politician trying to approach the subject of 'abortion'. And even now, the subject of 'childhood sexual abuse' is not an easily approached subject matter...
Now, let's go back 105 years and we should not have too much trouble imagining that the strictly male audience did not want to hear about, or otherwise have anything to do with the issue of 'childhoood sexual assault' -- let alone trying to grasp the clinical and logical connection between 'childhood sexual seduction/assault' and 'adult hysteria' and/or other forms of 'psycho-neurosis'.
Krafft-Ebing, the leader of the Vienna April 21st, 1896 meeting, called Freud's thesis a 'scientific fairy tale'. And it seemed like Freud had a whole roomful of 'ridiculers' that night.
No doubt in my mind, this evening was an 'ego-traumacy' for Freud....of greater or lesser proportion....and certainly a reaction to his latest essay that he was not entirely expecting...The particular 'proportion' of his ego-traumacy that night -- and his later reaction to it -- may go a long way towards explaining or not explaining Freud's 'abandonment of the traumacy-seduction theory' which 'coincidentally' started to occur almost immediately after this meeting...or maybe even before...as Freud's 'wish-fulfillment' and/or 'longing' theory was just starting to gain serious momentum with 'The Interpretation of Dreams' racing through his head (and Freud looking for an excuse, rationalization, justification...to alleviate his Emma Ekstein guilt by getting himself and Fliess off the 'accountability hook' for being responsible for the huge Ekstein nasal surgery mishap that almost cost her her life, and did cost her serious facial disfigurement...
The 50 million dollar question remains: Did Freud 'morally' and/or 'ethically' and/or 'neurotically' cave in, in the wake of these two 'ego-traumatic' events of February, 1895 (Emma Ekstein) and April 21st, 1896 (The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society Meeting), in such a way that he 'permanently disfigured' what was to become 'Classical' Psychoanalysis -- or did he not?
Worded otherwise, did the Emma Ekstein medical mishap that was still darkly on Freud's mind more than a year after it had gone down, in combination with the professional, economic, and/or personal fear/panic (due to his professional ostracization from his medical peers and superiors -- and more importantly, from the absence of their 'client referrals'), 'motivate' Freud to 'bend', 'distort', and 'disfigure' Psychoanalysis in a way that he wouldn't have to return to the subject of 'childhood sexual abuse' -- ever again -- particularly as it applied to the 'father-daughter relationship'?...
Or was 'The Oedipal Complex' and the whole subject matter of 'Childhood Sexuality' -- which was developed shortly thereafter -- developed not because Freud had any 'ulterior motive' of moving his subject matter away from 'childhood sexual abuse' because he was covering up for many Victorian fathers, some of whom might have been his friends and/or colleagues (and/or had the power to professionally hurt him) but rather because Freud truly believed that he had falsely believed his previous theory, now didn't believe it any longer, and was now heading down a different corridor -- still believing in repression and the pleasure-pain principle but looking now at 'the birth and evolution of childhood instinctual sexual drive rather than 'presexual sexual shock'.
Let us examine the timeline here because it could take some of the fire out of Masson's theory of 'Freud losing moral courage'... Or maybe not...
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On October 15th, 1895, Freud defines hysteria as follows:
Hysteria: Definition 1: 'Hysteria is the consequence of presexual sexual shock.
Obsessional Neurosis: Definition 1: Obsessional neurosis is the consequence of a presexual sexual pleasure, which is later transformed into self-reproach. "Presexual" means actually before puberty, before the release of sexual substances, the relevant events become effective only as memories.' (October 15th, 1895, Letter to Fliess).
Freud states elsewhere that 'obsessional neurosis' -- at least of the type that he is talking about here -- presupposes a 'pre-puberty, sexually active male' -- usually an older brother -- seducing and/or assaulting a younger sister in a manner that 'copies' or 'repeats' an earlier instance in which the older brother was sexually seduced and/or assaulted by an adult, usually one of the parents...and now the older brother has taken over the role of the offending adult....
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December 8th, 1895, Freud writes to Fliess:
Definition 2 of Hysteria:
'Have I written to you that obsessional ideas are invariably reproaches, while at the root of hysteria there is always conflict (sexual pleasure along with possibly accompanying unpleasure). This is a new way of expressing the clinical solution.'
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Here, Freud's definition of 'obsessional ideas' or 'obsessional neurosis' doesn't seemed to have changed -- the emphasis again is the essence of 'self-reproach' although the question might be asked: Self-reproach against what? To which I would reply on Freud's behalf: Self-reproaches against perceived 'transgressive sexual or id behavior' -- or at least the 'impulse' towards such 'perceived transgressive sexual behavior'...
Freud in the second definition above of hysteria no longer talks about 'presexual sexual shock' -- which was probably a great definitional loss -- and instead starts to emphasize the idea of 'presexual sexual pleasure' with the possible accompaniment of unpleasure (guilt?morality? ethics? modesty?) which makes hysteria start to sound more like 'obsessional neurosis' with the only distinguishing difference between them now the more 'passive' role of a prepuberty female vs. the more 'active' role of a prepuberty male....Gone is the 'shock-traumacy-seduction-assault' factor in hysteria -- and this was in early December, 1895, long before his 'professional collision with The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society on April 21st, 1896.
However, on January 1, 1896, in a letter to Fliess, Freud seems to return to his earlier formulation of hysteria in which he writes:
'This first stage of hysteria may be described as 'fright hysteria'; its primary symptom is the manifestation of fright accompanied by a gap in the psyche. To what age this first hysterical overwhelming of the ego can occur is still unknown'.
To be continued....
