The essay that used to be here is gone -- a victim of my deleting mind and fingers.
It is not easy for a writer to always be able to convey everything he or she wants to convey on a certain subject manner, especially when some of these messages are -- or may seem to be -- dialectically opposed to each other, at odds with each other, a walking, talking contradiction to each other....almost 'flip-flopping'....
I have done my share of flip-flopping as I have tried to make some sort of coherent, logical sense of Freud's own post-1896 'flip-flopping' from his previous 'Reality-Traumacy-Childhood Sexual Abuse (Seduction) Theory on the one hand to his 'Fantasy-Oedipal-(It's-In-His/Her-Imagination)-Impulsive-Instinct' Theory on the other hand....
How many times in the past have we heard a man defend himself against sexual assault charges using a defense like this, or she 'consented' to it, or she 'instigated' it...That is not to say that a woman cannot have her own 'narcissistic agenda' going on, and/or purposely or non-purposely 'distort' historical experiences, memories, etc. But Freud was a smart enough man to be alert to both or either possibility and not try to 'reduce' human behavior to a choice between two 'theoretical extremes': 1. either the father sexually assaulted the daughter (before 1896); and/or 2. the daughter 'wished' or 'longed' to be 'seduced' by the father -- either consciously or unconsciously, and usually unconsciously -- and it never happened in reality (after 1896).
Psychoanalysts -- or rather most 'Classically trained' psychoanalysts -- have tried to argue for over a hundred years that Freud was 'justified' in 'abandoning' his 'Seduction Theory' (which is another name for his 'Childhood Sexual Assault' Theory) in favor of his 'The daughter wanted to be seduced by her father' theory, i.e., his 'Oedipal Complex Theory'....
Nobody here -- most notably me -- is denying that human thoughts and emotions and impulses can't be paradoxical and contradictory the deeper we delve into anyone's personality. I have found through my life experience that human paradox and contradiction is the rule in human behavior -- even if there is a 'dominant, visible side' (our 'Public Personna Ego) and a 'suppressed or repressed invisible side' (our 'Conscious or Unconscious, Private Shadow Ego). But no concept in Psychoanalysis should 'pre-direct' and 'prejudice' an analyst into believing that all memories of reported childhood sexual assault cited by a daughter, a son, whoever -- should necessarily, by ironclad (over-generalization), be 're-interpreted' as a 'I wanted him to seduce me Oedipal fantasy'.
This, to me, is Psychoanalytic Blasphemy. Pathology. Corruption. It is Freud's own 'Scientific Fairy Tale'. Freud's own 'Identification With The Aggressor (The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society) in The Process of his own Ego-Defense'. Freud essentially 'betrayed' his female patients in order to 'appease' The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society.
Thus, in defense of Dr. Jeffrey Masson, I support his claim that, after 1896, 'Freud lost moral courage' -- even though neither of us can claim that we can completely get inside his head except through what Freud himself wrote in his letters to Fliess, and some of these letters were and still are pretty 'character damaging'.
Now, on a personal note, I do not want to see my 'Psychoanalytic advertisers' disappear on me because I just 'launched another wrecking ball at The House that Freud Built -- and 'Freud's Wall'. Like 'The Jericho Wall'.
What I do want to see is plain and simple.
I want to see the use of 'The Oedipal Complex' the way that Freud taught it -- disappear off the face of the planet. In the famous words of David Hume (used in a more abstract but similar context) , 'Commit it to flames!'
Then, I will go one step further than Masson did.
I will advance -- as I already partly have in previous papers -- a 'dialectical-integrative-bi-lateral-bi-polar' as opposed to 'unilateral' theory that I will call 'The Paradoxical Traumacy-Fantasy Theory'.
The logic behind this 'bilateral theory' is very simple: People invent 'Compensatory Ego Fantasies' in order to 'alleviate', 'compensate for', 'defend against', 'conquer'....their deepest 'narcissistic injuries' and/or 'ego traumacies'.
By this way of thinking, Freud was 'half right' before 1897, and 'half right' after 1896. This theory on my part doesn't in anyway mitigate my belief that Freud was motivated by 'functional conveniences' and 'narcissistic biases' in his changeover from Traumacy-Seduction Theory to Fantasy-Oedipal Theory.
Freud, in this context, was a 'unilateral, one-sided, either/or, black or white, Aristolean thinker.
I am a 'bi-lateral, bi-polar, dialectical, Hegelian thinker'.
The advantage of the latter type of thinking can perhaps best be described in this fashion.
'Oxygen' has both a 'life force' and a 'death force'. It both keeps us alive -- and it eventually 'kills us' through the 'side effect process' of 'oxidation'.
'Anti-oxidants' can help to keep us alive longer -- by reducing the effects of the pathological, toxic, oxidation which 'kills live, healthy cells'.
Well, in the same manner, 'the anti-oxidant' for the traumacy theory is the fantasy theory and visa versa as long as both are used properly in the context of a client's life history, and both are 'theoretically and therapeutically used at their proper times'.
If the client's life has 'zagged' with a very traumatic, real childhood memory or memories of sexual assault, it behooves the therapist not to be 'locked in with a pit bull bite' to The Oedipal Complex Theory which would be highly inappropriate and/or pathological to the situation at hand. Grossly unethical, I would call it. None of us can know for sure what happened or didn't happen in a young girls' or boy's life but one of the worst things that can happen to a young girl or young boy should not be 'overlooked' because of some, more than one century old, one-sided, Victorian, Patriarchal, Chauvinistic, Masculine-Narcissistic-Biased, theoretical assumption.
If someone tries to tell me that Freud was not smart enough to know that he had seen and felt the 'horror and anguish' of a woman in therapy either reciting -- or 'repetitively re-enacting in some genuine way' a childhood sexual assault -- and that this 'horror and anguish' was real, not contrived -- well, I would laugh sarcastically, and say, well, I guess Freud was not a very smart man after all, if he could 'flip-flop' and so easily 'repress' such a horrifically serious matter. Instead, I will side with Masson -- Freud 'morally caved' to The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society in order to professionally appease them and not to go around ranting anymore about 'scientific fairy tales' of childhood sexual abuse.
The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society didn't actually mind 'scientific fairy tales' -- as long as they weren't about 'fathers sexually molesting their daughters'.
That is why they were 'quiet as a mouse' when Freud invented 'The Oedipal Complex'.
Because, now it was 'all in the little girl's imagination'.
Where have we heard that before?
And how many of us haven't 'appeased our corporate bosses' in order to protect our jobs, our careers, and or our 'good standing' within the corporation we work for? That's called 'Narcissistic-Self-Survival, Capitalism'.
Friends, Romans, and Countrymen,
I come here to both praise Freud -- and to bury him.
Or at least to bury The Oedipal Complex the way he taught us to believe that it was true...
Below, from The Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, 1916, V. 16, p. 370....
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"Phantasies of being seduced are of particular interest, because so often they are not phantasies
but real memories. Fortunately, however, they are nevertheless not real as
often as seemed at first to be shown by the findings of analysis. Seduction
by an older child or by one of the same age is even more frequent than by an
adult; and if in the case of girls who produce such an event in the story of
their childhood their father figures fairly regularly as the seducer, there
can be no doubt either of the imaginary nature of the accusation or the
motive that has led to it." (emphasis mine.)
often as seemed at first to be shown by the findings of analysis. Seduction
by an older child or by one of the same age is even more frequent than by an
adult; and if in the case of girls who produce such an event in the story of
their childhood their father figures fairly regularly as the seducer, there
can be no doubt either of the imaginary nature of the accusation or the
motive that has led to it." (emphasis mine.)
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Masson lost his job and his career trying to defend the rights of female patients within the context of The Psychoanalytic Therapy Room.
And to this day, not a female psychoanalyst -- nor even the women's movement as a whole -- has risen up to defend Masson in public, and/or to pay tribute for what he, at the time, unsuccessfully tried to do -- i.e., make sure that psychoanalysts were not 'prejudicially dismissing' real memories of childhood sexual assaults and 're-interpreting' them as 'Oedipal fantasies'.
Freud was no Spinoza or Martin Luther King. He 'jumped boats' midstream from the one that wasn't 'floating' to the one that 'would float' -- at least among the members of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society.
Is it that The Psychoanalytic Establishment still cannot figure this one out? Or they just don't want to admit that it happened? I vote the latter.
'Traumacy Theory' is back in vogue among psychoanalysts.
I believe Dr. Jeffrey Masson should be accredited for this.
As much as no one in any Psychoanalytic Institute will admit it.
'The times, they are a changin'...
That is a good thing in this context...
I believe the old 'Classical' theorists and therapists are a dying breed...
At least the most extremely patriarch among them...
I have no problem calling myself a 'Post-Classical and Object Relations Theorist'....
Dialectic integration is the way of the future...
Stay tuned....and I will show you the way...
At least my own way...
Updating an old essay of mine, 'The First True Case of Psychoanalysis'...
And using my newest model of the human psyche...
I will interpret Freud's first conscious memory...
In a way that employs my own rendition of modified, Classical Psychoanalysis, Object Relations, and Adlerian Psychology...
My 30 plus year investigation into the 'phenomenon and theory of transference' will lead us to a new...
'DGB 21st Century Dynamics of Transference'...
In this -- Freud's 100th anniversary of the original 'The Dynamics of Transference' (1912)...
One of Freud's classic papers....
And the concept that I believe is 'The Real Foundation of Psychoanalysis' (i.e., 'transference'; not 'repression').
Til then,
Good night,
-- dgb, October 6, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain
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All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_jefferson.html#IZo0DmtqAbwYFWvf.99
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