To be re-packaged.......Started Nov. 9th, modfied and updated Nov. 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 2011...dgb
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Introduction
I hate to label and stereotype myself according to a 'word' or a 'group of words strung together' because this word or these words can become 'self-limiting', and evolution is basically built on the principle of 'breaking self-limits'...The cosmos and the human mind are outer and inner reflections of each other...and both work on the principle of 'bi-polarity' and 'paradox', as well as 'separation' and 'union'...'Evolution' is not a straight-forward event, but rather a process of 'trial' and 'error', 'thesis', 'anti-thesis', and 'growing and decaying and growing again synthesis'....
The minute we start to 'self-stereotype' ourselves, and put ourselves in a 'self-imposed prison'.... there is usually a 'devil's advocate' -- our 'Rebel With or Without a Cause' -- at work within us (our opposite bi-polarity) who/that starts to develop 'the opposite thesis'.... Call this 'devil's advocate' our 'Id', our 'Shadow', our 'Alter-ego'....any of these labels work, or sometimes one label may work better than the others, to describe the often 'hidden' or 'partly hidden' 'opposite tendency' in the human psyche...
We can be judgmental one moment, compassionate the next, we are constantly regulating betwen 'impulse' and 'restraint'....between 'primal' and/or 'primary' (id, shadow, alter-ego) wishes and 'secondary, moral-ethical shoulds and should nots' -- overseen and usually mediated by what I call our 'Central Mediating or Executive Ego' which generally 'negotiates compromises' between 'our wants' and 'our shoulds' -- assuming that one of the two sides isn't much stronger than the other -- and 'dominating the scene of the negotiation'.....
I don't mind using the Classical Freudian distinction between the 'oral' and the 'anal' personality, partly modified and extended by myself -- as 'metaphorical structures and processes' -- although we all have different degrees of both 'types of characteristics' running through our personality at all times...
The 'oral personality' -- or 'character type' -- is focused on the 'bi-polar spectrum of either 'giving' and/or 'receiving', 'altruism' and/or 'narcissism', sensusal, hedonistic pleasure of a giving and/or getting nature, as well as 'emotional nurturing', again of an either giving or getting nature...
There is room for 'sub-character types' within the larger spectrum of the 'oral personality' as, for example, 'the oral-narcissistic person' is usually quite different than 'the oral-giving person', at least in terms of 'dominat mode of interaction', although to repeat, wherever there is 'one strong polarity' in a person, you will usually find the opposite polarity more buried and hidden, but usually, still very covertly active...Usually, it is not very hard to find 'the covert rebel' working behind the scenes in the personality of a very 'oral-giving, co-operative, pleasing, approval-seeking' type personalty...'Anal-righteousness' is much more often 'buried' than 'smiling agreement'...
which brings us to 'the anal personality or character type'...
The 'anal polarity spectrum' actually includes a number of 'sub-anal-polarity spectrums'with assorted different and sometimes opposite characteristics such as: order vs. chaos, organization vs. disorganization, neatness vs. messiness, hygiene vs. uncleanliness, collecting (meticulously neat and organized) vs. hoarding (horribly messy and usually unhygenic), disciplined vs. non-disciplined, punctual vs. non-punctual, parsimonious vs. non-parsimonious, working vs. not working, righteousness vs. rebelliousness, toxifying vs. detoxifying, power and revenge, domination and submission, anal-retentiveness and/or anal-explosiveness, anal sadism and/or anal masochism, anal-confrontational and/or anal-paranoid-schizoid (distrustful and distancing)...
The 'active, oral hedonistic and/or narcissistic' person is more likely to be 'crudish, lewdish, rudeish' whereas the 'anal-retentive person' is more likely to be 'prudish'....
Those are some the main 'oral' vs. 'anal' bi-polar' distinctions that I use...
Amongst many Eastern philosophers the distinction between 'yin' (female characteristics usally associated with 'peace', 'tranquility', and 'more passiveness') and 'yang' (male characteristics usually associated with 'more active assertion and/or aggression) has been used for thousands of years, perhaps starting with the ancient Eastern philosopher, Lao Tse...(or some unknown person who taught Lao Tse).....Now, in the Western world, this stereotypical and sexual description of 'yin' and 'yang' may make some feminists uncomfortable....but let us not forget that we are all at least 'partly bi-sexual' in at least two or three different ways: 1. we all have differing levels of 'testosterone' and 'estrogen' in our bodies; 2. testosterone increases sexual drive in both men and women; and 3. most of us have pretty clear 'internalized templates' of 'mom' and 'dad', and both of these templates affect our day to day behavior, as well as what types of people we are attrracted to and/or repelled by...
Crucial to all of these potential and actual millions of 'bi-polarities' -- including the one that Freud got stuck on -- 'reality' vs. 'fantasy' -- is the principle of 'homestatic' and/or 'dialectic balance'....
In general, 'out of balance' creates 'sickness', and 'in balance' creates 'health'....
In this regard, what a 'therapist' -- or ourselves as 'self-therapist' -- is looking for is a 'sick point' (I think this idea can be traced to Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy) which is a point at which there is an 'empathetic break in self and/or other-compassion'. (I think this idea can be traced to Heinz Kohut.)
The sick point occurs at the point where there is an 'negotiation and integration breakdown' between either two bipolarities in the personality, and/or between our selves and some other or others outside in the world. This 'sick point impasse and/or breakdown' is often the resulting of 'righteousely opposing ideologies'...
Paradoxically, this 'sick point' is also the potential 'health point' if and/or when both parties in the impasse want to try to honestly face each other and work through their conflictual differences.
Employer/employee breakdowns are most likely to break off when either or both have lost compassion and empathy for the other's point of view....and cannot see the world through the eyes of their 'bi-polar opposite'...
'Bi-polarity Disorder' is an acute and/or chronic situation where opposing factions or polarities in the personality' take turn 'running amok'...
In all of the respects above, I don't mind calling myself a 'Neo-Hegelian-Dialectic or Bi-Polar Theorist'. I am constantly in search of 'dialectic, bi-polar truths' as opposed to 'one-sided, partial truths' that leave us in a 'conceptual blackout' on the bipolar side that has not been adequately accounted for -- i.e., it has been suppressed, minimized, denied, etc...I can also be viewed as a 'Neo-Derridian Dialectic or Bipolar Philosopher' in this same regard -- Derrida obviously having been significantly influenced by Hegel, directly or indirectly...Similarily, when talking about Freud or Jung's respective personality theories, wherever there is an 'ego' or a 'superego', there is also an 'id' usually hidden behind the scene, or wherever there is a 'personna', there is also a 'shadow' again hidden usually behind the scene ...The object of any bipolar, dialectic theory and therapy is to find a 'good, working balance' between 'two, partial bipolar truths' that need to be integrated together; not dissociated from each other like Freud sadly did between his 'reality-traumacy-seduction theory' and his bipolar 'childhood sexuality-impulse-drive-Oedipal theory'...The two polar theories simply need to be properly integrated to get to a better, working balance that 'Classical' Psychoanalysis is still sadly and unbelievably missing...In short, Freud 'missed a golden opportunity to arrive at a dialectic, bipolar truth' in 1896 when he instead bounced from one opposing theory to its opposite like a ball in a pinball machine...In the words of John Lennon, Freud's two opposing theories needed both then, and still now, to -- 'Come Together'... That is what I am writing this essay -- and a host of ones previous to it -- for....in two more words -- 'conflict resolution'.... dgb, Nov. 13th, 15th, 2011
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To be further edited, Nov. 15th, 2011...
The blindspot of any theory is its opposing theory. If a theory doesn't ideally have an 'opposing theory or theories' that it can be 'dialectically integrated and balanced with', then it is either not a 'complete' theory -- and/or it is a 'truth' or a 'fact'. Why? Because the world is essentially constructed in a mold of billions of 'bipolarities' and/or 'multi-bi-polarities', all searching for a working balance with each other....some more successful at finding each other...than others... -- dgb, Nov. 13th, 2011...
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As theorists -- and we are all 'theorists' in multiple matters each and every day we are alive -- the biggest mistake we can make is to confuse our 'theories' with 'truths' and 'facts'. That is what we call being 'close-minded'...
To become more 'open-minded' we need to be able to look at, and respect, the possible 'truth-value' in theories that oppose our own'...In fact, in some contexts, indeed, many contexts, there is greater 'truth-value' in 'integrative, multiple co-factor or dialectic (two-way) truth' then there is in the more simple, easier to comprehend 'Aristolean type of proclaimed truth' that we have been brought up and taught to look for -- i.e., 'either/or, black and white truth' like '2 plus 2 equals 4' or she is either 'pregnant or not pregnant -- she can't be both'....
Many 'truths' in the world simply do not fit into an either/or, black or white mold'....They may involve an 'integrative gray'....and indeed, a possible hundred or thousand 'shades of gray'...Such is the case in genetics and mutations....and such is the case in people interacting with, and influencing, each other...
Indeed, a theory and its opposite (or its numerous opposites), when integrated together, should provide a better theory, a more powerful theory, than either of, or any of, the different theories dissociated and alienated from each other. Dissociation and alienation can occur on either/or both a 'phenomenological-existential' level and a 'conceptual-theoretical' level...
Thus, we have Freud's clients being dissociated/alienated from either and/or both their memories and/or their desires -- or at least particular, uncomfortable ones... It is impossible to say that we 'know' a person well without knowing a combination of their memories and their desires...and the interaction between them....
Thus, 'memory-reality-traumacy' phenomenological events and 'compensation-defense-fantasy-desire' events become dialectially intertwined and inclusive in all of us; not 'dissociated, alienated, and mutually exclusive' from each other.
For Freud to try to 'separate' and 'dissociate' the two from each other -- conceptually and theoretically, saying, in essence, after 1896, that his 'memory-reality-traumacy' theory was 'wrong' and his 'fantasy-impulse' theory was 'right', was a most unfortunate example of Freud falling into 'The Aristotlean Black or White, Either/Or Trap'...
Freud chose to discriminately favour 'fantasy-desire-impulse' theory over 'memory-reality-traumacy' theory in a 180 degree turnaround of what, up to 1896 had been a 'reality-memory-bound' theory of what today is called 'Pre-Psychoanalysis', and after 1896, for reasons that are still controversially debated today, instead developed an 'instinct-fantasy-desire' bound theory of what today is called 'Classical' Psychoanalysis...
This is a strong example of a situation where I favor 'integrative-multiple-co-factor (dialectic-two or more ways) truth' over Freud's choice of basically discarding one form of 'truth' in favor of another. In essence, the 'more exciting and fashionable truth' became the focus of Freud's mindset over the 'old, established, stable, and less exciting truth'. It was like Freud 'falling out of love with his wife' and 'falling into love with his wife's sister'...It was a 'win-lose situation' both for his wife (if that is indeed what happened) -- and for Psychoanalysis...which did indeed happen...
The focus on one theory -- just as in one phenomenological desire and interest -- often dissociates and alienates another theory/desire/interest to the point where the 'excluded theory/desires/interest' recedes into The Shadow of our Psyche -- still a significant 'player' in the game of either 'psychic and/or cosmic truth' -- but no longer recognized or respected as such...(see the philosophy of Derrida's 'Deconstruction')....
I would posit a theory -- building on both what I have learned and what I have experienced -- that states that most, if not all, of human 'psychological neurosis, pathology, emotional suffering' comes from the perception of feeling socially excluded, rejected, and/or failing in some horrific moment, of feeling in some way 'less' than those around us, of becoming mad at both the world and at ourselves for this perceived self and social breakdown, of reaching a point of not feeling comfortable in our own skin, even of loathing ourselves for what we believe we failed to do, and punishing ourselves, terrorizing ourselves, internally -- sometimes nonstop and escalating -- for any of these, and/or all of these, perceived self and/or social failures...in effect, we are at war within ourselves...and at the same time, we are at war with the world...or some perceived portion of it...
Significant Freudian, Adlerian, and Jungian influence here...as well a Cognitive Theory...all screened through my own mind and personal experience...
Now, regarding 'integrative conceptual and/or theoretical truth-value'...
Two opposing theories -- integrated together -- can, and should, be better than either opposing theory trying to stand alone on what amounts to 'only one theoretical leg'... This is the essence of Hegelian Dialectic Theory....Partly paraphrasing Hegel (I don't have the exact quote here)...'Every theory carries within itself the seeds of its own self-destruction'...The area that the theory is most likely to 'self-destruct' in, is the area of its 'polar blind spot' -- i.e., 'the area better covered by one of its opposing theories'...
The particle theory and wave theory of matter and energy both have blindspots when taken apart from each other that seriously limit the value of each respective theory. However, when the two theories are integrated -- as they were in the early 20th century -- the resulting, integrative theory becomes much more powerful than either of the two theories taken apart from each other. In effect, they became 'good marriage partners'.
Adler's 'theory of inferiority feelings' would not have been as powerful a theory if it had not been integrated with his theory of 'compensation' and 'superiority striving' which, for each individual, according to Adler, culminates in his or her unique, particular 'lifestyle plan'. Now, I have integrated Adler's thinking here back into my version of what might be called 'DGB Neo-Classical 'GAP' (Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic) Theory with some Jungian 'Analytic' Theory, Transactional Analysis, Frommian Theory, and General Semantic-Cognitive Theory in there as well...too many influences to get them all in the name...
Ideally speaking, every theory -- at least every 'relevant theory' that has been around for a good number of years -- when integrated together, helps to 'minimize the blind spots' left behind by other theorists and their particular 'spectacles' for looking at the world and themselves the way they do, their 'pardigms', their 'philosophies', their 'theories', 'sub-theories', and 'concepts'...
What you need to put all these different 'world and self views' into a less restrictive and larger, more comprehensive, overall 'world view' is a superb, synthesizing theorist who is familiar with all these different theories, and has the creative and logical abilities to 'blend them all together into one, cohesive package'...
That's me!
Now, if I could go back in time to May, 1896, and visit Dr. Freud at his home in Vienna, and get in to see him for an hour or so, I would tell him to 'give his head a shake, that he was letting his personal and professional biases and traumacies -- the Emma Ekstein episode, the April 21st professional meeting with The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society, lack of clients and money that was threatening his career -- influence a 'paradigm-changing' decision that he was about to make that would, in essence traumatize Psychoanalysis and dissociate Psychoanalysis from its reality and traumacy underpinnings.' To use Freud's own terminology, Freud was about to 'repress' -- or at least 'suppress' -- the philosophical and psychological foundation of Psychoanalysis that he had spent over six years building (let's say, 1890 to 1896).
All the justifications and rationalizations in the world could not 'wipe out' the number of 'sexual assault victims' that walked through Freud's door between 1890 and 1896. By the spring of 1896 -- for whatever the combination of 'real reasons' that led to Freud's momentous decision to scrap the 'traumacy and seduction theories' -- Freud was simply developing an entirely different 'mindset' or 'paradigm'; in essence, he wanted to 'chase down' his clients' 'sexual fantasies'; not their 'sexual traumacies'.
His colossal mistake was his decision to 'turn his internal personal and professional conflict -- his theoretical and therapeutic impasse' into an 'either/or, mutually exclusive' decision...that would make his soon-to-be 'fantasy-instinct' theory dominant, and his abandoned 'reality-traumacy' theory dissociated, repressed, suppressed, disavowed, submissive, relegated to The Shadow, The ID Vault, The Dissociation Chamber...-- whatever word or collection of words you wish to use here, unless of course you believe that Freud 'did the right thing' in basically abandoning his 'Reality-Memory-Traumacy' Theory after 1896...
My advice to beginning psychology students who are just starting to study Freud....or conversely turn away from him because of what they have heard and/or read in small smatterings....
'Do not tarnish -- and dismiss -- Freud with one paintbrush...The man still remains the most brilliant psychologist of the mind who ever lived, in my opinion...He was human, like all of us are human, and subject to both personal and professional traumacies and fears on the one hand, as well as conceptual and theoretical overgeneralizations and reductionisms on the other hand....The best way to read Freud in my opinion, is to pretend that he never rejected his work before 1897, pretend that he never rejected his Reality, Memory, Traumacy, and Seduction Theories which were all built during this time period....Instead, read all of Freud's 50 years of theorizing as if it is 'wholistically connected' -- not 'dialectically divided and dissociated' by the years 1896 and 1897....What Freud wrote up to 1896 is just as important to the history and evolution of Psychoanalysis -- and 'Classical' Psychoanalysis (Unsuppressed) -- as anything he wrote after 1896. Where there seem to be 'theoretical collisions and contradictions', that is only because Freud was dealing with abstractions and generalizations that he 'compartmentalized and classified' in one direction, while ignoring clinical evidence -- real human, phenomenoligical events, moments, memories, relationships... -- that supported the theory or theories Freud was in the process of rejecting...
To support the theory of human sexuality and sexual fantasy does not wipe out the very real existence of human sexual traumacy and assault...
To support the theory of 'The Oedipal Complex' does not wipe out the very real existence of childhood sexual assault...adults assaulting children and older children assaulting younger children...
Freud's 1896 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' is one of the vest essays he ever wrote -- it certainly shows Freud at his concrete, compassionate, compelling best in terms of describing some of the horrific things that adults can do to children which were ending up in his therapy office many years later as real, live people -- usually women -- diagnosed as 'hysteric' because no one could make any kind of rational sense out of their bodily, emotional, and/or psychological symptoms -- the leftover 'damage' that had been incurred from their early (or later) traumacies -- which therapists like Breuer, Janet, and Freud were just starting to make sense out of in a way that was 'shocking' the professional medical world.
The knee-jerk reaction of the professional world was to 'reject and ridicule' these ideas -- to call them a 'scientific fairy tale' -- and, in my opinion, it is a historical shame that Freud took this professional rejection and ridicule too closely too heart....(probably it was the 'intimidation' in the form of 'professional blackballing' and 'lack of referral of clients' that brought Freud more to his knees than it was their rejection and ridicule (because to Fliess in his letters, Freud just ridiculed them back. Still, Freud was relatively young in his profession and was essentially at the 'economic' mercy of the medical community if they turned on him and stopped sending him patients which Freud said to Fliess, through his letter of May 4th, 1896 that that was exactly what they were doing to him after his scientfic meeting with them of April 21st, 1896.)
Through all his 'brave talk' to Fliess through this time period, it certainly looks to me like -- under professional and economic duress -- Freud, in the words of Masson, eventually 'lost moral couage' becuase, to my knowledge, Freud never wrote anything significant on childhood sexual abuse -- particularly as pertaining to a father against his own daughter -- again.
Blame the Psychiatry and Neurology Society of Vienna partly for this outcome -- for 'medically blackballing' Freud and 'taking away his income' -- I'm not sure how differently most of us would react under the very real threat, and indeed temporary actuality, of losing his income, and perhaps even eventually his profession...
Still, the matter of just exactly was 'going on inside Freud's head, from top to bottom' (we know partly from Freud's very intimate letters to Fliess), remains a contentious issues.
In between the Freudian idealists, ideologists, mythologists, and protectors (Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler mainly back in the early 1980s when the whole Masson scandal broke out...) on the one hand, and the Freudian 'conspiracy theorists' on the other hand, is probably the 'reality' of why Freud did what he did -- i.e., turn psychoanalysis on its head and start creating a new 'brand' of Psychoanalysis based on human 'fantasy' and 'instinct' theory and later 'narcissistic' theory, as opposed to 'reality' and 'traumatic memory' theory...
Freud's 'dream theory was coming hard by the beginning of 1896, and with it his 'sexual instinct' and 'sexual fantasy' and 'childhood sexuality' theories...But it remains very hard to believe that Freud -- who wrote one of the most compelling essays in his career on childhood sexual abuse in early 1896, would drop 'this line of thinking' almost seemingly in a 'Vienna Moment' without someone practically 'scaring the death' out of him...And that someone could very well have been the collective 'Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society'....Perhaps partly mixed in with the Emma Ekstein medical fiasco of February 1895 because in the same letter of May 4th, 1896, Freud was also going engaging in some 'historical and interpretive revisionism' regarding what 'caused' poor Emma Ekstein's 'post-nasal surgery hemmoraging traumacies'....
From the obvious 'cause' of medical incompetence and/or neglegence on Fliess' part, specifically, for 1. conducting the totally unorthodox, unsanctioned surgery in the first place; to 2. leaving a long piece of gauze up Emma's nose, and not telling Freud, while Fliess left Vienna and travelled back to his home in Berlin -- to any rational-empirical outsider, either there and then, or here and now, Fliess and Freud come across as 'backroom butchers'...And yet here was Freud in his letter of May 4th, 1896, writing to Fliess and still trying to 'console both of their guilt and moral consciences'...saying that Emma was hemmoraging because she was 'hysterical' and was a 'hysterical bleeder' and bled because she longed to see her two 'backroom butchers' again, and unconsciously, thought that 'bleeding' would bring one or both of them back to her 'bedside'....
I shake my head...
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Now, I am going to turn this essay in a direction that many of you may not like...
Let me preface this by saying that I like it when my essays are well-received, I like it when psychologists and particularly psychoanalysts, feel comfortable enough with my work that they want to advertise on this site...
However, sometimes, as in this case, I simply cannot dissociate myself from what I truly believe, and I charge ahead, knowing in the back of my mind that it is a good philosopher's duty to sometimes write what is 'politically incorrect' and/or what many people may just not want to read...
In this case, I am not like Freud in wanting, or feeling the need, to be like a 'magician' and shock and amaze people... but rather, I feel the need to make a strong point that seems to continue to elude the significance of the lay public, academics, and professionals alike...
And/or people simply do not want to believe, what first, Jeffrey Masson, the former Projects Director of The Freud Archives, had to say about Freud, particularly in the years 1895 and 1896, and now, I am saying in partly similar, partly different words, as Masson, but with a different 'end game' in mind -- i.e., specifically 'massive theoretical integration' rather than 'massive rejection' of Freud's post-1896 work (which is not entirely true with Masson, at least these days, because I have a beautiful, new, hardcover edtion of Freud's 'The Interpretation of Dreams', edited by Masson, in 2010. I give Masson credit for not 'painting all of Freud's post-1896 work with the same black brush or poison dart'....To be sure, Masson still makes his own editorial comments that are still consistent with his 1980s perspective; he simply makes these comments without disturbing the flow of what many consider to be Freud's greatest work...).
Still, the big Freudian-Psychoanalytic scandal of the 1980s was Masson, as Projects Director of The Freud Archives, saying (and I am paraphrasing) that Freud 'lost moral courage' when he 'suppressed' the Seduction Theory after April 21st, 1896 because of 'professional and economic pressure' being applied to him by The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society after the fateful April 21st, meeting...(I have more or less repeated the same argument above, and also addressed the Emma Ekstein medical disaster, which Masson did too back in his 1984, 1985, 1992 book, 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory'...
Masson's argument continued that Freud basically 'covered up' childhood sexual assault by inventing his concept of 'The Oedipal Complex' (real sexual assault memories by female clients being 're-interpreted' by Freud as 'distorted, unconscious, romantic-sexual fantasies that the client had towards her father as a child and perhaps 'embellished' and 'repressed' later as a teenager (as most female children have these types of 'fantasies' towards their respective dads, and alternatively, most male children have towards their respective mothers... According to Freud, this is 'normal psycho-sexual childhood development' with some 'different, individual variations' on the Oedipal theme...I would editorialize and say that most of us partly identify with both our mother and our father, assuming we were raised by both, while at the same time being partly 'attracted' and partly 'repelled' by 'adult surrogates' of both parents, either 'swinging back and forth between transference relationships with surrogates of either or both parents (and/or 'narcissistic images' of ourselves, or the opposite, and/or looking for a 'balance' between the key characteristics of both parents...and/or a balance between ourselves and our opposite...).
Masson argued (and again I am paraprhasing -- I think you can find this argument in 'In The Freud Archives' by Janet Malcolm although Masson later accused Malcolm of seriously misquoting him on many things she supposedly quoted him on....but I don't believe this argument...I will look for the reference and cite it here later) -- the argument was that Classical Psychoanalysis would have to 'recall all their patients -- like The Pinto' -- from about 1900 onwards to try to determine how many 'real sexual assault memories' might have been 'falsely diagnosed as the Oedipal Complex fantasies'...
Now, one of the two Senior Saints of Freudian Psychoanalysis back in 1982 -- Kurt Eissler (Anna Freud being the other) -- argued in this fashion: How could The Psychoanalytic Establishment continue to employ a man as 'Projects Director of The Freud Archives' who had openly in public stated that 'Freud lacked moral courage and integrity'?
The answer, determined by The Psychoanalytic Board of Directors -- which included Anna Freud and Eissler -- was simple: They couldn't. Masson had 'publicly denounced and defamed' Freud; therefore, Masson had to be fired from his job as Projects Director of The Freud Archives. Which he was...And Masson left Psychoanalysis altogether...
As outrageous as most people today (no different than the non-psychoanalysts around him when he was alive) -- and I include academics, professionals, and the general public -- may believe, and have believed, that Freud's ideas, and particularly his post-1900 pysychoanalytic interpretations -- were outrageously radical and convoluted, still, until Masson came along in the 1980s, no one really questioned Freud's 'moral and ethical integrity'... There were a few -- Max Schur, Freud's personal doctor, started to ask some 'tough questions' that Masson grabbed a hold of, tightly, like a Pit Bull, and wouldn't let go of...
So my question is this: What if Masson was essentially right: that Freud was metaphorically speaking, in a high stakes game of poker with his medical peers and superiors, in April and May, 1896, where they held all 'the high cards', the 'professional, political, and economic leverage', and Freud, starting to feel the pressure in terms of 'unreferred and lost patients'....essentially 'folded his cards'....drew a new set of cards....and started playing a 'different game of Psychoanalysis' with a 'different set of cards' -- i.e., 'Fantasy Theory' rather than 'Reality Theory'?
And what if Freud essentially 'hid' the phenomenon of 'childhood sexual abuse' -- particularily 'incest' -- behind his new 'trump card' -- his new 'source of the Nile' -- i.e., 'The Oedipal Complex'?
And what if 'Classical' Psychoanalysts today, are still playing with 'the Oedipal Card', and in so doing, are doing what Freud started doing after 1900, and up until the end of his career -- i.e., 're-interpreting 'reality theory' (incest) as 'fantasy theory' ('repressed' childhood and teenage sexual fantasies hidden behind 'false childhood memories')...
So, now we are faced with the dilemma and question:
Which is it?: Are childhood or teenage sexual assault memories hidden behind analyst-interpreted 'repressed childhood or teenage sexual fantasies'? Or are 'false' childhood or teenage sexual assault memories hidden behind 'repressed' childhood or teenage sexual fantasies?
Or either/or both depending on the context of the situation?
Or how about this which perhaps makes the most 'rational-empirical sense': Most of us can tell the difference between a 'memory' and a 'fantasy' and although there may be some lesser or greater degree of distortion and/or 'one-sidedness' of the memory based on things like 'time', 'interest and attention', and 'narcissistic bias', still, unless we are deliberately trying to deceive, and/or there is something 'seriously psychotic' at work within our personality, we can usually tell the difference between what 'experientially happened to us' and what 'we would like to happen to us'...again, assuming no serious, epistemological dissociation at work within us....We must remember that there is no 'ideal objective epistemology' except in the form of some credible, reliable 'subjective-objective-integrative epistemology'...And this process of 'determining reality' has never been perfect -- not even in a court of law....
It is not a cut and dry, black and white problem, except that in individual cases it is going to be one or the other, with the therapist not having been back in the client's childhood to be able to witness which was which?
And conveniently, by Freud 'drawing a hand of new cards' back after a very disappointing April 21st, 1896 meeting, 'his new cards' -- even though they seemed almost as 'crazy' as his 'first set of cards' -- did not draw attention to 'sexually abusive fathers' -- which could have made all the difference in the world to the 'male doctors' in The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society'...
One way, some of them may have been what we could call today 'sexual predators'; the other way they were 'normal' fathers...
Was this a 'Freudian manipulation'?
Or simply a 'coincidence' -- with Freud opting for what he believed was a 'better theory'?
One way, Freud's 'ethical integrity' remains in tact....
The other way -- like Joe Paterno this past week --
Freud's 'ethical integrity' takes a huge negative hit...
And nothing is written in stone...
Because it is all 'conjecture', 'historical speculation'....
As to just exactly what was going on inside of Freud's mind...
In 1895 and 1896,
Particularly, when Freud had already taken one 'ethical hit' in 1895,
With the botched Emma Ekstein 'nasal-sexual surgery'....
This whole controversy also reflects very much on Jeffery Masson's psychoanalytic career...
One way he is perceived as a 'narcissistic radical'...
And the other way he is perceieved as trying to...
Rescue 'the moral integrity' of The Psychoanalytic Establishment...
Which is more important: the moral and ethical integrity of Penn State?
Or the 'moral-ethical legacy' of Joe Paterno?
Similarily, which is more important: the moral and ethical integrity of The Psychoanalytic Establishment?
Or the 'moral-ethical legacy' of Sigmund Freud?
Is this a case of very few people seeing, or wanting to see, that 'The Emperor, in 1896, had no clothes on'....
Or did Sigmund Freud do the 'right' thing...
And this is all a 'smoke and mirrors' ethical controversy?
With Max Schur, then Jeffery Masson, and now me....amongst a host of other more diplomatic, and carefully treading, theorists and therapists...
Wasting our collective intellects, writing time, and energies...
Trying to diplomaticly and/or brashly and bluntly assert that something 'rotten happened in Vienna' after the spring of 1896: in a nutshell, Freud lost much of his 'empathetic compassion' for his patients, and partiularly his sexually abused patients, in the process of 'trying to safeguard his own profession and source of income'...and also in the process of developing his 'sexual fantasy model of the human psyche'...
I will let you mull on this for as long as you wish -- or don't wish -- to...
In the days that come, I will list off some of the most revelevant quotes that I think mark a radical change in Freud's personality after 1896 -- i.e., he became less empathetic, less compassionate -- and more narcissistic....
Have a great day!
-- dgb, Nov. 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain
