There's a time for 'yin',
And a time for 'yang',
And a time for balancing the two...
But mainly, I'm coming...
Straight at you....
Assertively, aggressively,
Hopefully, with clarity and vision...
Stability and rhythm...
To the best of my ability,
Not with high in the sky...
Discombobulations...
Watch your abstractions...
Don't get lost up there...
Is there an escalator back to earth?
Or do you plan to stay up there?
Watching the world from up above...
Like the view from up there...
Flying so high...
But forgetting how to walk
Forgetting where your roots are...
Plato was great...
But the Plato-Aristotle combination...
Was, and is, much, much better...
Name some of the greatest...
'Dialectic dualisms'...
Anaximander-Heraclitus...
Spinoza-Schelling...
Diderot-Rousseau...
Adam Smith-Karl Marx...
Kant-Hegel...
Hegel-Nietzsche...
Wittgenstein-Korzybski...
Freud-Adler...
Freud-Jung...
Freud-Klein
Freud-Fairbairn..
Freud-Perls...
Freud-Masson?
Did Jeffrey Masson, in the 1980s,
Create a needless, flippant, unsubstantiated,
Psychoanalytic scandal,
Based on the question,
'Did Freud lose moral courage in 1895, 96?'
Or was Masson grabbing onto something...
That was real,
And needed to be ethically addressed,
By The International Psychoanalytic Institute --
And wasn't....
Was Masson's public outcry in the 1980s,
A well-grounded demand,
For Psychoanalysis --
And Classical Psychoanalysis in particular,
To return to the more ethical-moral treatment,
Of its female clients,
Without the inherent Freudian, Victorian,
Patriarchal, narcissistic bias,
That has given Psychoanalysis
At least a partly bad name,
Among women's groups in particular....
That still exists to this day?
Why hasn't this issue been addressed?
And did Masson rightfully get...
To the heart -- and the worst part --
Of this issue?
This is the main issue of this essay....
Come back to earth, my dear man -- or woman --
Connect your abstractions with your concrete experience...
I and Thou,
Here and Now,
Let our Gods meet between us...
And don't over-generalize from your experience...
Freud was onto something very important...
In 1895....
When he used the term 'transference' for the first time...
And called transferences -- 'false connections' --
Between our past and present...
Between our childhood and adulthood experience...
Meaning transferences can often be considered to involve..
'Emotional over-generalizations'...
False connections, bad associations --
Between two sets of experiences...
Crossing many years of time...
That are significantly different...
From each other...
And yet we treat them as the same...
Transferences collectively,
Are one of the main cognitive causes...
Of all mental-emotional-behavioral pathology --
Including all forms of...
'Neurosis' and 'psychosis'....
Psychoanalysis calls them 'transference neuroses'...
Which I use universally,
Beyond the therapist-client relationship,
In Brian Bird fashion...
Unfortunately, Freud was one of the worst offenders...
Especially during his darkest, most guilt-ridden days,
Of 1895 and 1896.
With no help from The Vienna Psychiatry Society...
Who called Freud's 'clinically generalized connection'
Between 'hysteria' and 'childhood sexual abuse'...
A 'scientific fairy tale'...
Prompting Freud to 'change or modify his theory'...
Rather drastically...
And in the process, create his own...
At least partly...
'Scientific fairy tale'....
Freud dropped the old connection...
Between hysteria and sexual traumacy...
To create a new one..
Between hysteria and sexual fantasy...
What's with this?
What's going on?
There is quite a difference
Between sexual traumacy
And sexual fantasy...
Isn't there?
And between a fantasy...
And a real memory...
Isn't there?
What is going on?
Is it necessarily 'either/or'?
Do they have to be mutually exclusive?
Follow closely here now....
Follow the bouncing 'historical ball'...
As I do my best...
To bring some very complicated historical issues...
And human 'transference-existential' issues...
Down to 'slow motion instant replay'...
And 'lowest common denominator' clarity of...
Past, present, and future psychoanalytic vision...
...................................................
'Something is happening here,
And you don't know what it is,
Do you Mr. Jones?' (Bob Dylan, 1965)
......................................................................................
There are two kinds of philosophers...
Those who profess to be philosophers, and
smarter than the rest...
Thus, building abstractions higher and higher into the sky....
That have lost their roots and their meaning here on earth,
Leaving others to say, 'Wow, how brilliant you are....
Cause I don't understand what you just said...
Or what I just read....
With a smirk on his or her face,
This type of philosopher
Revels in his or her so-called brilliance....
And thinks that he or she has accomplished something...
(It is usually a 'he')
As students from everywhere flock to see and hear...
The new philosopher-guru....
These types of philosophers
That I am referring to...
Philosophize...
With their hands in their pocket,
And their noses in the air..
Thus, building abstractions higher and higher into the sky....
That have lost their roots and their meaning here on earth,
Leaving others to say, 'Wow, how brilliant you are....
Cause I don't understand what you just said...
Or what I just read....
With a smirk on his or her face,
This type of philosopher
Revels in his or her so-called brilliance....
And thinks that he or she has accomplished something...
(It is usually a 'he')
As students from everywhere flock to see and hear...
The new philosopher-guru....
These types of philosophers
That I am referring to...
Philosophize...
With their hands in their pocket,
And their noses in the air..
Abstractify you to death...
Without a care....
Let me corpsify you..
Turn you into...
Let me corpsify you..
Turn you into...
A living corpse...
With a corpse's stare...
So you can't move your body...
So you can't move your body...
Cause there's no energy in the air...
All the energy...
Has left the room...
And you feel like....
You're in a tomb.....
.......................................................................................
In contrast, there are those philosophers...
Who philosophize...
From their
hearts and from their guts...
And who leave it all on the floor...
Not to enhance their 'brand name'...
Not to enhance their 'profitability'..
And who leave it all on the floor...
Not to enhance their 'brand name'...
Not to enhance their 'profitability'..
But rather to 'get it right' ....
These often mind-bending interactions...
Between our subjective and objective world,
In Kant's terminology,
Our 'phenomenal' and 'noumenal' world...
This is the art and science of 'epistemology' --
Just exactly what knowledge, that we are calling knowledge,
Is really knowledge?
Can we really trust what we think we really know?
Especially in a narcissistic capitalist world that is predicated more and more...
On social deception....
And then there is the polarity between our 'narcissistic' and 'altruistic' selves...
In short, our 'ethical' selves....
Trying to interact in a world that seems to be becoming...
More and more unethical...
And finally, in congruence with our...
'Internal essence'...our 'Inner Self', our 'Spirit', our 'Soul'...
To feel the presence...
And the creativity....
And the passion and the caring....
Of our own 'Internal God'...
Our internal connection with our Creator...and all of Creation...
Spinoza style....
The type of philosophers
Who aim to use their thoughts and words
Like scalpels or swords...
These often mind-bending interactions...
Between our subjective and objective world,
In Kant's terminology,
Our 'phenomenal' and 'noumenal' world...
This is the art and science of 'epistemology' --
Just exactly what knowledge, that we are calling knowledge,
Is really knowledge?
Can we really trust what we think we really know?
Especially in a narcissistic capitalist world that is predicated more and more...
On social deception....
And then there is the polarity between our 'narcissistic' and 'altruistic' selves...
In short, our 'ethical' selves....
Trying to interact in a world that seems to be becoming...
More and more unethical...
And finally, in congruence with our...
'Internal essence'...our 'Inner Self', our 'Spirit', our 'Soul'...
To feel the presence...
And the creativity....
And the passion and the caring....
Of our own 'Internal God'...
Our internal connection with our Creator...and all of Creation...
Spinoza style....
The type of philosophers
Who aim to use their thoughts and words
Like scalpels or swords...
Cutting through the air....
With surgical precision
With surgical precision
Or like a Nietzschean hammer...
Pounding to the point...
If you are scared to make your point....
Even amidst raging social criticism...
Don't be a philosopher...
Be ahead of everyone else....
Ahead of those who are so locked into their cultural or
religious....
Or institutional, or political, or economic, or corporate...
Or scientific, or medical....
Theory or Paradigm....
Or institutional, or political, or economic, or corporate...
Or scientific, or medical....
Theory or Paradigm....
That they can't think or see outside
Their own particular narcissistic box....
Power-brokers who have an 'invested interest'...
Their own particular narcissistic box....
Power-brokers who have an 'invested interest'...
In what is inside their own self-proclaimed...
Presentation of 'The One and Only Rightful Truth'...
Or 'sheep in the herd'....
Who are afraid to confront....
Perhaps with good reason,
Their careers and/or jobs on the line...
Being leveraged against them...
Knowing where their bread is buttered...
And not wanting to upset the apple cart....
Their 'corporate haven'....
Their branding name...
Their profitability...
Power is knowledge -- or the ability to distort and/or hide real knowledge...real truth...
But not always forever...
Penn State...
Freud standing in front of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society....
On the evening of April 21st, 1896....
Bold and courageous on this evening....
But what happening to this boldness and courage....
Two weeks later?
Where was his ethics and conscience.....
When he was writing Fliess on May 4th, 1896?
Cringe as you read Freud calling Emma Ekstein...
A 'hysterical bleeder'.....
She 'wanted to bleed'....
Like rape victims 'want to be raped'....
Like the boys in the Penn State shower...
'Wanted to be raped'....
Freud in 1896
Before 'corporate intervention'...from The Vienna Society...
Wrote that....
These women...
These 'hysterical women'....who had been his patients....
His cared for patients...
Had been seduced, manipulated, and/or more forcefully raped...
As children....
With their memories being connected to their symptoms...
And visa versa...
To which, The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society...
Specifically, Krafft-Ebing....
Stood up after Freud had written perhaps his most passionate,
Compassionate, bravely endearing paper...
Of his career...
And said that Freud had written a...
'Scientific Fairy Tale'....
Shame on Krafft-Ebing and The Vienna Pschiatry Society....
For burying Vienna morality in a...
Graveyard of 'patriarchal, political expedience'....
And pulling Freud in there with them....
Freud was still rebellious -- briefly -- and wrote to Fliess 5 days later, on April 26, 1896...
'A lecture on the etiology of hysteria at the psychiatric society
was given an icy reception by the asses and a strange evaluation
by Krafft-Ebing: "It sounds like a scientific fairy tale." And this after one
has demonstrated to them the solution
To a more than thousand-year-old problem
-- a caput Nili.' (source of the Nile). They can go to hell,
euphemistically expressed.'
This was the last we would hear the more rebellious, morally courageous, defend the underdog' side of Freud's personality -- his bravery and courage in standing up, defiantly against The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society...in defense of sexually victimized women and children....would not be matched again, to my knowledge, in the remainder of his career.
From May 4, 1896, it was all downhill, at least ethically speaking, in terms of Freud speaking out in defense of sexually abused women and children. .
My reading of the historical evidence strongly suggests that Freud -- under political-professional-economic duress -- seems very much to have 'morally caved in' under the pressure and leverage of the Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society -- as they held his career and his economic survival in the palm of its collective hand, in terms of patient referral power.'...and Freud had a rapidly expanding family to shelter, feed, and clothe...
Freud was soon to start calling his 'solution to a thousand year old problem',
His...'caput Nili' -- a 'mistake'....
What happened after the evening of April 21, and after the letter of April 26, 1896?
Well, here is what Freud wrote to Fliess on May 4, 1896....
'I am as isolated as you would wish me to be. Word was given out
to abandon me, for a void is forming all around me. So far I bear it
with equanimity. I find it more troublesome that this year for the
first time my consulting room is empty, that for weeks on end I see
no new faces, cannot begin new treatments, and that none of the old
ones are completed. Things are so difficult and trying that it
requires, on the whole, a strong constitution to deal with them.
And then, the beginning of the moral collapse, seemingly significantly orchestrated,
and put in motion in Freud's head, not only partly by The Vienna Society and its leverage on Freud's economic well-being, in the presence of Freud's growing family, but also by a suggestion by Fliess to Freud regarding the idea of 'hysterical longing'.
You see, there were two traumacies going on in Freud's mind back in April/May, 1896: first, the April 21, 1896 Medical Meeting; and second, the now one year old Emma Ekstein nasal surgery traumacy that Fliess had performed on Ekstein on Freud's recommendation in Vienna in the early spring of 1895, and which both Fliess and Freud were still very much medically accountable for the disastrous consequences.
In this regard, Freud and Fliess were both still looking for 'any seemingly reasonable medical excuse' to free each of them respectively from their medical accountability and blame for what happened to Emma -- i.e., she almost died after the surgery, indeed, several times, she almost died.
Back to the letter of April 26, 1896.....where Freud writes to Fliess...
'First of all, Ekstein. I shall be able to prove to you that you were right,
that her episodes of bleeding were hysterical, were occasioned by longing,
and probably occurred at the sexually relevant times (the woman, out of resistance,
has not yet supplied me with the dates.)'
And on May 4, 1896, Freud continues to feel that he has grabbed onto something
important via Fliess' suggestion -- the principle of 'hysterical longing' i.e., 'the idea that a hysterical patient actually wished for what they traumatically got -- or alternatively, wished for what they imagined that they traumatically got'.
Now, to be sure, there are many cases of 'transference paradoxes' where 'reality and fantasy' are 'conflated together'; for example, girls who are sexually abused as children can, and often do, weave their way into similar 'abusive' situations as adults ('the repetition compulsion' at work which needs to be explained better later). Also, in some cases, 'narcissistic wishes and/or biases' can distort memories. But not in this case where Freud and Fliess were simply looking for a way of absolving themselves of medical blame. And not in the way that Freud ultimately 'abandoned' or 'minimized' traumacy theory to take up fantasy theory. Below, I think you can see the words of a guilty man trying to take himself off the 'ethical hook'...In the May 4, 1896 letter, Freud writes to Fliess...
'As for Ekstein -- I am taking notes on her history so that I can send it to you --
so far I know that she bled out of longing. She has always been a bleeder,
when cutting herself and in similar circumstances; as a child she suffered from
severe nosebleeds, during the years in which she was not yet menstruating,
she had headaches which were interpreted to her as malingering and which
in truth had been generated by suggestion (just like Fliess' idea of 'longing' had been
generated and passed onto Freud by 'suggestion' -- dgb's editorial comment); for this reason
she joyously welcomed her severe menstrual bleeding as proof that her illness was
genuine, a proof that was also recognized as such by others. She described a scene
from the age of fifteen, in which she suddenly began to bleed from the nose when she had
the wish to be treated by a certain young doctor who was present (and who also appeared in the
dream). When she saw how affected I was by her first hemorrhage while she was in the hands
of Rosanes, she experienced this as the old wish to be loved in her illness (by one of the doctors
who almost surgically killed her -- dgb's skeptical, cynical editorial comment), and in spite of the danger
during the succeeding hours she felt happy as never before. Then, in the sanatorium, she
became restless during the night because of an unconscious wish to entice me to go there;
since I did not come during the night, she renewed the bleedings, as an unfailing means of
rearousing my affection. She bled spontaneously three times and each bleeding lasted for four
days, which must have some significance. She still owes me details and specific dates...
...........................................................................................
This is Freud at his ethical worst in my opinion.....abusing the word 'unconscious wish' as a form of 'narcissistic defense' against both personal and professional guilt as well as defending himself and his beloved 'partner in crime' (Fliess) who could do or say no wrong in Freud's mind -- against the medical accusation of 'professional misconduct'...
Contrast the 'narcissistic defense' letter above on May 4, 1896, with what Freud had written to Fliess
a year earlier, just after the traumatic, nasal, surgical mishap on Emma Ekstein had taken place....This letter, written to Fliess immediately after the mishap was written on March 8, 1895. It is a long letter/quote but
it is important that I share it with you because it shows just how much Freud had changed -- and not in a good, ethical way, not to the 'best branding of his integrity and legacy' -- as we go back and read this letter now....This shows just how bad the operation went...
........................................................................................................................................................................
'I wrote you that the swelling and the hemorrhages would not stop, and that suddenly a fetid odor had set in, and there was an obstacle upon irrigation. (Or is the latter new to you?) I arranged for Gersuny to be called in, he inserted a drainage tube, hoping things would work out once discharge was re-established; but otherwise he was rather reserved. Two days later I was awakened in the morning -- profuse bleeding had started again, pain, and so on.
Gersuny replied on the phone that he was unavailable till evening; so I asked Rosanes to meet me. (Little did Rosanes know what he was about to walk into, or he may not have chosen to come. -- dgb's editorial comment.) He did so at noon. There still was moderate bleeding from the nose and mouth; the fetid odor was very bad. Rosanes cleared the area surrounding the opening, removed some sticky blood clots, and suddenly pulled at something like a thread, kept on pulling. Before either of us had time to think, at least half a meter of gauze had been removed from the cavity. The next moment came a flood of blood. The patient turned white, her eyes bulged, and she had no pulse. Immediately thereafter, however, he again packed the cavity with fresh iodoform gauze and the hemorrhage stopped. It lasted about half a minute, but this was enough to make the poor creature, whom by then we had lying flat , unrecognizable. In the meantime -- that is afterward -- something became clear to me -- and I immediately afterward was confronted by the sight of the patient -- I felt sick. After she had been packed, I fled to the next room, drank a bottle of water, and felt miserable. The brave Frau Doctor then brought me a small glass of cognac and I became myself again.
Rosanes stayed with the patient until I arranged, via Streitenfels, to have both of them taken to Sanatorium Loew. Nothing further happened that evening. The following day, that is yesterday, Thursday, the operation was repeated with the assistance of Gersuny; (the bone was) broken wide open, the packing removed, and (the wound) curetted. There was scarcely any bleeding. Since then she has been out of danger, naturally very pale, and miserable with fresh pain and swelling. She had not lost consciousness during the massive hemorrhage; when I returned to the room somewhat shaky, she greeted me with the condescending remark, " So this is the strong sex."
I do not believe that it was the blood that overwhelmed me -- at that moment strong emotions were welling up in me. (That's the Freud I want to hear -- and remember. dgb editorial comment.). So we had done her an injustice; she was not at all abnormal, rather, a piece of iodoform gauze had gotten torn off as you were removing it and stayed in for fourteen days, preventing healing; at the end it tore off and provoked the bleeding. That this mishap should have happened to you; how you will react to it when you hear about it; what others could make of it; how wrong I was to urge you to operate in a foreign city where you could not follow through on the case; how much intention to do my best for this poor girl was insidiously thwarted and resulted in endangering her life -- all this came over me simultaneously. I have worked it through by now.' (Translated and edited by Jeffrey Masson, 1985, The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904', p. 116)
.....................................................................................................................
This, written by Freud on March 8, 1895, was Freud writing from his heart.....before he started to put up 'character armor' around his heart to 'narcissistically defend' himself against accusations of 'medical improprieties and transgressions'....Yes, by May 4, 1896, with Fliess' 'suggestion' regarding the possible influence of 'longing', Freud had, indeed, 'worked it through' -- in the same type of way that Freud's patients had 'worked through' their own private 'traumatic neuroses' -- specifically, by denying, or distorting, or hiding reality.....Well, that was the end of 'reality theory and therapy' for Freud -- 'wishful, longing, fantasy theory' had arrived, but looking back at it now, not from ideal, ethical circumstances, in fact, far from it.
Indeed, looking at the evidence cited above, it is very hard to say that Freud's 'fantasy theory' arrived on anything but 'the flimsiest of clinical evidence', worded otherwise, 'neurotic, pathological, false connection' evidence -- seemingly steering Freud's audience away from the impact of 'reality, traumacy, and sexual abuse clinical evidence'....
Masson translated and edited these very letters. How could Masson not see what we are seeing right now -- unless we are narcissistically blind and deaf to Freud's own historical words and thoughts and feelings?
Masson, in the early 80s, started accusing Freud of 'losing moral courage'.
Harsh....but if the shoe fits....The Vienna Psychiatry Society, Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and the rest of the Psychoanalytic Board of Directors in the 1980s.....should all 'wear' it....
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck....it may or may not be a 'false connection'....
But from this vantage point here, it is looking like a very 'real' connection, not a 'false' one...
Yes, it is all historical, circumstantial evidence...but....
Taken all together, it is pretty strong circumstantial evidence....
From Freud's compassionate, empathetic words of March 8, 1895, do we really want to believe....
That Emma Ekstein was a 'hysterical bleeder' -- a woman who 'wanted to bleed' out of 'longing for her therapist'...
It is amazing she didn't want to kill both Fliess and Freud back at that time....
But then again, this was a period of time when women didn't have nearly the type of power they do today...
How many times have we seen men turn around in the midst of having committed some grave ethical transgression -- to protect their own careers, their own marriages, their own skin -- to 'blame the female victim' -- and in those Victorian times, a more or less politically powerless female victim?
Now this is not to say that women cannot be equally guilty to men in their own particular 'narcissistic agendas' in different contexts, different cases, different times....But not in the aftermath of this case...The story above involves the conniving work of two supposed professionals after a severe medical mishap from a surgery that should have never happened -- and an attempted 'cover-up' by Fliess and Freud afterwards.
Sad -- but true -- at least as I see it.
And a 117 years later, The Psychoanalytic Establishment is still not publicly prepared to say that Freud did anything ethically wrong? Not to mention the fantasy theory that grew from this 'longing hysteric'....Fantasy theory has a significant place in Psychoanalysis -- but not as a 'cover up' for reality, traumacy and/or seduction/sexual assault' theory. Later on, we will talk about how 'childhood traumacies' and 'adult sexual fantasies' often get inter-locked ('identification with the aggressor/rejector', 'transference-reversal', 'compensatory post-traumatic eroticism'...) but that is not what Freud was arguing. Freud took the 'either/or' route -- either 'traumacy/seduction theory' (up to April 21, 1896) , which became the 'fantasy route' (after April 26, 1896) which over a hundred years later is finally being overturned today by the return of traumacy theory to its rightful place in Psychoanalysis -- in addition to fantasy theory -- not integrated properly yet, but getting there slowly, like a tortoise slowly, and more or less silently while still not admitting Freud's long ago guilt, and the 100 year perpetuation of 'the false connection' that arose out of it...
Masson was -- and still is, to my knowledge -- psychoanalytically blackballed and negatively stereotyped as 'the narcissistic, power-mongering, egotist' who was more or less fabricating or distorting his version of the Emma Ekstein and Krafft-Ebing stories to give alleged credibility to his accusation that 'Freud lost of moral courage'....Well, the words above are Freud's own words, and it sure looks like it to me...
Anna Freud should have better listened to Masson....as much as what he was saying must have hurt. She was the woman in charge of The Whole, World-Wide Freudian Establishment when this scandal broke into the public news in the early 80s....and she just didn't figure out the whole picture....or simply denied it and got rid of Masson instead of fixing the 'ongoing moral psychoanalytic problem' about Classical Psychoanalysis mainly dismissing, suppressing, demeaning the childhood sexual assaults of women in a way that defends the narcissistic interests of men, and puts men in higher social status, esteem, importance. All of this was being immorally perpetuated in Classical Psychoanalysis.
Unfortunately, Anna Freud had one thing on her mind basically -- protecting her father's integrity and legacy -- and in this regard, she was too narcissistically biased, couldn't see the forest for the trees, still couldn't see the colossal negative impact that Freud's narcissistic, patriarchal bias had on the 'brand name' of The Psychoanalytic Institute/Establishment as a Whole -- and she had her whole professional life after her dad died in 1939 to do something about this, to align Classical Psychoanalysis with The Women's Rights Movement, to make Classical Psychoanalysis more 'female friendly', and to make darn sure that no Claasical Psychoanalyst 'confused' a 'Father-Daughter Oedipal Complex Syndrome' with a case of a real sexual assault of the father against the daughter.
Anna Freud was too attached to her father's reputation and legacy to think of the future and the greater integrity of The Psychoanalytic Establishment as a whole -- especially in the wave of The Women's Movement -- Anna Freud still turned her back on women, and female patients in psychoanalysis, no different than Sigmund Freud did 86 years earlier... Personal, and professional, and corporate narcissism, and 'the good image branding of the name of The Psychoanalytic Establishment'... and its ability to generate money -- all of this continued to rule the day....essentially not too different than what happened at Penn State from a 'cover up standpoint' even though the crimes obviously were not committed 'on site'.....At least not the original, most flagrant, horrific crimes....
But what about the rights of women to tell their story in Classical Psychoanalysis -- and not have her analyst tell her that 'she longed for what happened, or for what she imagined to have happened'...that 'she wished for it'....and that 'the memory was her own fantasy'....Sad but true... but what are we to do?
Ultimately, Anna Freud -- with Kurt Eissler and the rest of The Board of Psychoanalytic Directors at this time period in the early 80s back her up -- failed on all of these counts of 'properly assessing and doing what was right and best' for The international Psychoanalytic Institute moving forward, past the Seduction Theory Scandal, with a new and better, overall 'moral integrity' attached to the name of 'Psychoanalysis'.
Masson was trying to 'fix' this problem -- but could not do it alone, and could not do it without the support of Anna Freud who opted to try to protect the integrity and legacy of her father over the broader integrity of The International Psychoanalytic Institute moving forward, back in the 80s, and still today.
'Compensations' have been made as more and more psychoanalysts today support Object Relations
Theory, Self-Psychology, Bionian (Traumacy) Theory, Lacanian Theory, and move further and further away from the tarnished 'patriarchal' image of Classical Psychoanalysis.
But still, no one in The Psychoanalytic Establishment -- on pubic record -- will admit that what Freud did between 1895 and 1897 was 'morally wrong' -- in a very big way.
I still very much like Classical Psychoanalysis -- but only in a very modified, contemporary way. Remove the flagrant, Freudian-Victorian-narcissistic, masculine bias from classical psychoanalysis and that is a good start I will give my rendition of huge modifications that can be made after that -- which still honors much of Freud's 'narcissistic-fantasy-impulse-transference work' after 1899 -- but on a structural-dynamic base of what Freud wrote up to 1896, i.e., 'reality-traumacy-seduction theory'....I will build from the basic structural premise of 'ego-id-superego' -- with 'the splitting' of each....
Now admittedly, and from my own studies of the human psyche, I know that the human mind can be very 'paradoxical' and that 'love' and 'hate' can travel very closely beside each other.....
There are paradoxes in the understanding of the human mind -- particularly within the sub-region of 'transference traumacies and fantasies' that need to be better understood. I will help you -- at least as far as my personal knowledge base will take us in this area. Freud found a 'partial but hugely significant truth' in his Traumacy and Seduction/Sexual Assault Theory of 1893-1895....The worst thing in his career that he did was walk away from it....
Again, psychoanalysts are recognizing the value of 'traumacy theory' more and more these days, as support for Classical Psychoanalysis dwindles, and sub-schools of Object Relations, Self Psychology, Bionian Psychoanalysis, and Lacanian Psychoanalysis are now dominating the field....
I heard an estimate that about 80 percent of psychoanalysts practice some form of 'traumacy theory'....And more and more women psychoanalysts are bringing a new and significantly greater level of compassion to the evolution of psychoanalysis... Or so I believe from my brief contact with The Psychoanalytic Institute of Toronto....I had two psychoanalysts tell me -- rightly so -- that 'Traumacy Theory and Instinct-Fantasy Theory do not have to be 'mutually exclusive'.....My addition... they simply need to be properly integrated in a way that Freud could not figure out in his professional lifetime.....Fairbairn came the closest....and Adler, Eric Berne, Fritz Perls and others have all made significant contributions....most of them unfortunately, outside of psychoanalysis, but still their respective ideas can be brought back into the 'integrative fold' here...
I seek to build conceptual and theoretical and paradigm bridges -- not more 'walls' and 'moats'...
From my perspective, the Psychoanalytic Establishment -- at least the Toronto Institute that I have briefly experienced -- is heading in the right direction....
But Anna Freud could have seen the bigger picture....and she didn't....she only saw her father's ethical reputation...and the 'branding name' of The Psychoanalytic Establishment being 'tarnished' by this relatively young, brash, ambitious, Project Director of The Freud Archives, Jeffrey Masson....He had to be dismissed for 'unbecoming conduct' of a 'Project Director of The Freud Archives' like Kurt Eissler, would say in an interview years later, how could Masson dare to say that Freud 'lost moral courage' -- and keep his job? Eissler too, missed the big picture....
Well how about this....read what i have written above and decide for yourself whether you think Freud 'lost moral courage' or not....And if the shoe fits... if the duck quacks...
There is a moral story here that needs to be emphasized....The Psychoanalytic Establishment is here now with us, and Freud is dead. The integrity and character of The Psychoanalytic Establishment -- and all the people who are a part of it -- is more important than the integrity of Freud, under professional and economic duress....
Masson saw the bigger, more ethical picture....
The Psychoanalytic Establishment continues not to....
There are female clients involved here -- during Freud's lifetime, during Anna Freud's lifetime, who did not, and do not, deserve to be 'theoretically and therapeutically abused by being told that their family rape memories did not happen, that they only 'wished the scene that they were imagining to have happened'' -- all because of Freud's dinosaur, Victorian, Patriarchal, Narcissistic, One-Sided, biases....and the whole Psychoanalytic Establishment's failure to meet this epistemological and ethical challenge a lot better than they have....They only know how to keep 'sweeping the still alive Seduction Scandal under the rug'...
That's not good enough...
Masson deserves an apology...
And women -- especially female classical psychoanalytic patients from the past and present -- deserve an apology...
Krafft-Ebing -- and the whole Vienna Psychiatery and Neurology Society,
If any one of them were alive today....
Would still owe Freud -- and the whole world -- an apology....
For words most unbecoming of supposed 'medical scientists'....
Words to the effect that the connection between childhood sexual abuse
And 'mental pathology'....
Is a 'scientific fairy tale'....
The worst three words spoken in the history of Psychoanalysis...
In conjunction with 'the scientific fairy tale' that Freud did create after April 21, 1896...
To appease the 'political expedience' of The Vienna Psychiatry-Neurology Society...
As a 'compensatory ego defense'....
In the pursuit of...
'Narcissistic, professional self-survival....
Thus, DGB speaks...
........................................................................................................................................................
William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath'rin'
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears.
William Zanzinger who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering and his tongue it was snarling
In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears.
Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn't even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level
Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
That sailed through the air and came down through the room
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger
And you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears.
In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em
And that ladder of law has no top and no bottom
Stared at the person who killed for no reason
Who just happened to be feelin' that way witout warnin'
And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance
William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fearsv
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears.
-- Bob Dylan, 1963
More lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/b/bob_dylan/#share
..................................................................................................................................
On the evening of April 21st, 1896....
Bold and courageous on this evening....
But what happening to this boldness and courage....
Two weeks later?
Where was his ethics and conscience.....
When he was writing Fliess on May 4th, 1896?
Cringe as you read Freud calling Emma Ekstein...
A 'hysterical bleeder'.....
She 'wanted to bleed'....
Like rape victims 'want to be raped'....
Like the boys in the Penn State shower...
'Wanted to be raped'....
Freud in 1896
Before 'corporate intervention'...from The Vienna Society...
Wrote that....
These women...
These 'hysterical women'....who had been his patients....
His cared for patients...
Had been seduced, manipulated, and/or more forcefully raped...
As children....
With their memories being connected to their symptoms...
And visa versa...
To which, The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society...
Specifically, Krafft-Ebing....
Stood up after Freud had written perhaps his most passionate,
Compassionate, bravely endearing paper...
Of his career...
And said that Freud had written a...
'Scientific Fairy Tale'....
Shame on Krafft-Ebing and The Vienna Pschiatry Society....
For burying Vienna morality in a...
Graveyard of 'patriarchal, political expedience'....
And pulling Freud in there with them....
Freud was still rebellious -- briefly -- and wrote to Fliess 5 days later, on April 26, 1896...
'A lecture on the etiology of hysteria at the psychiatric society
was given an icy reception by the asses and a strange evaluation
by Krafft-Ebing: "It sounds like a scientific fairy tale." And this after one
has demonstrated to them the solution
To a more than thousand-year-old problem
-- a caput Nili.' (source of the Nile). They can go to hell,
euphemistically expressed.'
This was the last we would hear the more rebellious, morally courageous, defend the underdog' side of Freud's personality -- his bravery and courage in standing up, defiantly against The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society...in defense of sexually victimized women and children....would not be matched again, to my knowledge, in the remainder of his career.
From May 4, 1896, it was all downhill, at least ethically speaking, in terms of Freud speaking out in defense of sexually abused women and children. .
My reading of the historical evidence strongly suggests that Freud -- under political-professional-economic duress -- seems very much to have 'morally caved in' under the pressure and leverage of the Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society -- as they held his career and his economic survival in the palm of its collective hand, in terms of patient referral power.'...and Freud had a rapidly expanding family to shelter, feed, and clothe...
Freud was soon to start calling his 'solution to a thousand year old problem',
His...'caput Nili' -- a 'mistake'....
What happened after the evening of April 21, and after the letter of April 26, 1896?
Well, here is what Freud wrote to Fliess on May 4, 1896....
'I am as isolated as you would wish me to be. Word was given out
to abandon me, for a void is forming all around me. So far I bear it
with equanimity. I find it more troublesome that this year for the
first time my consulting room is empty, that for weeks on end I see
no new faces, cannot begin new treatments, and that none of the old
ones are completed. Things are so difficult and trying that it
requires, on the whole, a strong constitution to deal with them.
And then, the beginning of the moral collapse, seemingly significantly orchestrated,
and put in motion in Freud's head, not only partly by The Vienna Society and its leverage on Freud's economic well-being, in the presence of Freud's growing family, but also by a suggestion by Fliess to Freud regarding the idea of 'hysterical longing'.
You see, there were two traumacies going on in Freud's mind back in April/May, 1896: first, the April 21, 1896 Medical Meeting; and second, the now one year old Emma Ekstein nasal surgery traumacy that Fliess had performed on Ekstein on Freud's recommendation in Vienna in the early spring of 1895, and which both Fliess and Freud were still very much medically accountable for the disastrous consequences.
In this regard, Freud and Fliess were both still looking for 'any seemingly reasonable medical excuse' to free each of them respectively from their medical accountability and blame for what happened to Emma -- i.e., she almost died after the surgery, indeed, several times, she almost died.
Back to the letter of April 26, 1896.....where Freud writes to Fliess...
'First of all, Ekstein. I shall be able to prove to you that you were right,
that her episodes of bleeding were hysterical, were occasioned by longing,
and probably occurred at the sexually relevant times (the woman, out of resistance,
has not yet supplied me with the dates.)'
And on May 4, 1896, Freud continues to feel that he has grabbed onto something
important via Fliess' suggestion -- the principle of 'hysterical longing' i.e., 'the idea that a hysterical patient actually wished for what they traumatically got -- or alternatively, wished for what they imagined that they traumatically got'.
Now, to be sure, there are many cases of 'transference paradoxes' where 'reality and fantasy' are 'conflated together'; for example, girls who are sexually abused as children can, and often do, weave their way into similar 'abusive' situations as adults ('the repetition compulsion' at work which needs to be explained better later). Also, in some cases, 'narcissistic wishes and/or biases' can distort memories. But not in this case where Freud and Fliess were simply looking for a way of absolving themselves of medical blame. And not in the way that Freud ultimately 'abandoned' or 'minimized' traumacy theory to take up fantasy theory. Below, I think you can see the words of a guilty man trying to take himself off the 'ethical hook'...In the May 4, 1896 letter, Freud writes to Fliess...
'As for Ekstein -- I am taking notes on her history so that I can send it to you --
so far I know that she bled out of longing. She has always been a bleeder,
when cutting herself and in similar circumstances; as a child she suffered from
severe nosebleeds, during the years in which she was not yet menstruating,
she had headaches which were interpreted to her as malingering and which
in truth had been generated by suggestion (just like Fliess' idea of 'longing' had been
generated and passed onto Freud by 'suggestion' -- dgb's editorial comment); for this reason
she joyously welcomed her severe menstrual bleeding as proof that her illness was
genuine, a proof that was also recognized as such by others. She described a scene
from the age of fifteen, in which she suddenly began to bleed from the nose when she had
the wish to be treated by a certain young doctor who was present (and who also appeared in the
dream). When she saw how affected I was by her first hemorrhage while she was in the hands
of Rosanes, she experienced this as the old wish to be loved in her illness (by one of the doctors
who almost surgically killed her -- dgb's skeptical, cynical editorial comment), and in spite of the danger
during the succeeding hours she felt happy as never before. Then, in the sanatorium, she
became restless during the night because of an unconscious wish to entice me to go there;
since I did not come during the night, she renewed the bleedings, as an unfailing means of
rearousing my affection. She bled spontaneously three times and each bleeding lasted for four
days, which must have some significance. She still owes me details and specific dates...
...........................................................................................
This is Freud at his ethical worst in my opinion.....abusing the word 'unconscious wish' as a form of 'narcissistic defense' against both personal and professional guilt as well as defending himself and his beloved 'partner in crime' (Fliess) who could do or say no wrong in Freud's mind -- against the medical accusation of 'professional misconduct'...
Contrast the 'narcissistic defense' letter above on May 4, 1896, with what Freud had written to Fliess
a year earlier, just after the traumatic, nasal, surgical mishap on Emma Ekstein had taken place....This letter, written to Fliess immediately after the mishap was written on March 8, 1895. It is a long letter/quote but
it is important that I share it with you because it shows just how much Freud had changed -- and not in a good, ethical way, not to the 'best branding of his integrity and legacy' -- as we go back and read this letter now....This shows just how bad the operation went...
........................................................................................................................................................................
'I wrote you that the swelling and the hemorrhages would not stop, and that suddenly a fetid odor had set in, and there was an obstacle upon irrigation. (Or is the latter new to you?) I arranged for Gersuny to be called in, he inserted a drainage tube, hoping things would work out once discharge was re-established; but otherwise he was rather reserved. Two days later I was awakened in the morning -- profuse bleeding had started again, pain, and so on.
Gersuny replied on the phone that he was unavailable till evening; so I asked Rosanes to meet me. (Little did Rosanes know what he was about to walk into, or he may not have chosen to come. -- dgb's editorial comment.) He did so at noon. There still was moderate bleeding from the nose and mouth; the fetid odor was very bad. Rosanes cleared the area surrounding the opening, removed some sticky blood clots, and suddenly pulled at something like a thread, kept on pulling. Before either of us had time to think, at least half a meter of gauze had been removed from the cavity. The next moment came a flood of blood. The patient turned white, her eyes bulged, and she had no pulse. Immediately thereafter, however, he again packed the cavity with fresh iodoform gauze and the hemorrhage stopped. It lasted about half a minute, but this was enough to make the poor creature, whom by then we had lying flat , unrecognizable. In the meantime -- that is afterward -- something became clear to me -- and I immediately afterward was confronted by the sight of the patient -- I felt sick. After she had been packed, I fled to the next room, drank a bottle of water, and felt miserable. The brave Frau Doctor then brought me a small glass of cognac and I became myself again.
Rosanes stayed with the patient until I arranged, via Streitenfels, to have both of them taken to Sanatorium Loew. Nothing further happened that evening. The following day, that is yesterday, Thursday, the operation was repeated with the assistance of Gersuny; (the bone was) broken wide open, the packing removed, and (the wound) curetted. There was scarcely any bleeding. Since then she has been out of danger, naturally very pale, and miserable with fresh pain and swelling. She had not lost consciousness during the massive hemorrhage; when I returned to the room somewhat shaky, she greeted me with the condescending remark, " So this is the strong sex."
I do not believe that it was the blood that overwhelmed me -- at that moment strong emotions were welling up in me. (That's the Freud I want to hear -- and remember. dgb editorial comment.). So we had done her an injustice; she was not at all abnormal, rather, a piece of iodoform gauze had gotten torn off as you were removing it and stayed in for fourteen days, preventing healing; at the end it tore off and provoked the bleeding. That this mishap should have happened to you; how you will react to it when you hear about it; what others could make of it; how wrong I was to urge you to operate in a foreign city where you could not follow through on the case; how much intention to do my best for this poor girl was insidiously thwarted and resulted in endangering her life -- all this came over me simultaneously. I have worked it through by now.' (Translated and edited by Jeffrey Masson, 1985, The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904', p. 116)
.....................................................................................................................
This, written by Freud on March 8, 1895, was Freud writing from his heart.....before he started to put up 'character armor' around his heart to 'narcissistically defend' himself against accusations of 'medical improprieties and transgressions'....Yes, by May 4, 1896, with Fliess' 'suggestion' regarding the possible influence of 'longing', Freud had, indeed, 'worked it through' -- in the same type of way that Freud's patients had 'worked through' their own private 'traumatic neuroses' -- specifically, by denying, or distorting, or hiding reality.....Well, that was the end of 'reality theory and therapy' for Freud -- 'wishful, longing, fantasy theory' had arrived, but looking back at it now, not from ideal, ethical circumstances, in fact, far from it.
Indeed, looking at the evidence cited above, it is very hard to say that Freud's 'fantasy theory' arrived on anything but 'the flimsiest of clinical evidence', worded otherwise, 'neurotic, pathological, false connection' evidence -- seemingly steering Freud's audience away from the impact of 'reality, traumacy, and sexual abuse clinical evidence'....
Masson translated and edited these very letters. How could Masson not see what we are seeing right now -- unless we are narcissistically blind and deaf to Freud's own historical words and thoughts and feelings?
Masson, in the early 80s, started accusing Freud of 'losing moral courage'.
Harsh....but if the shoe fits....The Vienna Psychiatry Society, Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and the rest of the Psychoanalytic Board of Directors in the 1980s.....should all 'wear' it....
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck....it may or may not be a 'false connection'....
But from this vantage point here, it is looking like a very 'real' connection, not a 'false' one...
Yes, it is all historical, circumstantial evidence...but....
Taken all together, it is pretty strong circumstantial evidence....
From Freud's compassionate, empathetic words of March 8, 1895, do we really want to believe....
That Emma Ekstein was a 'hysterical bleeder' -- a woman who 'wanted to bleed' out of 'longing for her therapist'...
It is amazing she didn't want to kill both Fliess and Freud back at that time....
But then again, this was a period of time when women didn't have nearly the type of power they do today...
How many times have we seen men turn around in the midst of having committed some grave ethical transgression -- to protect their own careers, their own marriages, their own skin -- to 'blame the female victim' -- and in those Victorian times, a more or less politically powerless female victim?
Now this is not to say that women cannot be equally guilty to men in their own particular 'narcissistic agendas' in different contexts, different cases, different times....But not in the aftermath of this case...The story above involves the conniving work of two supposed professionals after a severe medical mishap from a surgery that should have never happened -- and an attempted 'cover-up' by Fliess and Freud afterwards.
Sad -- but true -- at least as I see it.
And a 117 years later, The Psychoanalytic Establishment is still not publicly prepared to say that Freud did anything ethically wrong? Not to mention the fantasy theory that grew from this 'longing hysteric'....Fantasy theory has a significant place in Psychoanalysis -- but not as a 'cover up' for reality, traumacy and/or seduction/sexual assault' theory. Later on, we will talk about how 'childhood traumacies' and 'adult sexual fantasies' often get inter-locked ('identification with the aggressor/rejector', 'transference-reversal', 'compensatory post-traumatic eroticism'...) but that is not what Freud was arguing. Freud took the 'either/or' route -- either 'traumacy/seduction theory' (up to April 21, 1896) , which became the 'fantasy route' (after April 26, 1896) which over a hundred years later is finally being overturned today by the return of traumacy theory to its rightful place in Psychoanalysis -- in addition to fantasy theory -- not integrated properly yet, but getting there slowly, like a tortoise slowly, and more or less silently while still not admitting Freud's long ago guilt, and the 100 year perpetuation of 'the false connection' that arose out of it...
Masson was -- and still is, to my knowledge -- psychoanalytically blackballed and negatively stereotyped as 'the narcissistic, power-mongering, egotist' who was more or less fabricating or distorting his version of the Emma Ekstein and Krafft-Ebing stories to give alleged credibility to his accusation that 'Freud lost of moral courage'....Well, the words above are Freud's own words, and it sure looks like it to me...
Anna Freud should have better listened to Masson....as much as what he was saying must have hurt. She was the woman in charge of The Whole, World-Wide Freudian Establishment when this scandal broke into the public news in the early 80s....and she just didn't figure out the whole picture....or simply denied it and got rid of Masson instead of fixing the 'ongoing moral psychoanalytic problem' about Classical Psychoanalysis mainly dismissing, suppressing, demeaning the childhood sexual assaults of women in a way that defends the narcissistic interests of men, and puts men in higher social status, esteem, importance. All of this was being immorally perpetuated in Classical Psychoanalysis.
Unfortunately, Anna Freud had one thing on her mind basically -- protecting her father's integrity and legacy -- and in this regard, she was too narcissistically biased, couldn't see the forest for the trees, still couldn't see the colossal negative impact that Freud's narcissistic, patriarchal bias had on the 'brand name' of The Psychoanalytic Institute/Establishment as a Whole -- and she had her whole professional life after her dad died in 1939 to do something about this, to align Classical Psychoanalysis with The Women's Rights Movement, to make Classical Psychoanalysis more 'female friendly', and to make darn sure that no Claasical Psychoanalyst 'confused' a 'Father-Daughter Oedipal Complex Syndrome' with a case of a real sexual assault of the father against the daughter.
Anna Freud was too attached to her father's reputation and legacy to think of the future and the greater integrity of The Psychoanalytic Establishment as a whole -- especially in the wave of The Women's Movement -- Anna Freud still turned her back on women, and female patients in psychoanalysis, no different than Sigmund Freud did 86 years earlier... Personal, and professional, and corporate narcissism, and 'the good image branding of the name of The Psychoanalytic Establishment'... and its ability to generate money -- all of this continued to rule the day....essentially not too different than what happened at Penn State from a 'cover up standpoint' even though the crimes obviously were not committed 'on site'.....At least not the original, most flagrant, horrific crimes....
But what about the rights of women to tell their story in Classical Psychoanalysis -- and not have her analyst tell her that 'she longed for what happened, or for what she imagined to have happened'...that 'she wished for it'....and that 'the memory was her own fantasy'....Sad but true... but what are we to do?
Ultimately, Anna Freud -- with Kurt Eissler and the rest of The Board of Psychoanalytic Directors at this time period in the early 80s back her up -- failed on all of these counts of 'properly assessing and doing what was right and best' for The international Psychoanalytic Institute moving forward, past the Seduction Theory Scandal, with a new and better, overall 'moral integrity' attached to the name of 'Psychoanalysis'.
Masson was trying to 'fix' this problem -- but could not do it alone, and could not do it without the support of Anna Freud who opted to try to protect the integrity and legacy of her father over the broader integrity of The International Psychoanalytic Institute moving forward, back in the 80s, and still today.
'Compensations' have been made as more and more psychoanalysts today support Object Relations
Theory, Self-Psychology, Bionian (Traumacy) Theory, Lacanian Theory, and move further and further away from the tarnished 'patriarchal' image of Classical Psychoanalysis.
But still, no one in The Psychoanalytic Establishment -- on pubic record -- will admit that what Freud did between 1895 and 1897 was 'morally wrong' -- in a very big way.
I still very much like Classical Psychoanalysis -- but only in a very modified, contemporary way. Remove the flagrant, Freudian-Victorian-narcissistic, masculine bias from classical psychoanalysis and that is a good start I will give my rendition of huge modifications that can be made after that -- which still honors much of Freud's 'narcissistic-fantasy-impulse-transference work' after 1899 -- but on a structural-dynamic base of what Freud wrote up to 1896, i.e., 'reality-traumacy-seduction theory'....I will build from the basic structural premise of 'ego-id-superego' -- with 'the splitting' of each....
Now admittedly, and from my own studies of the human psyche, I know that the human mind can be very 'paradoxical' and that 'love' and 'hate' can travel very closely beside each other.....
There are paradoxes in the understanding of the human mind -- particularly within the sub-region of 'transference traumacies and fantasies' that need to be better understood. I will help you -- at least as far as my personal knowledge base will take us in this area. Freud found a 'partial but hugely significant truth' in his Traumacy and Seduction/Sexual Assault Theory of 1893-1895....The worst thing in his career that he did was walk away from it....
Again, psychoanalysts are recognizing the value of 'traumacy theory' more and more these days, as support for Classical Psychoanalysis dwindles, and sub-schools of Object Relations, Self Psychology, Bionian Psychoanalysis, and Lacanian Psychoanalysis are now dominating the field....
I heard an estimate that about 80 percent of psychoanalysts practice some form of 'traumacy theory'....And more and more women psychoanalysts are bringing a new and significantly greater level of compassion to the evolution of psychoanalysis... Or so I believe from my brief contact with The Psychoanalytic Institute of Toronto....I had two psychoanalysts tell me -- rightly so -- that 'Traumacy Theory and Instinct-Fantasy Theory do not have to be 'mutually exclusive'.....My addition... they simply need to be properly integrated in a way that Freud could not figure out in his professional lifetime.....Fairbairn came the closest....and Adler, Eric Berne, Fritz Perls and others have all made significant contributions....most of them unfortunately, outside of psychoanalysis, but still their respective ideas can be brought back into the 'integrative fold' here...
I seek to build conceptual and theoretical and paradigm bridges -- not more 'walls' and 'moats'...
From my perspective, the Psychoanalytic Establishment -- at least the Toronto Institute that I have briefly experienced -- is heading in the right direction....
But Anna Freud could have seen the bigger picture....and she didn't....she only saw her father's ethical reputation...and the 'branding name' of The Psychoanalytic Establishment being 'tarnished' by this relatively young, brash, ambitious, Project Director of The Freud Archives, Jeffrey Masson....He had to be dismissed for 'unbecoming conduct' of a 'Project Director of The Freud Archives' like Kurt Eissler, would say in an interview years later, how could Masson dare to say that Freud 'lost moral courage' -- and keep his job? Eissler too, missed the big picture....
Well how about this....read what i have written above and decide for yourself whether you think Freud 'lost moral courage' or not....And if the shoe fits... if the duck quacks...
There is a moral story here that needs to be emphasized....The Psychoanalytic Establishment is here now with us, and Freud is dead. The integrity and character of The Psychoanalytic Establishment -- and all the people who are a part of it -- is more important than the integrity of Freud, under professional and economic duress....
Masson saw the bigger, more ethical picture....
The Psychoanalytic Establishment continues not to....
There are female clients involved here -- during Freud's lifetime, during Anna Freud's lifetime, who did not, and do not, deserve to be 'theoretically and therapeutically abused by being told that their family rape memories did not happen, that they only 'wished the scene that they were imagining to have happened'' -- all because of Freud's dinosaur, Victorian, Patriarchal, Narcissistic, One-Sided, biases....and the whole Psychoanalytic Establishment's failure to meet this epistemological and ethical challenge a lot better than they have....They only know how to keep 'sweeping the still alive Seduction Scandal under the rug'...
That's not good enough...
Masson deserves an apology...
And women -- especially female classical psychoanalytic patients from the past and present -- deserve an apology...
Krafft-Ebing -- and the whole Vienna Psychiatery and Neurology Society,
If any one of them were alive today....
Would still owe Freud -- and the whole world -- an apology....
For words most unbecoming of supposed 'medical scientists'....
Words to the effect that the connection between childhood sexual abuse
And 'mental pathology'....
Is a 'scientific fairy tale'....
The worst three words spoken in the history of Psychoanalysis...
In conjunction with 'the scientific fairy tale' that Freud did create after April 21, 1896...
To appease the 'political expedience' of The Vienna Psychiatry-Neurology Society...
As a 'compensatory ego defense'....
In the pursuit of...
'Narcissistic, professional self-survival....
Thus, DGB speaks...
........................................................................................................................................................
William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath'rin'
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears.
William Zanzinger who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering and his tongue it was snarling
In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears.
Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn't even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level
Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
That sailed through the air and came down through the room
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger
And you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears.
In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em
And that ladder of law has no top and no bottom
Stared at the person who killed for no reason
Who just happened to be feelin' that way witout warnin'
And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance
William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fearsv
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears.
-- Bob Dylan, 1963
..................................................................................................................................
We all need, at times, to look ourselves
straight in the mirror....
And take stock of 'the realness' and the
'humanistic quality'
Of our supposed 'truths' and 'values'...
In the words of Nietzsche.....
.....................................................................................
More and more it seems to me that the
philosopher, being of
necessity a man of
tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to
his day: his enemy was ever the ideal of today. So far all these extraordinary
furtherers of man whom one calls philosophers, though they themselves have
rarely felt like friends of wisdom but rather like disagreeable fools and
dangerous question marks, have found their task, their hard, unwanted,
inescapable task, but eventually also the greatness of their task, in being the
bad conscience of their time.
By applying the knife vivisectionally to the
chest of the very virtues
of their time, they betrayed what was their own secret: to know of a new greatness of man, of a new
untrodden way to his enhancement. Every time they exposed how much hypocrisy,
comfortableness, letting oneself go and letting oneself drop, how many lies lay
hidden under the best honored type of their contemporary morality, how much
virtue was outlived.
Every time they said: "We must get there, that way, where you today are
least at home."
Facing a world of "modern ideas" that
would banish everybody into a corner and "specialty", a philosopher
-- if today there could be philosophers -- would be compelled to find the
greatness of man, the concept of "greatness", precisely in his range
and multiplicity, in his wholeness in manifoldness. He would even determine
value and rank in accordance with how much and how many things one could bear
and take upon himself, how far one could extend his responsibility.
Today the taste of the time and the virtue of
the time weakens and thins down the will; nothing is as timely as weakness of
the will. In the philosopher's ideal, therefore, precisely strength of the
will, hardness, and the capacity for long-range decisions must belong to the
concept of "greatness":...And the philosopher will betray something of his
own ideal when he posits: "He shall be greatest who can be loneliest, the
most concealed, the most deviant, the human being beyond good and evil, the
master of his virtues, he that is overrich in will. Precisely this shall be
called greatness:
being capable of being as manifold as whole, as ample as full." And to ask
it once more: today -- is greatness possible?
(Nietzsche, 1886, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to
a Philosophy of the Future,
Translated, with Commentary, by Walter Kaufman, 1989, p 137-139.)
............................................................................................................
-- dgb, July 23rd, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain....
-- Coming at you...
-- Sometimes with a 'Nietzschean Scalpel'....
-- Or 'Hammer'....
-- Rhetorically arguing for a point...
-- That you don't want to hear....
-- Sometimes with a 'Nietzschean Scalpel'....
-- Or 'Hammer'....
-- Rhetorically arguing for a point...
-- That you don't want to hear....
-- We don't want to hear...
-- Our ethical conscience pounding in our ear....
-- When corporate greed....
-- And/or our 'Corporate Self-Protection Instinct'....
-- Has turned us into...
-- The 'Silence of The Lamb(s)'....
-- Our ethical conscience pounding in our ear....
-- When corporate greed....
-- And/or our 'Corporate Self-Protection Instinct'....
-- Has turned us into...
-- The 'Silence of The Lamb(s)'....
