Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Name of Theory
3. Foundational Influences
4. Theory
5. Application: The First True Case of Psychoanalysis
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This essay is driving me crazy. Sometimes the best essay you write is your first edition. Ten editions later, something has been lost relative to the freshness and spontaneity of the essay. And yet you can't go back -- or don't feel like you can go back. Four or five years have passed since I first wrote this essay in 2009 or 2010.
A lot of theoretical evolution has happened in my mind in those 4 or 5 years. And yet this remains one of my potentially most important essays -- my signature essay that separates my integrative work in psychoanalysis and neo-psychoanalysis from anything else that is out there on the market.
How can I most succinctly and simply 'mark my territory' here in a way that defines the essence of my work?
The range of my integrative brand of psychoanalysis-neo-psychoanalysis is extensive yet how can I communicate this range in as clear and simple a manner as possible? Obviously, I can't do it all in one essay.
So let's start with the name of this -- about the 1000th evolutionary mutation of psychoanalysis.
2. Name
Full Name: GAP (Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic) -DGB (Dialectic Gap-Bridging) Neo-Psychoanalysis;
Abbreviated Name: DGB Neo-Psychoanalysis;
Parallel, Synonymous Name: TIME (Transference-Immediacy-Mediation-Engagement) Theory and Therapy
3. Main Foundational Influences
a) Philosophical Influences
i) Dialectic Influences: Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Hegel, Derrida;
ii) Wholism and Pantheism: Spinoza;
iii) Epistemological Influences: Sir Francis Bacon, Locke, Kant, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida;
iv) Humanistic-Existential Influences: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Fromm;
v) Economic Influences: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Erich Fromm, Ayn Rand;
b) Psychoanalytic Influences:
i) Freud before 1897 (Pre-Classical Freudian Theory);
ii) Freud after 1896 (Classical Psychoanalysis);
iii) Object Relations, Self Psychology;
iv) Self-Psychology;
c) Neo-Psychoanalytic Influences:
i) Alfred Adler;
ii Carl Jung;
iii) Otto Rank;
iv. Wilhelm Reich;
v) Fritz Perls;
vi) Eric Fromm;
vii) Erich Berne;
viii) Karen Horney;
ix) Carl Rogers;
x) Arthur Janov
d) Cognitive-Behavioral Influences
i) Immanuel Kant;
ii) Wittgenstein and Alfred Korzybski
iii) S.I. Hayakawa;
iv) Albert Ellis;
v) Aaron Beck;
vi) George Kelley;
vii) Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden;
viii) Donald Meichenbaum
4. Theory
I am going to summarize in this essay 40 years of work in one sentence: an emphasis on transference-lifestyle(lifeline), immediacy; Oedipal trauma, splitting, defenses, and fantasies; intimacy in relationships, humanistic-existential meaning and striving in work, blockages in intimacy, blockages in humanistic-existential meaning and striving, gaps in personality wholism, obsessions, compulsions, fixations, dialectic engagement and bipolar integrations back towards personality wholism.
5. A Transference-Lifeline Interpretation of a Conscious Early Childhood Memory: The First True Case of Psychoanalysis
Little Siggy, about 3 years old, burst into his parents bedroom and was shocked by what he saw. His mom and dad were obviously having sex together and we can only imagine what little Siggy saw -- his dad probably perched over his mom like he was 'peeing' on her -- interrupted in whatever they were doing, Siggy's dad yelled at him to get out of the room and close the door behind him.
This was not a repressed memory. It was one of Sigmund Freud's earliest -- probably the earliest -- conscious childhood memory that he could remember.
Ernest Jones, Freud's first main biographer, viewed the memory 'flippantly' because it was not a 'repressed' memory.
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Among the (consciously) remembered ones (memories) are a few, banal enough in themselves, which are of interest only in standing out in the sea of amnesia. One was of penetrating into his parents' bedroom out of (sexual) curiosity and being ordered out by his irate father. (Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, p. 7).
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In contrast to Jones's casual perspective on this memory -- biased undoubtedly by Freud's own perspective on the relative non-importance of conscious early childhood memories except as possible 'screen memories' to other 'unconscious, repressed memories and/or fantasies' (Freud, Screen Memories, 1899) -- my perspective on this memory is 100 percent different. I believe that upon its 'template' in Freud's network of 'conscious transference memories', rests the whole foundation of psychoanalysis. This would make Freud, in contrast to Anna O., the first true case of psychoanalysis. Let us see how I get there.
Stepping into Adlerian Theory, our conscious early childhood memories are like 'metaphors -- or Stories -- of our lives. Bringing Adlerian Theory back into Psychoanalysis, these conscious early memories -- generally passed over lightly in psychoanalysis as being 'screen memories' to other more important 'repressed' memories and/or fantasies -- become the crux of psychoanalysis. They become 'narcissistic transference fixations, repetition compulsions, and defensive-fantasy mastery compulsions'. Both Oedipal trauma and the foundational basis for later Oedipal fantasies can be found in the same memory, assuming it has a traumatic base.
The ego and the id are mainly 'non-differentiated' at this point in the young child's development (2 to 6 years old) and thus, can be called 'the ego-id' (or 'the id-ego') (Freud, 1938, Outline of Psychoanalysis).
Trauma strikes in the Oedipal period and thus I call this trauma 'Oedipal Trauma' (which it is to a child of that young an age even though it might not be to a fully grown adult). The trauma is often (but not always) represented in one of a person's main conscious early chidhood memories -- often the first one recalled, or the one of youngest age.
Trauma causes 'personality splitting' or 'ego-id splitting' at this young an age. In Adlerian terminology, the 'inferiority feeling' -- under the stress of trauma -- is cemented for a lifetime.
The young ego-id rushes in to defend the young child against such trauma happening again in the future. Compensatory defenses -- and later Oedipal fantasies -- are established. The personality splitting begins:
1. The Assertive Ego-Id (Before the Oedipal trauma);
2. The Sensitive-(Approval-Seeking-Disapproval-Avoiding) Ego-Id (After the Oedipal trauma);
3. The Depressive Position (Mom or Dad -- or someone else -- doesn't love me for what I did);
4. The Phobic-Schizoid Position (I make sure I stay away from repeating the type of action that led to my mom or dad's disapproval and my traumatized ego-id);
The four positions above can all be classified as 'under-ego positions' that follow the formula of: I'm not okay; you are okay.
5. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic (Dionysian) Position: Pleasure-Seeking ego-id impulses;
6. The Paranoid-Schizoid (Passive-Aggressive) Position: I suppress or repress my angry feelings towards you but get my 'digs' in through passive aggressive behavior);
7. The Paranoid-Confrontational Position: My anger, my rage, is coming at you overtly, directly or indirectly, but explosively ('anal-righteous-explosiveness');
These last three positions all follow the formula of: I'm okay, you're not okay.
The first position can be viewed as being either/or 'identity-seeking', 'object-attachment seeking', and/or self-esteem seeking.
The next three positions can be viewed as 'object-attachment and self-esteem seeking'.
The last three under-ego positions can be viewed as 'identity-and-self-esteem seeking'.
All seven ego-positions or ego-states or ego-compartments can be -- and generally are -- duplicated as 'superego' or 'over-ego states'. These 'over-ego states' can often also be viewed as 'defensive fantasy ego-states' -- to be striven for.
We now have 14 defensive-fantasy ego-states.
To this, I add 7 more 'middle zone' ego-compartments:
15. The Social Persona Ego;
16. The Central-Mediating-Synthesizing Ego;
17. The Private Shadow-Id-Ego;
18. The Fantasy Ego;
19. The Body (Symptom) Ego;
20. The Projective-Displacement-Sublimation Ego;
21. The Introjective-Identification-Assimilation Ego;
And to this, I add 7 more preconscious-subconscious ego-structures and processes:
22. 'Unbound' transference-immediacy complexes and superego-id-ego complexes;
23. The Main Superego-Id-Ego Vault (Containing 'Bound' Complexes);
24. The Transference Memory and Fantasy Complex-Templates
25. The Subconscious Ego-Id;
26. The Abyss Ledge;
27. Nietzsche's Abyss;
28. The Rope and The Climb;
29. The Genetic-Existential-Mythological Self;
30/1. Nietzsche's (Zarathustra-Apollo-Dionysus) Mountain.
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How do I work this metaphorical, metaphysical, and mythological model?
The memory -- Freud's conscious early childhood memory described above -- can be viewed as a metaphor -- a metaphor or story of Freud's Life. It can be viewed as his 'transference-lifeline', his main 'transference memory-fantasy complex'.
Freud's main transference self-esteem issue was with his father -- of which this issue was 'bundled into a transference complex' and 'transferred' onto most of his adult, male working partners. If you view Psychoanalysis as being Freud's 'Secret Society' where you were either 'in' or 'out', the number of 'evicted' or 'departed outcasts' of male working partners grew in repetitive, significant number over time -- Breuer, Fliess, Adler, Jung, Stekel, Rank, Ferenczi, Reich, Perls....all 'transference surrogates' of either Freud's father -- or Freud himself -- spread over the course of his lifetime, evicted or departed like little Siggy was evicted and departed from him parents' 'Secret Society' -- 'the primal scene' -- 'the transference bedroom' -- projected some 35 to 40 years later into both 'the psychoanalytic room with its couch like a bed and the patient lying prone on the couch'; and 'The Vienna Society' which would eventually evolve into 'Psychoanalytic Societies' all over the world, and 'The International Psychoanalytic Society' linking them all together.
Freud had an 'erotic transference fixation' relative to 'triadic psychological interactions and formulas' and 'threesomes'. The template was his primal transference scene.
1. The impulsive-desire-drive, and/or fantasy; 2. The object; and 3. The resistance-defense to the impulse-drive-fantasy. Missing from this equation after 1896 was 4. The traumatic-transference scene and recalled memory of the scene.
In the psychoanalytic room, the patient (usually a woman) played the transference surrogate of his mom lying on the bed/couch, the 'resistance' was the projection of his dad's resistance into the psychoanalytic transference scene, and Freud played the role of 'little Siggy' who subconsciously or unconsciously wanted to 're-live his primal transference scene through his 'repetition and mastery compulsion' of fantasizing the original transference scene to a more erotically and voyeuristically satisfying conclusion (with Freud inside, not outside the primal room, finding out what was 'really going on inside the room' via transference projection into the psychoanalytic room -- and breaking through the woman's (Freud's internalized dad's) resistance/defense, to the 'Impulse-Desire' (ID).
Psychoanalytic Transference-Sublimation Fantasy completed (in his cases that worked well -- obviously, he didn't like the 'Dora' case but provided a negative transference explanation afterwards).
Freud's 'hankering' for threesomes -- a man, a woman, and Freud -- as found in the template of his primal transference scene-memory he projected later into his 'Screen Memories' essay (1899) where he describes a 'screen memory-fantasy' of a 'threesome' involving his older male cousin, a girl cousin, and himself. This 'Oedipal Fantasy' would play itself out in a transference-sublimation-fantasy in Freud's adult professional life (Freud, Fliess, and Emma Ekstein) unfortunately with a traumatic-tragic-scandalous ending.
Freud's worst failures and darkest hours can be captured by the idea of 'Nietzsche's Abyss' -- and his best successes can be captured by the idea of 'Nietzsche's Mountain'.
I would have to say that Freud's full exposition of psychoanalysis has to be viewed as a steep climb to the top of Nietzsche's Mountain.
And his first conscious, early childhood (transference) memory -- and its transference interpretation -- has to be viewed as....
The First True Case of Psychoanalysis.
-- David Gordon Bain (Revised Edition, December 18th, 2014).
