I'm going back into my archives here....back to June 9th, 2011...in order to pull up an essay that belongs in this network of essays that I am writing now....
Under revision....Jan. 17th, Jan. 21st, 2012...
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What I would like to do in this essay is to compare and contrast the work of Freud in 1894 (The Neuro-Psychoses of Defense), 1895 (Studies in Hysteria), and 1896 (The Aetiology of Hysteria) with the work of Freud in 1920 (Beyond The Pleasure Principle) and 1923 (The Ego and The Id).
Of particular speculative interest -- and this 'speculation' falls under the category of 'would have', 'could have', 'should have' -- is the question of what might have happened to Psychoanalysis if Freud had written The Ego and The Id in say, 1895 or 1896 rather than in 1923?
Now, obviously, Freud's mindset and abstraction process had not evolved enough in the mid 1890s when he was just getting going with what is usually classified as his 'Pre-Classical' Psychoanalytic thinking to have written The Ego and The Id at such an early date.
But what the question does is to direct us to look at how Freud's 1923 conceptuology of 'the ego', 'the id', and 'the superego' would have mixed -- or not mixed -- with his 'pre-Classcial, reality-traumacy-seduction-repression theory'.
You see, me being the 'post-Hegelian, dialectic, integrative bi-polarity thinker' that I am, I look at the question of 'What would have 'Classical' Psychoanalysis have looked like if Freud had integrated all 46 years of his pre-psychoanalytic and psychoanalytic thinking (1903-1939), rather than throwing the first four years of his work into a 'Dissociation Pit' -- like the 'neurotics' and 'neuroses' he was describing in his clients.
And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. Friedrich Nietzsche
These early, pre-1897, classic Psychoanalytic works listed above need to be reconciled, integrated, and harmonized with his later work -- not treated like Psychoanalsysis suddenly developed its own 'neurotic disorder' with Freud 'repressing' -- or in a better choice of words, 'dissociating' -- the first four professional years of his career. (I dislike the Freudian concept of 'repression' because of its reductionistic and non-empirical nature; my own preferable terminology consists of words like: 'alienating', 'dissociating', 'suppressing', 'restraining', 'splitting', 'avoiding'...trying as much as possible to stay away from the concept of repression except in discussing the way that Freud used this term...for the most part reductionistically and non-empirically...and not in the best interests of Psychoanalysis in my opinion.)
Remember, this is the man -- Freud -- who burned many of his most personal letters from Fliess, and presumably, important others. Indeed, he would have most certainly done the same if he had ever gotten a hold of his own letters to Fliess, but history was smiling on historians in this latter case, not on Freud, and thus, we get a truer picture -- not a 'mythological' one -- of what was happeneing during the crucial early development years of Psychoanalysis.
Freud had a very strong wish to keep most of his private life -- strictly private. But all of his most intimate letters to Fliess have made it through World War ll, and into the history books for philosophers, psycho-theorists and psychoanalytic historians like myself to interpret and evaluate as they choose to.
Masson was the 'golden child' of psychoanalysis at the beginning of the early 1980s who was given the 'key to the vault' to publish all of Freud's very intimate letters to Fliess (before then, the ones that seemed to tarnish Freud's reputation in any way were screened out of publication), but when Masson got into these letters, didn't like what he saw -- and said so -- accusing Freud of 'losing moral courage' around the issue of real childhood memories, specifically, real childhood sexual assault or 'seduction' memories, the main 'protectors' of The Freudian legacy -- mainly his daughter, Anna Freud, and the highly esteemed senior Freudian loyalist, Kurt Eissler -- were obviously berating themselves for letting Masson into The Freudian Archives in the first place because of the disastrous public relations scandal that followed -- Masson, more specifically, accusing Freud of 'backing away' and 'hiding' from the very 'professionally and politically unpopular' subject of childhood sexual abuse after a very volatile, confrontational meeting of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society on April 21st, 1896, in which Freud read his very famous or infamous paper, depending on your perspective, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria', which connected childhood sexual assault to the overall 'cause' of hysteria. Krafft-Ebing, the leader of the evening meeting called Freud's paper a 'scientific fairy tale'.
I have followed Masson's path through Freud's complete letters to Fliess through 1895 and 1896 in particular, and some of them don't shine a good light on Freud -- particularly the Emma Ekstein medical atrocity, and arguably, Freud's abandonment of his pre-1897 combined 'reality-traumacy-seduction' theory -- especially, IF this 'theory abandonment' reflected a loss of moral courage on Freud's part to stand up to his medical peers and superiors. Granted, they may have had -- indeed, most certainly did have -- 'leverage' over both his professional reputation and his income level relative to 'referring' or 'not referring' patients to him....and Freud had a growing family that he needed to shelter, feed, and clothe -- a type of situation where most of us may have at one point or another in our professional career been told to 'keep something quiet' or risk the consequences...or alternatively, you just know that saying something may not be a good idea relative to keeping your job and/or your career...
Still, regardless, the reputation of both Freud and Psychoanalysis is significantly at stake here. The nuts and bolts of the situation comes down to this moral question: Did Freud turn his back on his clients, particularly his female clients, and betray them -- like Judas? Or did Freud radically change the theory of Psychoanalysis 180 degrees because he believed that this was 'the right' thing to do based on a 're-interpretation of his clinical evidence'?
It is two very complicated, connected questions with both Freud's and Psychoanalysis' reputation and integrity hanging in the balance. It certainly seems like most Psychoanalysts back in the 1980s 'rejected and wrote Masson off as an academic radical' (at least in public, anyway). The position of professional and academic 'non-psychoanalysts' is less clear.
It comes down to whether you believe or not that Freud's whole change in direction of Psychoanalysis from 'reality theory' to 'fantasy theory' was, in effect, a 'cover-up' of chldhood sexual abuse -- or not. The evidence is still not fully clear, and probably never will be. There is evidence to suggest that Freud was in the process of 'changing' his reality theory to fantasy theory as early as December, 1895, which would make the evening of April 21st, 1896 far less dramatically significant.
Freud's creation and writing of 'The Interpretation of Dreams' was also coming hard about this time, and may have also influenced his changeover from reality theory to fantasy theory. There was the Emma Ekstein medical mishap of February, 1895 that was still 'playing in Freud's head -- as 'guilt' -- and from this guilt, may have sprung his concept (or Fliess') of 'longing'....Freud started to call Emma a 'hysterical bleeder' -- a patient who 'bled' because she 'longed' to be back in the presence of her 'male therapist' (presumably Freud), and she 'bled' to 'get his attention'....
That interpretation does not look very good on Freud at all as this was a woman who almost bled to death because Fliess, when he was doing 'the nasal-sexual surgery' (whatever that supposed connection was about) that he shouldn't even have been doing -- left about a foot of medical gauze or more in her nasal cavity, forgot about it, went back from Vienna to Berlin, and it was almost a month later when another doctor, examining Emma's badly infected nasal passage, suddenly found and pulled on the gauze -- and a torrent of blood rushed out after the gauze had been pulled out....And a year later Freud was calling Emma a 'hysterical bleeder'...
All of this is to say that there was 'mixed evidence' as to 'why Freud did what he did' when he started to abandon 'reality theory' for 'fantasy theory'....and some of the evidence isn't good...
Without The Psychoanalytic Establishment ever admitting that Freud may have -- or actually did -- 'screw up' bigtime -- still, it would seem that most Psychoanalysts have quietly left the school of Classical Psychoanalysis in order to pursue one or more other 'sub-schools' of Psychoanalysis -- ones that don't deny 'reality theory', ones that don't deny childhood sexual abuse, ones that quietly discard perhaps the most contentious theory in Psychoanalysis -- 'The Oedipal Complex' which Masson argued was being used to suppress the 'reality' of actual sexual assault memories, and instead being 're-interpreted' by Freud, particularly in a father and daughter case scenario, as his female client's 'own repressed sexual fantasy' relative to her dad -- which Freud viewed as being completely 'normal', a common fantasy amongst all young girls growing up with their respective dads.
That word 'repression' becomes a word impossible to argue -- a self-fulfilling prophecy for the theorist, in this case Freud. Allegedly, only a psychoanalyst has the 'knowledge and experience' to know what is 'repressed' and what is not, leaving everyone outside of Freud's 'Secret Society' in the dark, and in the lurch.
If Freud made two 'big' errors in the evolution of Classical Psychoanalytic Theory, the first 'big mistake' that he made -- before he even abandoned the 'reality-truamacy-seduction theory triad' -- was being 'obsessed' with the word 'repression' For Freud, particularly in his early days, Psychoanalysis was not Psychoanalysis unless it contained the central, linch-pin, idea of 'repression' -- the idea that just happened to make Psychoanalysis a 'Secret Society' with 'psychoanalysts in the 'we know' position and 'outsiders' in the 'they do not know' position...That's how 'pathological religious organizations work'...they are viewed from inside as being beyond criticism from 'outsiders' -- and that is what was taking Freud further and further away from the solid grounding of 'rational-empirical science' as Joseph Breuer was trying to hang onto -- while Freud was 'trying to fly to the moon and back'...
Even if Freud was moving towards 'fantasy theory' on at least partly legitimate clinical grounds, with a 'mixed bag of historical evidence' in this regard, I still share with Masson the basic belief, that regardless of what Freud's motives were at the time -- and some of them don't look very good at all -- Freud did indeed 'screw up' by abandoning his 'reality-traumacy-seduction theory triad' which, up to April 1896, provided the logical, rational-empirical grounding and theoretical foundation of Psychoanalysis.
Unlike Masson, I don't use this argument to say that 'all psychiatry and/or psychotherapy is bad', or that Psychoanalysis should go back to its pre-1897 reality-traumacy-seduction theory completely -- and reject any 'fantasy' theory created and written after 1896....I'm not even sure Masson would totally say this: he did just recently (2010) re-edit Freud's classic work 'The Interpretation of Dreams' (and did a good job of it in my opinion).
My theoretical position is that we need to go back -- or at least I need to go back in Psychoanalytic history, combine it with what I know today -- and sort out the respective roles that both 'reality' and 'fantasy' play in people's lives. 'Memories' are important -- and so too are 'fantasies'. What is there relationship to each other -- if any -- and how do they both have a crucial effect on man's individual health and/or 'neurotic and/or psychotic pathology'?
In this regard, we -- or at least 'I' again -- need to re-examine the relative 'health' or 'neurotic pathology' of Classical Psychoanalysis itself.
In regard to any theoretical 'errors' that Freud may have made, I need to go back and find out where these errors may have left -- indeed, did leave -- 'sick points' in Classical Psychoanalysis.
To use another metaphor, we might say that these 'theoretical weaknesses' that Freud left behind him, have left a hole in the side of The Great Ship, Classical Psychoanalysis, that has left it 'teetering' like the Titanic after it started to take in water left by the 'huge, sharp-edged iceberg'...Is Classical Psychoanalysis still floating? Or is it not? I will let you make your own interpretive conclusions regarding this matter -- as I continue to pursue my theoretical investigation, analysis, and 'creative, integrative, 'fix-up'.
I want to repair the ship; others -- including probably most psychoanalysts -- have probably already abandoned. No one wants to touch the 'Classic Psychoanalytic Ship-Titanic' -- at least now, perhaps because it is an historical artifact of history, and once it is changed it is no longer 'Classical' Psychoanalysis -- or admittedly, there are still some very 'anal-retentive diehards' who are still trying to make the old ship float...
Maybe I am being too hard here, maybe I am not but most people would probably now say that Classical Psychoanalysis is a 'relic' from the 'Victorian' era, and that there are other better models of Psychoanalysis that are creatively evolving in the 21st century --like Object Relations and Self-Psychology, and Lacanian Psychoanalyis, and Bionian Psychoanalysis...and 'Classical' Psychoanalysis -- with its concepts of 'The Oedipal Complex' and 'Castration Anxiety' and 'Penis Envy' -- belongs in a Psychoanalytic Museum. Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler would have certainly taken exception to this assertion but how many psychoanalysts are there left who still want to hang on with that 'obsessively fixated, anal-retentive, hanging on bite'....If they are still using a theory 'frozen by time', then they have probably become frozen themselves. I can certainly see Jeffrey Masson nodding his head in agreement from New Zealand -- even if it is me 'imagining' this from the man who called all of today's Psychoanalysis 'sterile'. (He was speaking in the early 80s and probably directing his complaint against 'Classical' Psychoanalysis with its potentially 'pathological' clinical usage of 'The Oedipal Complex, and perhaps its potential waste of time looking for deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper...and still deeper 'associations'...whether 'objective' or 'subjective', 'memories' or 'fantasies'...trust your psychoanalyst in all his or her professional wisdom to 're-interpret' them and/or 're-construct' them...until they are completely in line with 'Classic' Freudian Psychoanaytic Theory...even if this is the cart leading the horse rather than the horse leading the cart...)
Reality vs. fantasy -- we really have to clean up what we know to be the difference.
One is real -- and one is not. And Freud wanted to 'superimpose' the one onto the other. Well, sometimes, to be sure, they are superimposed onto each other....but then the question become: 'HOW'? To the point of a 'repressed sexual fantasy' completely underemining and fabricating an alleged 'sexual assault memory'? Maybe in a very extreme case....But do we really want to believe that this type of 'distortive cerebral activity' happens in all cases of little girls growing up in the same household as their father? A very 'convenient' defense for an 'actual father victimizer' over his much less powerful 'victim' daughter...Now I don't want to stereotype 'victimizers' and 'victims' because often we need to look at this whole problem of 'victimization' 'dialectically' such as in cases of 'domestic violence' where oftentimes men and women are both victims and victimizers in the same scernario leading to the escalation of a domestic conflict into domestic aggression and violence....But in Freud's 'moral challenge' case, we have to wonder whether Freud was indeed throwing a 'smoke and mirrors' theory over top of cases of 'real, cold-blooded, narcissistic reality' involving some fathers actually having sexually victimized their daughters...This would make 'The Oedipal Theory' at least a partly 'pathological' theory, if not more than that...Consequently, the silent abandonment of all or most critical thinking Psychoanalysts from the Sinking Classical Freudian Ship Titanic...and into other ''better floating' ships like The Object Relations Ship, The Self-Psychology Ship, The Bionian Ship, the Lacanian Ship, etc...
Or alternatively, the Good Classical Freudian Ship Titanic needs some very serious body work to patch some very large holes caused by a very large, sharp iceberg (The Oedipal Theory and Repression Theory and 'Penis Envy' Theory and 'Castration Anxiety Theory'.... Deconstructing or Self-Destructing under 80 years or more of very hard, critical, outside environmental pounding.....Every theory eventually crumbles under the weight of its own tombstone that it is carrying.....See Freud's Death Instinct...)
Sometimes -- to be sure -- our 'narcissistic biases and desires' can 'distort' the reality of our memories, but more than likely, this is usually done consciously, on purpose for narcissistic motives....Not 'unconsciously and repressively'! Or do we 'defer' to the 'Classical' Psychoanalysts and their self-fulfilling prophecy of 'repression' that can only be properly 'interpreted' by someone 'well-taught and well-trained' within their 'Secret Society'....(brainwashed, anyone?)
I love psychoanalysis -- and Freud -- 'projectively' like I love my father -- it/he just needs/needed to break through some seriously 'anal-retentive, narcissistic, righteous paradigms' that he couldn't see outside of...(kinda like my father...zap...ouch!...did I just say that?...perhaps that makes me a 'dictatorial control freak' as well...in my father's own image...only more of a 'deconstructive anarchist' -- and 'reconstructionist/re-builder' -- at the same time...You gotta love psychoanalysis for its ability to give you enlightening, sometimes harsh, personal insights....A lot of these insights may come with your better and better ability to interpret 'transference and sublimation projections'...more on this integrative concept later...)
Anyways, I am stubborn, and I want to 'fix' Classical Psychoanalysis; not pretend that it doesn't have a problem, or abandon it all together...
I want to freshly integrate 'Pre-Classical' and 'Classical' Psychoanalysis with 70 years of post-Classical psycho-theoretical and psychotherapeutic evolution...And yes, I guess that means that what I am creating here can no longer be right classified as 'Classical' Psychoanalysis...even though I hold onto more parts of it than many...
The name I used to call my 'post-Classical' rendition of Classical Psychoanalysis was 'DGB Psychoanalysis' -- as in 'Dialectic-Gap-Bridging' Psychoanlysis. Now I have changed the name to 'Quantum-Dialectic' Psychoanalysis, the idea being that when we creatively engage in a 'democratic-dialectic-gap-bridging' approach to problem-solving and conflict-resolving where 'dominant/suppressive/oppressive masters' and 'suppressed/dissociated/oppressed slaves' -- regardless of whether we are talking about opposing people or opposing ideas and/or theories and/or paradigms -- are taken out of the master/slave paradigm and inserted into a 'dialectically-democratically-dynamically egalitarian paradigm-process', then 'good things can happen in the relationship -- very good things -- and this can result in a 'quantum leap' in the 'quality of our lives'...
Masterr/slave relationships almost always carry an element of either overt and/or covert hostility, aggression, rebellion, anarchy....power and/or revenge seeking...as well as dissociative alienation....the stuff that bad relationships are made out of...They are the seeds of Narcissistic Capitalism and/or visa versa....and in effect, these polar, pathological psycho-dynamics are no different then the same type of variables that also can be connected to Mao Tse Tung, Lenin, Stalin -- and probably even Karl Marx in his later years as he became more of an anarchist than a democrat....
Marx did much to describe the plight of the alienated worker, the master/slave relationship as first formulated by Hegel, and its extrapolated connection to the relationship of aristocrat to the working class proletariat, employer to employee, upper to lower class, the widening gap of power and control and money, the 'growing abyss' between the classes, greed and narcissism, covert collusion and manipulation, a lack of tranparency and accountability amongst those who control the 'money vault' -- whether private or public -- a lack of equality and integrity and respect...This whole network of pathological factors are just as relevant -- if not more relevant -- today, then they were back in Marx's time...and to repeat, I believe that Marx became less humanistic and more radically aggressive later in his writing career. His early work remains probably his best work in terms of its 'humanistic-existential value'...which Erich Fromm picked up and ran with...
What we are talking about here -- the difference between the authoritarian personality and the democratic personality, and between the authoritarian relationship and the democratic relationship -- goes right back to the main core of our psycho-dynamic relationship with our parents which is then 'introjected' or 'internalized' into our personality....and we end up having to live with for our entire lives...
If we have had an authoritarian, dictatorial, and or aggressively autocratic parent -- either father or mother -- then it is quite likely that we are going to be struggling with 'power and authority' issues, our whole lives....either as a 'dictator' ourselves, and/or as a person 'submitting to' and/or 'rebelling against' all 'projected dictators'' in our social environment...
Indeed, it can be easily argued that one of, if not the, most important 'core nuclear conflicts' in our personality is going to be the issue of 'control and power' vs. 'giving up or letting go of control and power'....
Offshoots of this 'internal and external power-control conflict' include the conflict between 'competition and co-operation', between 'unity and separation', between 'approach and avoidance', between 'seduction and abandonment', between 'love and power', between narcissism and altruism, between leadership and being led....
And somewhere in this list lies the conflict between 'cold-hearted reality' and 'narcissistic fantasy'....or stated differently...'objective reality' and 'subjective fantasy'....with the reality being that 'subjective narcissistic fantasy' is often going to 'sugar coat' and/or completely replace 'cold-hearted, narcissistic reality'...
Take, for example, a childhood sexual assault....committed by a father against his daughter....a case of 'cold-hearted, narcissistic reality'.....And now we have a relatively young 'radical' doctor who specializes in the treatment of 'hysteria' and he is trying to assert that 'all cases of hysteria are caused by childhood sexual assaults and/or manipulations/seductions of the (usually female) victim, with the victimizer usually being the father, an uncle, a 'friend' of the family, an older brother, or a stranger...
How are the 'good Victorian doctors of Vienna' going to react to such a radical theory and theorist? Suppress him!....Oppress him! Ostrasize him! Exclude him! Dissociate him until he 'comes around' with a 'new theory' that the 'good doctors' could live better with -- one that doesn't 'trumpet' the co-connection between childhood sexual assault and adult hysteria....and which could get some of the 'good doctors' into trouble...politically, legally, and/or professionally...
Was their world really much different than ours today?
We see -- or don't see -- this type of 'Covert, Manipulative, Leverage, Power-Dynamic' going on all the time in private corporations, in the government, in the media...all around us...every day we do or don't go to work...'Power and Dominance vs. Less Power and Suppression, Dissociation, Ostrazization, Opression, Alienation...'...
And so too we see -- or don't see -- this same type of power-dynamics at work in our own personality....
But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum...
Where there is power and dominance vs. less power and suppression....
The Suppressed and Ostracized Will Usually Come Back to Haunt Us...See Anaximander...600 and something B.C...
Call this 'The Return of The Suppressed or Ostracized or Dissociated'....
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Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
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Kinda sounds like Freud's 'Death Instinct' -- i.e., all things returning from whence they came (whether that be 'the earth' (Freud and Freud's mother), or 'The Apeiron' -- or 'Chaos' (Anaximander) or possibly 'The Abyss' (Nietzsche)...
It also sounds like Freud's 'Return of The Repressed' which I have re-worded up above....which alternatively can be viewed as a form of 'Cosmic Justice' and 'Cosmic Retribution'...the idea that 'The More Powerful' and 'The Less Powerful' will continually chase each other through Time -- one 'de-volving' and 'losing power' while the other 'evolves' and 'gains more power' until the less powerful becomes more powerful and the more powerful becomes less powerful, the 'two dialectic, opposing and conflicting polarities' switching with each other over time as they both race through time...'taking turns' in the 'light of sunshine' and the 'darkness of the shadows' in life, in death, and being re-born again....'
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How different is this to the 'magical trick' that Freud's mother showed her 'astonished' young boy who was just starting to 'formulate his philosophy of life and death'....to reappear some 58 years later in his 1920 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle'...
'Another memory was of his mother assuring him at the age of six that were made of earth and therefore must return to earth. When he expressed his doubts of this unwelcome statement she rubbed her hands together and showed him the dark fragments of epidermis that came there as a speciment of the earth we are made of. His astonisment was unbounded and for the first time he captured some sense of the inevitable. As he put it: "I slowly acquiesced in the idea I was later to hear expressed in the words 'Thou owest nature a death.'
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-- dgb, June 9th, 2011, some modifications and updates November 26th, 2011, Jan. 17th, 2012....
-- David Gordon Bain
