This is the first of many forecasted editorial commentaries on Freud's always evolving psychological essays and theories from 1892 to 1939.
Now, to a greater or lesser extent, this path has been 'beaten down' by hundreds if not thousands of Freudian commentators before me. You have the 'main beaten path', and then you have a few commentators deviating from this 'main beaten path' to some greater or lesser extent.
Well, I want to go down a relatively unbeaten path (or perhaps an unbeaten path off a beaten path) examining in particular Freud's earliest psychology papers between 1892 and 1897 and find out for myself whether Freud might not have done a better job integrating his early evolving 'reality-sexual abuse-trauma-repressed-memory-return of the repressed through the symptom' theory with his later evolving 'instinct and fantasy' theory, as opposed to declaring them 'mutually exclusive' and stating that his pre-1897 reality-trauma-seduction work was basically a 'mistake', or a 'misinterpretation' of what was really happening, and had to be 'replaced' by his post-1896 evolving 'repressed-instinct/impulse-desire/drive-fantasy-Oedipal' theory.
Being the 'post-Hegelian, dialectic logic, thesis-anti-thesis-synthesis' philosopher that I am, and bringing this Hegelian paradigm perspective into my thinking about Psychoanalysis, I basically look at The International Psychoanalytic Establishment and Jeffrey Masson as having 'landed at two opposite ends of the same dialectically bipolar and potentially integrative spectrum', Masson having supported Freud's early reality-trauma-seduction theory whereas The International Psychoanalytic Establishment -- in maintaining consistency with Freud's interpretation and evaluation of the situation -- chose to, and basically still chooses to, support Freud's later evolving instinct-fantasy-Oedipal theory.
Both positions, in my opinion, need to be 'reconciled' and 'synthesized' in the middle such that the second wave of Freudian theories (instinct/impulse-desire-drive-fantasy-Oedipal) needs to rest on the foundation of the first wave of Freudian theories (reality-memory-trauma-seduction).
Now, in their own way, to what I can see from the information coming out of The Psychoanalytic Institute that I am closest to these days (The Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute'), Psychoanalysis does seem to be very focused on the same basic goal that I just mentioned above -- specifically, examining different 'brands' of existing trauma theory in Psychoanalysis today, coming mainly out of Object Relations, Self Psychology, and Attachment Theory -- but no one that I can see is going back to the origin of Freud's earliest trauma theory between 1892 and 1895.
This being the case, I will take on this job of 'integrating' the two opposing 1. 'Pre-Classical'; and 2. 'Classical' theoretical positions into one combined 'bipolar theory'. .
We start in 1892.
