I may have told this story before online but I will tell it again.
I remember walking into a Queen Street East bookstore in Toronto, I think in the early 1990s -- probably between 1992 and 1994 -- and walking over to the psychology section, and seeing three books jump out at me by an author who I was totally unfamiliar with. The titles of the books, respectively, in no particular order, were: 1. 'Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst'; 2. 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory'; and 3. 'The Unabridged Complete Letter of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904' -- the first two written, the third edited, by the unknown writer (at least to me at that time), Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.
I bought the first two books and left the bookstore.
Final Analysis, I read in a few days with increasing curiosity and mounting passion. Jeffrey Masson sounded like 'the Bob Dylan of Psychoanalysis' (for me that was exciting, 'a rebel with a cause') -- at least until he left psychoanalysis over a decade earlier than when I was reading this book, but still apparently working off 'unfinished psychoanalytic business' in this, his latest book which, from his own subjective mindset, summarized his rise to the top of The Psychoanalytic Establishment (or at least 3rd from the top behind Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler). And, to me, this was an exciting story with a rather traumatic, tragic ending -- Masson's splitting from The Psychoanalytic Establishment, and from his close friendship with the old veteran psychoanalyst, Dr. Kurt Eissler, a long time loyal Freudian analyst.
At some point in the 1990s (the late 1990s probably) -- by this time Masson had switched to being an animal psychologist living in New Zealand -- I got a hold of Masson's email address and sent a couple of emails to him with Jeffrey's reply that he was basically no longer interested in psychoanalysis.
A number of years later -- probably moving into the mid to late 2000s by now (say, 2008 to 2010) -- I contacted Masson again, got a few replies from him (I could tell which emails he didn't particularly care for, or about, because he didn't reply to them). But at the end of 2009, I think I asked him if I could get a short, online interview with him in January, 2010. I think he said maybe. The interview didn't happen in January 2010, but in March 2010, I emailed him the questions I would ask him -- and he answered them. I got Dr. Masson to proofread the final interview piece, he said it looked fine, and presto, I had my first interview on line in Hegel's Hotel with a much esteemed interviewee -- the man who was ironically and paradoxically fueling my passion for psychoanalysis -- Dr. Jeffrey Masson.
I was thrilled -- and I agreed with many of his criticisms of Classical Psychoanalysis -- particularly, the more or less abandonment of Freud's early trauma theory (1893-1896), and his criticism of the Oedipus Complex as an intentional or non-intentional 'potential and/or actual cover-up' for real childhood sexual abuse, particularly between a female psychoanalytic client and her father, as reported by the client in a childhood memory or memories which she communicated to her analyst.
Well, what kind of a theory would or could deliberately, or by ignorance disguised as 'knowledge', actually allow an analyst to unequivocally 're-interpret' a female client's reported childhood sexual abuse as 'her own distorted childhood sexual fantasy -- courtesy of the Oedipus Complex'. You would think that feminist social activists would be protesting in front of Classical Psychoanalysts' offices at this inherent sexual bias and discrimination.
Well, it was this type of editorial comment and protest that Masson started to issue in public forums to active newspaper and magazine journalists (particularly, Janet Malcolm), and particularly his comment about Freud 'losing moral courage' (relative to standing up against Vienna patriarchal and narcissistically biased doctors who had power over the success or failure of his new and budding career) that got Masson, himself, in trouble with The International Psychoanalytic Establishment -- and ultimately, his 'non-extension' of his position as 'The Projects Director of The Freud Archives' (which is where Masson found and read Freud's unabridged and complete letters to Wilhelm Fliess which led Masson to conclude that there was something 'fishy' that happened in Vienna after April 21st of 1896, that motivated Freud to do a one hundred and eighty Copernican switch from his 'disappearing trauma theory' to his 'freshly evolving fantasy theory'.
Thesis, anti-thesis, and...synthesis...
In cases like this, unlike Masson and Freud, I do not believe in 'either/or'.
I do not believe in polar, unilateral theories that generally capture one end of a polar spectrum -- but not the other opposite side of the spectrum.
DGB stands for the initials of my name, but more than this, in the context of Hegel's Hotel here, it stands for 'Dialectic-Gap-Bridging' (Theories)...In other words, it stands for integrative or synthetic, even 'multi-integrative' or 'quantum-dialectic' theories...
That is the whole essence of Hegel's Hotel -- indeed, call me a 'post or neo-Hegelian-Humanistic-Existential' theorist...who is always looking for creative, integrative theories to 'bridge the gap' between 'polar opposite theories'...
The apparent disconnection, alienation, dissociation...between Freud's early trauma-seduction theory and his later fantasy-impulse-drive theory virtually demands a synthesis...
As much as Freud's post-1897 -- or post-1900 publicly -- use of the Oedipal Complex as a potential 'cover-up for real childhood sexual abuse', still, Freud couldn't have developed his fantasy-impulse-drive theory for some 42 years, maybe even 44 years stretching back to Freud's aborted 'Project for a Scientific Psychology' (1895) where you could start to see Freud's the hugely foretelling use of the word 'wish'...combined with the fact that Freud was starting to write 'The Interpretation of Dreams' in 1895 where again the word 'wish' -- as in fantasy -- would dominate -- to finish this long sentence off, Freud could not have upheld his 'fantasy theory' for some 44 years as a 'cover up' for avoiding any more discussion of childhood sexual abuse which unfavorable put The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society into a righteous frenzy, calling Freud's 'childhood sexual abuse theory' of hysteria a 'scientific fairy tale' on the infamous evening of April 21st, 1896....
Nor could the now infamous botched 'nasal-sexual surgery' by Fliess on Freud's patient, Emma Ekstein, in February of 1895, who would later would become disfigured by all the follow-up surgeries aimed at stopping her repetitive 'nasal hemorrhages' that more logically seemed to be more connected to the first botched surgery by Fliess and Freud, rather than any later concocted (guilt) theory of 'Emma's unconscious wish for Freud to return to her bedside by her 'use' of 'nasal hemorrhaging' to get him there'...
It would be a very sad day for psychoanalysis if poor Emma was Freud's first 'fantasy, wish-fulfillment' patient -- which by all circumstantial evidence -- it certainly looks like she was.
What a tragic, traumatic beginning for Freud's fantasy theory!
Who's 'neurosis' was, and still is, exploding off the page here -- Emma's or Freud's own 'wish-fulfillment theory' to cover up the part played by himself in this horrific, tragic-traumatic accident -- meant with seemingly the best of intentions for Emma but built from dangerous, untested, 'false knowledge' that both Fliess and Freud -- acting like 'The Keystone Kops' in this case -- thought was true? And as Freud asserted later, he had no thought whatsoever of any such dangerous negative side-effect happening from what he thought was an 'innocuous, danger-free' surgery. Little did he know that Fliess was going to leave a long piece of gauze in Emma's nasal passage, not tell anyone, and then trip back to Berlin from Vienna where the operation was conducted...
And so the word 'wish' was born from the fertile minds of Fliess and Freud during this very eventful year of the beginning of 'The Interpretation of Dreams' and Freud's aborted 'Project For a Scientific Psychology'...which also contained the word 'wish'...
I mean, with all due respect to Freud and many of his creatively brilliant ideas -- as hard as it may be -- and indeed, it was more or less impossible for both Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler to get their respective heads around the idea that their mutual idol -- and Anna's father -- could possibly commit such a gross transgression of both medical and theoretical ethics....still.... Freud wrote many brilliant -- and still standing strong -- essays after 1897, starting with The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899/1900.
So how do we integrate this possible moral transgression with creatively brilliant, and long-standing essays that were written after this moral transgression, but perhaps still a part of it, indeed, possibly around, and/or through, this possible 'moral-theory-creating-transgression'? Had 'Freud the neurotic' -- using a neurotic defense mechanism -- created at least a partly 'neurotic theory' out of his own personal, morally neurotic defence mechanism? The answer -- in my humble opinion -- is quite likely 'yes'. Which is why Classical Psychoanalysis has attracted so much criticism over the years -- both inside and outside Psychoanalysis -- and most telling of all, perhaps, is that Classical Psychoanalysis is particularly unattractive and unfriendly to women -- and particularly among active feminists who go after Freud's patriarchal narcissistic bias. Where were these feminists when Masson was being 'professionally lynched'?
So Masson became vilified -- demeaned and dismissed -- stereotyped as a 'charlatan' and a 'narcissistic opportunist' (come on, people, if he was a 'narcissistic opportunist', why would he ever have been so 'politically naïve and/or stupid' to have dared to open his mouth and give the public interviews that he did?).
To keep Psychoanalysis on the 'morally up and up' -- Psychoanalysis needed a 'witch' to 'burn' -- and they found an author to help them do that -- Janet Malcolm, who first seduced, then betrayed and 'murdered' her prime interviewee -- Dr. Jeffrey Masson....lumping him in with Jung and Adler and all the other 'ex-psychoanalysts' who Malcolm editorialized just didn't understand the 'full depth' of psychoanalysis like Freud and his loyalists did?
Right! And Martin Luther King didn't know anything about 'equal rights'!
Classical Psychoanalysis -- to the extent that it purports to be a legitimate 21st century 'school of psychotherapy' -- has to 'overturn' Freud's Victorian biases and particularly anything that could conceivably be connected to Freud's sudden and/or gradual abandonment of his trauma-seduction theory after 1896. Particularly to make it more 'customer-friendly' for women who deserve to know that they walk into an office to start analysis with a 'Classical' psychoanalysis -- and God forbid, that they may have been sexually abused by their dad as a child -- that they are going to get the same type of treatment that a man would -- and that their memory or memories of childhood sexual abuse will be accepted and respected as they are told -- all else being equal (unless this memory can unequivocally be proven to be wrong which is hard enough for a judge to prove one way or the other, let alone a psychoanalyst...). As far as I am concerned if I were put into a Classical Psychoanalyst's position, upon hearing such a memory, I am going to go with it as 'the truth' -- or at least have some kernel of truth in it -- unless or until something substantially different comes out from the client and/or someone else -- that puts this 'truth' into the category of 'significant skepticism'...
Remember, philosophers -- and all men and women -- have been arguing about 'epistemological truths' from probably the beginning of time....Power, narcissistic bias, and 'conflict of interest' should not rule on matters of 'truth'.
Did Freud 'lose moral courage'? I would suggest -- as hard as this may be for all of us to bear -- that there is very strong circumstantial between the Emma Ekstein sad story and the April 21st Psychiatry Meeting' to suggest that he did...
It is -- or will be dedicated to Dr. Jeffrey Masson and all the hard work -- important work -- that he did in Psychoanalysis in the 1970s and early 80s, aimed at telling The Psychoanalytic Establishment in specific, and the world, in general, that a very important part of psychoanalysis -- the work Freud did before 1897 -- was 'squashed' and 'dissociated' from psychoanalysis, or at least a very significant part of it, by Freud himself, which created a type of 'dissociative neurosis' in
Psychoanalysis, that to this day, has still not been properly repaired.
To repair all the inherent 'problem' in Classical Psychoanalysis would require a smooth, coherent, logical, and viable, practical integration between Pre-Psychoanalysis (reality-trauma-seduction theory) and Classical Psychoanalysis (fantasy theory, instinct, desire, and/or drive theory, infantile-childhood sexuality theory, and Oedipal Theory).
One of my primary goals in this network of 100 essays of psychoanalysis is to create such an 'integrative Pre-Psychoanalytic-Classical Psychoanalytic' integration and viable, practical theory-therapy. There will be other integrations on top of this one but this I view as being probably my most important one.
For those of you who may not know, Masson rose exceedingly quickly, passing all older psychoanalysts than him to the third highest spot on the Psychoanalytic Hierarchy, behind only Anna Freud herself, and Dr. Kurt Eissler.(one of, if not, the oldest, most longstanding, and loyal Freudians up until his death in the late 1990s.)
Then, with Masson first getting permission from Anna Freud to publish Freud's complete letters to Wilhelm Fliess, and then, due to Masson reading all of the unpublished letters that told a different story than the already published letters, Masson, in the early 1980s, reopened the highly controversial and provocative 'Seduction Theory' issue -- and what became a major public psychoanalytic scandal in the early 1980s....Masson accusing Freud of having 'lost moral courage' when he gave up his 1896 theory of the link between hysteria and childhood sexual abuse.
Which in my opinion, Freud probably partly did, based on a combination of political, professional, and financial duress -- and leverage he didn't have relative to the Vienna Psychiatric and Neurological Society and all the doctors in it having the power to 'pull' their patient referrals away from Freud if he continued to trumpet his theory of hysteria and childhood sexual abuse, which did not go over very well in Victorian Vienna, with the good Vienna (patriarchal) doctors.
For whatever reason -- political and/or theoretical -- Freud basically 'abandoned' his Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) theory, and turned this theory on its head -- by 1897 starting to advance the ideas of 'The Oedipus Complex', 'Childhood and Infantile Sexuality', Instinct and Fantasy theory in place of his earlier 'reality-trauma-seduction' theory..
I have no wish to re-open The Seduction Theory Controversy although if someone asks my opinion on it, I will be straight about what I believe which is that I think that there were perhaps a mixture of theoretical and political reasons for Freud's abandoning his early work so abruptly. Political reasons may have sped up this process or prevented a 'smoother evolution in his thinking'.
Ideally, I believe that Freud should have integrated the two sets of theories -- Pre-Psychoanalysis (reality-trauma-seduction theory) and Classical Psychoanalysis (Oedipus-Instinct-Fantasy-Childhood Sexuality) -- together. But having failed this, it has given me a mission to 'synthesize' what The Psychoanalytic Establishment should have many years ago synthesized.
I hold this advantage. I am on the outside looking in, rather than the inside looking out. No overt or covert political 'shoulds and should nots' staring over my shoulder. Making me nervous. No possible 'banishment' from an Establishment I have not joined.
Sometimes being outside of a 'biased, over-regulated, situation' -- is a good situation.
More possibility of 'breaking free' of 'Establishment-regulated dysfunctional assumptions'.
Psychoanalysis is changing, evolving, for the better...
But sometimes it seems like it is the Titanic turning...
It doesn't happen quickly....
Which is not good if there are icebergs in the water...
Gotta go for now, but Masson's birthday is coming up (March 28th)...and I will probably write the poem on here tomorrow morning....
