Good day!
In one of Freud's earliest precursor papers to the beginning of psychoanalysis, Freud wrote an obituary on one of his main 'traumacy theory' teachers -- Jean-Martin Charcot -- a few days after Charcot died in 1893. Freud studied under Charcot in Paris between October of 1885 and February of 1886.
In terms of psychoanalysis, it was probably the main turning point in Freud's life because it motivated his shift in interest and excitement from neuropathology to psychopathology -- from physical science to psychology. (Strachey, The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Standard Edition, Vol. 3., p. 9).
Most important from this obituary, in my opinion, is a partly negative judgment I hold of Freud.
Charcot gave Freud and the other students present a lesson in theory-making that certainly caught Freud's attention but, at the same time, the lesson that he caught, time and time again, over the span of his 45 year writing and teaching career, Freud did not abide by. Indeed, it was probably Freud's primary weakness as a theory-creator -- his perceived 'reductionism' and/or 'one-sided theories'.
Freud was constantly jumping from theory to theory and seemingly the more shocking the theory was, the better he liked it: his sexuality theories, his childhood sexual abuse theory (the seduction theory), his repression theory, his displacement and 'transfer of energy' theory, his 'false connection' theory, his childhood sexuality theory, his 'all dreams are wishes' theory, his Oedipus theory, his psycho-sexual stages of development theory, his 'neurosis is the inverse of the perversion' theory, his 'castration anxiety' theory, his 'penis envy' theory...
One of the main reasons that Breuer and Freud split from each other is that Freud grew impatient with Breuer as Breuer was constantly cautioning Freud of his 'limited sample of clinical evidence' and his 'jumping to premature conclusions and over-generalizations' -- such as his ill-fated 'seduction theory'.
The lesson from Charcot went something like this: As Freud wrote in the Charcot obituary, when one of the students was showing doubts and objected to one of Charcot's clinical innovations, he bluntly stated to Charcot: 'But that can't be true, it contradicts the Young-Helmholtz theory.' Charcot did not reply 'So much the worse for the theory, clinical facts come first' or words to that effect; but he did say something which made a great impression on us: (English translation)...'Theory is good; but it doesn't prevent things from existing.'
Breuer was like Freud's alter-ego -- 'opposites both attract and repel'. Breuer was much more theoretically conservative and clinically grounded than Freud whereas Freud was much more creatively imaginative than Charcot but often to a fault in 'trying to go too far, climb too high, on insufficient clinical evidence'.
Charcot -- for Freud -- offered the best of both worlds. He was clinically grounded. But at the same time, he was continually shocking and amazing people -- most notably Freud -- and this is what probably most endeared Charcot to his lifelong heart. Not many -- if any -- other men fit into this same category -- of maintaining Freud's lifelong respect and affection.
I have a 'transference theory-explanation' for this: Charcot reminded Freud more of Freud's mother than he did of his father. Our early transference relationships with key people -- particularly our mother and father -- generate a 'template' in our subconscious by which we often interpret and evaluate all our other relationships. I make one 'transference distinction' that neither Freud nor Psychoanalysis never did -- specifically, I distinguish between 'transference relationships' and 'transference encounter-memories'.
Our transference encounter-memories tend to often if not usually 'co-operate' with our transference relationships -- both on the same page -- but not always. And the memory does not have to be a 'repressed' one or even an 'unconscious' one. It can be a conscious or pre-conscious one (subconscious but easily brought back to our conscious awareness) -- as the following 'conscious transference memory' cited below from Ernest Jones' biography of Freud is a perfect example:
(The) '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 specimen of the earth we are made of. His astonishment was unbounded and for the first time he captured some sense of the inevitable. (Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 1953, 1981, p. 16).
In the memory above, Freud's mom acted much like an 'astonishing magician' -- in effect, creating something out of nothing, or making something magically appear. Freud used the word 'magic' and 'magician' significantly in some of his most notable relationships -- specifically, Charcot and Fliess, and possibly Jung as well. In a letter to Fliess, Freud opened the letter, 'Dear Magician',
Based partly on Jungian theory, we might at least partly say that Freud had the 'archetype ideal' of a 'magician' inside of his psyche. Not from his 'collective unconscious' but rather from the childhood memory cited above.
In the Charcot obituary, Freud wrote:
'If Charcot was so much more fortunate in this respect we must put it down to the personal qualities of the man -- to the magic that emanated from his looks and from his voice, to the kindly openness which characterized his manner as soon as his relations with someone had overcome the stage of initial strangeness, to the willingness which he put everything at the disposal of his pupils, and to his life-long loyalty to them.' (Freud, SE, V.3, Charcot, p. 16).
In my interpretive opinion, Freud could have been writing about his mother in the passage above. This is what I call a 'transference projection' and a 'transference-immediacy-encounter relationship' (or a 'TIE' relationship where there is an 'associate tie' between our childhood transference figure or object and our adult transference surrogate figure or object. In 1895 (Studies in Hysteria), Freud stated that 'transference' (his first use of this term) involved a 'false connection' between a past and present figure. Well, that is not always true. A distinction can be made between 'contactful' TIE relationships and 'distorted' or 'non-contactful' TIE relationships. A TIE relationship with an adult surrogate of a past relationship can have either 'positive' and/or 'negative' and/or 'ambivalent' energy attached to it which is the essence of the importance of 'analyzing the nature of the transference or TIE relationship between, for example, husband and wife, and/or client and therapist/analyst.
The most important point to be made here is that 'encounter-memories' can be used as poignant examples of the 'template nature and psycho-dynamics' of any adult surrogate transference encounter and/or relationship.
-- dgb, July 7th, 2013,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations, Integrations, and Creations...
Are Still in Process...
