Floor 34: The Re-integration of Freud's Traumacy-Seduction Theory into Psychoanalysis: HH

Part 1: The Freud-Masson Seduction Theory Controversy

2010-04-03T04:05:00.000-07:00

Reconstructed...June 29th, updated Aug. 9th, 2009...

I will aim to make this my most definitive, up-to-date DGB editorial essay on the Freud vs. Masson Seduction Theory Controversy -- complete with all its associated moral-ethical and legal issues -- and how this still debated controversy fits into the overall theory, practice, and evolution of Psychoanalysis, real and/or ideal.

For those of you who know little or nothing about this controversy, let me fill you in very quickly.

In 1896, Freud posed a theory -- albeit very briefly (it lasted less than a year) that hysteria was basically caused by the repression of a childhood sexual assault memory (or series of associated memories) -- either a flat out forceful childhood rape or a more manipulative seduction. The main perpetrators of these 'crimes against children' were fathers, older brothers, uncles, or 'friends' of the family.

Now looking at this from a 2009 perspective, I would say that there was probably a significant element of truth in what Freud was arguing back in 1896. However, Freud had a strong tendency throughout his career to jump to fast conclusions on the basis of over-generalizations that were provocative, controversial, and sparked off strong elements of social and/or professional protest while at the same time not always being strongly supported by the bulk of the clinical evidence that he stated supported his 'provocative scientific conclusions'.

One is tempted to say -- at least I am -- that there was as much 'provocative writing journalist' in Freud's character and behavior as there was 'unbiased, objective, scientific researcher and theorist'. Freud was always 'champing at the bit' wanting to go where no researcher, clinician, and/or theorist had gone before him, to lead the way into new and provocative forms of clinical theory and therapy -- to make new discoveries like an 'inventor' -- whether these discoveries be relevant to either 'medical' therapy and/or 'psycho'-therapy.

There was a danger here. Freud's 'innovativeness', his 'creativity', and his willingness to 'take a risk' constituted both the best and the worst parts of his character. In both his personal and professional life. On the one hand, almost all of present-day clinical psychology and psychotherapy is indebted to the richness and creativeness of Freud's mind relative to the laying of its theoretical and therapeutic foundations.

However, on the other hand, both in his personal and his professional life, Freud committed a number of 'ethical transgressions' that bordered on both the 'inexcusable' and the 'criminally negligent'. I am talking primarily about two series of events here: 1. Freud's almost 20 year 'personal and professional affair' with cocaine (1884 to 1904, see my article on Freud and Cocaine soon to come, added Aug. 9th, 2009); and 2. the Emma Ekstein medical debacle which Masson speculates to have possibly had a profound affect on Freud's abandonment of The Seduction Theory. Both series of events violated medicine's Hippocratic Oath: 'First, do the patient no harm.' -- Hippocrates

Relative to this 'risk-taking' aspect in Freud's character, Freud's co-writer in 'Studies in Hysteria', 1893,1895, Joseph Breuer was probably the much more 'grounded and ethical, scientific researcher and theorist'. Breuer didn't want to jump to the 'sexual abuse' conclusion -- he was happy with their preceding 'traumacy theory' which on the whole was a better theory than Freud's 1896 Seduction Theory because it 'fit' a greater percentage of the clinical population.

Indeed, Freud's and Breuer's Traumacy Theory is relevant to all of us because we all have to meet with our 'first rejections and narcissistic traumas' early in life, invariably in our first 4 or 5 years.

At some point in these early years we are all going to face the 'harshness' of life in one way or another -- an abandonment, a betrayal, a discrimination, a tragedy, a failure, a costly mistake, an egotistical or narcissistic blow to our self-esteem -- and one or more of our memories is going to catch this event because it was significant in our evolution -- for better or for worse.

But a 'childhood sexual assault' -- that is going to affect a smaller proportion of the general population, not enough of the population to build an entire theory on its premise, except as a smaller derivative of the Traumacy Theory.

Certainly, Freud was not, and is not, the only person in the world who has ever been guilty of 'jumping to fast conclusions' and 'overgeneralizing'. We all can be deemed guilty of these charges at different time, and in different contexts, in our lives -- some more often and with more drastic consequences than others.

However, when you are the creator of a brand new school of psychology -- a theory of the functioning of the human mind -- it is extremely important that the conclusions and generalizations you come to as a theorist are 'good conclusions' and based on 'good generalizations' relative to the clinical evidence that is available to you.

Otherwise, the whole foundation of the school of psychology you are building is going to creak at its very foundations -- and if the conclusions and/or over-generalizations that you have made are faulty and bad enough -- your school of psychology is likely going to come tumbling down at some point like a house of cards.

The only thing that is going to delay this structural collapse from happening is perhaps otherwise intelligent people who are 'too loyal to the status quo, too loyal to the assumed and presumed ideas of The Establishment they work for, and who either do not see, do not want to see, are too 'brainwashed' to see, are too scared to challenge, and/or are too happy with their $100,000 plus salary and lifestyle to want to challenge, an assumption and/or a whole set of assumptions that may be simply wrong, and/or -- worse -- pathological. This is where Erich Fromm's concept of 'the pathology of normalcy' (See 'The Sane Society') comes to life, and needs to be fully examined by those theorists who are still idealistically striving for 'the pursuit of truth, fairness, justice and The Enlightenment Way'.

It is easy to lose touch with these values in a sea of cultural and individual, pathological narcissism.

I have another dialectic formula here that is not too profound. Cultural narcissism stimulates and shapes more and more individual narcissism. And individual narcissism, in turn, stimulates and shapes more and more cultural narcissism. The two co-factors -- cultural narcissism and individual narcissism -- are dialectically and often pathologically entwined. Each co-influences the embellishment and exasperation of the other with both individual and cultural narcissism escalating in the process.

However, pathological narcissism -- in and by itself -- is a house of cards that will eventually tumble under its own weight and instability. Worded otherwise, unbridled individual and cultural narcissism will eventually self-destruct in its own toxic poisons.

Historically, we have seen this over and over again -- from Plato's time in Athens to hedonistic fall of Rome.

We have seen this in the 'deconstruction' and decline of the Roman Church once too much narcissistic greed and power had permeated inside leading to one or more various 'religious Reformations'.

We have seen this in The American Revolution -- too much greed and power coming from the British and 'marginalizing' the Americans.

We have seen this in The French Revolution. Again too much power and greed at the top.

We have seen this in The American Civil War where slaves were being treated as 'non-people.

Now many men on this side of the Atlantic Ocean are wondering whether or not -- if not downright righteously and angrily believing (myself included) that -- the 'pendulum of civil justice has not swung significantly too far the other way incriminating men for domestic violations or sexual assaults where there is more of a need for 'bilateral, two-way, two fault, dialectic justice'

We have seen corporate narcissism just recently bury (or allegedly bury) the American Financial Sector -- and with it the Main Street Housing Market and both collapsed together as well as most of the other financial markets around the world that were connected to these two American markets.

Wherever cultural and individual narcissism proliferates over other more ethical human behavior patterns, generally, there is eventually a collapse. (The only people not collapsing under this this rule of thumb are the ones that are high enough on the corporate ladder that they have found other ways of narcissistically protecting themselves like these 'back door bonus contracts, escape clauses, and severance packages. These corporate executives are like 'pilots who jump from their burning plane with their parachutes attached while the rest of the passengers go down with the plane -- in flames.)

Ayn Rand's ethics -- the core of her ethical-morality -- 'The Virtue of Selfishness' is fundamentally flawed to the extent that it denies Kantian 'ethical reciprocity'. (Don't do unto others what you would not others to do to you.)

Selfishness or narcissism in and by itself, is an ethical-moral value that is one-sided, it is homeostatically out of balance relative to living in any supposed 'civil society'.

Narcissism absolutely needs its polar, paradoxical, ethical-moral 'alter-ego' in order to be homeostatically balanced properly -- and that alter-ego is 'altruism'.

Similarly, if an organization, an institution, a corporation, a society, a culture --like The Psychoanalytic Institute -- does not contain within it a 'deconstructive element', 'a Deconstructive Ego', then it will narcissistically pathologize, toxify, and ultimately self-destruct...

The Deconstructive Ego is the mental, the psychological, the philosophical, the legal, and the political equivalent of 'the liver'. Biologically, the liver removes toxins and pathogens from the body in whatever means it has available to it -- the bowels, the bladder, the immune system, the skin...

The Deconstructive Ego functions in similar fashion on a psychological, philosophical, legal, and political level. It removes pathogens and toxins from the individual's psyche, the organization's psyche, the society's psyche, the culture's psyche.

If there is no Deconstructive Ego, no Deconstructive Element, in a society -- which happens when there is no 'freedom of speech', 'freedom of the press' and 'freedom of philosophical analysis' -- then overwhelmingly narcissistic toxins and pathogens are going to poison the society, the culture, until it self-destructs.

Back to Freud and Psychoanalysis.

Freud was a very active 'Creative-Constructive' theorist. He was also a very active Deconstructionist. Freud was constantly changing and modifying his own theories throughout his own lifetime.

However, Freud was not very good at accepting -- or even properly listening too -- the 'deconstructionist criticisms' of other Psychoanalytic and non-Psychoanalytic theorists. He was too righteous, too narcissistic, too authoritarian, too anal-retentive when it came to listening to other theorists criticize -- and modify -- his own Psychoanalytic theories. How many theorists did he lose -- I can't count them all -- Breuer, Adler, Jung, Reik, Rank, Ferenczi, and that is just off the top of my head; indeed, I could also include the 'post-Freudians', the 'neo-Freudians', and the 'anti-Freudians'...Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Leif Erickson, Harry Stack Sullivan, Berne, Perls, and who knows whether Freud would have ever accepted the 'Object Relationists' and all their various deviations from Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis such as: Melanie Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip, Kohut...and many others...

And last of all their was Jeffrey Masson who turned our attention back to Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory in 1896. Why did Freud abandon a theory that seemed to have at least a significant 'truth element' in it?

Masson's answer to this question was rather harsh and non-forgiving -- rightly or wrongly so -- which in turn brought down the rather harsh and non-forgiving 'righteous superego' of the Psychoanalytic Establishment on Masson.

Freud 'lost moral courage' -- according to Masson's interpretation, analysis, and judgment of the situation. (Masson, The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory', 1984, 1985, 1992, preface)

Freud lost moral courage because he did not want to jeopardize his career in medicine, psychiatry, and Psychoanalysis. He succumbed to the external social and economic pressures, forces, leverage applied against him by 'non-believing' Psychiatrists who had the political and economic power to make or break Freud's early Psychiatric and Psychoanalytic career. So argues Masson (The Assault, 1992.)

Masson could be at least partly right. It is quite possible that Freud had legitimate reason to fear the 'greater political and economic power' of other, older Psychiatrists and Doctors in his profession who could have potentially ruined his career.

Indeed, it could be easily argued that what could have happened to Freud in 1896 if he had continued to 'open the social can of worms' of childhood sexual abuse is exactly what did happen to Masson in the 1980s some 85 to 90 years later.

Masson's career in Psychoanalysis was destroyed in the 1980s because he ethically persisted in an area where Freud -- for whatever reason -- backed away from, and didn't come back too often to this most controversial of issues, for the remainder of his long career (some 40 years).

Still, I will follow and accept Masson's logical argument about 50 percent of the way -- and no further. Not into the 'loss of moral courage' judgment.

If Freud wanted only to stay clear away from the most controversial issue of childhood sexual abuse, he could have done this much more easily than by 'turning Psychoanalysis upside down to do it'.

Freud didn't need to fully engage in, obsess with, and trumpet his 'new' Psychoanalytic theory of 'Childhood Sexuality, Oedipal and Fantasy Theory' just to escape the heat of talking about childhood sexual abuse and its relation to hysteria.

So why then did Freud turn Psychoanalysis upside down from 'The Seduction Theory' to 'The Childhood Sexual Fantasy/Oedipal Theory'?

Freud did this between 1896 and let us say 1899 (his essay 'Screen Memories') because he thought he was right. Period.

No loss of moral courage. Or maybe some loss of moral courage to the extent that he steered away from the topic of childhood sexual abuse for most of the rest of his career.

However, how many of wouldn't have done the same? Particularly, in that 'highly patriarchal culture'. Knowing that by 'blowing the horn of child sexual abuse' you might be jeopardizing your own career, your own economic stability. It may be a sad statement of human motivation stemming all the way back to the philosophy of 'Sophism' in ancient Greece (who believed basically in the principle of 'subjective ethical relativism' based on 'monetary narcissism'), through Stoicism, Cynicism, Epicureanism, Hobbes, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Marx's 'cynical pessimism' relative to 'Narcissistic Capitalism': 'When money talks, ethics walks.' (my personal philosophical rendition of what Marx believed).

Ethical righteousness supersedes personal narcissism only when the personal narcissism doesn't involve us. (Call this 'the philosophy and psychology of personal and/or group exclusionism and marginalization').

Now, to be sure, this is a generalization as well -- and some might say an over-generalization. Every generalization carries the seeds of its own self-destruction which is contained in exactly that part of 'life and truth' that lies outside of the boundaries of the generalization. (This is a DGB Post-Hegelian extrapolation of a Hegelian idea.)

Narcissism and ethics are 'dialectic antagonists and war partners' (unless you follow 'The Virtue of Selfishness' Philosophy of Ayn Rand). We all have to walk the plank of personal narcissism vs. personal ethics each and every day. Dionysus and Narcissus vs. Apollo. (Perhaps an unfair fight -- two against one.) We all have to make a 'Kierkegaardian either/or choice' at different points in the day as we walk out onto our existential plank -- the plank and the choices that end up defining us:

Either jump into Dionysus and Narcissus' (non-ethical) pool. Or jump into Apollo's (ethical) pool. Depends partly on our character, partly on the context of the situaiton. Our impulses. Our restraints. Our values. The extent of the social, political and/or economic forces being used against us. And/or on the restraints and forces being used by ourselves, against ourselves.

Apollo, Dionysus, Zeus, Hera, Gaia, Approdite, Aries, Cupid, God, Satan, Jesus...are all mythological-relgious projections and extensions of ourselves and our own inner conflicts between good and evil, narcissism and altruism, narcissism and ethics...patriarchy and matriarchy...love and war, love, lust, and reason...

Back to the issue of 'moral courage'...

How many of us don't choose to 'tell people what they don't want to hear' particularly if that person is our boss who could potentially end our job or career with perhaps just a little too much 'honesty', 'bluntness', 'internal congruence and essence' coming out of our mouth?

How many politicians turn their back on the number of ethical transgressions committed in the process of 'government functioning' (and/or dysfunctioning)?

Would Dr. Masson have shown the same 'moral courage' if he had the opportunity to re-live the 1980s all over again? Would he have re-endured a 10 year lawsuit against Janet Malcolm and The New Yorker -- all over again -- if he had the chance to 're-trumpet his moral righteousness and courage'?

Maybe. Maybe not. I take my hat off to you Dr. Masson. I think that your work has been important -- indeed, imperative -- to the proper evolution of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Psychology/Psychotherapy/Psychiatry in general.

I respect your moral courage.

Which is not to say that I think you are completely right about Freud's motivation -- or the validity of The Seduction Theory in general.

The Seduction Theory is a lopsided, one-sided, overly reductionist theory -- just as The Oedipal Theory is on the other side of The Psychoanalytic fence. It remains for a Post-Hegelian philosopher and psychological theorist like myself to integrate or synthesize the differences between Freud's Traumacy Theory, his Seduction Theory, and his Oedipal Theory -- along with any other theories that may be equally relevant. (Adler, Jung, Reich, Fairbairn, Guntrip, Berne, Kohut, Perls...)

And everything that I have read from other biographers and theorists -- other than from you, Dr. Masson -- have stated that Freud did not lack moral courage, in fact, this was a strength, not a weakness, in his character. There is an Erich Fromm quote in this regard that is particularly relevant. (Sorry, I will have to search for it -- I think I will find it in 'Sigmund Freud's Mission'.

No, Freud may have committed some ethical transgressions in his life, knowingly or unknowingly, such as in his 'trumpeting of cocaine usage and giving it to patients', such as in the Emma Ekstein medical fiasco, such as in perhaps steering away from the controversial issue of childhood sexual abuse. But not to the tune of turning Psychoanalysis on its ear -- and re-theorizing everything.

This he did because he believed what he was doing was right -- even if it was partly or mainly wrong in the extent of his 'theoretical over-compensations'.

Freud was a 'theoretical extremist'. He would either steer 'hard right' and/or overcompensate and then 'steer hard left'.

It remains for other, clearer heads, and more moderate minds, to creatively integrate Freud's left and right, up and down, theoretical extremism.

That is our intent here -- in Hegel's Hotel.

-- dgb, June 29th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations,

-- Are still in process...

..............................................................................

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (born March 28, 1941 as Jeffrey Lloyd Masson in Chicago, Illinois) is an American author, residing in New Zealand. Masson is known for his conclusions about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. In his book The Assault on Truth, Masson argued that Freud may have abandoned his seduction theory because he feared that granting the truth of his female patients' claims that they had been sexually abused would hinder the acceptance of his psychoanalytic methods. He has also written about animals and animal rights.

Contents

1 Life and career
2 Views on the Seduction Theory
3 Recent work
4 Personal life
5 Name
6 Writings by Masson
6.1 Reviews of his books
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links

Life and career

Masson is the son of Jacques Moussaieff, a French Mizrahi Sephardic Jew of Bukharian ancestry, and Diana (Dina) Zeiger from a Ashkenazi strict Orthodox Jewish family. Both parents were followers of the British Jewish mystic Paul Brunton. During the 1940s and 1950s, Brunton often lived with them, eventually designating Jeffrey as his heir apparent. In 1956, Diana and Jacques Masson moved to Uruguay because Brunton believed that a third world war was imminent. Jeffrey and his sister Linda followed in 1959.

At Brunton's urging, Masson went to Harvard University to study Sanskrit. While at Harvard, Masson became disillusioned with Brunton. Brunton and his influence and the Masson family form the subject of Masson's autobiographical book My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion. Harvard University granted Masson a B.A. in 1964 and a Ph.D. with Honors in 1970. His degrees were in Sanskrit and Indian Studies. While undertaking his Ph.D., Masson also studied, supported by fellowships, at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, the University of Calcutta, and the University of Poona.

He taught Sanskrit and Indian Studies at the University of Toronto, 1969-80, reaching the rank of Professor. He has also held short term appointments at Brown University, the University of California, and the University of Michigan. From 1981 to 1992, he was a Research Associate, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, at the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Views on the Seduction Theory

In 1970, Masson began studying to become a psychoanalyst at the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute, completing a full clinical training course in 1978. During this time, he befriended the psychoanalyst Kurt Eissler and became acquainted with Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna Freud. Eissler designated Masson to succeed him as Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives after his and Anna Freud's death. Masson learned German and studied the history of psychoanalysis. In 1980 Masson was appointed Projects Director of the Freud Archives, with full access to Freud's correspondence and other unpublished papers. While perusing this material, Masson concluded that Freud might have rejected the seduction theory in order to advance the cause of psychoanalysis and to maintain his own place within the psychoanalytic inner circle. [1]

Masson's actions, along with those of Kurt Eissler and Peter Swales, form the subject of In the Freud Archives, an article in the New Yorker by Janet Malcolm, which she later expanded into a book.

In 1981, Masson's controversial conclusions were discussed in a series of New York Times articles by Ralph Blumenthal, to the dismay of the psychoanalytic establishment. Masson was subsequently dismissed from his position as project director of the Freud Archives. and stripped of his membership in psychoanalytic professional societies. Masson was defended by Alice Miller [2] and Muriel Gardiner ("While striving not to take sides," Gardiner said, "I consider him a good and energetic worker and a worthwhile scholar.") [3]

Masson later wrote several books critical of psychoanalysis, including The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. In the introduction to The Assault on Truth, Masson admitted that, "My pessimistic conclusions may possibly be wrong. The documents may in fact allow a very different reading." [4] Janet Malcolm interviewed Masson at length when writing her long New Yorker article on this controversy. Masson sued the New Yorker for defamation, claiming that Malcolm had misquoted him. The ensuing trial drew considerable attention.[5]The decade-long, $US10 million lawsuit came to a close when the court ruled in the New Yorker 's favor.[6]

In 1985, Masson edited and translated the complete correspondence of Freud with Wilhelm Fliess after having convinced Anna Freud to make all of it available. He also looked up the original places and documents in La Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris,[7] where Freud had studied with Charcot. Masson has written that people used to be very interested in himself but as far as the cause was concerned, there is silence from the scientific community. [8]

[edit] Recent work
Since the early 1990s, Masson has written a number of books on the emotional life of animals, one of which, When Elephants Weep, has been translated into 20 languages. He has explained this radical change in the subject of his writings as follows:

“ "I'd written a whole series of books about psychiatry, and nobody bought them. Nobody liked them. Nobody. Psychiatrists hated them, and they were much too abstruse for the general public. It was very hard to make a living, and I thought, 'As long as I'm not making a living, I may as well write about something I really love: animals.'"[9] ”

Masson also wrote a book about his new home country New Zealand, including an interview with Sir Edmund Hillary. [10] Among other things, Masson and Hillary talk about Alexandra David-Neel and the story of her Tulpa, both of them having read her books Magic and Mystery in Tibet, Initiation and Initiates in Tibet and My Journey to Lhasa. Masson says that he met her in 1957 when he was 16, at her country house at Digne in the south of France.

Personal life

Masson is married to Leila Masson, a pediatrician. [11] They have two sons, Ilan and Manu. He also has a daughter, Simone, by a previous marriage. [12] Masson was once engaged to University of Michigan feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, who wrote the preface to his A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality, and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century.

Name

Jeffrey Masson's grandgrandfather Shlomo Moussaieff (rabbi) was a kabbalist and founder of the Bukharian Quarter in Jerusalem. His grandfather Henry Mousaieff changed his familyname from Moussaieff to Masson. Jeffrey Masson changed his middlename from Lloyd to Moussaieff.

Masson's father's first cousin is Shlomo Moussaieff (businessman). Masson's first cousin is pianist James Raphael and his second cousin is First Lady of Iceland Dorrit Moussaieff.

[edit] Writings by Masson
1974. "India and the Unconscious: Erik Erikson on Gandhi," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 55: 519-26. Discussion by T. C. Sinha: 527.
1976. "Perversions-some observations", Israel Ann. Psychiat. rel. Disc., (1976b), 14, 354-61.
1976. (with Terri C. Masson) "The Navel of Neurosis: Trauma, Memory and Denial.", paper presented to the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society [13]
1978 (with Terri C. Masson), "Buried Memories on the Acropolis. Freud's Relation to Mysticism and Anti-Semitism", International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 59: 199-208.
1980. The Oceanic Feeling: The Origins of Religious Sentiment in Ancient India. (Table of contents)
1981. The Peacock's Egg: Love Poems from Ancient India, W. S. Merwin and J. Moussaieff Masson, eds. ISBN 0-86547-059-6
1984. The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. Farrar Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-374-10642-8
1984. "Freud and the Seduction Theory A challenge to the foundations of psychoanalysis," The Atlantic Monthly, February 1984.
1985 (editor). The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904. ISBN 0-674-15420-7
1986. A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century. ISBN 0-374-13501-0, last edition 1988
1988. Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing. ISBN 0-689-11929-1
1990. Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of A Psychoanalyst. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-52368-X, new edition 2003
1993. My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion, Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-56778-4
Dogs Never Lie About Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs.
1995. When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Life of Animals.
The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals.
The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey Into the Feline Heart. ISBN 0345448820
The Cat Who Came in from the Cold. Wheeler. ISBN 1587249146
The Emperors Embrace Reflections on Animal Families and Fatherhood.
The Evolution of Fatherhood: A Celebration of Animal and Human Families.
Raising the Peaceable Kingdom: What Animals Can Teach Us about the Social Origins of Tolerance and Friendship.
Lost Prince : The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. [14]
Sex and Yoga: Psychoanalysis and the Indian Religious Experience in Vishnu on Freud's Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism, T.G. Vaidyanathan & Jeffrey J. Kripal (editors): , Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195658353, Paperback (Edition: 2003)[15]
Slipping into Paradise: Why I live in New Zealand. ISBN 0-345-46634-9
2006. Altruistic Armadillos - Zen-Like Zebras: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals. ISBN 978-0-345-47881-8 (0-345-47881-9)
See Masson's praise of the book by Luna Tarlo, the mother of Andrew Cohen.
1995, "A Note on U.G. Krishnamurti."

[edit] Reviews of his books
The Original Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904: By William McGrath.
Against Therapy:
By Jeanne Stubbs.
By Wray Herbert.
Final Analysis: By Michael Sacks.
Breaking Away From the Cult: By Carol Tavris.

[edit] References
^ "Did Freud's Isolation Lead Him to Reverse Theory on Neurosis?" by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, August 25, 1981
^ PSYCHOLOGIE HEUTE, April 1987, P.21, 22: "Im Gegensatz zu manchen Interpreten, die, wie zum Beispiel Marianne Krüll, Marie Balmary oder Jeffrey Masson, Freuds Abkehr von der Wahrheit als Folge seiner Familiengeschichte deuten, sehe ich diesen Schritt als Folge und Ausdruck unserer jahrtausendealten kinderfeindlichen Tradition, in der wir auch heute noch leben. Die Ergebnisse der oben genannten historischen Forscher können trotzdem korrekt sein, aber ich meine, daß es Freud trotz der persönlichen Familiengeschichte möglich gewesen wäre, seiner Entdeckung treu zu bleiben, wenn die Gesellschaft als Ganzes nicht so kinderfeindlich gewesen wäre, wenn schon damals andere, freiere Erziehungsmuster denkbar gewesen wären. Doch zur Zeit Freuds war es noch absolut unmöglich, die Unschuld der Eltern in Frage zu stellen." Alice Miller in interview entitled Wie Psychotherapien das Kind verraten
^ "Freud Archives Research Chief Removed in Dispute Over Yale Talk" by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times November 9, 1981.
^ Masson, Jeffrey (1992). The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. New York: Harper Perennial. xxxv. ISBN 0-06-097457-5.
^ David Margolick (1994-11-03). "Psychoanalyst Loses Libel Suit Against a New Yorker Reporter". The New York Times.
^ SMH article October 6, 2007
^ History of La Salpêtrière
^ Masson, J., 1990. Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-52368-X.
^ Powells.com Interviews - Jeffrey Masson
^ Masson, J., "A Conversation with a Great Ordinary Kiwi: Sir Edmund Hillary," chpt. 7 in Slipping into Paradise.
^ [1]
^ [2]
^ [3]
^ Review
^ Table of Contents

[edit] Further reading
Kurt R. Eissler, 2001. Freud and the seduction theory: A brief love affair, New York: International Universities Press.
Janet Malcolm, 2002. In the Freud Archives, New York Review of Books. ISBN 159017027X
Sthitaprajna (Perfect Yogi) - Part 2
Luna Tarlo, 1997. The Mother of God. Plover Press. ISBN 9781570270437

[edit] External links
From Jeffrey Masson's Website

Masson's website.
About Jeff (with new Photo of Jeffrey and his family)
Photo
Articles

"Scholars seek the hidden Freud in newly emerging letters." The first of two NYT articles by Ralph Blumenthal, published August 18, 1981.
"Till Press Do Us Part: The Trial of Janet Malcolm and Jeffrey Masson."
Interviews

Transcript of an interview: Jeffrey Masson talking with Kirsten Garrett about Sigmund Freud and Emma Eckstein/ first broadcast on The Science Show in 1986, second broadcast 3 June 2006 presented by Robyn Williams
[4] A conversation about the lives of animals with Susan McCarthy and Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason on Jun 30, 1995, Duration 60 min (Audio)
"Walking on the Beach with Jeffrey Masson's Cats," November 14, 2002
"Conversation between Masson and Richard Fidler. Related Audio, December 14, 2007.
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Moussaieff_Masson"

...............................................................................

Part 3: The Freud-Masson Seduction Theory Controversy

2010-04-03T03:25:00.001-07:00

Written August 16th, 2009

Every time I start this essay -- looking for more and more interpretive and evaluative clarity, first in myself, and second in the way I convey my thinking to you -- I start in essentially the same place and end up up traveling to, and finishing up, somewhere completely, or at least partly different.

I'm not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. I think it is a good thing.

It brings us to this essential point:

Every thing is subject to change -- including human thinking, both 'inside and/or outside the box' which is our own particular representation and construction of the millions of different stimuli that life throws at us, both inside and outside our minds and bodies.

I keep going over this whole 'Freud and Classical Psychoanalysis vs. Masson and the 'Psychoanalytic Deconstructionists' relative to this now 113 year old Seduction Theory Controversy' which Masson re-opened very forcefully and dramatically in the early 1980s.

I pound my head with this issue, going back over the clinical facts and the editorial conclusions from both sides, trying to establish for myself where 'right' and 'wrong' is, 'good' and 'bad', 'guilty' and 'innocent'.

One time Freud is wrong but innocent of all moral-ethical charges against him. Another time -- he is not. There is still the 'Emma Ekstein scandal' and what would seem to be Freud's almost 20 year involvement with 'cocaine' (1894-1904) in which Freud was passing out cocaine like it was aspirin to his friends, probably his wife, his patients, probably Fliess and/or visa versa, a patient died to some combination of morphine and cocaine addiction under Freud's watch...even though no one knew at the beginning what the properties of cocaine were, how dangerous it was, how addictive it was, and other doctors were experimenting with it in similar ways, still Freud was involved in some highly risky and dangerous forms of 'medical and surgical treatment' that seemed to fly in the face of (without too much concern on Freud's part) the medical establishment's Hippocratic Oath: 'First, Do the patient no harm!'

But then again, there have always been risky and dangerous forms of 'therapy' in the evolution of medical treatment, and even today, one can quite legitimately ask the question: 'How closely do radiologists and chemo-therapists adhere to The Hippocratic Oath?'

Still, Freud's involvement with cocaine between approximately 1894 and 1904 is a bigger taboo topic than even his abandonment of The Seduction Theory between 1896 and 1899, and someone has to legitimately ask the question -- no different than an athlete who is known to be, or have been, on steroids -- 'To what extent did Freud's cocaine involvement during this time period (1894-1904) affect his theoretical as well as therapeutic work?'

And more specifically, did it have any affect on Freud's abandonment of The Seduction Theory and his evolution into 'Fantasy Theory'?

Doesn't it seem rather strange that no orthodox Psychoanalyst in approximately 110 years has ever professionally touched this question, let alone attempted to answer it, not even to my knowledge, Dr. Masson?

And then there is -- the 'bull in the china shop' -- Dr. Masson. Did Dr. Masson commit any epistemological and/or ethical errors or omissions in this 'Watergate' of a Psychoanalytic controversy/scandal? Such as accusing Freud of 'losing moral courage' when none of us 80 to 100 years later can profess to know for sure what Freud's mindset was back between 1896 and 1900. Did Masson overstep his own ethical boundaries in this respect -- and kill his own career in Psychoanalysis in the process?

And then there is the question of whether Freud's 'Seduction Theory' -- meaning his 'Childhood Sexual Assault Theory' -- was ever fully justified by the clinical evidence in the first place? I have made this point this point before. Freud had a propensity for jumping to fast, provocative generalizations and theoretical conclusions (The Seduction Theory, The Oedipal Theory, The Childhood Sexuality and Sexual Fantasy Theory, The Death Instinct Theory...) that had a tendency of overstepping the boundaries of 'good epistemology' -- 'good rational-empiricism'. It almost seemed like Freud had a propensity throughout his life -- almost as if it was a 'transference repetition compulsion and/or serial behavior pattern' -- to 'shock people first', and then to 'justify' his provocative, controversial, shocking 'scientific conclusions' with 'rhetorical arguments' that were well put together and seemingly tightly argued -- almost like a prosecution or defense lawyer putting together a 'good case' -- even though, when you really delve into the case and get to the bottom of it, you find that the case, is at best, based on very 'flimsy' and 'far-stretched' clinical evidence that could just as well or better support 5 or 10 other completely different clinical theories.

Again and again, I need to impress upon you as a reader, that life offers each and every one of us a myriad of ever changing, connected and unconnected, stimuli that can be interpreted and evaluated in a multitude of different ways depending on our own personal background, our own experiences, our own narcissistic biases and interests...so to create a theory -- any theory -- is to start to 'think inside a box', 'a theoretical box of our own making' which in effect, 'leads the witness', leads the reader, in a particular direction, towards the conclusion and the theory of our own making -- which may be only one of many other possible conclusions and theories that another person could draw from the same 'myriad of connected and/or not connected stimuli'.

Furthermore, as soon as we start to abstract, as soon as a theorist, we start to 'pick and choose' what evidence we will include and what evidence we will leave out we are once again, leading the witness, leading the reader, on a trip to either 'epistemological and/or ethical clarification' and/or on a trip to 'Never, Never Land' -- a 'boxed theory of our own making', good and/or bad, which for better or for worse, is a 'sound bite' or a 'visual bite' that leaves part of life out and this part of life that is left out may be either non-important or it could be critically important and neglected, suppressed, marginalized.

This problem of 'thinking inside a narcissistically biased theoretical box' is just as relevant to Masson 're-supporting and re-trumpeting the Seduction Theory' as it does for Freud abandoning the Seduction Theory and moving onto 'The Oedipal Theory' and 'Childhood/Adult Fantasy or Phantasy Theory'.

That is why I like, for the most part, to take a combined 'Spinozian-Hegelian' approach and go with the assumption that there is usually a 'combination of truth, distortion, and fantasy in any and every theory' -- not just The Seduction Theory, and not just the Oedipal Theory -- but both as they 'dialectically engage' with each other.

And then there is the issue of 'political correctness' -- what is 'politically correct and politically incorrect' at any given time in history, in this culture or that one, in this society or that one, in this institution or that one. What is deemed to 'fall within the dominant theoretical box at any given time'? And what is deemed to 'fall outside of this dominant theoretical box' -- with the very likely possibility/probability of being suppressed, marginalized, steamrolled over? Again this applies to both Freud and Orthodox Psychoanalysis on the one hand, and any and all forms of 'Anti-Orthodox-Psychoanalysis' on the other hand.

As Western thinkers, we are trained over and over again to think according to a combination of 'Aristolean and Kierkgaardian logic': 'either/or', 'good or bad', 'Right or Wrong', 'Us or Them'...and marginalized in the background is a more 'Spinozian-post-Hegelian' approach to logic that aims to think more wholistically as opposed to reductionistically, dialectically and multi-dialectically as opposed to 'mono-theoretically'...

Again and again, we hear the expression 'think outside the box' (I just heard it on the television show, 'Criminal Minds' the other day) but how many of us can actually do this? How many of us can actually think outside of the dominant theory that rules the day -- or alternatively, how many of us can actually even escape our own more 'unorthodox theory' if we are going against the 'grain of the wood', going against 'Corporate or Institutional or Bureaucratic Policy'...

I know something -- indeed a lot -- about going against Corporate Policy. I just resigned from a $60,000 dispatcher's job because I violated 'Corporate Policy', was suspended...and then resigned...That has consequences -- very real, economic consequences that are usually best fully thought out before we 'brazenly shoot our mouth off'...and perhaps regret it afterwords. Talk about -Aristolean-Kierkaardian logic -- here is an example of Aristolean-Kierkgaardian logic that we all must face each and every day:

To rebel or not to rebel, that is the question. (With a little help from Shakespeare.) Some people can compromise and make their point a little more diplomatically than others. Usually I can 'white wash' or 'sugar coat' what I want to say. But sometimes -- given a particular context -- I don't. And then I have to live with the potential and/or actual consequences of being a little too dramatic in my actions. How many of us have not been here at one point in our lives or another -- some more often than others?

I have a life history of advancing and/or trumpeting 'Unorthodox Theories' -- of my own making, and/or of someone else's making -- indeed, to be sure, there is a 'Transference Complex' here, a 'transference repetition compulsion' based upon my various compensations and identifications with my father's 'authoritarian' personality.

It is amazing that Melanie Klein managed to stay within the Psychoanalytic Establishment with all her 'radically un-Classical Psychoanalytic ideas'. But she kept insisting that she was 'staying loyal and true to Freud'. By the time the rest of the 'Object Relationist' theorists came along (Fairbairn, Hartmann, Jacobson, Winnicott, Guntrip...) and The 'Self-Psychologists' (Kohut), Object Relations had become an accepted 'deviation' from Classical Psychoanalysis when they are probably just as different from what Freud wrote to anything Adler, Jung, Perls, or Masson wrote... They all -- in the broadest sense of the word, and their many conflicting paradigms, be called 'Psychoanalysts'...

It is out of the DGB post-Hegelian Evolutionary Multi-Dialectic of: 1. 'multi-thesis'; 2. 'multi-anti-thesis'; and 3. 'multi-synthesis' -- that Psychoanalysis breathes its strongest fire of life -- becomes life in that it more accurately reflects and represents life from all dialectic sides pulsating towards a central 'essence'. Call that essence what you want -- relative to Psychoanalysis, I like to call it 'transference or even 'the progressing and regressing dialectic force of life itself' of which 'transference' plays a central role in this many act play, this existential drama -- both personal and collective -- this conflict between 'staying the same and/or regressing or self-sabotaging in the throes of the repetition compulsion, the throes of the paralyzing and petrifying transference' vs. 'moving forward towards rebirth, re-creation, regeneration, growth, modification, transformation, the myth of the Phoenix...' The Thanatos Transference vs. the Phoenix Transference. 'Eros Transference' may not be a good way to describe the 'Transference of the Phoenix' because unfortunately, often Eros aligns himself with Thanatos -- in a whirlwind of self-sabotage and self-destruction. This is so in a 'Seduction-Abandonment' Neurosis -- 'Eros' providing the energy for the 'seduction' and 'Thanatos' lurking in The Shadows, The Underground, providing the 'rejecting-death energy' of the 'abandonment'.

But we are getting way ahead of ourselves. Let us follow this hugely captivating 'Dialectic-Psychoanalytic-Existential' drama a little more slowly.

I am reminded of a passage I just read from 'In and Out of the Garbage Pail (1969) by Perls and his favorite quote by Einstein who he met once:

................................................................................

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

Albert Einstein

.............................................................................

Let's get down to business.

There are some serious ethical charges that are flirting around the edges of The Seduction Theory Controversy such as 1. Freud's cocaine usage -- and giving cocaine to his friends, his wife, and his patients -- as well as to himself when cocaine was brand new to doctors and no one yet clearly knew or understood its essential strongly addictive and life-threatening properties; and 2. the Emma Ekstein debacle where Freud and Fliess together orchestrated a brutally bad, completely unwarranted, and life-threatening nasal surgery on one of his patient's, Emma Ekstein, who almost died from the surgery when Fliess left a long string of medical gauze up her nasal passage and it became infected and painful, leading Freud to find another doctor/surgeon who looked at Emma, found the gauze stuck up and buried in her nose, and removed it, causing blood to come gushing out of her nose til she almost didn't have a pulse. Freud was sick to his stomach and left the room.

However, neither of these incidents -- nor Freud's fear of 'being professionally blackballed and economically shut out' for expounding a new theory of hysteria that stated that 'child sexual abuse was the main precipitating cause of hysteria' (what became known as 'The Seduction Theory' (read by Freud at The Society for Psychiatry and Neurology, Vienna, April 21st, 1896) -- none of these factors in my opinion were he main reason for Freud switching theories 180 degrees from 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' to 'Oedipal-Childhood and Adulthood Sexual Fantasy Theory'.

Instead, let me postulate another theory. Call this the 'transference-projection and sublimation theory'.

My experience with theorists -- myself included -- is that they tend to 'project' and/or 'sublimate' their own personal, private transference issues and complexes onto and into their work. Often, no other theory of 'theory-making' is needed except that theorists then often tend to 'project their own transference material' into their clinical-psycho-therapeutic relationships which in turn can either help or greatly hinder, bias, and pathologize the therapeutic process of working with their clients. For a psychoanalyst this information and this 'phenomenon' is nothing new -- they have known this information for a long while and even given it a name: they call it 'counter-transference'.

Thus, my theory here is that Freud's psychoanalytic counter-transferences -- or worded otherwise, his own personal transference complexes -- were largely responsible for his changeover in Psychoanalytic theory, post-1896, from traumacy-seduction theory to Oedipal-Childhood and Adult Sexual Fantasy Theory.

However, in order to present this theory, I need to step outside of Classical Psychoanalytic Theory in order to expound my own 'Integrative-Post-Hegelian- GAP-DGB' Theory as in -- the key acronym here 'GAP' standing for: 'Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic'.

You see, at least one other very strange and mysterious thing happened between 1895 and 1896 that neither any Classical Psychoanalyst, nor any Object Relations Psychoanalyst, nor even Dr. Jeffrey Masson with his return to 'The Seduction Theory' has caught. The only one who has caught anything close to what I am going to discuss here -- and he caught the nail flush with the theoretical hammer -- is Fritz Perls.

Now I am going to say something here that may sound very strange and foreign to most clinicians and psychotherapists.

Freud was essentially a Gestalt Therapist before he was a Psychoanalyst.

Similarly, the type of psychotherapy that Joseph Breuer practiced on Anna O (or that Anna O. taught Joseph Breuer) and the type of 'hypnotic psychotherapy' that Charcot practiced on his patients in the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, France -- all of these similar and/or different renditions of 'memory psychotherapy' had as much in common -- or more -- with Gestalt Therapy as they did with what would eventually become 'Classical Psychoanalysis' (let us say, post-1899).

There are some other clinicians, psychotherapists, and psychoanalyst who are extremely important here -- among them: Wilhelm Reich and his concept of 'body armor'; Melanie Klein and her concepts of 'good' and 'bad' objects; Ronald Fairbairn and his concepts of 'exciting object' and 'rejecting' object; Alfred Alder and his theory of our 'conscious early recollections' offering us 'metaphors' of 'the essence of our lives' (changed into GAP-DGB theory, this reads our 'obsessive-compulsions', our 'repetition-compulsions', and our 'transference complexes'); and Heinz Kohut and his concept of 'narcissistic transferences'.

Let us see, what else are we missing? Sandor Ferenzci and Anna Freud -- and their shared concept of 'identification with the aggressor' which I also call 'transference reversal' and/or 'topdog transference identification'.

Back to Fritz Perls. Fritz Perls met Sigmund Freud for the one and only time in 1936. It was barely a meeting. Rather, it was a lightning fast rejection. A greeting and parting 'gift' from Freud to Perls. Here is the encounter in Perls' own words from 'In and Out of The Garbage Pail' (1969):

.............................................................................

The Master was there, somewhere in the background. To meet him would have been too presumptuous. I had not yet earned such a privilege.

In 1936, I thought I had. Was I not the mainspring for the creation of one of his institutes and did I not come 4,000 miles to attend his congress. (I am itching to write His congress.)

I made an appointment, was received by an elderly woman (I believe his sister) and waited. Then a door opened about 2 and a half feet wide and there he was, before my eyes. It seemed strange that he would not leave the door frame, but at that time I knew nothing about his phobias.

'I came from South Africa to give a paper and to see you.'

'Well, and when are you going back?', he said.

I don't remember the rest of the (perhaps four-minute long) conversation. I was shocked and disappointed.

One of his sons was delegated to take me to dinner. We had my favorite dish, roast goose.

I had expected a quick 'hurt' reaction, but I was merely numbed. Then slowly, slowly, the stock phrases came; 'I'll show you -- you can't do this to me. This is what I get for my loyalty in my discussions with Kurt Goldstein.'

........................................................................

We will come back to this little encounter between Freud and Perls. It is extremely important. Indeed, psychoanalytically (from a GAP-DGB perspective), this was a 'topdog-identification-transference-reversal' encounter -- from Freud's side. If this terminology is unclear now, it shouldn't be by the time I finish this paper.

You see, Freud was a 'serial rejector' or more specifically, a 'serial abandoner' -- of men.

This was one of Freud's main 'transference neuroses' or 'transference complexes'. Or 'transference scripts'. A 'transference game' that Freud -- subconsciously or unconsciously -- liked to play. Except it was no 'game' in that it was 'deadly serious'. What made it a 'game' -- and here I bring to the foreground another critically important theorist that, until now, I had forgotten, i.e., Eric Berne -- was the element of 'gotcha' at the end of the transaction. And the fact that this was all a subconscious/unconscious 'repetition compulsion' in Freud's life.

What we have here is an ancient Chinese puzzle or riddle that badly needs to be solved. To use Freud's own metaphor, it is like the 'riddle of the Sphinx'.

Or to use another Freudian metaphor, we need to follow Freud's own transference neurosis to its 'childhood etiology' -- to the 'source of the Nile'.

I know that Freud used the 'source of the Nile' analogy relative to his expounding of 'The Seduction Theory' whereas the 'riddle of the Sphinx' analogy, I believe he used relative to his 'discovery of The Oedipal Complex'. (I will have to check the latter analogy -- although I would guess that both can probably be found in Freud's unabridged letters to Fliess; I know the first one can; it the second one that I will have to search down. (Masson, 1985)

'The Oedipal Complex' -- for those who may not know -- was Freud's theory that a man, as a boy, basically 'sexually fantasizes' about his mother and wants to 'sleep with her' while basically 'destroying his father' and/or taking his place in the process'; and alternatively, a woman as a girl sexually fantasizing about her dad and wanting to sleep with him while 'destroying and/or taking the esteemed place of her mother. (Freud later called this latter phenomenon regarding the woman and her father -- the 'Electra Complex'.

In my own approach, I 'water down' Freud's Oedipal Complex Theory to make it more 'realistically palatable' -- i.e., that the boy as a man is often romantically and/or sexually attracted to a woman who is like his mom; while the girl as a woman is often romantically and/or sexually attracted to a man like her dad. Or the opposite -- in which case we have what might be called 'The Reverse Oedipal or Electra Complex'.

You see, most people -- i.e. most 'academics' and/or 'professionals' believe that Freud's Traumacy-Seduction Theory and his Oedipal-Childhood Sexual Fantasy Theory were mutually exclusive. I don't. In the words of Ronald Fairbairn -- or my modified interpretation of him -- the 'rejecting object' is often the same as 'the exciting object'. Freud couldn't get his head around this aspect of 'the transference phenomenon' nor this aspect of The Traumacy-Seduction Theory because in his mind it violated 'the pleasure principle'. He was only partly right here. He came closest to understanding the 'repetition compulsion' and the phenomenon of 'transference' at the beginning of 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' when he talked about the possible connection between 'the repetition compulsion' and 'the mastery compulsion'. Bingo!

You got it right there, Dr. Freud. There was only one problem. 'The mastery compulsion' sounded an awful lot like 'the superiority complex' or 'superiority striving' -- and that sounded an awful lot like the thinking of one ex-Psychoanalyst whose work you had rejected a number of years before -- i.e., one Alfred Adler.

Which brings us to a bigger part of the problem here. By the time we get to -- let us say -- 1936 and Freud's brief meeting with Fritz Perls, Freud -- and Psychoanalysis as a whole (and as a transference projection of his personality) -- was like a combination of 'Scrooge' from 'A Christmas Carol' and 'Humpty Dumpty' in that all of the best elements of Freud's thinking, and all his various theories, and all the various theories of all his 'ex-colleagues' who he had ultimately rejected of whom Perls may have been the last one (off the top of my head: Adler, Jung, Ferenzci, Rank, Reich, Perls...Let me even include Masson.) -- were scattered all across the map like, well, 'Humpty Dumpty'.

Just think of what a Psychoanalytic 'smorgasbord' we could have if we would could bring all these brilliant theorists and therapists back into the Psychoanalytic fold!!!

We could have a huge post-Hegelian Psychoanalytic and ex-Psychoanalytic feast!!!

Just think of what a Hegelian multi-dialectic game of 'thesis', 'anti-thesis', and 'synthesis' we could play!!

We could have Traumacy Theorists. Seduction Theorists. Oedipal Theorists. Object Relationists. Adlerians. Jungians. Frommians. Transactional Analysts. Gestaltists.

We could have the richest Psychoanalytic Buffet that any theorist could possibly want to dine at.

All we would have to do is throw out all 'the conceptual narcissism' because that is the one 'professional defense mechanism' that is preventing Humpty Dumpty from being put back together properly again!!

Conceptual narcissism is the reason that Humpty Dumpty is scattered all across the globe.

Let us come back to Fritz Perls -- and Gestalt Therapy.

And to Alfred Adler.

And to the whole mystery of 'transference' which unbeknownst to many clinical psychologists, psychotherapists, and psycho-theorists is also very tied up to the whole 'traumacy-seduction-Oedipal' controversy.

We are still trying to unravel 'riddle of the Sphinx', and find the source of the Nile which is somewhere at the bottom of all these partly different but interconnected problems.

Adler had a few very important 'pieces' of the answer to the transference riddle.

Only conceptual narcissism stepped into the middle of things and greatly confused the issue -- put up a wall of 'smoke and mirrors'.

In Adler's terminology, the idea of a 'transference script and/or complex and/or neurosis' basically became a 'lifestyle script and/or complex and/or neurosis.

And in Adler's terminology and conceptuology, 'repressed, unconscious childhood memories' were out -- and 'conscious early childhood memories' were in.

And in Adler's terminology, 'mastery and repetition compulsion' basically became 'superiority striving'.

But anyway you want to look at it, there are some extremely important connections here that someone needs to properly address and point out their significance.

Conceptual narcissism or no conceptual narcissism.

Gestalt Psychology -- and Perls utilizing many of the 'wholistic' ideas from Gestalt Psychology in Gestalt Therapy (with help and influence from his wife Laura, Kurt Goldstein, Hefferline, and Goodman...) -- provided a much needed 'closure' to the Psychoanalytic problem of 'transference'.

............................................................................

Kurt Goldstein
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born November 6, 1878
Kattowitz, Province of Silesia
Died September 19, 1965
Nationality German
Fields Neurology
Institutions Institute for Research on the After-Effects of Brain Injury
Columbia University
Tufts University, Brandeis University
Doctoral advisor Carl Wernicke
Known for Holistic Method, Organismic theory
Influenced Frederick Perls, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Paul Tillich, Georges Canguilhem

Kurt Goldstein (November 6, 1878 - September 19, 1965) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist who was a pioneer in modern neuropsychology. He created a holistic theory of the organism based on Gestalt theory which deeply influenced the development of Gestalt therapy. His most important book in German Der Aufbau des Organismus (1934) has been published again in English: The Organism (1995) with an introduction by Oliver Sacks.

Goldstein was co-editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology.

................................................................................

The critically important concept here that Perls introduced to psychology and psychotherapy was not completely foreign to Psychoanalysis. Indeed, as I stated earlier in this essay, it can easily be argued that all of Breuer, Charcot, Freud, even Janet, were closer to being 'Gestalt Therapists' in those early days than they were to being 'Classical Psychoanalysts'.

The critical concept that Perls introduced to the understanding of transference was the Gestalt concept of 'the unfinished situation'.

But before we zero in on Perls, Gestalt Therapy, and the 'unfinished situation', there is another writer who very nicely 'closes the gap' between Freud, transference, the repetition compulsion, Adler -- and what is coming with Perls.

Aldo Carotenuto, author of 'Kant's Dove: The History of Transference in Psychoanalysis' (1986, 1989) saw the theoretical and therapeutic connections:

..........................................................................

It should be clear in what sense we have used the term repetition compulsion without the negative connotations attributed to it by Freud. It is obvious that a repetition compulsion characterized by the more or less unconscious intent to get over, by int of trying again and again, the obstacle which once got the better of us, paralyzing or mortally wounding us, is no longer destructive but, on the contrary, constructive. The difference between the two concepts is radical; they are poles apart. The immediate results can sometimes be the same, for if one persists in measuring oneself against an adversary that has proven itself superior, one risks extreme consequences. However, it is one thing to ask for a return match and quite another to want the humiliation of defeat.

Our concept is comparable to Adler's 'handicap challenge': the inferiority complex induces us to excel in precisely that area where we feel inferior. (Aldo Carotenuto, Kant's Dove, p. 103.)

........................................................................

In Ronald Fairbairn's language, suddenly the 'rejecting object' becomes the 'exciting object'.

Tucked in between Fairbairn and Carotenuto historically (I was writing in the same subject area and with the same perspective as Carotenuto around the same time period in the early to mid 1980s before I knew he existed and found his book probably in the later 80s or early 90s) -- was Fritz Perls.

Here is what Perls had to say in 1969 pre-dating the work of both Carotenuto and myself by about 15 years. This is a rather long quote from 'In and Out the Garbage Pail' by Perls -- but critically important for our discussion here:

..............................................................................

Perhaps the most interesting and important property of the gestalt is its dynamic -- the need of a strong gestalt to come to closure. Every day we experience this dynamic many times. The best name for the incomplete gestalt is the unfinished situation.

I want to make very clear a fallacy of Freud's, and to compare this fallacy with the academic and my personal gestalt approach, and to cut through some superficial similarities. In this context, I want to show the therapeutic hopelessness of the Freudian (and every) instinct theory.

Freud observed that some of his patients showed a need to repeat a pattern of experience over and over again. Some, for instance, sabotaged themselves at the moment of success. He named such an attitude 'compulsive repetition'. This is certainly a valid observation and an adequate term. Repetitive nightmares and similar gestalten are easily traced in many neuroses. It is doubtful whether we should include in this category the need to go five days a week to the same analyst at the same time to the same place on the same couch, come rain or come sunshine, whether sad or gay, disturbed or calm.

Freud ended up with his theory that life is a conflict between Eros and Thanatos. As each one of us participates in life, he participates, according to this theory, in Thanatos, the death instinct. That means that each one of us suffers from compulsive repetition.

This seems to be a supposition that is rather far stretched.

How does one come from a compulsive repetition to a death instinct? (Howe does the spinach get on the roof? A cow can't fly!) A simple sleight of hand, Gentlemen! You see, here is this repetition -- now this repetition is a habit. A habit deprives you of freedom to choose. It petrifies your life. Voila! Simple, isn't it? Now watch: this death can be life too. If you turn petrifaction outward, it is aggression, which is very much alive. I feel like an s.o.b. but someone has to see the emperor's nakedness.

Where is the fallacy? In the assumption that all habits are petrifactions. Habits are integrated gestalten and, as such, in principle, are economical devices of nature. As Lore once pointed out to me, 'good' habits are life-supportive.

... (skipping a paragraph) Perls continued...

Now it is true that once a habit is formed -- once a gestalt is established -- it is there and becomes a part of the organism. To change a habit involves pulling that habit out of the background again and investing energy (as we saw with H2O) to disintegrate or reorganize the habit.

Freud slipped up by not recognizing the difference between pathological compulsive repetition and organismic habit formation.

The compulsive repetition cannot empty out the foreground and be assimilated. (See Breuer's, Charcot's, Freud's, and Janet's early work on hypnosis, repression, and dissociation...my dgb editorial remarks.) On the contrary, it remains a constant source of attention and stress just because the gestalt has no closure, just because the situation remains unfinished, just because the wound will not heal.

The compulsive repetition is not death-oriented, but life-oriented. It is a repeated attempt to deal with a difficult situation. The repetitions are investments towards the completion of a gestalt in order to free one's energies for growth and development. The unfinished situations are holding up the works; they are blocks in the path of maturation. (Fritz Perls, 1969, p. 65-67.)

.........................................................................

Freud said this himself, much, much earlier than Perls (1969), myself, and Carotenuto (1986), in a quote that is attributed to Freud from I do not know where by Ferenzci in the latter's 1909 paper, 'Introjection and Transference' long before Freud moved in the direction of 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' (1920), -- and 'the death instinct'.

...................................................................

Freud summarizes these considerations in the saying that we may treat a neurotic any way we like, he always treats himself psychotherapeutically, that is to say, with transferences. What we describe as introjections and other symptoms of the disease are really -- in Freud's opinion, with which I fully agree -- self-taught attempts on the patient's part to cure himself. (Sandor Ferenzci, 1909, Introjection and Transference, found in: Aaron Esman's book, 'Essential Papers on Transference', 1990, p. 25.)

...........................................................................

In 1936, Perls came from South Africa -- where he had been given a position by Ernest Jones as a training analyst in Johannesburg, South Africa, and founded the South Africa Institute for Psychoanalysis. (Fritz Perls, 'In and Out of the Garbage Pail', 1969, p. 41-42.) -- to Czechoslovakia to give a paper at the International Psychoanalytic Congress (p. 44) on 'oral resistances'. (This is where Perls had the quick, deflating meeting with Freud cited above.)

Now I haven't read the 'oral resistances' paper that Perls was talking about but I imagine fairly confidently that it was a foreshadowing of what was later to come with his first book, 'Ego, Hunger, and Aggression' (1947) where Perls made the evolving transition from Orthodox Psychoanalysis to the beginning of Gestalt Therapy.

The idea of 'oral resistances' is a fairly simple one to contemplate although it may have many different types of 'derivatives' -- and even some 'metaphorical derivatives'. Like 'swallowing whole a pathogenic idea' (pathological introjection) as opposed to metaphorically 'carefully testing these ideas with your tongue and teeth and either slow, careful chewing or ocnversely spitting the idea out because you can taste its toxicity and don't want it, don't want to ingest it...'

But let us get back to the more physical level -- and talk briefly about 'eating disorders'.

...............................................................................

Eating disorder

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with compulsive overeating. (Discuss)
This article's citation style may be unclear. The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting, or external linking.

An eating disorder is to eat, or avoid eating, in a manner which negatively affects both one's physical and mental health. Eating disorders are all encompassing. They affect every part of the person's life. According to the authors of Surviving an Eating Disorder, "feelings about work, school, relationships, day-to-day activities and one's experience of emotional well being are determined by what has or has not been eaten or by a number on a scale."[1] Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the most common eating disorders generally recognized by medical classification schemes,[2] with a significant diagnostic overlap between the two.[3] Together, they affect an estimated 5-7% of females in the United States during their lifetimes[4]and "approximately 10% of eating disordered individuals coming to the attention of mental health professionals are male".[5] There are several other eating disorders which are prevalent amongst certain demographics that are being investigated and defined - Rumination syndrome, Compulsive overeating, and Selective eating disorder.

......................................................................

Now I don't profess to know much about eating orders but using the polar-dialectic idea of 'oral obsessive-compulsions and addictions' on the one hand, and the opposite polar-dialectic idea of 'oral resistances, oral restraints, and/or oral defenses', I think we can work our way through a number of similar, different, and/or related issues here.

Let us say that 'I want to eat.' But I am concerned about a 'weight problem' and my 'social-self-image'. Thus, we have the potential beginning of a 'self-conflict' -- a 'self-division' if you will between 'id' and 'superego' or between 'topdog' and 'underdog' or between 'Dionysian Ego' and 'Apollonian Ego'.

Now this type of conflict could or can potentially resolve itself in any of a hundred or a thousand possible different ways. Some healthy, some not. One example -- 'binging' and then 'purging' -- is obviously not healthy. Nor is not eating.

As with any conflict between 'impulse' and 'restraint', one side of the conflict might 'dominate' while the other side is 'marginalized'. Or visa versa.

Or the two sides might be literally stuck in some type of 'neurotic clinch', or a 'neurotic impasse'.

This is where Wilhelm Reich made a huge contribution to Psychoanalysis with his work, 'Character Analysis', 1933 (and the related ideas of 'character armor' and 'body armor').

............................................................................

Wilhelm Reich
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born March 24, 1897(1897-03-24)
Dobrzanica, Galicia
Died November 3, 1957
Lewisburg, PA
Residence Rangeley, ME
Citizenship Austrian, American
Fields Psychoanalysis
Alma mater University of Vienna
Known for Freudo-Marxism, body psychotherapy, orgone
Influences Max Stirner, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx
Influenced Saul Bellow, William Burroughs, Paul Edwards, Arthur Janov, Paul Goodman, Alexander Lowen, Norman Mailer, A.S. Neill, Fritz Perls
Signature

Wilhelm Reich (March 24, 1897–November 3, 1957) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry.[1] He was the author of several notable textbooks, including The Mass Psychology of Fascism and Character Analysis, both published in 1933.

Reich worked with Sigmund Freud in the 1920s and was a respected analyst for much of his life, focusing on character structure rather than on individual neurotic symptoms.[2] He tried to reconcile Marxism and psychoanalysis, arguing that neurosis is rooted in the physical, sexual, economic, and social conditions of the patient, and promoted adolescent sexuality, open relationships outside marriage, the availability of contraceptives, abortion, and divorce, and the importance for women of economic independence. His work influenced a generation of intellectuals, including Saul Bellow, William Burroughs, Paul Edwards, Norman Mailer, and A. S. Neill, and shaped innovations such as Fritz Perls's Gestalt therapy, Alexander Lowen's bioenergetic analysis, and Arthur Janov's primal therapy.[3]

......................................................................................

Victor Daniels' Website in

The Psychology Department at
Sonoma State University

lecture notes on

Wilhelm Reich

and His Influence

10-05-08

photo of Reich

INTRODUCTORY

FOUNDER OF SOMATIC PSYCHOLOGY.Wrote over 20 books and 450 articles. Brought the body into psychology.

"Body Language" -- the term is now commonplace. It wasn't always that way. With Freud and psychoanalysis everything was the mind. Reich was the first to bring the body into psychoanalysis, and to physically touch the client.

BIOGRAPHICAL: EARLY LIFE.

Born in 1897 in the eastern Austro-Hungarian empire. From a landowning Jewish family in Romania, but assimilated into German culture and forbidden to play with Jewish children. Stressed German culture. Family was welthy, stuck up, with a feudal attitude. His father was very abusive --struck him for minor infractions and gave him harsh beatings. A brutal man with an intensely jealous streak.

His mother, by contrast, was soft, nurturing, beautiful. Loved to stroke his hair and hold him. Not an intellectual. Shortly after Wilhelm's brother Robert was born, due to trauma associated with his childbirth, she had to go away to spas for a health cure and Wilhelm took this as abandonment. Reich rarely mentioned his brother, but theyr were very competitive -- competed constantly for mother's love.

MOTHER'S AFFAIR
A. Between ages 6 and 10, Reich was being tutored at home and not allowed to play with other children. During this time, Reich's mother had an affair with one of the tutors. At age 12, he told his father everything. He had been very angry at her for never intervening when father beat him--this was his way of getting back at her. She tried to commit suicide by drinking lysol. After that his father suspected her of more infidelity, and started to beat her as well as Wilhelm. When Reich was 14 his mother committed suicide. At first Reich showed no remorse --then guilt.

FATHER'S DEATH
Three years after his mother committed suicide, his father died of TB. But before that he had stood in the rain and gotten pneumonia. His illness was considered self-induced.

Reich never in his life was able to complete psychoanalysis himself. He started several times and always stopped. There were traumas in his early life that he was simply unable to come to groups with. He always found excuses to break off analysis.

4. INTEREST IN SEXUALITY
As early as age 3 wanted to ask where babies come from. Wilhelm and his borther Robert were left alone with the servants a lot. Observed an affair between the housemaid and the coachman.

* At 4 1/2 gave it a try with Robert's nurse. As he reports it, he climbed in bed with her while Robert was sleeping, got on top of her, reached for her genitals, she didn't object, and he tried his best. Robert woke up and told his father, who then forbade Wilhelm to sleep with servants. (Previously he had tried it with the maid while she was sleeping, bud she woke up and slapped him and threatened to tell his father.)
*
* At age 11 he had intercourse with the cook. At 15 he occasionally visited a brothel..
*
* He saw the mother symbolized in breasts. Talked about yearning for the mother. His obsession with sex was probably related to his yearning for love. Never kissed womens' breasts --said "That will be only when I find someone I can truly love."
*
* Despite, or perhaps because of this remarkable history, Reich considered any kind of sexual contact with a client to be forbidden- --potentially harmful to the analysis.

LATER EVENTS -- RELATIONSHIP WITH FREUD
After father died, Reich took over the business and continud his studies. At age 18 he left to join the army and never returned to the family farm. After the Army he went to Vienna to medical school. For a time he shared an apartment with his brother in Vienna and was extremely poor. His professor kept inviting thm to dinner so they could eat.

Reich was impatient and brilliant. He studied with Freud and was fascinated with the concept of libido, but thought of it not just as psychic but as real energy. In 1919 was allowed to join the Vienna psychoanalytic society as an undergraduate. Very unusual. Was considered Freud'ds "favorite son." Became vice-director of Freud's polyclinic in Vienna, became director of training at the psychoanalytic institute, in charge of supervising the training program for other analysts, and had an open invitation to visit Freud any time. Also very involved in music.

Married Annie Pink, a psychoanalyst and socialist. At medical school she was considered very desirable, likely to succeed, etc.

In 1927, severe conflict with Freud. Reich had asked Freud to be his personal therapist. Frued refused-- had a policy against being analyst for anyone in his society. According to his wife, Reich saw Freud as a father figure.

Reich basically agreed with Freud up until the 30s. But thought Frued stayed too much in the mind, didn't go into body. Psychoanalytic theory was well developed but therapeutic techniques lagged behind. It could go on for years with no cures, and when cures occurred, people sometimes didn't know why. In regard to his ideas, R. thought Freud just didn't get it.

In 1933, tried to integrate the idea of Marx with psychoanalysis. At ages 2 and 4 sent his 2 girls away to a communist school, much to the chagrin of their mother. Once they were singing "O tannenbaum," and he got angry because he wanted them to sing communist songs.

BERLIN, DENMARK, SWEDEN.

* After Vienna he moved to Berlin. The Berlin psychoanalytic society had a lot of problems with his communist ideas, communists had a hard time with his ideas on sex.
* From there he moved to Denmark. In 1935 he pulled out of all psychoanalytic organizations. He moved from Denmark to Norway, constantly getting ostracized because of his radical beliefs. In Norway he was the target of a vicious campaign by a newspaper.
* 1939-- with world war II approaching, moved to the U.S.

CHARACTER ANALYSIS: The name of Reich's approach.

CENTER OF REICH'S WORK: REUNITING THE MIND AND BODY.
This split between mind and body causes us to destroy each other and our planet, Reich believed, and allows us to go to war. So in therapy we pay attention to the body and work on it. He developed a variety of innovative ways of working with held-in somatic energy, such as having people lie on mattresses and kick and pound them to release energy, , in combination with psychotherapy.

THE BODY'S OUTWARD APPEARANCE IS AN ACCURATE REFLECTION OF WHAT'S HAPPENING INSIDE, said Reich. There is a basic mistake in idea, "I think,...I am." You can't change your thoughts at a basic level without change in your body, in what you do.

* Reich wanted a full-body emotional response to life. If you cover yourself up, may deaden pain, but also rob yourself of full joy.
* When someone inhibits an impulse they feel tension. Inhibited libido is tense muscles, sexual charm is relaxed muscles.

FUNCTIONS OF MUSCULAR ARMOR:

* KEEPS POTENTIALLY EXPLOSIVE EMOTIONS IN
* WARDS OFF EMOTIONS OF OTHERS.
* Reich noticed men have trouble taking away armor because they are so accustomed to suppressing feelings and emotions. \
* An armored person does not feel their armor as such. Reich believed that mind-body work is necessary for people to rid themselves of this armor.
* BODY ARMOR AND CHARACTER ARMOR are essentially the same. Their function is trying to protect yourself against the pain of notexpressing things that society says you may not express. Muscular armor is character armor expressed in body, muscular rigidity.
* Armoring is the sum total of the muscular attitudes which a person develops as a defense against the breakthrough of emotions, especially anxity, rage, sexual excitation. Character armor is the sum total of all the years of the muscular attituded that have also been incorporated in the person's character.

CHARACTER ARMOR CAN BE REFLECTED IN LIFE-PATTERNS. Karen Horney, reflecting on Reich's work, noted that people may arrange their lives to fit their character armor. Thus a severely introverted person may find an apartment in a building that is so configured that he or she need not meet or interact with neighbors, and shop at impersonal stores where minimal contact with others is necessary.

AGGRESSION:
Direct correlation betwen inhibition of aggression and byd armor. Mood-blocked patients-- "stiff as a board" In therapy when he would get person to relax some, an anxiety would take the place of the stiffnes, and for many people, the stiffness was preferable to the anxiety. Holding back like that blocks awareness. Arkoring can lead to cancer, arthritis, rheumatism.
THE LONGER THE ARMOR GOES ON, INSTINCT SUPPRESSED, THE MORE PSYCHOSOMATIC PROBLEMS ITS LIKELY TO LEAD TO

RINGS

Blocks are the contractions in the organsism which prevent the free flow of energy. It appeared to Reich that these appear as rings at a number of points in the body.

1. OCULAR. Forehead, eyes, cheekbones, tear duct glands. Inability to open eyes wide. Treatment: Get people to open their eyes "really wide like they're scared."

2. ORAL. Lips, chin, throat. Person may find it hard to cry, grin, grimace at all.

3. NECK: When armoned, holding back crying, anger.

4. CHEST: Major function--self-control, restraint. Ex: suppressed spite. Holding back anger. Tight muscles holding back raving rage, heartbreaking solbbing, intolerable longing. The armored peerson is unable to express thos things.

With someone armored in chest areas -- hands and arms may move very awkwardly.Example of being free of this armor: musician or dancer who moves in very fluid way. Armor in head and chest-- often found in militarism. Militarism based on armoring and vice-versa. In women, armoring can result in insensitivity in nipples, disgust at nursing.

5. DIAPHRAGM.

6. ABDOMINAL CONTRACTIONS

7. PELVIC REGION. When excitement reaches a place that is blocked, the pleasure that comes from the flowing of the energy turns into rage. Might have muscular spasms. Emphasis on vigorous expression of anger, rage, crying, other emotions. We can function as a whole unit when the armor is removed. Focus on breaking up the inhibitions.

Reich would work with the seven regions of the body to dissolve resistance. The resistance is what we build up throughout our life to block affect. In Reich's day, the newborn infant was immediately bundled up very tightly to restrict movement. Reich takes each developmental stage and shows how society forbids certain kinds of expression of energy. \Example: in early toilet training, people are taught to tighten up, restrict.

In masturbation, "Don't touch that dirty little finger or it will fall off." All along, parental teaching is stopping the natural flow of energy. Inside excitement is building up like a pressure cooker. I'm angry but not allowed to be angry. Can't express things like we want. "I"m mad as hell. I want to touch my little thing and it's not going to fall off." We develop armoring to stop this flow of energy.

SEXUALITY AND ARMORING. As a result of armoring, the sexual impulse is changed from something soft and gentle to something harsh and brutal. Inability to express sexuality causes rage, which must also be repressed, and then sex becomes mechanical and brutal.

* One manifiestation: pelvis pulled back, thing and buttock muscles tight. Therapeutic goal: to dissolve the armoring, both muscular and character.

* People could perform the act but not necessarily feel the pleasure associated with it. Freud never talked about sexual experiences in adult life. Always went back to childhood. At the time it was thought that if man could ejaculate and woman could show any interest or pleasure at all they were doing OK.

ORGIASTIC POTENCY: Ability to surrender to the flow without any inhibition. Complete surrender to the sexual act. "This is always lacking in neurotic individuals." Few people mature with complete orgiastic potency. Full orgasm can only happen in 4 ways, held Reich:

1. If people love each other and can express this love
2. When both people are free of armor, then involuntary muscular movements occur before climax
3. Breathing should be deep, full, pleasurable
4. Shortly before orgasm both sexes should experience deep, delicious current-like sensations running up and down bodies. Armoriing cuts this off. Otherwise, climax in loins only. Not throughout body.

Reich saw ability to lose ourselves in sexual ecstasy as the ultimate measure of well being.

NEUROTIC SEXUALITY: Sexual discharge leaves people empty, unsatisfied, not fully at peace. For Reich, ejaculation alone, or a small climax by the woman, was not enough to be called an orgasm. It required ca complete release of exicitation. Many men boasted of now many times they could do it a night but were limited in the pleasure they got, while women were filled with conflict and guilt.

* Reich saw sexual energy as in two parts. Buildup and release. Charge and discharge.
* He held that NEUROSIS IS NONE OTHER THAN THE SUM TOTAL OF ALL CHRONICALLY AUTOMATIC INHIBITIONS OF NATURAL SEXUAL EXCITATION, AND EVERYTHING ELSE IS THE RESULT OF THIS ORIGINAL DISTURBANCE.
* STASIS: A damming-up of sexual energy in the organism. Stasis = neurosis. Sexual stasis is the difference between the energy built up and the amount released during orgasm. This leftover energy, undischarged, feeds the inhibition which is hindering sexual release and pleasure, and the inhibition in turn adds to the sexual stasis. A vicious circle. That, for Reich, was the energy source of neurosis.
* ESSENTIAL: Ability to give and receive love in all its forms The full orgiastic reflex is a sign that the person is free of body armoring. Reich's goal was to RESTORE THE PRIMACY OF OUR SENSUAL NATURE. To really let go during the sexual experience. Not just an orgasm but a complete, full release.

REICH'S APPROACH TO THERAPY

INTERPRETATION OF RESISTANCE. Psychoanalysts were not doing this. They were very involved with subsconscious--dreams, etc., paying no attention to behavior. Reich noticed resistance right from the start. Wondered why people never fully let go. Why inhibitions not relaxed?? In Reich's approach, we should start with the armoring and defense mechanisms and THEN go inward. So he would start with the resistances the people were putting up.

Freud had known that resistance was a sign of repression, but no effective technique was ever found to move through them, except free association.

Reich was much more interested in patients' resistances than in the information they offered (in contrast to Freud.) In psychoanalysis, clients would offere the same information over and over, going around in circles. Reich focused on breaking up inhibitions. He declared, "the resistance itself becomes the center of the work." When people discover how they resist awareness, then they can choose to keep doing so, or to go deeper into themselves, at their own pace.

He said, don't work with the deeper layers of the unconscious until the defense mechanisms are identified, because the resistance will hold the neurotic behavior in place even if the meanings are understood. He worked first with resistances and would not interpret behavior until the resistances had been laid bare.

In CHARACTER ANALYSIS, resistances could be observed in the patient's behavior --ways of talking, walking, moving. Reich couldn't understand why psychoanalysts refused to pay attention to observable behavior.

We have primarily one character structure. Our character can imprison us in rigid and stereotyped reactions at the same time that we build our character as a defense against our environment. Characterological armoring. The armoring is a compromise between our impulses and our social obligations--between what we want and what we think we should do.

In therapy, instead of digging into the deep meaning of the information people present, he would notice how they breathed, held their shoulders, etc. and work with that.

In the 1930s, took idea of armoring one step farther, to muscular armor. Assumes that we are the sum total of our entire lives. How we breathe, laugh, hold ourselves.

He focused on breaking down the muscular armor. Through breathing and other techniques that mobilized body energies. Lookef for "the orgasm reflex" in breathing. Start breathing way up high and way down into the belly. Then become aware of your head --what does your head do as you inhale and exhale, which way does the pelvis go?

Some people, as inhale, head forward, pelvis back. As exhale, head back, pelvis forward. An important goal of therapy --just to have people breathe in this manner.

Examples: If someone with chin held high, he would interpret this as a resistance. Try and feel sad with your chin up. He might ask them to bring the chin down, and then see how easy it is to feel sad.

If people had a scream to let out, put their head back, then drop the jaw. His first step in therapy --to get patient to breathe easily and deeply.

Second step --mobilize whatever is seen in the patient's behavior. Touched and moved his patients, another break from psychoanalysis.

CHILDREN: He wrote a lot about the self-regulating child. Letting the child determine when it's ready for toilet-training, etc. PREVENTION OF NEUROSIS: The social culture of people would have to be altered.

NEO-REICHIANS

ALEXANDER LOWEN ("Bioenergetics") FROM 1942-54 Reich was treating and teaching Lowen, the founder of bioenergetics, who said that he learned everything that's important to him from Reich.Reich said, Got to get energy down into the pelvis. Lowen: Get it radiating into our extremities, out into hands and feet. Achiever energy --always outward, forward. Trainer had a woman walk backward in a circle to get into her energy.

STANLEY KELEMAN: Maintained a body-oriented psychotherapy practice in San Francisco Wrote the most readable neo-Reichian body oriented psychology books I've seen. Best known is Sexuality, Self, and Survival. Also various others. I highly recommend his writing.

MOSHE FELDENKREIS; THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE. Other neo-Reichian approaches that use gentle movements and manipulations. Eleanor Criswell uses a similar approach.

IDA ROLF: Developed a method of deep tissue massage that can be seen as an even deeper cousin of shiatsu in which she actually went in with her thumb and fingertips and physically separated stuck-together muscles and tendons and ligaments that were held in certain positions as a result of personality and character variables, thus literally freeing up the body to move in ways that it had been unable to before. Not infrequently during Rolfing, deep emotions and images from the past often come flooding out as the tension and held-togetherness of particular areas of the body are released.

ROBERT K. HALL, originally trained as a psychoanalyst, then as a Gestalt therapist with Fritz Perls, combined Rolfing with the knowledge he gained from the bodywork system developed by Dr. Randolph Stone of India, which added work at particular acupressure points, as well as other interventions, to Rolfing per se. Hall called this LOMI BODY WORK. The Lomi School he founded, which is in Santa Rosa, grants Master's degrees.

WILHELM REICH'S SOCIOPOLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY
(Notes from a guest lecture by Mary Gomes).

THE "FREUDIAN LEFT" Reich was part of the "Freudian left" which included himself, Marcuse, Fromm, Adorno, Horkeimer, and the various other figures of "critical theory." He was one of the first political psychologists. Undertook a creative synthesis of psychoanalysis and Marxist socialism. . Was kicked of both the psychoanalytic association and the Communist Party as a consequence of publishing The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933). (Mary's comment: He must gotten done something right!)''

WHAT IS OUR BASIC NATURE? Reich asked, can our basic nature be trusted, can we trust people's natural unfolding? Or if we think the child is inherently bad, we will probably insist on strong external controls. Because if you don't trust people, you will look for some way to control them.

REICH'S MODEL: :

* Reich's model of Personality, Drawn as a circle:
* the center (core) is natural sociability, sexuality, spontancous enjoyment of work with no external carrot or stick, and capacity for love. All this often get repressed.
* In a circle around the center, the next layer that arises. This is the Freudian unconscious, in which sadism, greediness, lasciviousness, envy, and perversions of all kinds are found.
* In the outer circle is the layer of control: compulsive, insincere politeness, cocktail party conversation and artificial sociability. Equivalent to Jung's Persona. We can also equate this to "peeling the onion."

REVOLUTIONARY OR REACTIONARY ATTITUDE Reich asked, Does psychoanalysis have a "revolutionary" or a "reactionary" attitude toward our situation? Does it endeavor to help people

* a. Get out of suppressive social situations, or
* b. Strengthen the authorities in them?

Reich's break with Freud was partly around this very issue within the psychoanalytic movement. Freud, although he opposed the Nazis, took the authoritarian position within psychoanalysis. Once he had fully developed his own ideas, Reich viewed Freud asreactionary. In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud laid out a theory of innate aggressiveness,. He held essentially that in our deepest core we want to rape and pillage and murder. You can't trust people. Ultimately, we're inherently destructive. Reich read this and found it inherently reactionary. Reich thought that Freud started to look underneath the character of the society he lived in, but did not look far enough.

REICH'S REFLECTIONS ON FREUD:

In Reich's view, Freud sort of peeked underneath the little mask of character and saw perversions. Freud's mistakes:

* He thought he had gone as deep as he could go, when in reality he had only taken the first step.
* He thought he had found universal human tendencies, without fully considering the culture in which the patterns he observed were formed.
* On Freud and Sexuality. Freud thought that letting sexuality "have free rein" would be the end of civilization as we know it. Reich: thought not. Our culture is sexually repressive, he held. He asked, what are the causes and consequences of living in this kind of culture?

NAZI GERMANY, FASCISM, AND THE COMMUNISTS. Reich's case study of fascism was largely responsible for his expulsion from both the psychoanalytic institute and the Communist party. The Communists said, "You're not supposed to be asking about psychology. Psychological effects are supposed to be determined by the economic situation, not vice-versa.

For Reich, a key question was: Why did people support the Nazis? Reich stated that he found that several things went together in Nazi Germany:

* Strong paternal authority
* Sexual repressiveness
* authoritarian personalities
* reactional political ideologies

Economically the Nazi program was not in the interest of lower middle class people of Germany, but they gave their support to it. Reich asked, What psychological reason could be found that would make the fascist ideology compelling to this group of people?

His answer was: The combination of authority and rebellion. Reich said the sons would especially admire an authoritarian person above them who was also rebellious. (Like Hitler and Stalin) That way they could fulfill the desire to rebel but with subservience. This was a submission that came with some real resentment.

FAMILY AND WORK. Reich noticed that the family structure and work structure in the German lower middle class overlapped. In their small farms and businesses, both the family authority and the work authority were the same person.In other cases, if you go off to work you're going to work somewhere else. But if you're in a situation where you're working together within the family, the father's capacity to ensure his authority, to have a kind of totalitarian state within the home, goes way up.

* Especially in such situations, fathers are better able to sexually repress their sons. So the sons develop a subservient attitude toward authority and a stronger identification with the father, which transfers to other authorities. They develop an authoritarian personality structure. A very strong identification with the authority who is above you and a subservience to it. Reich was apparently the first to look at this. Later Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson & Sanford studied this dynamic in much more detail in their social psychological classic, The Authoritarian Personality. Still later, Milton Rokeach continued this line of inquiry in Dogmatism.
*
* The authoritarian agenda is largely unconscious. People are almost totally unconscious of what they are doing, The parents carry out the intentions of authoritarian society. The authoritarian parent finds meaning through identification with a strong leader and nation. This explains why people get so caught up in their nation "being Number 1."
*
* Reich held that most of our inner experience has been cut off along with our sexuality, so that "being number 1" is where people of whom this is so find meaning in life.

THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX. Reich's explanation: You also get the Oedipus complex from this kind of situation. Sexual desires naturally urge a person to enter into all kinds of relations with the world, and to enter into close contact with others in a variety of forms. If these urges arep reressed, they can only express themselves in the narrow confines of the family. Karen Horney referred to "the emotional hothouse of the family."

'FAMILY VALUES" The "safeguarding of the family," held Reich, customariily refrers to the male-dominated authoritarian and large family. This, he declared, "is the first cultural precept of every reactionary ideology."

* Rather than support a variety of family forms, reactionary ideologies bolster the particular form that has an authoritarian male at the head. This sets people up to go for politically conservative ideologies.
* Jennifer Stone, a contemporary thinker, declares, "Always remember, 'family values' is a code-word for male supremacy."
* One cross-cultural study found that male dominance in the sultural structure was highly correlated with aggression.
* A feminist psychoanalyst, Nancy Chodow, maintains that no matter what you say about sex roles, if mother does all the childcare, it will perpetuate sex roles of traditional patriarchal society.

SOCIAL CONTROL IN PATRIARCHY AND MATRIARCHY

* Reich was saying that a certain family structure inadvertently contributes to a certain character structure. In patriarchy, there is much more emphasis on sexual control than in matriarchy. If all the wealth passes through the father, you want to be very sure who the father is. If it passes through the mother, there is less concern as to who the father is. Monogamy, etc., are not so necessary.
* Pre-patriarchal societies. Reich was aware of some of the early research, starting to come out in the 20th century, of pre-patriarchal society. Investigators tended to think of these as matriarchies. Now the evidence seems to be that in many of them neither gender ruled. There is evidence in Crete, Turkey, and southeastern Europe of a period of many thousands of years when there were both male and female rulers, both genders engaged in athletic contests, and "great mother" icons were widespread.

REICH'S SEXUAL EMPHASIS:. Reich's programs for social change always seemed to start with sex. Sexual hygiene programs for workers, young people having sex when they want to, etc. But such measures didn't start the revolution he wanted. In our society, we seem to be as likely to get child pornography as true sexual freedom.

Reich would always stop short of being completely systematic with something. Reich did not explain why the patterns he described would result from sexual repression instead of some other kind. The political and sexual arenas were two parallel streams of his thought and he liked to connect them because sexuality was one of his central interests, but actually the political effects could come from any kind of repression

ORGONE ENERGY

An adaptation of libido theory. Reich argued that libido theory was too narrowly sexual, and coined the term "orgone energy" for a broader view. Ultimately he argued that it is not only in the body but outside as well, defining it as "A subtle biophysical energy which permeates all living things." It Permeates all space in different concentrations, taken into the body through breathing.

He developed an "orgone box" or "orgone accumulator" to capture this vital energy so that people could then absorb it. Because of his orgone box, people thought he was in left field, and had gone mad.

But there are parallels among Hindu prana and the chakras.Fritz Perls, one of Reich's students and the central figure in founding Gestalt Therapy, avoided all this trouble by speaking simply of "excitement," noting thatour excitement can flow into emotion, inhibition of emotion, thinking, sensation, or action at any given moment. He paid attention to how excitement is expressed and blocked.

The orgone box was a 5 foot by 2 1/2 by 2 1/2 box made of layers of sheet metal and wood. Got into the weather, pulling energy from the universe, etc. These were purchased by doctors and psychiatrists in both the U.S. and abroad.He and his disciples bought land in Maine and called it Orgonon.

The verdict on orgone energy can be seen most clearly in the fact that all of Reich's students who carried on his body-oriented therapeutic work dropped the concept of orgone energy and did not make it part of their work.

DEATH IN PRISON He had been an activist in the German Communist party during the 1930s. In 1954, during thered-baiting Joe McCarthy era, when right-wingers found it politically expedient to find a communist under every bed. The feds in the U.S. went after Reich andFDA placed a ban on transporting, etc., the orgone boxe across state lines. In addition, it insisted that all copies of his books be distroyed..A co-worker continued to transport them, Reich was imprisoned. He died of a heart attack in prison at the age of 60 in 1957 after two years in Federal prison, the day before he was to go up for parole. His son, who was 13 when father was imprisoned, said, "Cry," we can cry together," when he visited in prison, and they did. After Reich's death, most students stopped continuing his work, but his daughter Eva carried on, and Ellsworth Baker, and Alexander Lowen.

PSYCHOLOGY'S STRANGE BLACKOUT OF REICH'S WORK. It is incontestable that Reich is one of the seminal thinkers and practitioners of twentieth century psychology. He singlehandedly brought the body into psychology at a time when others dealt with the mind and emotions but the only reference to the body was physiological and neurophysiological.

When I revised this lecture in 2003, I looked through ten different history of psychology books and found no reference whatever to Reich. I looked through a number of personality theory books and found only one, Personality and Personal Growth, by James Fadiman and Robert Frager, that addressed and presented his work. Yet there are dozens of minor figures who made only small additions to ideas articulated by others who receive considerable mention. I find this utterly bizarre. You are welcome to your own speculations as to why American psychology largely ignores a man who was one of the last century's greatest contributors to its advancement. (There is an interesting parallel with the longtime ignoring of contributions by women psychologists.) As he was persecuted in life for drawing attention to matters that others wished to look away from, so is he largely ignored in death.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Baker, Elsworth F. Man in the Trap. New York: Avon, 1974.
Bean, Orson. Me and Orgone. New York: Fawcett, 1971.
Boadella, David. Wilhelm Reich. Chicago: Regnery, 1974.
Dunbar, F. Mind and Body: Psychosomatic Medicine. New York: Random House, 1955.
Lowen, Alexander. The Betrayal of the Body. London: Collier, 1967.
Lowen. Bioenergetics. New York: Penguin, 1976.
Lowen. Love and Orgasm. New York: Macmillan, 1965.
Mann, W. Edward, and Hoffman, E. The Man who Dreamed of Tomorrow. Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1980.
Man, W.E. Orgone, Reich, and Eros. N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 1973.
Reich, Ilse Ollendorff. Wilhelm Reich. London: Elek, 1969.
Reich, Wilhelm: The Cancer Biopathy. NY: Orgone Institute Press, 1948.
----- Character Analysis. NY: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1949.
-----The function of the Orgasm. New York: Farrar, St. , 1973.
-----Listen, Little Man! New York: Farrar, 1967.
-----The Mass Psychology of Fascism. NY: Farrar, 1971.
-----The sexual Revolution, Farar, 1962.
Sharaf, Myron. Fury on Earth. NY. St. Martin's, 1983.
Autobiography: Passions of Youth.

.............................................................................

dgb...continued...Aug. 16th, 2009.

I like Wilhelm Reich. Reich 'thought outside the Orthodox Psychoanalytic Box' although, it would definitely seem that towards the end of his career and life, Reich went 'a little or a lot off the deep end' of what most people, including myself, would likely be willing to believe and/or follow. Still, Reich was a very creative, original thinker chasing down and seeking to compensate for his own private demons as well as his patients'. He had a strong influence on Fritz Perls and the development of Gestalt Therapy. I cannot say for sure but I would say that it is definitely very likely that Reich significantly influenced Perls' 1936 paper cited above on 'Oral Resistances' which was definitely 'too far outside the box of Orthodox Freudian Psychoanalysis' to be acceptable to Freud -- probably prompting Freud's quick negative reaction against Perls described above.

I don't know why Freud would have objected to Perls' idea of 'oral resistances'. Without even reading Perls' 1936 paper on this subject matter -- I'm not even sure where I can find this paper; so far, I have only found a reference to it on the internet -- I can surmise how this theory might easily be used.

...............................................................................

From the internet...a paragraph taken from...

Prelude To Contemporary Gestalt Therapy

By

Charlie Bowman, MA, and Philip Brownell, Psy.D.

(Previously published at the first web site for the Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy (AAGT), under the title, "Simplified Summary of Gestalt Therapy - Historical Antecedents.")

The Perls' had fled Nazi Germany, where Fritz lost most of his family members. His presentation to the 1936 Psychoanalytic Conference on "Oral Resistances" was shunned, as was Ego, Hunger and Aggression when it was published in 1942 (following a scathing review by Marie Bonepart). By 1944, he had been a soldier for both the English and the German armies, and they had moved from affluence to poverty and back. Clearly, these life experiences influenced Gestalt therapy theory, providing concepts such as “zero-point,” “homeostasis,” and “polarity,” among others.

....................................................................................

'Ego, Hunger, and Aggression' (1942, 1947, 1969), I have read which in itself via the influence of other theorists such as Friedlander, Cannon, Jung, and indirectly, Hegel, continues to provide an important influential foundation for my work here in 'Hegel's Hotel'.

Regarding the idea of 'oral resistances', if I am hungry and want to eat -- even 'need' to eat -- but I put up a 'mental block', a 'resistance' or 'defense' against eating, say, to 'prevent my stomach from getting any bigger', then this could easily be conceived of as an 'oral resistance'. Taken to the extreme, the result of this type of 'oral resistance behavior could or can easily become 'anorexia', a very serious eating disorder, or alternatively, any form of healthy or unhealthy 'dieting'.

.......................................................................

Apr 06 2008
Bulimia and Anorexia
Print This Post Print This Post Email this Article to a friend Email this Article to a friend

Just caught this long article on Eating disorders on the main MSN.ca site. There are a lot of facts in this article and it is interesting that when people want to better their health sometimes they go to far and actually harm themselves by losing to much weight. I used to hate the talk of Anorexia and Bulimia being a disease thinking that it was just a way for some people to get attention but have really learned over the last few years that this is something that is a very dangerous disease with very deep rooted causes.

Eating disorders have increased in frequency as a consequence of society’s emphasis and preoccupation with thinness. Eating disorders are multi-factorial, with genetic, traumatic and nutritional causes. In North America, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the two most important eating disorders. They predominantly affect females.
What is the difference between anorexia and bulimia?

Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric condition where people intentionally starve themselves because of a false belief that they are fat, or for fear of becoming obese. In reality, they are almost always underweight or of normal weight when the condition starts. It is estimated that more than 90% of all those diagnosed with anorexia nervosa are female, often from middle and upper socioeconomic backgrounds. This disorder usually starts in the years between adolescence and young adulthood, with the average age at onset of 14 years. Anorexia nervosa afflicts about 1 per 100,000 in the population at large, but the rate is believed to be higher among Caucasian adolescent girls – about 1 in 200.

Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder that is characterized by uncontrolled or compulsive binge eating, usually followed by inappropriate ways of trying to get rid of the food. Most often, this involves purging by self-induced vomiting or abuse of laxatives, enemas, or diuretics. It’s also sometimes called the binge-purge syndrome. Some people with bulimia don’t purge, but will overeat (consuming as many as 20,000 calories at one time) and then compensate for binge-eating sessions with other behaviours such as fasting or over-exercising. A person with bulimia may secretly binge anywhere from twice a day to several times daily. In most cases, binge eating is followed by purging. A bulimic may use as many as 20 or more laxatives at a time.

Bulimia commonly appears in the latter part of adolescence, between the ages of 18 and 20, but it can develop at an earlier or later age. Like anorexia, bulimia predominantly affects young, Caucasian, middle- and upper-class women. The American Psychiatric Association estimates that between 0.5% and 3.7% of females experience anorexia and between 1.1% and 4.2% experience bulimia at some point in their lifetime. One difference between people with bulimia and anorexia nervosa is that people with bulminia are aware of their problems with food yet they don’t feel in control of their condition.
Causes of Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are generally viewed as being psychological in origin. However, like depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar affective disorder, they are presently believed to have many causes – including genetic and functional changes in the brain. People suffering from anorexia and bulimia have preoccupations with body image, weight, and eating. They also have a distorted personal body image and a fear of fatness and weight gain.

Although cultural factors have an influence on the development of eating disorders, they appear to stem from multiple factors. There’s been a lot of debate about the role of faulty parenting and dysfunctional family environments in relation to eating disorders. Genetic and hormonal factors are believed to play significant roles; people with eating disorders are believed to have a genetic predisposition to the illness. Individuals who have a family history of depression, alcohol abuse, obesity, or eating disorders are at higher risk for anorexia nervosa and bulimia. There also appears to be a neurologic relationship between eating behaviour patterns (such as dieting and starvation) and the nervous and hormonal systems, since hunger, food cravings, and feelings of fullness are controlled by certain areas of the brain and involve a number of digestive hormones.
Symptoms and Complications of eating disorders

People with anorexia nervosa may appear severely emaciated due to malnutrition, sometimes so severe that their ribs can be seen through the skin. Other common symptoms of anorexia include:

* missed, or absence of, menstrual periods
* constipation
* intolerance to cold
* dizziness
* irritability
* depression
* inability to concentrate
* dehydration
* faintness or weakness
* slow heart beat
* low blood pressure
* loss of body fat
* dry, scaly skin
* psychological fears of obesity and weight gain

While most people feel hungry and uncomfortable when their calorie intake is low or restricted, people with anorexia suppress this discomfort and usually lose the ability to normally appreciate normal hunger cues. As they begin to starve, they may experience a feeling of euphoria, similar to how a runner or jogger gets the well-known “runner’s high.”

.............................................................................

In the famous first case of Psychoanalysis, 'Anna O', Anna at one point had a 'drinking phobia' (another form of 'oral resistance') which was traced by Breuer to a memory where she remembered 'a dog drinking water from a glass'. Now, to be sure, there were many, many other factors at work in Anna O's extreme brand of 'neurosis' and/or 'hysterical psychosis' -- indeed, even today there is much disagreement as to whether Breuer and Freud 'misdiagnosed' Anna O's illness.

Many today think that Anna O. suffered from some form of 'neurological disorder' such as 'epilepsy' which, to the best of my knowledge, not being a doctor, and as someone who was not there, like any and/or all others who try to 'historically diagnose' some 100-129 years after the fact -- does not 'fit for me'.

I think that Breuer and Freud mainly had their diagnosis right (i.e., 'hysterical psychosis' which may be just another way of saying a 'functional and/or dysfunctional series of partial or complete nervous breakdowns').

There may have been some things that Breuer and Freud may have missed which I will address in my next paper. But again, I think Breuer and Freud largely got it right. In some ways, I trust Breuer more than Freud because Breuer was the more 'rationally-empirically grounded scientist and scientific theorist' and less 'narcissistically biased of the two of them' but still, it was Freud, not Breuer, who came up with the concept of 'The Theory of Defense' which to this day remains one of the central foundations of all Psychoanalysis -- Classical and otherwise -- and indeed, of all psychotherapy in general.

I like how Breuer handled himself in Psychoanalytic history -- a man to be respected for maintaining his scientific and family values (at least that we know of) -- but Freud was by far the greater visionary of the two of them -- stoned and/or not stoned on cocaine between some or all of 1884 and 2004 -- 24 volumes later, Freud had laid the groundwork for virtually all Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy to come; he still, in my mind, remains the undisputed 'heavyweight' in his field, and a creative genius, leading the way where few to no other men would travel (even if he backed off once he got there as in The Seduction Theory)

Regardless of how many theoretical mistakes he made, and/or how many ethical transgressions that he committed -- and at least two of them were bad ethical medical transgressions -- still, Freud was a bold, risk-taking, creative theorist, and without him, there likely would have been no Adler, no Jung, no Ferenczi, no Reik, no Rank, no Fairbairn, no Fromm, no Erickson, no Sullivan, no Horney, no Perls, no Masson, and no Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology, along with thousands and thousands of other theorists and/or therapists who I have not mentioned, thousands and thousands who I do not even know who they are -- in any other closely conceivable way to the way that they turned out having been influenced by Freud.

We still have a ways to go here, other theoretical and therapeutic places to travel, but I think that we have more than covered quite a bit of different, connected, unconnected, and soon to be connected, territory here.

It has taken me almost a week to cover all this subject matter -- book-ended around my 10th anniversary with my girlfriend last Thursday and Friday, Aug. 13th. and 14th.

We will look at the Anna O. case more closely in the next essay.

Enough for now.

-- dgb, Aug. 16th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

-- DGB Multi-Dialectic Psychology, Psycho-theory, and Psychotherapy Goes Beyond Conceptual and Territorial Naricissism.

Freud Could Have Been A Champion -- For The Enhancement of Women's Rights (Part 1)

2009-03-02T08:07:00.000-08:00

Freud could have been a champion -- in fact, very briefly in history he was a champion -- for uncovering child abuse, childhood seduction, childhood sexual assault, and for advancing women's rights in this regard. But unfortunately, that moment in history was brief, as Freud reversed his theoretical and clinical tracks shortly thereafter.

The time of Freud's first dramatic, controversial clinical psychology statements unveiling the issue of childhood sexual abuse relative to the aetiology (cause) of hysteria was April 26th, 1896. There would be many more controversial clinical statements to come in the years that followed but none that continued along this same 'childhood sexual abuse' aetiology path.

After 1896, Freud started to write more and more about the aetiological factors of 'childhood sexual wishes and fantasies', 'distorted memories', 'symbolism', 'dreams', 'the Oedipal Complex', 'stages of 'psycho-sexual development, and the like. But there would be no more concerted writing about the factor of childhood sexual abuse -- whether it be 'rape' and/or 'seduction' -- like there was in this mostly succinct and direct paper on April 26th, 1896, read to a very disbelieving and angry medical audience at the time.

..........................................................................

Jeffrey Masson writes on this most dramatic and controversial change of events in his equally controversial book, 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory' (1984, 1985, 1992). From Chapter 1 of Masson's book:

"I had shown them the solution to a more than thousand-year-old problem-- a caput Nili." -- Sigmund Freud, 1896.

On the evening of April 21st, 1896, Sigmund Freud gave a paper before his colleagues at the Society for Psychiatry and Neurology in Vienna, entitled 'The Aetiology of Hysteria'. (The paper has been included below as Appendix B.) Freud realized that in giving this paper he would become "one of those who had disturbed the sleep of the world." The address presented a revolutionary theory of mental illness. Its title refers to Freud's new theory that the origin of neurosis lay in early sexual traumas which Freud called "infantile sexual scenes" or "sexual intercourse in childhood". This is what later came to be called 'the seduction theory' -- namely, the belief that these early experiences were real, not fantasies, and had a damaging and lasting effect on the later lives of the children who suffered them.

.........................................................................

Now there are at least three or four theories of speculatively interpreting what happened back in 1896 -- and thereafter.

Theory 1. Masson's Thesis: Freud basically 'ran out of ethical courage'. He went charging into this 1896 meeting like a lion -- and he came out of it more or less wimpering like a lamb. Maybe not totally. Nor immediately. But still this theory asserts that Freud basically 'chickened out' of his sexual abuse theory because it was met with too much resistance in the (totally male) medical community. These men in the medical community had the power to destroy Freud's young medical career by ceasing to 'refer' patients to him, and in so doing, they had the power to economically destroy Freud as well. According to this Masson theory, Freud knew this, caved in to the medical pressure exerted on him, and eventually 'significantly modified' his theory in such a way that these doctors ceased to exert career and financial controls over him. Freud's various 'modifications in clinical theory' -- his 'Screen Memories' theory, his 'Dream Theory', his 'Wish Theory', his theory of 'forgetting' and 'jokes', his 'Oedipal' theory, his 'Childhood Sexuality' Theory, his 'Psycho-Sexual Stages of Development' Theory, his Libido Theory, his 'Psychic Apparatus' (Id, Ego, and Superego) -- all of these and more accumulated into what became together known as 'Classical Psychoanalysis'. But by this time, Freud's earlier 'Traumacy' and then 'Seduction' Theory had to all extents and purposes -- become dead and buried.

Some Psychoanalysts would argue that Freud still kept these two earlier theories at least partly alive in particular circumstances, but the vast majority of the evidence seems to indicate that the Traumacy and Seduction Theories were 'marginalized' in Classical Psychoanalysis at best, 'suppressed' in Masson's words, and to all extents and purposes -- dead and buried, a product of 'extinction' by earlier 'ethical' and/or unethical', 'right' or 'wrong' forces.

.........................................................................

From the internet...

Classical Psychoanalysis

Theory of Illness

-Three-Stage Compromise Model of Mental Illness:

- Stage 1: Primal repression in the pregenital stages

- Step A: Id prompting (wish)

- Step B: Ego defends (counterwish)

- Stage 2: Return of the repressed content following

pubescence

- Stage 3: Compromise deflection (conversion) to

“symptoms”

Theory of Cure

Freud’s original theory:

1. Understanding of hidden meanings = insight (Freud

tells the secret and patient is obliged to change)

2. Client had to be free and open with therapist – relax

level of censorship (let the patient talk – whatever comes

to him/her = free association -> psychic determinism)

Freud’s final theory:

1. The neurotic is a person with significant primal

repressions, including those surrounding the

unresolved Oedipal complex

2. In therapy, this same acting-out process occurs in

the transference of feelings onto the therapist

a. Transfers affectionate, friendly feelings for the

therapist as a person

b. There are positive transferences of an erotic,

sexually lustful nature that are actually aimed at

the image

c. There are negative transferences of a hostile,

death-wishing variety that are also aimed at the

image rather than the person of the therapist

3. Neuroses stem from a personal dynamic, and it is

only the neurotic who can directly confront his/her

own unconscious and try to end the lack of

communication between the private realms of mind

4. As the neurotic client moves through

psychoanalysis, he/she develops an artificial or

transformed neurosis within the four walls of the

consulting room

5. When we speak of positive or negative feelings

being transferred to the therapist via imagoes, we are

also saying that libidinal or hostile

cathexes are taking place

6. The patient in psychoanalysis comes gradually to

remove libido from object cathexes in the environment

and from the symptoms manifested in the body and to

redirect this free libido onto the relationship with the therapist

Therapy

- A scientific investigation in addition to a curative process

- Rules for dream interpretation/analysis:

1. Do not take the manifest content of a dream

literally, because it never reflects the unconscious

meaning intended.

2. Present various portions of the dream contents to

the client as a prompt for free association, and do not

worry about how far this line of investigation takes

you from the original dream story.

3. Never lead or suggest things about the dream to

the client; wait until several dreams and/or free

associations to dream contents suggest the direction to

be taken in making interpretations.

- Patient lies on sofa, Freud sits behind head of patient - out of sight (Freud did not like being stared at for eight hours a day)

- Met several times/week, for at least a year

- Pay was discussed up front and charge would occur for even missed appointments

- Saw patients for 50 minute hour - took notes between sessions (not during)

- In earliest sessions, Freud turned lead to patient: “Before I can say anything to you I must know a great deal about you; please tell me what you know about yourself.”

- Freud began instructing on basis of psychoanalysis around the 5th or 6th session (very much against independent reading/studying of psychoanalysis by patient)

- Advised patients not to make important decisions during course of treatment - to limit making of errors in life decisions

- Hold out on interpretation until client is one step short of making it himself or herself.

- Psychoanalysis ends when both analyst and analysand decide to stop seeing one another.

To contact the web manager:
E-mail Colin M. Burchfield, Ph.D.
Use the above link (e.g., image) to purchase my favorite textbook on clinical psychology. Use the below (e.g., image) link to purchase the book from which much of the information on this page came.
Links to Resources on Classical Psychoanalysis:

Psychoanalysis Related Organizations

Psychoanalysis Related Journals

Psychoanalysis Related Books

..............................................................................

Theory 2: This thesis is probably held by most orthodox and classically trained Psychoanalysts: That Freud's 'new' theoretical modifications after he slowly 'dropped' his 'Traumacy' and 'Seduction' Theories were warrented by 'new' clinical evidence and were superior theories based on this 'new' and/or 'accumulative' clinical evidence. Freud's biggest argument seemed to be that these 'alledged' incidents of 'childhood sexual abuse/seduction' were just far too common for Freud to believe that they were all 'real'; that conversely, they represented 'distorted memories and real fantasies of unconcsious childhood wishes on the part of his female clients and that these fantasy-wishes were a "normal" part of their evolving childhood and adult sexual process'. In particular, the little girl's evolving 'romantic/sexual fantasies' towards her father became labelled by Freud in Classical Psychoanalysis as 'The Oedipal Complex'.

..........................................................................

Theory 3: The DGB Psychology Theory: That Freud overgeneralized on his Repressed Memory Theory, he overgeneralized on his Repressed Fantasy/Wish/Impulse Theory, he overgeneralized on his Traumacy Theory, he overgeneralized on his Seduction Theory, he overgeneralized when he abandoned both his Traumacy and Seduction Theory, he overgeneralized on his Oedipal Theory, and he overgeneralized on his Sexual-Libido Theory. In effect, both Pre-Psychoanalysis and Classical were/are full of overgeneralizations that to this day have not been fully compensated for except by differing elements of 'Post-Freudian' and 'anti-Freudian' schools of psychology, each of which have their own unique and particular way of focusing on human behavior and human pathology -- and each of which only sees a 'certain element of the whole of human life and human mental pathology' just like Classical Psychoanalysis still does. As theorists, we all play 'The Fitting Game' (Fritz Perls) where we all make 'boxes' and 'generalizations' and 'theories' most of which generally see 'elements of the whole' but never 'the entire whole'. We all come up with these 'generic theories' -- some better or worse than others -- but none ever 'perfect' enough to encompass the whole of 'human life' and 'human pathology'. There are different ways that we -- meaning theorists and/or therapists -- can play the fitting game. Mostly, a therapist is taught one particular theory and sticks with that theory. However, we can also change and/or modify our theories according to the clinical cases and information that we receive.

The worst thing we can do is try to 'force' our generic theory on case information that doesn't fit the theory. This is a Cardinal Sin amongst theorists and therapists -- and when we are dealing with a theory that handles clinical information that is potentially as emotionally volatile and devastating as The Seduction Theory (or its opposite, The Oedipal Theory) -- with potential legal ramifications to boot -- it is imperative for theorists and/or therapists to either get this information 'absolutely right' and/or at the very least to not make any claims of 'absolute rightness' when the clinical information is based on 'subjective, narcissistically biased testimony' -- or even more dangerously -- therapist interpretation (that is potentially based on the therapist's own projections and/or counter-transferences) that could be right or wrong or anywhere in between. If some father's legal, family, and/or social reputation is at stake -- and the consequences involve the very real potential of his life being ruined -- the people who get involved in this type of case better make sure that they have an iron-clad case of what they are talking about. There is absolutely no room for ethical and/or legal error here because the potential consequences to a 'falsely accused and/or convicted man or woman are so great.

One only has to be reminded of the horrific case of Dr. Charles Smith who's 'seemingly expert' testimony helped to convict numerous parents of 'killing their own babies' -- only to find out significantly later that much of this testimony was fraught with errors and 'not expert at all'. The doctor was totally discredited, his medical license was revoked, and numerous cases came back up for re-investigation -- with some people having spent years in jail already -- based on Smith's 'bad' testimony.

While there are some differences in the two professions here -- childhood forensics vs. psychotherapy -- still, there are many similarities in issues, logic vs. illogic, and horrific consequences that deserve to be seriously looked at and analyzed for their potential for error...Here are two articles relative to the 'Dr. Charles Smith' horror show...

.......................................................................

Court lets dad appeal Dr. Smith baby case
Judge waives deadline to challenge conviction
January 7, 2009

Tracey Tyler

LEGAL AFFAIRS REPORTER

The Ontario Court of Appeal is giving Richard Brant a second chance to prove he didn't kill his 2-month-old baby, contrary to highly damaging findings made by disgraced pathologist Dr. Charles Smith.

Brant's deadline for appealing his 1995 conviction expired more than 13 years ago, but the court yesterday agreed to an extension. Lawyers for Brant, 36, have until Friday to file documents formally setting the appeal process in motion.

"The applicant (Brant) has explained the delay and there is obvious merit to the appeal," Justice Marc Rosenberg said in a written endorsement yesterday, after hearing submissions from Brant's lawyer, James Lockyer, and Crown counsel Alison Wheeler.

Wheeler did not oppose Lockyer's request for a time extension. Brant's case was one of nearly two dozen that led to a recent public inquiry into Ontario's pediatric forensic pathology system.

A team of international forensic experts found Smith, described by Brant's trial lawyer as "the king" of child death investigations, made mistake after mistake and reached findings not supported by evidence.

In Brant's case, Smith concluded 2-month-old Dustin Brant's death in Nov. 1992 was a homicide from blunt-force trauma, likely the result of being shaken. In his findings, he contradicted a neuropathologist who performed an autopsy and found Dustin died of respiratory failure and pneumonia.

In an affidavit filed with the court, Brant, who had originally been charged with manslaughter, said he agreed to accept an offer from the Crown and plead guilty to aggravated assault because he felt he stood no chance against Smith, then a powerful and persuasive witness.

Brant served six months in jail.

Speaking with reporters outside court yesterday, Lockyer said his client and many other parents who were convicted of killing their children on the basis of Smith's testimony share another common denominator. Most, like Brant, had little money.

To this day, Brant, who now lives in New Brunswick, doesn't have the money to fight to clear his name.

As a result, Rosenberg ruled yesterday that Lockyer will have his legal fees covered by the province, as allowed by the Criminal Code, at a rate of $225 an hour. His law student will get $35 an hour.

Toronto Star

...............................................................................

the charles smith blog

Monday, June 9, 2008
Extraordinary Article: Dr. James Le Fanu: Why Have Women Been Wrongly Convicted Of Killing Their Children?

My attention was recently drawn to an extraordinary article entitled: "Expert witnesses, suspect science and dead babies: Why have women been wrongly convicted of killing their children?"

The author is Dr. James Le Fanu - a medical columnist for London's Daily and Sunday Telegraph and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for "The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine" published by Diane Publishing Company in 2001;

The article was published in a feisty medical publication called "Spiked Health" on June 27, 2005.

As a practicing physician, Le Fanu saw first hand the emergence of the dubious proposition that there might be a hidden epidemic of abusive injury of children emerged in the 1980s with the description by British paediatricians of two covert forms of child abuse - factitious illness and smothering - and its tragic results.

Le Fanu's insightful article is preceded by the following quotes:

'PLEASE, IF THERE IS ANY WAY YOU COULD HELP WITH OUR SITUATION, BY YOURSELF OR ANYONE YOU KNOW, COULD YOU PLEASE GET IN TOUCH. WE CAN HONESTLY SAY, HAND ON HEART, WE HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING TO HURT OUR BABY. WE ARE NOW BEEN [SIC] ASSESSED AND WE GOT TOLD [SIC] THAT WHEN WE GO TO THE FINDING OF FACTS HEARING AND WE STILL INSIST WE HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING, OUR TWINS WILL GO UP FOR ADOPTION.';

LETTER FROM PARENT

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'FOR ME, THE UNUSUAL FEATURE IS DEATH SO SOON AFTER BEING SEEN WELL, THE FACT THAT THERE HAVE BEEN PREVIOUS DEATHS IN THE FAMILY AND THE FACT THAT HE HAD HAD AN EPISODE OF SOME SORT ONLY NINE DAYS BEFORE HE DIED THAT CAUSED HIM TO BE ASSESSED IN HOSPITAL, BECAUSE THOSE FEATURES ARE ONES THAT ARE FOUND REALLY QUITE COMMONLY IN CHILDREN WHO HAVE BEEN SMOTHERED BY THEIR MOTHERS. SO THE DIAGNOSIS FOR ME, THE CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS, WOULD BE THIS WAS CHARACTERISTIC OF SMOTHERING.';

TESTIMONY OF PROFESSOR SIR ROY MEADOW, R V CANNINGS, MARCH 2002;
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE AUTHORITY OF MEDICINE DERIVES FROM ITS SCIENCE BASE, SO IT WOULD BE REASONABLE TO ASSUME THAT DOCTORS WHEN CALLED ON TO GIVE THEIR EXPERT OPINION IN COURT WOULD HAVE A THOROUGH BALANCED GRASP OF THE RELEVANT SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE. THE SUCCESSFUL APPEALS OF SALLY CLARK AND ANGELA CANNINGS AGAINST THEIR CONVICTIONS FOR CHILD MURDER WOULD SUGGEST OTHERWISE, AS DOES THE RECENT RULING OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL THAT A FURTHER 28 CASES OF PARENTS CONVICTED OF SMOTHERING OR SHAKING THEIR CHILDREN ARE 'POTENTIALLY UNSAFE';

NOR CAN THAT BE ALL, FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERAL'S REVIEW WAS RESTRICTED TO THE CRIMINAL COURTS, AND THUS DOES NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE SEVERAL HUNDRED CASES A YEAR HEARD IN THE FAMILY COURTS WHOSE LESS STRINGENT STANDARDS OF PROOF ('BALANCE OF PROBABILITY' RATHER THAN 'BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT') WOULD FURTHER INCREASE THE RISK OF UNSAFE CONVICTIONS. THUS THE MEDICAL ADVOCACY OF CONTENTIOUS THEORIES OF THE MECHANISMS OF CHILD ABUSE IS LIKELY TO HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR A SYSTEMATIC MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE ON A SCALE WITHOUT PRECEDENT IN BRITISH LEGAL HISTORY - WITH DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES FOR THE PARENTS WRONGLY CONVICTED. HERE I OFFER A 'MASTER THEORY' TO EXPLAIN HOW THIS EXTRAORDINARY SITUATION HAS COME ABOUT.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The article proceeds as follows:

The hidden epidemic of child abuse;

Since Kempe's description of the 'battered-child syndrome' in 1962, paediatricians have become only too familiar with the burns, bruises, fractures and neglect of the child victim of abusive physical assault. The current concerns about the wrongful diagnosis of child abuse, however, centre on a trio of very different clinical situations whose defining characteristic might be described rather as one of uncertainty or ambiguity.

-- Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) - SIDS remains much the commonest cause of unexpected death in childhood, whose primary aetiology, despite much research, has proved elusive.

-- Childhood injuries - children are by nature accident-prone but sometimes the severity of their injuries might seem disproportionate to the explanation provided.

-- Medically unexplained symptoms - all doctors have patients whose signs and symptoms are difficult to explain.

Doctors are no different from anyone else in being reluctant to admit they 'do not know'. Why, for example, might SIDS affect two or more children in the same family, or how might a seemingly trivial accident cause an acute intracranial injury? Some might thus be unduly susceptible to the notion that the uncertainties arise not from their lack of knowledge or clinical skills but from parental concealment - that each of these ambiguous clinical situations is potentially a form of hidden or covert abuse inflicted by parents in such a way as to hide their intentions from external scrutiny. Further, these clinically ambiguous situations are not uncommon, which would suggest that child abuse is both more prevalent than is widely appreciated and perpetrated by even the most apparently respectable of parents. Paediatricians clearly have a major responsibility in identifying these concealed forms of abuse if they are to protect children from further injury or death.

The evidence for a hidden epidemic of child abuse;

The proposition that there might be a hidden epidemic of abusive injury of children emerged in the 1980s with the description by British paediatricians of two covert forms of child abuse - factitious illness and smothering. Roy Meadow, in his pioneering paper on Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, described two cases illustrating a phenomenon, familiar now but puzzling at the time, where mothers sought the sympathy of doctors and nursing staff by fabricating the symptoms of a perplexing illness in their child that warranted repeated hospital admissions and investigative procedures. In the first case the mother contaminated her six-year-old daughter's urine specimens to simulate recurrent urinary tract infections, while in the second the mother fed her six-week-old son high doses of salt, causing him to be admitted to hospital several times with 'unexplained' hypernatraemia. Four years later Meadow reported a further series of 19 cases in which 'fraudulent clinical histories and fabricated signs' encompassed the entire spectrum of paediatric illness - bleeding from every orifice, neurological symptoms of drowsiness, seizures and unsteadiness, rashes, glycosuria, fevers and 'biochemical chaos'.

The implications of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy were twofold: it alerted doctors to the possibility of fabricated illness as a potential differential diagnosis in children with unexplained symptoms. But it also demonstrated how the seemingly most devoted of parents might, in reality, be potential child abusers. Meadow himself, commenting on the mothers in the cases he described, observed how they were 'very pleasant to deal with, cooperative and appreciative of good medical care'.

David Southall's innovative technique of covert video surveillance for investigating apnoeic episodes in children vividly confirmed the sinister reality of hidden abuse. Now paediatricians attending meetings and conferences could see for themselves the blurry black and white images of mothers caught in the act of smothering or choking their babies. Southall's study widened the spectrum of child abuse in two significant directions. It offered, in smothering, a plausible explanation for why a child might experience recurrent acute life-threatening events necessitating urgent admission to hospital. And it emphasised, once again, the possibility that some at least of those children whose deaths were labelled as SIDS might have been the victims of smothering. Southall in a further report of 30 children undergoing covert video surveillance identified 12 siblings who had died unexpectedly, eight of whom the parents subsequently confessed to having smothered. Thus parental smothering must be a clear possibility in any child with recurrent acute life-threatening events where there has been more than one unexplained childhood death in the family;

The hidden epidemic revealed;

There could be no doubt following Meadow and Southall's findings that paediatricians must have been missing a substantial number of cases of child abuse and would in future need to be much more alert to the possibility of parental harm where the diagnosis was not clear. Frequently, however, such suspicions could not be confirmed with the sort of direct evidence provided by techniques such as covert video surveillance. So how could doctors be confident that covert abuse was the cause - and convince others to take the necessary steps to protect the child from further danger?

Significantly, there were certain similarities in the signs and symptoms of children with these clinically ambiguous situations and those recorded in well-authenticated forms of abuse such as smothering, poisoning and abusive head injury. Thus it seemed reasonable to infer, by extrapolation, that these presentations were 'characteristic' of covert forms of abuse which could then be confidently diagnosed - even in the absence of any other circumstantial evidence such as bruises, signs of neglect or parental history of violence. During the 1980s the trio of clinically ambiguous situations would become redesignated as 'child abuse syndromes'. A key influence was 'Meadow's rule' regarding SIDS. While the absence of reliable pathological findings made it difficult to distinguish SIDS from smothering, Meadow argued that two or more childhood deaths in the same family, along with a recognisable 'pattern' of events (such as previous acute life-threatening episodes) was strongly suggestive of infanticide: 'two is suspicious and three murder unless proved otherwise...';

Another was the proposal that two specific presentations of childhood injury were 'characteristic' of abusive assault. Caffey's original description of shaken baby syndrome suggested that the whiplash effect of vigorous shaking offered a 'reasonable explanation' for the presence of subdural and retinal haemorrhages in severely abused children. The imagery of how the violent to-and-fro movement of the baby's head could cause bleeding of the vessels of the eye and brain proved very persuasive, and it seemed logical to infer that any child presenting with retinal and subdural haemorrhages must have been shaken - despite the absence of other circumstantial evidence of abuse;

Similarly, Caffey attributed a radiological 'bucket handle' appearance of the metaphyses of the long bones in severely abused children as being due to a 'twisting and wrenching' of the child's limbs by the parents. Subsequently, it was suggested that those children in whom abuse was suspected should have a skeletal survey for similar 'suspicious' metaphyseal lesions that were interpreted as being characteristic of abusive assault - again, despite the absence of clinical signs of fracture or subsequent radiological evidence of healing. A third was a widened case definition for Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. Meadow, in his initial series, had confirmed the diagnosis either by covert surveillance or by confronting the perpetrator and obtaining a confession. In a widened definition the presence of 'diagnostic pointers' was proposed for use in children with medically unexplained symptoms. They included:

-- Parents unusually calm for the severity of illness;

-- Parents unusually knowledgeable about the illness;

-- Parents fitting in contentedly with ward life and attention from staff;

-- Symptoms and signs inconsistent with known pathophysiology;

-- Treatments ineffective or poorly tolerated;

The hidden epidemic confirmed;

These novel child abuse syndromes, taken together, represented a major conceptual breakthrough in paediatrics. The uncertainty of clinically ambiguous situations had given place to the certainty of the single unifying and plausible diagnosis of covert abuse. The scale of the hidden epidemic then turned out to be substantially greater than had been expected, with a fourfold increase in the number of child abuse cases in the 10 years from 1978 to 1988. This was reflected regionally in an increase from 40 to over 200 cases a year in the City of Leeds while, by the end of the decade, an extra 7,500 children every year were being placed on the child protection register on the grounds of physical abuse;

Nonetheless, the facility with which the syndromes could bring to light covert abuse concealed from view their poor evidential basis. The causal link between the putative mechanism of assault and subsequent injury could be neither independently confirmed nor experimentally investigated. It might seem reasonable to extrapolate from the presence of retinal and subdural haemorrhages in the battered child that these features had the same significance in a child with no other circumstantial evidence of injury. Certainly the powerful imagery of violent shearing forces disrupting the blood vessels was persuasive, but shaking has never been directly observed or proven to cause such injuries; the supposition that they do is based on (contested) theories of biomechanics;

Rather, the legitimacy of the syndromes was predicated on two related and highly improbable assumptions, scientific and legal. The scientific assumption was that there could be no other explanation, either known or that might be discovered at some time in the future, that might explain these 'characteristic' presentations. Meadow's 'rule', for example, precluded the possibility that there might be some unknown genetic explanation for multiple unexpected childhood deaths in the same family, while the 'characteristic' pattern of shaken baby syndrome precluded the possibility of some alternative explanation for the retinal and subdural haemorrhages - such as an acute increase in retinal venous pressure from intracranial bleeding caused by accidental head injury. The legal assumption presupposed that these presentations were so specific for abuse that they were by themselves sufficient to secure a conviction - even in the absence of the sort of circumstantial evidence of violence or neglect that would normally be required to return a guilty verdict in a court of law.

Put another way, the 'characteristic' presentations of the syndromes could not sustain the interpretation placed upon them: they might be 'consistent with' but could not, by themselves, be 'diagnostic of' child abuse. Thus some at least of the parents contributing to the statistics of the fourfold rise in child abuse were likely to be innocent. Three additional factors, in particular, bolstered the credibility of the syndromes in the family and criminal courts.

The authority of the child abuse expert;

By the close of the 1980s, the leading experts in child abuse had acquired an international reputation and were thus called on to instruct and educate not just their fellow paediatricians but also the police, lawyers, social workers and judges in the child abuse syndromes. Their persuasive expert opinion, when expressed in court, was guaranteed a sympathetic hearing, while their confidence in the syndromes they had discovered was virtually unchallengeable. Further, they could scarcely accept the force of contrary evidence since to do so would require them to concede that their expert testimonies might, in similar cases, have resulted in wrongful conviction. Meanwhile the costs of the process of investigating allegations arising out of the child abuse syndromes rose to an estimated £1billion per year, with the more prominent experts receiving fees for the preparation of their reports and appearances in court in excess of £100,000 a year;

The circular argument of successful convictions;

The validity of the child abuse syndromes would appear to be confirmed by the high proportion of successful convictions that followed the courts' careful scrutiny of the allegations against parents. These convictions, however, came to rely increasingly on a circular argument - whereby the main evidence for the child abuse syndrome of which the parents were accused was that parents had been convicted of it in the past. Thus parents whose child presents with subdural and retinal haemorrhages are accused of inflicting shaken baby syndrome because, in the vast majority of cases, parents of children with subdural and retinal haemorrhages are convicted of causing shaken baby syndrome. Similarly, Meadow argued that 'the likelihood that the court verdicts about parental responsibility for [causing their children's death] were correct was very high indeed', without making clear that it was his expert testimony that repetitive SIDS was 'murder unless proved otherwise' that had been a major factor in securing those convictions;

There is a further element of circularity in the presumed pathogenesis of the syndrome of which the parents are accused. The theory of shaken baby syndrome presupposes that violent, abusive force (comparable, it is claimed, to that sustained in a high-speed road traffic accident or a fall from a second storey window) is necessary to cause retinal and subdural haemorrhages. The parents are then caught in the catch-22 of either confessing to the alleged assault (for which they might be offered the inducement 'if you say you did it we will let you have your child back') or denying it, in which case their denial is evidence they must be lying about the events surrounding their child's injury, which is then further evidence of their guilt;

The silencing of parents;

The forces of expertise ranged against the parents were formidable enough, but it is apparent too from their personal accounts that they were subjected to a series of intimidatory tactics to silence their protestations of innocence and deny the validity of their testimony as the only witnesses of the circumstances surrounding their child's injury or death. Thus parents describe how, when summoned to see the consultant to learn (they presume) about their child's progress, they were 'ambushed' with the diagnosis of, for example, shaken baby syndrome, presented to them as irrefutable fact ('your son must have been violently shaken for several minutes to cause these injuries') without any suggestion that there could be some alternative explanation.

The prompt involvement of the police and social workers would lead to further accusatory interrogations that begin from the principle that the parents must be guilty - as the doctors would not have made such serious accusations if they were not convinced they were true. The transcript of these interrogations would subsequently be turned against them in court so that any inconsistencies in their explanations of how their child's injuries might have occurred were then presented as evidence of their efforts to conceal their guilt. Parents describe the same pattern of events where they would only be informed late on a Friday evening that a preliminary court hearing had been arranged for the following Monday morning - thus leaving them the weekend to find a lawyer (who was unlikely to have any expertise in this field) to contest their child being taken into foster care;

These psychological tactics were a prelude to the yet more powerful intimidatory weapon of technical obscurantism - the description of their child's injuries and couching of the charges against them in a language in which the professionals were fluent but the bewildered parents were not. How could they hope to dispute the allegations when they did not know what was being talked about? Parents are of course entitled to seek their own expert opinion, but soon discovered that the overwhelming consensus about the validity of the child abuse syndromes meant it was very difficult to find anyone to argue in their defence; or worse, the expert reports they requested were actively detrimental to their case;

This silencing of parents was made more effective still by the rules of confidentiality that wrap the proceedings of the family courts in a cocoon of secrecy, making parents liable to a charge of contempt of court if they sought advice or support from anyone not directly involved in their case. This secrecy in turn protected the proceedings of the court, and in particular the testimony of expert witnesses, from external scrutiny while concealing from public view the spectacle of so many apparently respectable parents being convicted of inflicting these terrible injuries on their children - without any circumstantial evidence that they had done so.

For parents there was no escaping their fate. From the moment of the initial allegation against them, the alliance of medical experts, police, social workers and an unsympathetic judiciary - well organised, experienced and well financed - meant that their eventual conviction was almost a foregone conclusion. Nonetheless, the two assumptions, scientific and legal, of the specificity of the syndromes as being diagnostic of abuse remained as insecure as ever, with the courts' willingness to convict parents in the absence of circumstantial evidence of abuse resting almost entirely on their faith in the reliability and trustworthiness of medical expert opinion.

The first sign that such faith might be misplaced came in 2003 during Sally Clark's successful appeal, with the revelation of 'fundamental errors' in the testimony of Meadow and other prominent experts that had resulted in her original conviction. Their credibility was further undermined by Justice Judge's Appeal Court ruling exonerating Angela Cannings of murdering her two children. Justice Judge dismissed the central plank of the prosecution case, Meadow's claim that there had been a 'pattern of events' leading up to the deaths of children that was 'characteristic' of smothering: 'We doubt the aptness of the description "pattern"...the history of each child was different from every other child.' Further research would refute Meadow's claim (as reflected in his 'rule') that recurrent SIDS in the same family was 'extremely rare' - in other words, that in such cases the cause was likely to be unnatural. On the contrary, a follow-up study of SIDS families found two or more deaths in the same family to be 'not uncommon' with the overwhelming majority (80-90 per cent) due to natural causes. There are, it has subsequently emerged, several genetic mechanisms that could account for recurrent SIDS including congenital visceroautonomic dysfunction and cardiac dysrhythmias;

Similarly, further research has undermined the validity of retinal and subdural haemorrhages as being characteristic of shaken baby syndrome, with an evidence-based review finding 'serious data gaps, flaws of logic and inconsistency of case definition' in the relevant scientific work. Shaken baby syndrome was not, as its name implied, a 'syndrome', but rather encompassed several different forms of brain injury, with different clinical history and neuropathology, involving some mechanism other than shaking to account for the presence of retinal haemorrhages. Thus a series of independently witnessed accidents confirmed that, as parents had maintained, minor falls could cause an acute subdural bleed with the retinal haemorrhages being due to a sudden rise in retinal venous pressure (44). Further, parental histories of a preceding episode of respiratory collapse were compatible with the very different pathological findings of anoxic brain damage, with disturbance of the microcirculation causing thin subdural and retinal haemorrhages;

Meanwhile, the widened definition of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy based on 'diagnostic pointers' has also resulted in wrongful convictions, with the child's unexplained symptoms proving to be due to some rare or unusual medical condition with which the doctor was not familiar. Subsequently the syndrome would be renamed 'factitious illness' in recognition of the fact that, while some parents may fabricate the symptoms of their child's illness, the combination of unexplained symptoms and the mother's personality profile did not constitute a syndrome of abuse. Finally, radiologists' misinterpretation of normal variants of ossification in the first year of life as being metaphyseal fractures accounts for the obvious discrepancy between the findings of multiple fractures on skeletal survey and the absence of any clinical signs of abusive injury;

This serial collapse of the improbable scientific assumption that there could be no explanation other than abuse for the characteristic presentation of these syndromes has exposed in turn the equally improbable legal assumption that, contrary to sound judicial practice, it is possible to convict parents without there being additional circumstantial evidence or reasonable motive for their abusive intentions. Thus Justice Judge would, in his exoneration of Angela Cannings, draw attention to 'the absence of the slightest evidence of physical interference which might support the allegation she had deliberately harmed them'. And, again, he emphasised how 'the absence of any indication of ill temper or ill treatment of any child at any time' and 'the evidence of both her family and outsiders about the love and care she bestowed on her children' made it extraordinarily unlikely that she might have smothered them. Justice Judge's exoneration of Angela Cannings' character as a loving mother focuses attention on the moral and judgmental dimension of the child abuse syndromes, arising from extrapolation from Meadow's original description of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, that all parents are potential child abusers. Is this extrapolation plausible? The psychological profile of those who unambiguously have harmed their children reveals, as would be expected, them to be psychopaths, criminals, opioid abusers, alcoholics and so on. So when parents such as Angela Cannings, with no blemish on their character, appear as loving, concerned parents, the likelihood must be that it is because they are loving concerned parents - and very powerful evidence is required to argue otherwise.

Meadow and the proponents of the child abuse syndromes necessarily take the contrary view, and in so doing are required to portray parents' protestations of innocence as deceitful. That moral judgment, together with the failure to recognise that medical knowledge may be incomplete, meant that Angela Cannings' wrongful conviction for infanticide was almost inevitable. The question remains how many other parents have similarly been wrongly convicted of the terrible crime of injuring their children, and been robbed of their families, livelihoods and good name.

Next Post: A critique of this article by Dr Michael Fitzpatrick as published in "Spiked Health."

................................................................................

DGB

In Conclusion:

The best that we can say regarding the whole 'Seduction Theory' vs. 'Oedipal Theory' is that:

1. 'Every case is different and each case needs to be thorough analyzed and judged on its own particular merits and idiosyncrisies';

2. Beware of so-called 'expert testimony' whether it is Classical Freudian (Oedipal) or pre-Classic-Freudian (Seduction) Theory;

3. Let us not lose focus on that most important democratic principle that a man or woman is innocent until proven guilty.

4. If in doubt, remain skeptical -- and don't turn 'subjectively biased testimony' into 'righteous truth or fact'.

5. Both Freud's early 'Traumacy-Seduction' Theory and his later 'Impulse-Restraint' Ideas are deserved of proper recognition and respect -- and should be combined into a more comprehensive Integrative Theory. How tightly -- or whether at all -- one wants to hold onto Freud's Oedipal Theory is a matter for further debate. I accept it 'metaphorically' or 'symbolically' but not literally; similarily, with Freud's 'psycho-sexual stages of development';

6. Adler, Jung, Ferenczi, Klein, Fairbairn, Berne, Kohut, Perls, and others all had legitimately good things to say on much of this inter-related clinical material and all deserve to be properly read and studied for anyone who is a psychotherapist -- or thinking of being one.

-- dgb, Feb. 28th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

Freud's Causal Interpretations -- And Generalizations -- About 'The Aetiology of Hysteria'

2009-02-23T10:27:00.000-08:00

Freud and Joseph Breuer made a good team -- as short-lived as it turned out to be.

Breuer was the older and in some ways the wiser of the two. He was more conservative and cautious with his 'causal interpretations and generalizations'. He was the more 'grounded' of the two. He was the better 'rational-empiricist' in that he was not quite so quick to jump to fast fast conclusions and over-generalizations.

In contrast, Freud was younger and more ambitious. Freud was quicker to jump to new -- and more provocative, controversial, dramatic -- conclusions. Freud was the better 'marketer' and 'seller'. It's just you had to pay a little closer attention to what Freud was marketing and selling because Freud was quicker to 'jump off the deep end' with his conclusions. When this happened, Freud needed someone to 'reel him back to earth again'. Breuer was that man. Unfortunately, Freud was stubborn and would not take 'no' for an answer. It was his way or the highway. So Breuer took the highway leaving Freud to fend for himself and to deal with whatever provocative, controversial issues he got himself into. They were frequent -- and many.

However, Freud was charismatic and always seemed to attract -- and then lose -- male followers. This would be one of the main 'serial, transference patterns' in Freud's life. Freud would attract all these male 'followers', 'co-workers', and/or students. He would teach them his 'Psychoanalytic system'. Then he would 'spit them out' (or they would 'spit him out') when they 'refused to buy completely into the Psychoanalytic program'.

With Freud, there was not too much room for 'variations on a theme' unless these variations came from the mouth of Freud. Between about 1906 and 1926, a whole host of very brilliant pschologists had passed through Freud's very 'tight Vienna circle', made their impression, rebelled against Freud's very 'tight reign over Freudian theory' -- and either quickly or slowly left. We can included amongst this group: Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Sandor Ferenczi, and Otto Rank. (And that is a select list.)

All of this is to say that Psychoanalysis could have offered a much, much richer playing field for understanding human behavior and human neurosis and/or psychopathology. But time and time again, smart men with very smart ideas were turned away by Freud -- to the ongoing and ultimate detriment of Psychoanalysis in terms of its very 'anal-retentive' development which can be viewed as a projection of Freud's very anal-retentive -- and largely 'unemotional' -- character.

Breuer was the first smart man to fall by the way side. He would be far from the last.

Between about 1893 and 1895 Freud and Breuer came up with a 'whole host of partial and interconnected sub-theories' on the various 'causes' and/or 'co-factors' of hysteria which they put together into a more or less integrative theory of hysteria.

Having said this, it could be argued that Breuer's strength was primarily as a scientist and as a doctor -- and his contribution to the 'cause of hysteria' was a more or less 'physio-genic' theory of hysteria that went nowhere. In contrast, Freud's contribution to the 'cause of hysteria' was a psychological one, and a 'theory of resistance or defense' -- that went everywhere. So maybe Breuer had reached the limit of his capabilities even though his greatest contribution to Psychoanalysis was his treatment of 'Anna O' which Freud freely acknowledged as the birthpoint of Psychoanalysis.

Off the top of my head, I will itemize most of the Freudian 'hysterical co-factors' -- and then check them later.

1. Shock: A shocking experience that rattles the personality.

2. Unconscious/Repressed Memory or Memories: The memory of the shocking experience doesn't go through the usual 'conscious memory channel'. Rather it is denied entry into the personality and enters an 'unconscious or repressed memory channel' which is totally different than the usual conscious memory channel.

3. Hysterical Conversion: From its vantage point in the unconcious memory channel, the memory is able to 'cause havoc' in the personality and in the body. 'Repressed emotional energy' gets converted into 'bodily symptoms' that often have an associative and/or symbolic connection with the original shocking experience.

4. There may be something in the 'hysterical personality' that may be 'hyper-sensitive' and prone to 'hysterical conversion pathway'.

5. Unlock the repressed memory -- complete with all emotions locked up with the memory -- and you unlock the hysterical symptom, and 'set the client free' of the particular symptom associated with the particular memory.

6. I am speculating here but I imagine that one of the main problems that a therapist like Breuer or Freud might have had with a hysterical patient is that as fast as you help 'cure' the patient of one symptom, the patient might well 'create one or more new ones'. In doing so, she has the creative capability of keeping you busuy as a therapist for either the rest of her life or the rest of yours.

Here is where the full 'transference relationship' can be seen and diagnosed. It was often the case that these young hysterical women were also 'home nurses' who treated their acutely and chronically sick fathers who, in this regard, were monopolizing all of their time and energy.

How could these women 'break free' of their fathers' constant needs in order to fulfill some of their own 'freedom' and 'womanly' needs? Presto. On a subconscious or unconscious level the women learn how to behave like their fathers were -- i.e., the hysterical young women, in effect, 'identify with their sick fathers'.

Now from a position of previous 'powerlessness', they are 'transferred' into a position of 'power' -- just like their sick father. This is the power of the sick.

The young women go to a doctor with very 'mystifying' symptoms. The doctor is 'stumped' and can't help them. They go to another doctor -- a 'neurological' and/or 'psychological' specialist.

The 'hysterical daughter of a sick father' -- quickly becomes subconsciously very creative in keeping the new doctor 'very busy' just like her father has very creatively kept his daughter busy for the last x number of years.

What goes around comes around. I call this 'transference-reversal'. From an 'underdog' position as 'nurse', the daughter quickly learns the 'power-advantage' of playing the role of 'hysterical patient' -- she gets to control the young doctor just as her sick father controls her. It's more 'fun' 'being in control', 'being in power' and controlling the young doctor.

At least until or unless the young doctor is finally smart enough to figure out what is going on. That is where the therapy really starts. It starts with understanding the full dynamics of the transference complex and the corresponding nature of the therapeutic transference relationship. In 1895, Freud hadn't quite gotten there yet. And I'm not sure he ever fully did.

Transference is not always about 'sex' and/or 'love'. Even more often, it is about 'power' and 'self-esteem' and 'aiming to undo or repair a narcissistic self-esteem injury'. Often, all the factors listed above -- and more (anxiety, guilt, anger, rage, jealousy, possessiveness, hate, revenge...) are 'mixed together' into a whole smorgasboard of different and conflicting emotions and impulses and restraints that make up the entire 'transference package or complex'.

Call this my 'Nietzschean-Adlerian-Jungian' influence when I say this. Freud had part of the transference picture figured out -- more so than anyone else at the time -- but he did not have all of it figured out. Not in 1895. Not when he was treating 'Dora' from 1900-1901. And not when he came to associate transference with 'the repetition compulsion' and 'the death instinct' late in his career.

Freud was constantly hampered in his theorizing about transference by the 'tight constraints of his own very anal-retentive theorizing about Psychoanalysis in general'. Probaby the theorist who could have helped him the most in his understanding of transference -- Alfred Adler with his theories of 'inferiority feeling', 'superiority striving', and 'compensation' -- was not around long enough and/or respected enough for his deviation off the 'main Psychoanalytic path' to have any significant and long-lasting impact on Freud's understanding of transference. For the briefest moment in history -- specifically, Nov. 7th, 1906, in the minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society -- Freud and Adler seemed fully on the same page together:

.............................................................................

Freud first turns against Hitschmann and his 'rationalistic' point of view.

He (Freud) attributes great importance to Adler's work; it has brought his own work a step further. To judge from the immediate impression, much of what Adler said may be correct. (Notes by the editors, Herman Nunberg and Ernst Federn: It seems that Freud had in mind what was later characterized as overcompensation or counterbalance for a narcissisitic 'injury' although he uses 'anatomical' language here.)

He singled out two leading ideas as significant and fertile: (1) the concept of compensation, according to which an organic inferiority (later to include the idea of 'psychic inferiority') is counterbalanced by a supervalent cerebral activity, and (2) that the repression is accomplished by the formation of a psychic superstructure. A similar formulation had occurred to him. (Notes by the editors, Nunberg and Federn: This may refer to the formulation that repression is accomplished by the ego.)

Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, Volume 1: 1906-1908, Edited by Herman Nunberg and Ernst Federn, New York, International Universities Press, Inc., 1962.

...............................................................................

But this was only a fleeting moment in time -- and the rest is history -- Adler ultimately, like so many others, separating from Freud and developing his own school of psychology -- Adlerian or Individual Psychology.

DGB Philosophy-Psychology goes back to re-integrate some of the separated pieces.

In the case of 'Anna O', one of the distinctions that DGB Psychology wants to make is between a simple case of 'Traumacy Neurosis' -- say, in the form of an 'emotional-to-physical hysterical conversion' symptom (such as Anna O 'refusing to drink) -- and a full-blown 'Father-Complex Transference Neurosis' (such as between Anna O and Joseph Breuer or between Freud and Dora).

...........................................................................

From the internet, see Freud, Anna O, and her 'not drinking water'.

Cathartic Method

Psychoanalysis: Cathartic Method
Sponsored LinksAnalysis
Franco Investigation Services Ltd See My Profile
YellowPages.ca/FrancoInvestigationS

The so-called "cathartic method" was a treatment for psychiatric disorders developed during 1881-1882 by Joseph Breuer with his patient "Anna O." The aim was to enable the hypnotized patient to recollect the traumatic event at the root of a particular symptom and thereby eliminate the associated pathogenic memory through "catharsis." The term was derived from Aristotle's use of it to describe the emotionally purgative effect of Greek tragedies.

Reading the case history of Anna O., one sees that the method developed gradually. At first, Breuer limited himself to making use of the patient's self-induced hypnotic states in which she would strive to express what she preferred to avoid talking about when normally conscious. Later on, Anna O. began inventing stories around a word or words she heard, at the conclusion of which she awakened serene and improved. After the death of her father, such stories evoked diurnal fears and hallucinations. The cathartic effect, linked to the emotional state that accompanied these fears, required the doctor to listen without actively seeking etiological clues. Anna O. aptly described this procedure, speaking seriously, as a "talking cure", while she referred to it jokingly as "chimney-sweeping" (1895d, p. 30). At this juncture Breuer began to more systematically employ a technique by which, while Anna O. was in a trance, he repeated to her a few words that she herself had muttered while in a self-induced "absence."

It was probably in August 1881 that the method acquired its definitive form. This was when Anna O., after refusing to drink water and suffering near-hydrophobia during hot weather, remembered the disgust she felt when she happened upon her English lady-companion's dog while it was drinking from a water glass. As soon as she described the event, she asked for water and "thereupon the disturbance vanished, never to return" (p. 35) Other examples provided Breuer with evidence that "in the case of this patient the hysterical phenomena disappeared as soon as the event which had give rise to them was reproduced in her hypnosis" (p. 35), and that systematic application of what she called "chimney sweeping" would put an end to one after another of such morbid phenomena. To move the treatment along faster, Breuer began use hypnosis, which he had not regularly employed previously.

Freud and Breuer filled out the notion of catharsis with the concept of "abreaction"—a quantity of affect that was linked to memory of a traumatic and pathogenic event that could not be evacuated through normal physical and organic processes as required by the "principle of constancy" and so, thus blocked (eingeklemmt), was redirected through somatic channels to become the process at the origin of the pathological symptoms (1893a).

Tired of poor results and of the monotony of hypnotic suggestion, by 1889 Freud appears to have decided, in treating Emmy von N., to employ "the cathartic method of J. Breuer." But failure to regularly induce hypnotic states inclined him by 1892 to give up hypnosis, which his patient Elisabeth von R. disliked. He asked her to lay down and close her eyes but allowed her to move about or open her eyes as she wished, and he experimented with a "pressure technique": "I placed my hand on the patient's forehead or took her head between my hands and said: 'You will think of it [a symptom or its origin] under the pressure of my hand. At the moment at which I relax my pressure you will see something in front of you or something will come into your head. Catch hold of it. It will be what we are looking for.—Well, what have you seen or what has occurred to you?" (Freud 1895d, p. 110). This procedure "has scarcely ever left me in the lurch since then," (p. 111) Freud added, claiming that this was the case to such an extent that he told patients that it could not possibly fail but invariably enabled him to "at last [extract] the information" (p. 111).

Breuer's method little by little thus became an "analysis of the psyche" which prefigured "psychoanalysis," a term that first appeared in print in 1896. The technique would be developed progressively over the course of a dozen years.By 1907, when Freud undertook analysis of the "Rat Man," he no longer actively demanded that patients produce material, but asked only that they verbalize what spontaneously came to mind.

Freud's thesis, according to which trauma at the root of displaced energy towards the soma is invariably sexual in nature, led to a rupture in his relationship with Breuer, but it also determined the future course of psychoanalysis. His explanation of the difficulties that patients experienced during treatment to defend themselves against pathogenic memories would come to be known as "resistance," while the concept of "transference" would emerge from his understanding of Breuer's sudden termination of Anna O., or the time that a patient, upon waking from hypnosis, threw her arms around his neck.

Catharsis and abreaction, even while still observed during psychoanalytic treatment, no longer constitute therapeutic aims as in 1895. However, they remain prominent in several psychotherapeutic techniques, such as in "Primal Scream" therapy and certain types of psychodrama.

Bibliography

Anderson, Ola. (1962). Studies in the prehistory of psychoanalysis. Stockholm: Svenska Bokförlaget.

Chertok Léon; and Saussure, Raymond de. (1973). Naissance du psychanalyste. Paris: Payot.

Freud, Sigmund. (1893a). On the psychical mechanism of hysterical phenomena: Preliminary communication. SE,2.

——. (1895d). Studies on Hysteria. SE, 2: 48-106.

Mijolla Alain de. (1982). Aux origines de la pratique psychanalytique. In R. Jaccart (Ed.), Histoire de la psychanalyse. Paris: Hachette.

.................................................................................

DGB Psychology does not let Freud totally off the hook for abandoning his infamous 'Seduction Theory'. In doing so, Freud put 'the theoretical and therapeutic lid back on child sexual abuse' or 'swept it under the carpet' if you will. However, at the same time, DGB Psychology does not let Freud off the hook for his totally focusing on 'The Seduction Theory' to begin with. Nowhere have I read in the case of 'Anna O' that she was sexually abused by her father. Nor does Anna O's 'refusing to drink water' because 'a dog drank water out of a human glass' constitute anything close to 'The Seduction Theory' in my mind (unless the dog seduced Anna O). Freud had an unfortuante habit of overgeneralizing his theoretical conclusions -- and then 'grandstanding' these conclusions until they collapsed under the weight of his own overgeneralizing. 'One or two robins does not necessarily mean spring.' Any man of Freud's scientific background and training should know that. Sometimes a person's need to 'make scientific or social or political waves' can interfere with, and push into the back seat, the same person's need to 'stay grounded in good, logical, rational-empirical common sense'. Narcissistic bias can easily interfere with scientific, epistemological -- and Psychoanalytic -- evolution.

DGB Psychology mixes and matches elements of Freud's Traumacy, Seduction, Childhood Sexuality, Oedipal, and Life-Death Instinct Theory with elements from other theorists such as Bacon, Nietzsche, Adler, Jung, Fairbairn, Berne, Perls, and Masson.

More on this to come.

-- dgb, Feb. 21st-23rd, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

Freud, Psychoanalysis, Hysteria -- and Childhood Traumacy, Sexual Traumacy, Sexual Abuse

2009-02-20T09:50:00.000-08:00

I am about to embark on what I view as one of my most difficult tasks as a philosopher and psycho-theorist. I have to go back into Psychoanalytic history -- back to between about 1885 and 1900 and determine for myself what 'right' and 'wrong' turns Freud made when he was learning about -- and treating -- 'hysteria', learning about the connection between hysteria and sexuality, learning about the connection between hysteria and childhood sexuality, and finally learning about the connection between hysteria and childhood sexual traumacy and/or childhood sexual abuse.

Freud was a very provocative and controversial man -- he generally did not run away from provocative and controversial opinions. In fact, he tended to run towards them -- not away from them. Provocative, controversial opinions and theories were 'the name and essence of his character and game' if you will. Psychoanalysis was nothing if it was not provocative and controversial -- particulary about issues of human sexuality.

And yet in the late 1970s, along came another very provocative and controversial man -- trained right here in my area at The University of Toronto as a Freudian Psychoanalyst (1971-1979) while I was finishing up my Honours B.A. in psychology at The University of Waterloo. Jeffrey Masson is one of my few philosophical and psychological mentors (that I know of) who is still very much alive -- and much 'cooking'. Well, back between about 1979 and let us say 1992, Jeffrey Masson sure 'cooked up a storm' in The Freudian Establishment -- kind of like Carl Jung, first viewed as the fastest rising young star in the Freudian World, gaining the trust of Anna Freud at the top of the Freudian hierarchy, gaining access to Freud's most private letters in The Freudian Archives -- and then 'all Hell started to break loose' as Masson obviously didn't like what he was reading...

............................................................................

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is a writer who lives with his family in New Zealand. He has a 32-year-old daughter, Simone, who works with animals in California. His wife Leila is a pediatrician (visit her website) and they have two sons: Ilan (10) and Manu (5). They live on a beach in Auckland with three cats and three rats.

Jeff has a Ph.D. in Sanskrit from Harvard University. He was Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Toronto. While at the university he trained as a Freudian analyst (from 1971-1979) graduating as a full member of the International Psycho-Analytical Association. In 1980 he became Project Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives.

Given access to Freud's papers in London and the Library of Congress, his research led him to believe that Freud made a mistake when he stopped believing that the source of much human misery lay in sexual abuse. Masson's view was so controversial within traditional analytic circles that he was fired from the archives and had his membership in the international society taken away. Janet Malcolm has written a book about this episode (In the Freud Archives - the subject of a libel suit by Masson) and Jeff has published a series of books critical of Freud, psychoanalysis, psychiatry and therapy.

.................................................................................

Masson basically accused Freud of running away from the issue of childhood sexual abuse after bumping into this very difficult problem in his clinical practise, first incorporating the issue of childhood sexual abuse in one of his earliest and most provocative essays and theories on 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' -- and then something 'very funny happened on the way to the forum' -- Freud essentially 'abandoned' this theoretical position and started to develop one equally provocative and controversial -- but not as legally provocative and controversial -- specifically, Freud began to develop the idea of 'childhood sexuality' and 'childhood sexual fantasies' as opposed to 'real, live sexual traumacies and abuses'. That was one very, very large turn that basically shook, rattled and completely 'reconstructed' the 'etiological foundations' of Psychoanalysis -- and this theoretical changeover seemed to start happening very shortly after Freud read his most controversial essay -- 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' -- to a very, very shocked and disbelieving audience of medical professionals on April 21st, 1896.

Masson believes that Freud was basically 'intimidated' by these doctors who held the balance of power over his future career as a medical practictioner -- and had the full power to determine whether he got any patients referred to him or not -- and in effect, 'chickened out' of the theoretical he presented to the doctors that night.

Masson could be right. How many of us can say that our ethical values have not been compromised at some point in our lives because we have 'shut up' in order to stay employed by the company who is signing our paycheque. I, for one, can't. I cannot say that I have always stayed 'ethically strong' in the face of the possibility of losing my employment.

So maybe Freud ethically 'caved in'.

However, maybe there were other mitigating factors at work here that deserve at least some if not equal or superior consideration.

Chief amongst these is possibly the fact that Freud was evolving into a 'more clinically experienced practicitioner' and as such, he was bumping into the fact that life is not always about 'clear-cut theoretical categories'. Or maybe Freud thought that life was about 'clear-cut theoretical categories' and the experiences that Freud was bumping into as he moved along in his clinical practise were not 'fitting neatly' into his early Aetiology of Hysteria Seduction-(Sexual Assault) Theory. Maybe he seriously believed that some significant alterations needed to be made to his earlier theory. Freud was certainly not shy about changing or modifying his theories if he thought he had a better one. (He just didn't like his theories being changed or modified by anyone else!).

Freud was a very complicated man. He was certainly vry 'multi-bi-polar' -- and his theories reflected this. Sometimes Freud oversimplified his theories. Other times, he over-complicated them. Sometimes Freud was very 'anal-retentive' and 'conservative'. Other times he was very 'liberal'. Sometimes he was very 'rational-empirical' -- a student of science and of The Enlightenment. Othertimes, Freud was on 'Pluto' or 'Mars' -- exploring the most outrageous, 'out of this world' theories that any man could reasonably or unreasonably explore. Symbolism, fantasy, sexuality, and childhood sexuality were four areas of Freud's thinking that would remain with him the rest of his life -- even after Freud started to basically or seemingly 'abandon' the idea of 'sexual traumacy and childhood abuse' as being central to his psychological theories.

Maybe Freud didn't have the emotional, ethical, and economic fortitude -- in short, the 'courage' -- to continue to stand up to a roomful of doctors who had the power to control -- and/or destroy -- his future. Or maybe Freud's ideas were simply changing in other directions -- towards more 'symbolism' and 'sexual fantasy' -- that gave a different value priority to the direction of his work, even as he may or may not have every completely abandoned his earlier 'traumacy' and 'seduction' (sexual assault) theories.

Probably, in the end, none of us will never know for sure.

However, I will point out one type of clinical and theoretical problem that I do believe Freud was bumping into in his work -- that was in Freud's eyes -- contradicting both his 'Traumacy' and his 'Seduction' Theory. Why? Because he was getting clinical information from his clients that seemed to be violating one of Freud's most basic underlying principles of Psychoanalysis -- and that was/is 'The Pleasure Principle'.

And here I think there was a question that needed to be clinically answered that Freud could not properly answer -- without in effect, abandoning his traumacy-seduction theory. The question ran something like this:

If these early childhood scenes of childhood traumacy and sexual abuse were really as horrifically traumatic and painful as Freud originally believed them to be, then why now, was Freud many years later in his clinical practise with these 'adult women' of allegedly 'childhood sexual traumacy and seduction and/or assault' -- why were these adult women now 're-creating and re-enacting these early scenes of traumacy and abuse' not as 'painful events' but rather as 'sexually exciting events'?

Maybe this wasn't happening all of the time. But maybe it was happening often enough in Freud's clinical practise that Freud couldn't ignore the evidence. It happened to Breuer when Breuer was treating 'Anna O'. And even more frightening to an evolving therapist -- 'Anna O's' sexual excitement was aimed squared at Breuer. Breuer had a wife and a marriage to protect. Breuer ran from 'Anna O' -- and that was basically the last we heard of Breuer as a 'psychotherapist'.

Obviously, by 1896 or 1897, Freud was probably running into some of the same clinical complications -- specifically, 'love and sexual transference' -- that Breuer ran into with 'Anna O'. How would Freud handle this very difficult clinical problem differently than Breuer?

So that -- for Breuer, Freud, and for me -- may have been the 50 million dollar clinical and theoretical question that Freud could not answer -- without abandoning his 'traumacy-seduction' theory and moving more and more towards a theory of 'childhood sexual fantasy'. How do you account for women re-creating their supposedly painful childhood sexual assaults as 'adult sexual fantasies' -- and how do you account for the phenomenon of 'love transference' -- without changing Freud's original 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory'? And that is exactly what Freud went ahead and did. I will give DGB's answer to this most complicated clinical and theoretical problem in another essay and/or series of essays to come.

Freud may or may not have been wrong in doing what he did. But I can see Freud doing this -- in a spirit of 'maintaining his ethical and theoretical integrity'; not in a spirit of running away from an unpopular social-psychological theory. Or maybe Freud 'killed two birds with one stone' -- I wasn't there, I don't know.

But I will give Freud the benefit of the doubt on this last theoretical account.

He had a very difficult clinical question to answer -- and he answered it by modifying his psychological theory away from 'childhood sexual abuse' and towards 'childhood sexual fantasy'. The second theory would become almost as unpopular as the first one. But there was one critical difference. Fathers would not be called up on 'the red carpet' to account for possible incidents of 'sexually abusing their children'. That was a very big legal difference that would probably make fathers rest a lot easier at night. And perhaps in the process, Freud's future as a medical practictioner was safeguarded and maintained.

No one will probably ever fully know.

-- dgb, Feb. 20th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

DGB Transference and Personality Theory Integrates Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Breuer, Freud, Adler, Jung, Fairbairn, Berne, Kohut, Perls, Masson

2009-02-19T15:39:00.000-08:00

It's funny. Freud was a Gestalt Therapist before he was a Psychoanalyst.

All of Freud's early work with hysterical patients, using hypnosis (let us loosely say between 1886 and the early 1890s) was geared towards 'finishing the unfinished situation'. Some might say 'making the unconscious, conscious'. Alternatively, I would say 'emotionally resolving unresolved emotional situations from years gone by'.

In conceptuology and terminology that had not been close to fully developed yet, we might say that: Hysterical symptoms were 'compromise-formations' between deep, underlying impulses for self-expression and more surface-level, social resistances, restraints, and/or defenses against the underlying and 'rising' impulses for self-expression.

Let's back up and do a quick history lesson before we go any further.

...............................................................................

From the internet...

The Freud Page

Psychoanalysis

©1998-2009 Maria Helena Rowell

II. HISTORY

Suggestion x Free Association

Hysteria, Charcot, Breuer, Anna O.

Hysteria, now commonly referred to as a conversion disorder, displays physical symptoms (numbness/paralysis of a limb, loss of voice or blindness) that occur in a healthy body.

The French neurologist, Jean Martin Charcot, who was concerned with the treatment of hysteria, believed it to be a genuine ailment that afflicted men and women, and tried to free his patient's from their symptoms through hypnotic suggestion.

Joseph Breuer, a Vienese physician who also chose hypnosis as a clinical procedure, didn't intend just to suppress his patient's symptoms but rather searched for the deep causes of their suffering. He realized, during the treatment of his young patient "Anna O." (1880-82), that the results were far reaching if he let her talk about her feelings and thoughts. He named "spontaneous hypnosis" her trance-like states. Anna named 'talking cure' or 'chimney sweeping' the process that lead to the disappearance of her symptoms whenever she was able to recollect their root events.

Freud studied with Charcot in 1885-86. He collaborated with Joseph Breuer, while progressively formulating his theory on the mind, and considered hypnosis far more satisfactory than the electrotherapy he had tried until 1890.

........................................................................

From the internet...

Hypnosis and Catharsis in Freud
David B. Stevenson '96, Brown University

Freud's early work in psychology and psychoanalysis endeavored to understand and cure the human mind by means of hypnosis. Freud's initial exposure to hypnosis in a clinical setting was over the winter of 1885-1886, when he studied in Paris with Jean-Martin Charcot, a renowned French professor of neurology. Charcot's work centered on the causes of hysteria, a disorder which could cause paralyses and extreme fits. He soon discovered that the symptoms of hysteria could be induced in nonhysterics by hypnotic suggestion and that the symptoms of hysterics could be alleviated or transformed by hypnotic suggestion. This ran contrary to the then-prevalent belief that hysteria had physiological causes; it suggested that a deeper, unseen level of consciousness could affect an individual's conscious conduct.

Freud subsequently collaborated with Josef Breuer, who applied hypnosis not just to cause or suppress the symptoms of hysteria but to actually divine the root causes. In his work with Anna O, he found that by tracing her associations in an autohypnotic state, he could not only find an original repressed incident, but could actually cure her of her symptom. When she related an event to a symptom while in a hypnotic state, her symptom would become terribly powerful and dramatic, but would then be purged, never to trouble her again. This powerful and often traumatic transfer of an memory from the unconscious to the conscious is known as catharsis, an effective method which also seems to corroborate Freud's theories on the mind.

However, Freud soon abandoned hypnosis in favor of conscious psychoanalysis, first for the technique of free association, then eventually for his well-known technique of observational, couch-based psychoanalysis.

.....................................................................

DGB Editorial Comments

Now understand that I am a 'freelance and/or integrative theorist' who does not feel restricted by the boundaries of any one theorist's language, conceptuology, and/or theorizing. In fact, I can, and do, easily integrate them all -- particularily Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Breuer, Freud, Adler, Jung, Fairbairn, Berne, Kohut, Perls, and Masson.

When it comes to pre-Freudian, Freudian, and post-Freudian integrative theorizing about the nature, structure, and different process-dynamics in the personality -- in other words, in this instance, DGB Integrative Personality and Transference Theory -- I will call these 12 personality theorists who preceded me 'The Imperative 12'.

More history...

......................................................................

From the internet...

The Freud Page

Psychoanalysis

©1998-2009 Maria Helena Rowell

Beginnings of Psychoanalysis

Breuer and Freud published their findings and theories in Studies in Hysteria , in 1895. They assumed that hysterical symptoms occurred when a mental process highly charged with affect found its normal path blocked to consciousness and movement. This 'strangulated' affect diverted along wrong paths and flowed off into the somatic innervation (conversion).

Through hypnosis, the thoughts and memories connected with the symptoms would eventually reach consciousness. 'Catharsis' (cleansing in Greek) would come about bringing a normal discharge of affect; despite these facts, symptoms tended to reappear if the relation with the physician was disturbed in any way, signaling that an intense emotional tie with him played an important role in the cure.

The authors stated that these symptoms had sense and meaning, being substitutes for normal mental acts and were caused by unconscious wishes and forgotten memories (psychic traumas).Thus, hysterics suffered mainly from 'reminiscences' that had not been worked-through.

The cornerstone of this theory was the assumption of the existence of unconscious mental processes that follow laws that do not apply to conscious thinking. Later, these processes were better understood and the mechanisms of psychological productions such as dreams could be grasped.

The Fundamental Technical Rule

Finding hypnosis inadequate, Freud refined Breuer's methods, based on his increasing clinical understanding of neuroses. He realized that success of the treatment depended upon the patient's relation to his physician whose task was to make the unconscious become conscious.

An entirely new relation between patient and physician developed out of a change in the technique and the surprising results thus obtained extended themselves to many other forms of neurotic disorders. Freud named this procedure Psychoanalysis - an art of interpretation, in 1896.

Freud thought that disturbing thoughts and conflicting urges were kept unconscious (repression) but, even so, they caused strong guilty feelings and great anxiety, interfering with conscious mental activity, as they consumed vital psychic energy in their struggle for release. As they were incompatible with the individual's normal standards, he would feel compelled to raise defenses against the intrusive ideas and the release of such urges, in order to maintain his inner equilibrium (defense mechanisms).

As Freud believed in the strict determination of mental events and assumed that all memories were interconnected, so that one recollection would lead to the next, he insisted that the patient should tell him everything that came to his mind, regardless of how irrelevant, senseless or disagreeable the idea might seem to him (free association). He found it possible for the patient to recover crucial memories while conscious.

By surrendering to his own unconscious mental activity (a state of evenly-suspended attention), Freud would follow the unconscious flow of his patient's mental productions, in order to trace the connections between the chain of allusive associations and the forgotten memories.

Occasionally, the patient might omit some material and this very gap in the communication would reveal that the association was avoided (resistance) due to its potential evocative power to bring the underlying forgotten memories to the surface of consciousness, along with the emergence of its previously inaccessible meaning.

Freud noticed that in the majority of the patients seen during his early practice the events most frequently repressed were concerned with disturbing sexual ideas. In 1897, he concluded that, rather than being memories of actual events, they were the residues of infantile impulses and desires (fantasies). Thus he assumed that anxiety was a consequence of the repressed libido, which found expression in various symptoms.

By being in touch with his inner experiences in a state of regression, in which long-forgotten 'events' would be remembered, the analysand would relate to the analyst as if the latter were a figure from his past (transference).

Freud would communicate the connection between the patient's fantasies and feelings about the analyst and the origin of these thoughts and emotions in childhood experiences (interpretation).

This powerful re-experience of original conflicts caused great distress to the patient, but the working-through of the emotional pain (insight) rendered the treatment efficient, due to a new balance and distribution of psychic energy, promoting a reorganization of the psychological structures into healthier mental configurations.

..........................................................................

DGB Editorial Comments

Integrative theorizing is not a completely 'random' and/or 'democratic' process. As an integrative theorist, there are times when I have make 'either/or' judgments and decisions. Either I support Freud's ideas or I support Adler's ideas. Either I support Freud's ideas or I support Perls' ideas. Either I support Adler's ideas. Or I support Perls' ideas. Either I support Freud's 'Traumacy and Seduction Theories' or I support his Oedipal and Childhood Sexuality Theories. Sometimes -- indeed, oftentimes -- compromise-formations can be arrived at between the different theories. But not always. Like every theorist before me, my brain becomes a 'filter and editorial screening process' for those ideas that I let into my brain to become a vital part of DGB Personality and Transference Theory -- and those ideas that I don't let through this editorial screening process.

Example 1:

I think Freud invested way too much Psychoanalytic time and energy locked up in the concepts of 'unconscious memories' and 'repression'. These ideas play no part in DGB Personality and Transference Theory. To put it bluntly, they get tossed away.

Between 1974 and 1979, while I was at The University of Waterloo working through my Honours B.A. in psychology, I was involved in numerous 'group psychotherapy' processes. Never once, did I witness -- either in myself or someone else -- an 'unconscious memory becoming conscious'. Never once did I witness the so-called phenomenon of 'repression'. I don't believe in concepts that I can't -- or don't -- experience. In this regard, I am an John Locke rational-empiricist, through and through. Don't give me any 'no-sense' concepts that do not have a 'sensory-experiential' ('phenomenological-existential') foundation. If you do -- then at least properly label these concepts as 'metaphysical' and/or 'mythological'. DGB Philosophy-Psychology uses metaphysical-mythological concepts but they are labelled as such. Metaphysical and/or mythological concepts are not to be confused with 'down-to-earth' concepts that have 'physical referents' that can be seen, heard, and/or touched. Our loved ones, we can see, touch, experience. I've never seen an 'unconscous memory' or a 'repression' seen, touched, experienced. My roughly 12 years off and on at The Gestalt Institute (1979-1991) in Toronto only further reinforced what I am saying here.

I've never seen a 'memory therapeutically worked with' that couldn't be brought to the client's awareness usually in pretty easy and timely fashion. 'Resistance' and 'suppression' are verifiable concepts.

With some degree of apprehension, I will use the concepts of 'suppressed memories' and 'subconscious memories' -- meaning 'out-of-awareness' memories that can usually be quickly brought into awareness with the right associations and/or the right degree of focus of attention -- but these are not to be confused with the ideas of 'unconscious memories' and 'repression'. These latter two concepts give a psychotherapist far too much liberty and license to 'project his or her own theoretical and/or experiential material' onto the client. Psychotherapeutically and legally there is the potential for much abuse and damage here -- in essence, creating or interpreting or reconstructing or analysing 'unconscious or repressed memories that don't exist, and that never existed' in a client's life history. Perhaps Freud, as an Oedipal and Childhood Sexuality Theorist was the worst violator of supposedly unconscious or repressed memories -- see 'Dora' and 'The Wolf Man' -- but the potential for this type of violation exists just as strongly, maybe even more so, at the hands of present-day Traumacy-Seduction Theory Psychotherapists. I cringe at the very real event of some father being dragged into court -- and his life ruined -- because some Traumacy-Seduction-Repressed Memory Therapist has 'interpreted or analyzed or reconstructed' a supposedly repressed memory from a client who doesn't even remember this memory. At least until the therapist convinces him or her elsewise. In most courts, that is called 'leading the witness'. All such cases should be thrown out of court. If a person can't remember something -- it's not a memory. Period.

Don't let some psychotherapist's or even some school of psychotherapy's theorizing --whether from one polar extreme, such as 'Classical Psychoanlytic-Oedipal-Childhood Sexuality-Fantasy' Theorizing; or from another polar extreme, such as Childhood-Traumacy-Seduction-Sexual-Assault' Theorizing -- destroy a person's life and/or a family's life because he/she/they 'projected his/her/their own theory onto a client whose case material didn't support this theory but rather was 'forced' into this theory like trying to put a circular piece into a rectangular box. We are talking about any situation where the therapist is playing the 'fitting game' with the client -- and the client's life experiences don't neatly 'fit into the therapist's theory, diagnosis, and therapeutic gameplan'. Any use of 'unconscious' or 'repressed' memories gives a therapist far too much liberty, license -- and potential for abuse -- of what a client does and doesn't remember.

How many men or women who as children or as adults were sexually assaulted -- don't remember the assault? They may not want to talk about it. But that is a different thing entirely from 'not remembering' it. I don't support everything that Jeffrey Masson has written about Freud's Controversial Abandonment of his Traumacy-Seduction Theory but I support Masson's editorial opinion on this account (The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory) -- people can almost always remember if they have been sexually assaulted, to what extent, and the particular details around this event. 'Commit to flames' the ideas of 'unconscious and repressed memories'. Work with 'conscious memories'!
............................................................................

'Hysteria' and 'Neurotic Symptoms' as 'Compromise-Formations' and 'Allusions to Immediacy'

We have to be very careful that we not abuse the label of 'hysteria' and that it represents a legitimate diagnostic phenomenon, and not some 'medically unknown and/or undiagnosed phenomenon' either in present day or in Freud's time such as perhaps 'epilepsy' or a 'brain tumor' or 'schizophrenia' or 'hypochondria'.

Having said this, Freud, in his earliest psychotherapy sessions, worked in much more 'immediacy-oriented, Gestalt-fashion' than he did in his later more interpretive and analytical Psychoanalytical sessions.

I believe that Freud might have taken some serious steps backwards in this regard.
It is important that any form of psychotherapy be well-grounded in immediacy, contact, and the client's experience. The higher a therapist climbs into his or her own abstractions, interpretations, and analysis, more often than not, the less meaningful and therapeutically important this 'flight into therapist interpretation and abstraction' is going to be for the client. Did 'Dora' get anything out of Freud's rather 'wild transference interpretation' of Dora's symptoms? Or did she cut off Freud's treatment of her believing that perhaps she had met a therapist who was crazier than she was? (See Freud's 'Dora case' for your own interpretation and judgment here.)

In contrast, you look back at the way Breuer handled the 'Anna O' case and you have the classic essence of any form of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is a 'talking cure' -- meaning the client is doing most of the talking, not the therapist. The 'talking cure' leads to 'chimney sweeping' and 'emotional catharsis' -- turning an 'unfinished emotional event' into a 'finished' one. This is the Gestalt theory of 'paradoxical change'. By accepting first who we are, and who we have been, and by 'closing unclosed emotional events' or by 'finishing unfinished emotional events', we then give ourselves the opportunity to move beyond who we are and/or who we have been, to who we now can be. 'The truth shall set you free.'

The further Freud moved away from Breuer's more 'client-centred approach' (which Breuer basically 'fluked' upon) where 'Anna O' basically led the way and 'closed some of her own emotional issues and neurotic symtoms', and the further Freud moved into his own more 'therapist-directed, interpretive and analytic directed, and Oedipal-sexual fantasy directed' form of psychotherapy -- i.e., Classic Psychoanalysis -- the more it is quite possible if not probable that Freud was leaving patients behind in his own 'unilateral dust'. 'Dora' and 'The Wolf Man' being two cases in point.

................................................................................

From the internet...

Freud:
A Very Short
Introduction
Anthony Storr
Neville Jason, Reader
(Naxos AudioBooks)

Civilization and Its Discontents, the Wolf Man, the Rat Man, Anna (and Anna O!), penis envy, the Oedipus Complex, the Electra Complex, The Interpretation of Dreams, cigars, Charcot, Fleiss, hysteria, infantile sexuality, jokes, the unconscious, neuroses, slips of the tongue, the oral, the anal, and death. It is astonishing what the man accomplished in his almost eight decades on earth.
At one point, Storr wonders out loud why Freud was so influential. He cites his marvelous writing style (and it is wondrous, even in translation --- Norman Mailer said Freud was one of the greatest novelists of the 20th Century). But we suspect it is more simple than that.

Most of us want to know what makes us tick, and most of us run into people and events that affect us strangely, that make no sense. We wonder where they come from, what it all means, how could we --- for example --- fall into a trap, any trap, that trap again.

Positing id, ego, and the hidden unconscious gave us a chance to explain these oddities. For those lucky enough, or rich enough, psychoanalysis offered the chance to peer into one's own mind with the assistance of a nonjudging, tolerant, and infinitely patient helper.

§ § §
Storr was a practicing psychoanalyst, which would mean that he should also be patient, observant, non-judgmental. In writing about Freud, he is patient and observant but very judgmental. He wants to make sure that we know that when Freud defined the obsessional character ("order, cleanliness, control") the master was talking about himself: a man of detail, one who was detached, one who did not brook rebellion in the ranks.

Storr suggests that although Freud repeatedly called his handiwork a science --- not a philosophy, not a religion --- those who deviated from the dogma (Fleiss, Jung, Rank) were cut off, even labeled by the other followers as "Neurotic" or "Psychotic."

There are some surprises here. Freud was called "my golden Ziggy" by his mother. He took a dim view of humanity, called it "trash." He was generous. One of his long-term patients he christened The Wolf Man because of a dream he related to Freud --- a dream, perhaps, next to the dreams of Emanuel Swedenborg, one of the most famous in existence:

I dreamed that it was night and I was lying in my bed. Suddenly the window opened of its own accord, and I was terrified to see that some white wolves were sitting on the big walnut tree in front of the window. There were six or seven of them. The wolves were quite white, and looked more like foxes or sheep-dogs, for they had big tails like foxes and they had their ears pricked like dogs when they pay attention to something. In great terror, evidently of being eaten up by the wolves, I screamed and woke up.
Wolf Man lived into the 1970s, was often interviewed on the master's technique. He tells us that Freud chatted with him about his own life, talking of his children, daily events; he even loaned him money, arranged for loans from others when he was broke. The only thing Freud did not do, Storr tells us, was to cure him. Even in later life Wolf Man suffered from depression, from the frightening thoughts that first brought him to treatment when he was a young man.

Freud's books, and monographs as published constitute some twenty-four volumes, but Storr informs us that he did not even begin writing until he was thirty-nine years old. Storr doesn't think much of most of Freud's writings outside of his theories (although he does make an exception for his paper on Michelangelo's Moses). Moreover, he suggests that Freud was not all that great an analyst. He offers up the idea that he saw patients mainly to create or shore up his own theories of the mind.

Storr also gives short shrift to Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. He points out that modern psychoanalysts do not see dreams as hiding repressed sexual fantasies or memories. He merely credits Freud for rescuing dreams from the realm of mystics and witches, and he ignores Freud's insight that dreams represent one of the richest treasure-chests of insight to those who bother to record them.

Many of us who bother to interpret our own dreams learn quickly that they are as Freud saw them --- puns and games, a superb internal movie going on nightly, with hints and clues that can tell us more than we ever dreamed possible what the hell is going on there in our psyches, creating its own subtle symbolic system, the system that possibly rules us, possibly can free us.

Freud preferred his patients --- they weren't called "clients" in those pre-Carl Rogers' days --- to be well educated. He also was not interested in treating the overtly mad, nor those over the age of fifty. (In 1900 the life expectancy was such that to analyze an older person, he suggested, would be a waste). Freud also chose the couch for his analysands because he didn't like "being stared at for eight hours a day."
From his time with Charcot, Freud learned that the traumas could be retrieved and defused through hypnosis. This led to one of his major theories, that of trauma and repression. From his own experience, he learned of the significant phenomena of transference and counter-transference --- a subtle but powerful tool that brought the reality of a patient's passions and needs right into the consulting room where they could be examined by doctor and patient to understood where he or she came from, where he or she was going.

Patients were thus given permission to fall in love with the analyst without fear or shame. And an artful analyst could help one define fears and hopes from childhood, artfully transferred to the consulting room.

He cites Freud's showing the profound importance of how children are raised, and how they are hurt. The child, he proved, is indeed "father of the man." You and I as we exist now were formed by those who created us, nurtured us --- or in some cases, maltreated us.

The major gift of the master, in Storr's view, is that individuals were offered the opportunity to have an uncritical, sympathetic listener, one who would devote extensive time to those who may have needed it the most. It was the chance to be in the presence of one who would listen, would not judge nor criticize, and at appropriate times, could guide one into soul-changing insight.

These three discs run for four hours. Nevill Jason is a fine and precise (and dare we say , a compulsive) reader ... in the dry, BBC sense. Storr's judgmental view of his subject would be more befitting a parent rather than a historical figure. Perhaps it is appropriate that Storr emphasizes Wolf Man's oft repeated sentiment that Freud was "like a father" to him.

..........................................................................

DGB Editorial Comments

The only point on which I take issue with the writer above is on just how 'non-interpretive and non-judgmental a listener' Freud really was -- particularly the older Freud got and the more 'entrenched' his own theories became in his own mind.

I think that there may have been a point at which Freud's theoretical conclusions and the clinical applications of these theories may have come to supersede and dominate any client's feeling of being 'freely and non-judgmentally listened to'.

That point may have come very early in Freud's evolutionary clinical development, maybe as early as 1895 or 1896, maybe even earlier back to the time when Freud actually was practising hypnosis.

Indeed, I wonder if something very important in the evolution of Psychoanalysis wasn't lost in the first Psychoanalytic case -- i.e., Breuer's case -- of 'Anna O'.

Or shortly thereafter.

That was the point at which Freud ceased to be a Gestalt Therapist -- and started to become a 'Psycho-analyst'.

-- dgb, Feb. 18th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

.........................................................................

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is a writer who lives with his family in New Zealand. He has a 32-year-old daughter, Simone, who works with animals in California. His wife Leila is a pediatrician (visit her website) and they have two sons: Ilan (10) and Manu (5). They live on a beach in Auckland with three cats and three rats.

Jeff has a Ph.D. in Sanskrit from Harvard University. He was Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Toronto. While at the university he trained as a Freudian analyst (from 1971-1979) graduating as a full member of the International Psycho-Analytical Association. In 1980 he became Project Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives.

Given access to Freud's papers in London and the Library of Congress, his research led him to believe that Freud made a mistake when he stopped believing that the source of much human misery lay in sexual abuse. Masson's view was so controversial within traditional analytic circles that he was fired from the archives and had his membership in the international society taken away. Janet Malcolm has written a book about this episode (In the Freud Archives - the subject of a libel suit by Masson) and Jeff has published a series of books critical of Freud, psychoanalysis, psychiatry and therapy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jeffrey and his family
Skeptical that humans could be understood (at least by psychologists) Masson turned to animals. In 1995 he published When Elephants Weep, an international best seller, followed by the equally popular Dogs Never Lie About Love.

Since those two books he has published 6 more books about animals, looking in every one at their emotions: About cats he wrote The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (along with a fable, The Cat Who Came in from the Cold); He looked at fatherhood in the animal world and the lessons to be learned for humans in The Evolution of Fatherhood; writing about the emotional world of farm animals in The Pig Who Sang to the Moon turned Jeff into a vegan.

Lately he wondered why animals did not engage in genocide, and wrote Raising the Peaceable Kingdom. Finally he wrote an encyclopedia of his 100 favorite animals (often with an animal-rights angle) called Altruistic Armadillos - Zenlike Zebras. He has just signed a contract with W.W. Norton to write a book about vegetarianism (Veganism) called The Face on Your Plate.

Leila, Jeff and Manu are all vegan. Ilan and his three rats are vegetarian. The cats could not be persuaded to follow either philosophy, and are, alas, carnivores.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What I believe:
I believe that in 500 years (maybe less) people will look back on us and wonder about many things. No doubt behavior we consider normal today will inspire horror in our more enlightened successors. War, for example. But I also think they may believe our disdain of insects is incomprehensible. Perhaps they will marvel that we could so easily cut down trees and perhaps even flowers.

I am completely opposed to any form of animal exploitation, including animal experimentation, keeping animals in zoos or in circuses, (indeed any form of captivity for animals), the use of leather, fur, wool and silk. I am even questioning my use of hearts of palm and maple syrup (thinking about the wounds necessary to create the sap). I also have begun to wonder whether any domesticated animal can lead an ideal life in the company of humans. Cats seem to me to come the closest, when they are able to wander freely and in safety.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Take a look at some of Jeff's favorite books.

Copyright © 2000-2008, All Rights Reserved.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's website is dedicated to the emotional lives of animals, vegetarianism, veganism (the ethics of food), animal rights, and human-animal interactions.

Painting of Jeff and family on their beach in New Zealand, by Carina Koning

The Birth of Psychoanalysis From Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, 'The Birth of Tragedy', Apollo, Dionysus, 'Anna O' -- and 'The Neurotic Clinch'

2009-02-19T15:33:00.000-08:00

DGB

You have to understand that even as I criticize Freud and Psychoanalysis -- like many, many before me -- I am still trying to make it better. From my little corner of the universe here in Hegel's Hotel, I am still examining -- probably with the beginning of more thoroughness than ever before -- Freud's every move, his every theoretical move, why he did it, and what the eventual outcome of his moves were relative to the ongoing evolution of Psychoanalysis. Again, many, many others have been here before me, some with far greater expertise than me, on the exact historical details relative to the development and changes in direction of Psychoanalysis.

I come into the picture -- let us say about 120 years after Freud started making his first theoretical, clinical, and psychotherapeutic moves towards the birth of Psychoanalysis.

And I have to go back to that first case of 'Anna O' treated by Joseph Breuer -- like thousands and thousands of academics have been here before me -- and I say, 'Herein lies the ultimate simplicity and the ultimate beauty of the birth of Psychoanalysis as a therapeutic intervention even though it basically involved Breuer simply sitting by in awe and listening while 'Anna O' treated and cured herself of some of her various 'neurotic or hysterical symptoms' -- 'physical conversion symptoms' (see below) -- with 'her talking cure' and what she called 'chimney sweeping'.

..........................................................................

From the internet...wikipedia

Anna O. was the pseudonym of a patient of Josef Breuer, who published her case study in his book Studies on Hysteria, written in collaboration with Sigmund Freud.

Anna O was, in fact, Bertha Pappenheim, an Austrian-Jewish feminist, treated by Breuer for severe cough, paralysis of the extremities on the right side of her body, and disturbances of vision, hearing, and speech, as well as hallucination and loss of consciousness. She was diagnosed with hysteria. Freud implies that her illness was a result of the grief felt over her father's real and physical illness that later led to his death[1].

Her treatment is regarded as marking the beginning of psychoanalysis. Breuer observed that whilst she experienced 'absences' (a change of personality accompanied by confusion), she would mutter words or phrases to herself. In inducing her to a state of hypnosis, Breuer found that these words were "profoundly melancholy phantasies...sometimes characterized by poetic beauty". Free Association came into being after Anna/Bertha decided (with Breuer's input) to end her hypnosis sessions and merely talk to Breuer, saying anything that came into her mind. She called this method of communication "chimney sweeping", and this served as the beginning of free association.

Anna's/Bertha's case also shed light for the first time on the phenomenon called transference, where the patient's feelings toward a significant figure in his/her life are redirected onto the therapist. By transference, Anna imagined to be pregnant with the doctor's baby. She experienced nausea and all the pregnancy symptoms. After this incident, Breuer stopped treating her.

Pappenheim under her real name translated the diary of her ancestor Gluckel of Hameln.

..........................................................................

DGB

Now, I want to back up a few steps further in history.

The case of 'Anna O' may have marked the beginning of psychoanalysis from a 'therapeutic treatment' point of view.

However, from an 'academic-philosophical' point of view, I will say again what I have said before -- and not too many -- if any -- academics before me that I know of have made this claim: In juxtaposing the work of Hegel in 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807) with the work of Schopenhauer in 'The World as Will and Representation', Nietzsche's first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy' (BT) marked the true academic-philosophical birth of Psychoanalysis.

In this respect, we might look at the case of 'Anna O' as the first clinical-psycho-therapeutic application of Nietzsche's BT. Let me make my case.

My case is symbolic, metaphorical, metaphysical -- and mythological, a growing tendency in Hegel's Hotel here.

Let us enter a world of 'As If' -- See Hans Vaihinger.

............................................................................

From the internet...wikipedia

Hans Vaihinger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Hans Vaihinger Western Philosophy
20th-century philosophy

Full name Hans Vaihinger
Birth September 25, 1852 (Nehren)
Death December 18, 1933 (Halle)
School/tradition Neo-Kantianism
Main interests idealism, positivism
Notable ideas fictionalism, instrumentalism, nominalism
Influenced by[show]
Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer[1], Friedrich Nietzsche
Influenced[show]
Alfred Adler
Hans Vaihinger (September 25, 1852 – December 18, 1933) was a German philosopher, best known as a Kant scholar and for his Philosophie des Als Ob (Philosophy of As If), published in 1911, but written more than thirty years earlier.[2]

Vaihinger was born in Nehren, Württemberg, Germany, near Tübingen, and raised in what he himself described as a "very religious milieu". He was educated at Tübingen, Leipzig, and Berlin, became a tutor and later a philosophy professor at Strasbourg before moving to the university at Halle in 1884. From 1892, he was a full professor.

In Philosophie des Als Ob, he argued that human beings can never really know the underlying reality of the world, and that as a result we construct systems of thought and then assume that these match reality: we behave "as if" the world matches our models. In particular, he used examples from the physical sciences, such as protons, electrons, and electromagnetic waves. None of these phenomena have been observed directly, but science pretends that they exist, and uses observations made on these assumptions to create new and better constructs.

This philosophy, though, is wider than just science. One can never be sure that the world will still exist tomorrow, but we usually assume that it does. Alfred Adler, the founder of Individual Psychology, was profoundly influenced by Vaihinger's theory of fictions, incorporating the idea of psychological fictions into his personality construct of a fictional final goal.

Frank Kermode's The Sense of an Ending (1967) was an early mention of Vaihinger as a useful methodologist of narrativity.

Later, James Hillman developed both Vaihinger and Adler's work with psychological fictions into a core theme of his work Healing Fiction in which he makes one of his more accessible cases for identifying the tendency to literalize, rather than "see through our meanings," (HF 110) with neurosis and madness.

[edit] Works
1876 Hartmann, Dühring und Lange (Hartmann, Dühring and Lange)
1897-1922 Kant-Studien, founder and chief editor
1899 Kant — ein Metaphysiker? (Kant — a Metaphysician?)
1902 Nietzsche Als Philosoph (Nietzsche as Philosopher)
1906 Philosophie in der Staatsprüfung. Winke für Examinatoren und Examinanden. (Philosophy in the Degree. Cues for teachers and students.)
1911 Philosophie des Als Ob (Philosophy of "As If", translated by C. K. Ogden, 1924)
1922 Commentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason), edited by Raymund Schmidt

[edit] References
^ "Schopenhauer's love of truth was a revelation to me." The Philosophy of As–If, p. xxix.
^ Loewenberg, J. Untitled Review. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, Vol. 9, No. 26. (Dec. 19, 1912), pp. 717-719.

................................................................................

DGB

So here is the metaphor, here is the mythology. For our purposes here -- which does not sway far from Nietzsche's purposes in BT -- Apollo represents The God of Self-Restraint and Self-Defense. Juxtaposed against Apollo is -- Dionysus, The God of Self-Expression and Self-Impulse. Put into Classic Psychoanalytic terminology, Apollo is The God of The Superego, while Dionysus is The God of The Id.

Let us now make another metaphorical or symbolic leap into the 'World of As If'.

Apollo is The God of The White Blood Cells.

Dionysus is The God of The Red Blood Cells.

Both are crtical to the life process. One defends, restrains, and deconstructs (Apollo and the white blood cells.) The other surges forward and embraces life and all of life's impulses -- birth, creativity, sensuality, sexuality, pleasure, romance, intimacy...(Dionysus and the red blood cells.)

The two -- Apollo and Dionysus -- are forever locked in 'compromise formations' with each other that express themselves in all elements of human behavior, and stand out particularly in 'neurotic symptoms' -- in 'neurotic clinches or impasses between Apollo and Dionysus, between red and white blood cells'.

What is a 'joke'? A joke is an 'allusion to immediacy'. A joke is a compromise-formation between Dionysus and Apollo, between Superego and Id.

In 'either/or' terminology, there are two different types of 'neruoses'.

For our purposes here, we will define a 'neurosis' as a 'homeostatic imbalance' in the mind and/or body such as between Apollo and Dionysus.

In a 'Narcissistic and/or Dionysian Neurosis', Narcissus and/or Dionysus rules, while Apollo succumbs to Dionysus' and/or Narcissus' greater power.

In an 'Anxiety and/or Distancing Neurosis' Apollo rules while Dionysus and/or Narcissus succumb to Apollo's greater power.

A third type of neurosis might be called a 'Neurotic Clinch or Impasse'. Here, Apollo and Dionysus are locked in a fairly evenly matched power battle where neither one is really winning or losing -- but the health of the mind and/or body as a whole is losing. Too much energy is being locked up in the 'neurotic stalemate'. This can be seen in the case of Anna O.

We probably all have 'hysterical conversions' at one time or another. They may not be as pronounced and as dramatic as Anna O's refusing to talk or eat but still different types of 'clinches in the human body' can be viewed as hysterical conversions.

We may have a 'tightness of jaw' where we are holding back anger or grief or saying something, we might have a 'tightness around our eyes' where we are holding back tears, we might be holding back grief around our chest area or in the pit of our stomach, we may be holding back anger or rage in the 'clinch of a migraine headache', we might be holding back sadness in the back of our neck. A partly clenched fist could obviously involve the holding back of anger...

How about the tragedy just recently involving the little girl whose dentist pulled all her baby teeth? She stopped eating -- and died -- her obvious and dramatically tragic protest against the supremely perceived narcissistic traumacy of all her teeth being pulled. What was the dentist thinking? He obviously was not thinking one iota about the little girl's self-image, her self-esteem. I had to almost cry about that one.

Unravel the pain, unravel the anger or rage, uravel the fantasy or impulse -- let Dionysus 'free' within the safe confines of the therapeutic setting -- and you set in motion 'the talking cure', 'chimney sweeping' and the unclinching of the neurotic sypmtom, the hysterical conversion. 'Talk -- and the truth will set you free.'

Sometimes a 'massage psychotherapist' might get faster and more efficiently to an area of the 'body-psyche' -- the neurotic clinch -- where a psychoanlyst might be having much more trouble -- or take much longer -- to get to.

The 'no touching' rule was/is? quite prohibitive in Psychoanalysis but certain Psychoanalysts broke into new therapeutic ground when they broke this Psychoanalytic rule. (Ferenczi, Wilhelm Reich...) And a long chain of psychotherapists followed...

..........................................................................

Wilhelm Reich
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Wilhelm Reich
Born March 24, 1897(1897-03-24)
Dobrzanica, Galicia, Austria-Hungary
Died November 3, 1957 (aged 60)
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

Residence Orgonon, Rangeley, Maine,
United States
Citizenship Austria, United States
Fields Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis
Alma mater University of Vienna
Known for Freudo-Marxism, body psychotherapy, Orgone
Influences Max Stirner, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx
Influenced Alexander Lowen, Fritz Perls, Ronald Laing, Arthur Janov
Wilhelm Reich (March 24, 1897–November 3, 1957) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

Reich was a respected analyst for much of his life, focusing on character structure, rather than on individual neurotic symptoms.[1] He promoted adolescent sexuality, the availability of contraceptives and abortion, and the importance for women of economic independence. Synthesizing material from psychoanalysis, cultural anthropology, economics, sociology, and ethics, his work influenced writers such as Alexander Lowen, Fritz Perls, Marie Louise Berneri Paul Goodman, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Colin Wilson, Shulamith Firestone, A. S. Neill, and William Burroughs.[2] [3]

He was also a controversial figure, who came to be viewed by the psychoanalytic establishment as having succumbed to mental illness or somehow gone astray. His work on the link between human sexuality and neuroses emphasized "orgastic potency" as the foremost criterion for psycho-physical health. He said he had discovered a form of energy, which he called "orgone," that permeated the atmosphere and all living matter, and he built "orgone accumulators," which his patients sat inside to harness the energy for its reputed health benefits. It was this work, in particular, that cemented the rift between Reich and other prominent psychoanalysts.[4]

He was living in Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power. As a communist of Jewish descent, he was in danger, and he therefore fled to Scandinavia in 1933 and subsequently to the United States in 1939. In 1947, following a series of critical articles about orgone and his political views in The New Republic and Harper's,[5] the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began an investigation into his claims about orgone, winning an injunction against the interstate sale of orgone accumulators. Charged with contempt of court for violating the injunction, Reich conducted his own defense, which involved sending the judge all his books to read, and arguing that a court was no place to decide matters of science. He was sentenced to two years in prison[6], and on 23 August 1956, several tons of his publications were burned by the FDA[7][8]. He died of heart failure in jail just over a year later, days before he was due to apply for parole.[9]

...........................................................................

Sándor Ferenczi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Sandor Ferenczi)
Jump to: navigation, search
The native form of this personal name is Ferenczi Sándor. This article uses the Western name order.
Sándor Ferenczi

Born July 7, 1873(1873-07-07)
Miskolc, Hungary
Died April 22, 1933 (aged 59)
Budapest, Hungary

Fields Psychoanalysis
Institutions International Psychoanalytical Association - (president)
Hungarian Psychoanalytical Society - (founder)
Known for "Budapest School of Psychoanalysis"
Influences Sigmund Freud
Influenced Mihály Bálint, Aliz Bálint, Imre Hermann, Sigmund Freud
Sándor Ferenczi (July 7, 1873, Miskolc, Hungary – April 22, 1933, Budapest, Hungary) was a Hungarian psychoanalyst.

Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 Ferenczi’s main ideas
3 Notes
4 Further reading
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Biography
Born Sándor Fraenkel to Baruch Fraenkel and Rosa Eibenschütz, both Polish Jews, he later magyarized his surname to Ferenczi.

Over the course of his psychiatric work, he came to believe that his patients' accounts of sexual abuse as children were truthful, having verified those accounts through other patients in the same family. This was a major reason for his eventual break with Sigmund Freud.

Prior to this break he was a member of the inner circle of psychoanalysis and was notable for working with the most difficult of patients and for developing a theory of more active intervention than is usual in psychoanalytic practice. In the early 1920s, criticizing Freud's "classical" method of neutral interpretation, Ferenczi collaborated with Otto Rank to create a "here-and-now" psychotherapy that, through Rank's personal influence, led the American Carl Rogers to conceptualize person-centered therapy (Kramer 1995).

Ferenczi has found some favor in modern times among the followers of Jacques Lacan as well as among relational psychoanalysts in the United States. Relational analysts read Ferenczi as anticipating their own clinical emphasis on mutuality (intimacy), intersubjectivity, and the importance of the analyst's countertransference. Ferenczi's work has strongly influenced theory and praxis within the interpersonal-relational movement in American psychoanalysis, as typified by psychoanalysts at the William Alanson White Institute.

Ferenczi presided over the International Psychoanalytical Association from 1918 to 1919.

Group photo 1909 in front of Clark University. Front row: Sigmund Freud, G. Stanley Hall, Carl Jung; back row: Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sandor Ferenczi.Ernest Jones, a biographer of Freud, termed Ferenczi as "mentally ill" at the end of his life, famously ignoring Ferenczi's battle with pernicious anemia, which killed him in 1933. Though desperately ill with the then-untreatable disease, Ferenczi managed to deliver his most famous paper, "Confusion of Tongues"[1] to the 12th International Psycho-Analytic Congress in Wiesbaden, Germany, on September 4, 1932.[2]

In 2002 Ferenczi's reputation was revived by publication of Disappearing and Reviving: Sandor Ferenczi in the History of Psychoanalysis[3] One of the book's chapters dealt with the tragic nature of the relationship between Freud and Ferenczi.

[edit] Ferenczi’s main ideas
1. Activity in psychoanalytic therapy.

Contrary to Freud’s view of an abstinence therapeutic stance, Ferenczi purposed a more active role for the analyst. For example, instead of the relatively “passive” stance of the listening analyst encouraging the patient to free associate, Ferenczi used to curtail certain responses, verbal and non-verbal alike, on the part of the analysand so as to allow suppressed thoughts and feeling to emerge. Ferenczi (1980) described in a case study how he used a kind of behavioral activation (uncommon in the psychoanalytic therapy at that time) when he asked an opera singer with performance anxiety to “perform” during therapy session and this way to face her fears (Rachman, 2007).

2. Clinical empathy in psychoanalysis.

Ferenczi viewed the empathic response during therapy as the core of clinical interaction. He based his intervention on responding to the subjective experience of the analysand; if more traditional views saw the analyst in the role of the physician, administering a treatment to the patient based upon diagnostic judgment of psychopathology, Ferenczi wanted the analysand to become a co-participant in an encounter created by the therapeutic dyad. This shift to empathic reciprocity during the therapeutic encounter was an important contribution to the evolution of psychoanalysis. Ferenczi also believed that self-disclosure of the analyst is an important therapeutic reparative force. The practice of bringing the therapist’s personality into therapy led to the development of the idea of the mutual encounter: the therapist is allowed to bring to the therapy some content from his own life and from his inner world, as long as it is relevant to the therapy. This is in contrast to the Freudian abstinence therapeutic stance according to which the therapist should not bring to therapy content which relates to his personal life, and should remain neutral (ibid). The mutual encounter is a forerunner of the psychoanalytic theory of two person psychology.

3. The “confusion of tongues” theory of trauma.

Ferenczi believed that the persistent traumatic effect of chronic overstimulation, deprivation, or empathic failure (a term further elaborated by Heinz Kohut) in childhood is what causes neurotic, character, borderline and psychotic disorders (ibid). According to this concept trauma develops as a result of sexual seduction of the child by a parent or authority figure. The confusion of tongues takes place when the child plays, in an infantile way, to be the spouse of the parent. The pathological adult interprets this infantile and innocent game according to his adult “passion tongue” and then forces the child to conform to his “passion tongue”. The adult uses a tongue the child does not know, and interprets the child’s innocent game (his infantile tongue) according to his disturbed perspective. For example, a father is playing with his little girl. During their common game, she offers him the role of her husband and wants him to sleep with her like he sleeps with her mother. The pathological father misinterprets this childish offer, and touches his daughter in an inappropriate way while they are in bed together. Here, the child spoke her innocent childish tongue, and the father interpreted her offer with his passionate adult sexual tongue. The adult abuser also attempts to convince the child that the lust on his part is really the love for which the child yearns. Ferenczi broadened the idea of trauma to emotional neglect, physical maltreatment, and empathic failure. The prominent manifestation of these disturbances would be the sexual abuse.

[edit] Notes
^ Ferenczi, S. (1933). The Confusion of Tongues Between Adults and Children: The Language of Tenderness and of Passion. Sándor Ferenczi Number. M. Balint (Ed.) International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 30: Whole No.4, 1949 [The First English Translation of the paper.]
^ Section V - Continuing Education - Ferenczi
^ Andre E. Haynal (ed.),Disappearing and Reviving: Sandor Ferenczi in the History of Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac Books

[edit] Further reading
Ferenczi's Turn in Psychoanalysis, Peter L. Rudnytsky, New York University Press, 2000, Paperback, 450 pages, ISBN 0814775454
Final Contributions to the Problems & Methods of Psycho-Analysis, Sandor Ferenczi, H. Karnac Books, Limited, Hardback, 1994, ISBN 1855750872.
Development of Psychoanalysis (Classics in Psychoanalysis, Monograph 4), Otto Rank and Sandor Ferenczi, International Universities Press, Inc, 1986, Hardback, ISBN 0823611973.
First Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, Sandor Ferenczi, translated by Ernest Jones, H. Karnac Books, Limited, 1994, Hardback, ISBN 1855750856.
Sandor Ferenczi: Reconsidering Active Intervention, Martin Stanton, Jason Aronson Publishers, 1991, Hardcover, 1991, ISBN 0876685696.
Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality, Sandor Ferenczi, H. Karnac Books, Limited, 1989, Paperback, ISBN 0946439613.
Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi, Edited by Adrienne Harris and Lewis Aron, Analytic Press, 1996, Hardback, ISBN 0881631493.
Antonelli, Giorgio, Il Mare di Ferenczi, Di Renzo Editore, Roma, 1996 ISBN 8886044445
Triad: the physicists, the analysts, the kabbalists, Tom Keve, Rosenberger & Krausz, London, 2000, ISBN 0953621901. (http://www.rosenbergerandkrausz.com/)
Paul Roazen: Elma Laurvik, Ferenczi's Step-Daughter from the pages of PSYCHOMEDIA
The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 1, 1908-1914, Harvard University Press
The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 2, 1914-1919, Harvard University Press
The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 3, 1920-1933, Harvard University Press
The Clinical Diary of Sándor Ferenczi, by Sándor Ferenczi. Edited by Judith Dupont, translated by Michael Balint and Nicola Zarday Jackson, Harvard University Press. ISBN 067413527X
Kramer, Robert (1995). The Birth of Client-Centered Therapy: Carl Rogers, Otto Rank, and 'The Beyond,' an article in Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Volume 35, Number 4, pp. 54-110.
Ferenczi, S. (1980). Technical difficulties in the analysis of a case of hysteria: Including observations of larval forms of onanism and onanistic equivalents (J. I. Suttie, Trans.) In J. Rickman (Ed.), further contributions to the theory and technique of psychoanalysis (pp. 291-294). New York: Bruner/Mazal. (Original work published 1919).
Rachman, A. W. (2007). “Sandor Ferenczi’s contributions to the evolution of psychoanalysis”, Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 74-96.
Wolman, B. B. (1977). International encyclopedia of psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, & neurology, (vol. 5). Aesculapius Publishers, New York.

[edit] See also
Psychoanalysis
Otto Rank

................................................................................

It is my DGB perspective that much of Psychoanalysis is simply different extensions and applications of the basic formula outlined above.

-- dgb, Feb. 19th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

DGB Philosophy-Psychology vs. Freud and Psychoanalysis: On Transference (Part 1, Revised Edition, Jan. 30th, 2009)

2009-01-30T07:31:00.001-08:00

Freud's most brilliant discovery and conceptual creation -- was 'transference'.

It is in the sphere of the transference - and the realm of 'transference complexes' (a combination of Freudian and Jungian terminology)-- that we move into the deepest -- and darkest -- closets of the personality.

Interwoven into the sphere of the transference is a number of other Psychoanalytic and post-Psychoanalytic concepts such as:

1. Introjection : metaphorically 'swallowing whole' a thought, idea, belief, value...like a child often introjects the beliefs and values of his or her parents -- or at least some of them;

2. Identification: copying like a small child often watches and copies the behavior his mother and/or father;

3. Projection: 'seeing' the world as we consciously and/or subconsciously are ourself, like watching a movie of ourselves that we 'project' out into the outer world -- but most of the time, we don't even recognize that we are watching and projecting onto a friend or a lover or an enemy or an animal or an object or a creative story or essay a characteristic, a thought, a feeling, a flaw, an impulse, a strength...that fully or partly, distinctly or subtley, consciously or subconsciously belongs to us...we are alienated from our own projection(s) unless and/or until we fully recognize and accept the fact that it/they belong to us...;

4. Compensation: Adjusting and/or modifying our thoughts, feelings, impulses, and/or behavior to fit with new information and/or experiences that are constantly coming into our ego, thought, and feeling process. Call this also, 'mutation' and/or 'compensatory evolution'.

5. Displacement/Distortion: Most different types of transference have a greater or lesser amount of 'displacement' and 'distortion' in them. Displacement implies the element of 'cognitive-emotional-behavioral inappropriateness' based on the idea that the transference complex and/or element which originated in Situation A -- let us say usually up to or before the age of 7 or 8 years old in childhood -- is then functionally -- and/or dysfunctionally (usually dysfunctionally) 'transferred' to Situation B which may be 10, 20, or 30 years later in some similar - but significantly different -- adult encounter, and/or relationship. To the extent that this is true, we can say that the transference is displaced and/or distorted onto an inappropriate adult person and/or into an inappropriate social setting many, many years after the origin of the childhood transference complex.

6. Undisplaced/Undistorted Transference: However, in some and/or even many adult transference relationships, we will find that a person's particular 'transference projections and reactions' are quite relevant and appropriate to the present person and relationship at hand. Indeed, this is usually the most outstanding feature of the whole 'transference comlex' -- searching in the present for someone who reminds us of some element of our 'unfinished emotional and self-esteem business' of the past.

What has happened is that 'the transferring person or subject' has subconsciously sought out and found a person in his or her adult life ('the transference object') who appropriately and/or inappropriately reminds the transferring person of his or her original childhood transference figure/object. This starts to get complicated so let me try to utilize some metaphors and examples to illustrate what is going on here.

We move through life and we find a girlfriend or boyfriend, husband or wife -- or 'other friend and/or lover' - who reminds us of an important childhood transference figure in our 'template' of subconscious, unfinished, emotional complexes in our personaliy. Imagine a 'roulette wheel' in the subconscious memory- fantasy template of our personality. Every number on this 'psychological roulette wheel' represents an assortment of different possible 'memory-fantasy' transference complexes -- 'metaphorical planets or moons' if you will that are spinning around the main planet or sun of our 'Central Ego'. You can even look at them as being like 'astrological signs or planets' that create for us a myriad of potential 'biochemical-psychological-philosophical' relationship possibilities...spinning around in our head looking for a particular type of 'match' or 'fit' in the real world. This is the world of 'transference complexes'.

And then in the real world, we hit a 'fit'. Now I don't give complete credibility to 'astrological signs and readings and predictions...' But I don't completely discredit them either. I look at 'coincidences' and 'accidents' in life and I don't always completely discard them as coincidences and accidents. I look at potential 'emotional fits' between coincidences and accidents on the one hand -- and the internal workings of 'subconscious emotional transference complexes' on the other hand.

Here are some of the different types of 'mystical coincidences' (the head of The Toronto Gestalt Institute (George Rosner at the time I was learning there -- off and on between 1979 and 1991 -- used to call them 'wu wu connections') that I do not automatically dismiss and view as possible 'mystical transference fits': 1. My dad's birthday is April 2nd. So too is my girlfriend's birthday who I have been with for almost 10 years. My son's birthday is October 15th. That just happens to be Nietzsche's birthday. Freud and Jung met for the first time on March 3rd (1907). That's my birthday -- 48 years later. Alexander Bain is, I believe, usually viewed as being the 'first academic or technical psychologist' -- the first philosopher to specifically move from the study of philosophy into the more particular study of psychology. I did a bit of a 'geneology check' on my family's roots and couldn't find a connection with this man's lineage...and yet I look at this man's biography and his work -- in philosophy, psychology, English (spelling, grammar)....and I see his academic interests written all through my own personality...Also, Alexander Bain taught at The University of Aberdeen, Scotland, which is the city where my ancestors came from...I feel some serious 'Karma' with this man...even if there are no (at least known) genetic roots.

My work may or may not come anywhere close to Alexander Bain's level of academic significance but once again I fin it 'mystcally coincidental' that ...if I had one choice of what I would like to do with the rest of my life, I would like to create 'The DGB PEPP (Philosophy-English-Psychology-Politics)...Club' focusing on the study and dialectic evolution of Philosophy, English, Psychology ..the same three areas of study that Alexander Bain specialized in...

.......................................................................

Karma

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Kamma (disambiguation).

Spirituality portal

Karma (Sanskrit: कर्म kárma (help·info), kárman- "act, action, performance"[1]; Pali: kamma) is the concept of "action" or "deed" in Indian religions understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect (i.e., the cycle called saṃsāra) originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Buddhist philosophies.

The philosophical explanation of karma can differ slightly between traditions, but the general concept is basically the same. Through the law of karma, the effects of all deeds actively create past, present, and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one's own life, and the pain and joy it brings to him/her and others. The results or 'fruits' of actions are called karma-phala. In religions that incorporate reincarnation, karma extends through one's present life and all past and future lives as well.

..................................................................................

Alexander Bain

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born 11 June 1818(1818-06-11)

Caithness, Scotland
Died 18 September 1903 (aged 85)

Occupation philosopher and educationalist
This article is about the philosopher. For the inventor, see Alexander Bain (inventor).
Alexander Bain (11 June 1818 – 18 September 1903) was a Scottish philosopher and educationalist.

Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 See also
3 Works Online
4 References
5 External links
6 Further reading

[edit] Biography
He was born in Watten, and went to school there, but took up the profession of a weaver, hence the punning description of him as Weevir, rex philosophorum. In 1836 he entered Marischal College, and came under the influence of John Cruickshank, professor of mathematics, Thomas Clark, professor of chemistry, and William Knight, professor of natural philosophy. His college career was distinguished, especially in mental philosophy, mathematics and physics. Towards the end of his arts course he became a contributor to the Westminster Review (first article "Electrotype and Daguerreotype," September 1840).

This was the beginning of his connection with John Stuart Mill, which led to a lifelong friendship. In 1841, Bain substituted for Dr Glennie, the professor of moral philosophy, who, through ill-health, was unable to discharge his academic duties. He continued to do this three successive terms, during which he continued writing for the Westminster, and also helped Mill with the revision of the manuscript of his System of Logic (1842). In 1843 he contributed the first review of the book to the London and Westminster.

In 1845 he was appointed professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in the Andersonian University of Glasgow. A year later, preferring a wider field, he resigned the position and devoted himself to writing. In 1848 he moved to London to fill a post in the Board of Health, under some circumstances

, and became a prominent member of the brilliant circle which included George Grote and John Stuart Mill. In 1855 he published his first major work, The Senses and the Intellect, followed in 1859 by The Emotions and the Will. These treatises won him a position among independent thinkers. He was examiner in logical and moral philosophy (1857-1862 and 1864-1869) to the University of London, and in moral science in the Indian Civil Service examinations.

In 1860 he was appointed by the crown to the new chair of logic and English literature at the University of Aberdeen (created by the amalgamation of the two colleges, King's and Marischal, by the Scottish Universities Commission of 1858). Up to this date neither logic nor English had received adequate attention in Aberdeen, and Bain devoted himself to supplying these deficiencies. He succeeded not only in raising the standard of education generally in the north of Scotland, but also in forming a school of philosophy and in widely influencing the teaching of English grammar and composition. His efforts were first directed to the preparation of textbooks: Higher English Grammar[1] and An English Grammar[2] were both published in 1863, followed in 1866 by the Manual of Rhetoric, in 1872 by A First English Grammar, and in 1874 by the Companion to the Higher Grammar. These works were wide-ranging and their original views and methods met with wide acceptance.

His own philosophical writings already published, especially The Senses and the Intellect (to which was added, in 1861, The Study of Character, including an Estimate of Phrenology), were too large for effective use in the classroom. Accordingly in 1868, he published his Manual of Mental and Moral Science, mainly a condensed form of his treatises, with the doctrines re-stated, and in many instances freshly illustrated, and with many important additions. The year 1870 saw the publication of the Logic. This, too, was a work designed for the use of students; it was based on JS Mill, but differed from him in many particulars, and was distinctive for its treatment of the doctrine of the conservation of energy in connection with causation and the detailed application of the principles of logic to the various sciences. His services to education in Scotland were now recognized by the conferment of the honorary degree of doctor of laws by the university of Edinburgh in 1871. Next came two publications in the "International Scientific Series", namely, Mind and Body (1872), and Education as a Science (1879).

All these works, from the Higher English Grammar downwards, were written by Bain during his twenty years as a professor at Aberdeen. He also started the philosophical journal, Mind; the first number appeared in January 1876, under the editorship of a former pupil, George Croom Robertson, of University College, London. To this journal Bain contributed many important articles and discussions; and in fact he bore the whole expenses of it till Robertson, owing to ill-health, resigned the editorship in 1891.

He was succeeded by William Minto, one of his most brilliant pupils. Nevertheless his interest in thought, and his desire to complete the scheme of work mapped out in earlier years, remained as keen as ever. Accordingly, in 1882 appeared the Biography of James Mill, and accompanying it John Stuart Mill: a Criticism, with Personal Recollections. Next came (1884) a collection of articles and papers, most of which had appeared in magazines, under the title of Practical Essays. This was succeeded (1887, 1888) by a new edition of the Rhetoric, and along with it, a book On Teaching English, being an exhaustive application of the principles of rhetoric to the criticism of style, for the use of teachers; and in 1894 he published a revised edition of The Senses and the Intellect, which contain his last word on psychology. In 1894 also appeared his last contribution to Mind. His last years were spent in privacy at Aberdeen, where he died. He married twice but left no children.

Bain took a keen interest and frequently an active part in the political and social movements of the day; after his retirement from the chair of logic, he was twice elected lord rector of the university (1881, ?), each term of office extending over three years. He was a strenuous advocate of reform, especially in the teaching of sciences, and supported the claims of modern languages to a place in the curriculum. A marble bust of him stands in the public library and his portrait hangs in the Marischal College. Although his influence as a logician, a grammarian and a writer on rhetoric was considerable, his reputation rests on his psychology. At one with Johannes Müller in the conviction psychologus nemo nisi physiologus, he was the first in Great Britain during the 19th century to apply physiology in a thoroughgoing fashion to the elucidation of mental states. He was the originator of the theory of psycho-physical parallelism, which is used so widely as a working basis by modern psychologists. His idea of applying the natural history method of classification to psychical phenomena gave scientific character to his work, the value of which was enhanced by his methodical exposition and his command of illustration. In line with this, too, is his demand that psychology should be cleared of metaphysics; and to his lead is no doubt due in great measure the position that psychology has now acquired as a distinct positive science.

William James calls his work the "last word" of the earlier stage of psychology, but he was in reality the pioneer of the new. Subsequent psycho-physical investigations "have all been in" the spirit of his work; and although he consistently advocated the introspective method in psychological investigation, he was among the first to appreciate the help that may be given to it by animal and social and infant psychology. He may justly claim the merit of having guided the awakened psychological interest of British thinkers of the second half of the 19th century into fruitful channels. He emphasized the importance of our active experiences of movement and effort, and though his theory of a central innervation sense is no longer held as he propounded it, its value as a suggestion to later psychologists is great. His autobiography, published in 1904, contains a full list of his works, and also the history of the last thirteen years of his life by WL Davidson of Aberdeen University, who further contributed to Mind (April 1904) a review of Bain's services to philosophy.

Works (beside the above) Edition with notes of Paley's Moral Philosophy (1852); Education as a Science (1879); Dissertations on leading philosophical topics (1903, mainly reprints of papers in Mind); he collaborated with JS Mill and Grote in editing James Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1869), and assisted in editing Grote's Aristotle and Minor Works; he also wrote a memoir prefixed to G Croom Robertson's Philosophical Remains (1894).

Various schools in Mexico City as well as Irapuato, Guanajuato Mexico are named after him, which consist of kindergartens, primary schools, junior high and highschools.

[edit] See also
Association of Ideas

[edit] Works Online
"Early Life of James Mill", from Mind, Vol. 1, No. 1 (January 1876).
Review of Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology, from Mind, Vol. 1, No. 1 (January 1876).
"Mr. G. H. Lewes and the Postulates of Experience", from Mind, Vol. 1, No. 1 (January 1876).

[edit] References
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
Bain, Alexander, English Composition and Rhetoric, 1871 (facsimile ed., 1996, Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, ISBN 9780820114972).
^ Higher English Grammar at Google Books
^ An English Grammar at Google Books

[edit] External links
William L. Davidson, Professor Bain, an obituary from Mind (Jan. 1904)
Moral Science: A Compendium of Ethics by Alexander Bain
Works by Alexander Bain at Project Gutenberg

[edit] Further reading
Hattiangadi, Jagdish N. (1970). "Bain, Alexander". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 403-404. ISBN 0684101149.

.................................................................................

One way or the other -- whether I am 'reaching too far' on these 'coincidental connections' or not -- it is no accident that we all narcissistically and symbolically return to the scene of our 'childhood transference memories and figures' to 're-create' the 'old scene' again, to re-live it again -- and to try to narcissistically 'finish' or 'complete' that which was left 'unfinished' and/or 'unresolved' the first time. This phenomenon gave rise to Freud's concepts of the 'repetition compulsion' and the 'death instinct' which do not do sufficient justice to what is happening here. The essence of the childhood transference scene -- and the memory -- is that it is narcissisically unfinished, and incomplete because either there has been a 'life-changing, self-esteem injury' here, and/or the opposite -- a narcissistic triumph or pleasure -- and a 'fixation' with this triumph and/or pleasure. In the case, of a life-changing self-esteem tragedy, traumacy, and/or injury, the one thing that Freud could not get his head around -- and perhaps his main reason for abandoning his Childhood Traumacy/Seduction/Sexual Assault Theory -- is that Freud couldn't understand why a person, usually a 'hysterical' woman in his early clinical practise, but equally applicable to both sexes, would want to return, over and over again -- obsessive-compulsively -- metaphorically in clinical practise and in adult relationships to the scene of his or her greatest childhood and lifetime traumacies/tragedies. This clinical fact violated and flat-out contradicted his 'unpleasure theory' which stated that people would go out of their way to avoid pain -- and/or its re-creation. And yet, here in the 'deterministic' throes of an obsessive-compulsive-addictive transference complex' people were coming back over and over again metaphorically, symbolically to the childhood scenes of their greatest traumacies -- and self-esteem traumacies. Why in God's name, would they want to do this -- and often in the process, re-create, re-live the old childhood pain all over again, often to the tune of brand new -- but old self-destruction all over again -- unless they derived some sort of contorted, twisted, masochistic pleasure from this experience? Which seems to be more or less what Freud concluded -- and also that there was some sort of twisted narcissistic pleasure in the old traumatic childhood scene -- which led Freud up the road, up the path -- a partly wrong one, I believe -- to 'distorted, screen memories' and then to 'dreams' and 'unconscious childhood fantasies' and 'The Oedipal Complex' and later to 'the repetition compulsion' and the 'death instinct'.

DGB Philosophy-Psychology doesn't go to any of these later Freudian places in the exact same way that Freud did -- except from a different post-Freudian, integrative perspective -- specifically, a combined Psychoanalytic, Adlerian, Jungian, Transactional Analysis, and Gestalt perspective that focuses on the idea of of 'transference incompletion' and 'unfinished childhood business' -- the compensating wish and fantasy to complete or finish this unfinished childhood business, the childhood self-esteem traumacy -- in a more self-empowering fashion. This is how in Ronald Fairbairn's terminology and conceptuology -- our 'childhood rejecting transference object' becomes also at the same time our 'childhood exciting transference object' as we view this and only this person as holding the key to 're-completing the wholeness' of the 'void' or 'abyss' or 'tumor' in our own fractured self-esteem growth. This combination of rejecting and exciting transference object is then transferred into our adult transference complexes and relationships.

In other words, contrary to Freud's logical analysis of this situation, there is no violation of the 'pleasure' and/or 'unpleasure' principle here but rather the pleasure principle is still very much in tact and at work. Specifically, man's -- and woman's -- greatest narcissistic triumph involves his or her own transference complex(es) whereby our greatest childhood narcissistic/self-esteem failures, rejections, abandonments, and traumacies are 'magically undone' and/or 'reversed' if only for a short period of time through the supreme triumph of our adult transference successes and accomplishments that -- if only for a brief time -- make our self-esteem 'whole' again where in the original transference scene (and/or series of scenes/memories), there may have been the creation of a huge, gaping 'self-esteem void or hole' through tragedy, traumacy, rejection, assault, abuse, betrayal, and/or the like.

In the 1980s, I called this whole transference complex -- and its underlying goal of 'compensation superiority striving, success and triumph' (Adler) -- transference-reversal. It totally follows the dictates of the pleasure and unpleasure principle -- although in an often seemingly contorted and masochistic way, for if we are 'symbolically and existentially going to play with fire again', it is more or less inevitable that we are going to get 'burnt again', as we go down some of the old childhood paths again, leading back to a newer version of one of our most feared and revered old childhood protagonists/rejectors/excitors -- and a 'symbolic repetition' of the same or similar traumacy, tragedy, and self-destruction -- all over again, relived dramatically, in all of its old and new, most exciting and most painful passon and suffering combined together to the max. This is the essence of the transference complex and at its worst, one can easily see how Freud connected it to his idea of the repetition compulsion and death instinct.

That is a DGB short version of the whole idea of 'transference' -- built from the earliest and latest work of Freud, and many of the greatest psychologists -- pro, con, and modified, integrative Psychoanalysts -- who came after him.

7.Narcissism: Another one of Freud's most important conceptual and theoretical additions to Psychoanalysis was/is the concept and phenomenon of 'narcissism'. Narcissism is a very abstract term/concept with a broad range and focus of different nuances of meaning depending on the context it is being used in. It can be used to describe any of the following inter-related ideas, feelings, experiences: ego, pride, self-esteem, self-worth, self-absorption, self-arrogancy, selfishness, self-assertion, greed, self-pleasure, connected with traumacy and/or tragedy, we can talk about 'narcissistic traumacy', 'narcissistic anxiety', 'narcissistic excitement', 'narcissistic fixation', 'narcissistic compensation', 'narcissistic projection', 'narcissistic introjection and/or identification', 'narcissistic transference', 'narcissistic rage'...It was the psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut who was most influential in developing the last line of thought relative to transference...Freud thought that people who are extremely narcissistic cannot 'transfer' thoughts and/or feelings and/or impulses because they are too locked up, too self-absorbed, in themselves. However, Kohut correctly assessed (in my opinion) that it was/is this characteristic of 'self-absorption' in the context of a social relationship that is the essence of a 'narcissistic transference' -- i.e., the inability and/or unwillingness to see another except in the light of one's own thoughts, feelings, impulses, and projections...In other words, the extemely narcissistic person is unwilling and/or incapable of feeling empathy and/or social sensitivity towards another person. Thus, extreme narcissism is often connected to the ideas of 'psychopathic' and/or 'sociopathic', particularly when it is connected with such auxiliary thoughts, feeling, emotions -- and/or the lack of them -- as extreme possessiveness, jealousy, anger, rage, hate, violence...

Narcissism is both an normal and an abnormal, a healthy and an unhealthy process depending on its childhood course of development and evolution. And depending on the element of 'balance' vs. 'extremism' that is attached to this childhood and adult evolutionary delopmental process.

The opposite of narcissism is 'altruism' although both can and do have the same roots in caring and love -- and/or its absence.

Narcissism -- particularly pathological narcissism -- can and does have its roots in childhood neglect, abuse, betrayal, abandonment...Thus, we can speak of 'narcissistic traumacy' and/or 'narcissistic tragedy'...a traumatic/tragic loss of an important childhood figure (like mom and/or dad) and often combined with this a tragic/traumatic loss of self-esteem, self-worth, self-love...

However, narcissism can and is often connected with what would seem to be the opposite -- pampering, spoiling, treating a child as if he or she can do no wrong, as if there are no social laws, rules, regulations, and values to be learned in life -- especially the values of empathy, social sensitivity, ethics, fairness -- and reciprocity.

Thus, we can distinguish between the 'narcissism of neglect' -- i.e., 'compensatory narcissism' -- vs. the 'narcissism of being spoiled/pampered' (which involves the 'neglect of being taught and learning social reciprocity'. It is from these childhood lessons and learning processes -- and/or the lack of them -- that we, meaning DGBN Philosophy-Psychology arrive at the same concept Kohut did -- this being the concept of 'narcissistic transferences.
...........................................................................

Heinz Kohut
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Part of a series of articles on
Psychoanalysis

Concepts
Psychosexual development
Psychosocial development
Conscious • Preconscious • Unconscious
Psychic apparatus
Id, ego, and super-ego
Libido • Drive
Transference • Ego defenses • Resistance

Important figures
Alfred Adler • Nancy Chodorow • Erik Erikson
Ronald Fairbairn • Anna Freud • Sigmund Freud
Karen Horney • Ernest Jones
Carl Jung • Melanie Klein
Heinz Kohut • Jacques Lacan
Margaret Mahler • Otto Rank
Harry Stack Sullivan
Susan Sutherland Isaacs

Important works
The Interpretation of Dreams
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Civilization and Its Discontents

Schools of thought
Self psychology • Lacanian
• Object relations
Interpersonal • Relational
Ego psychology

Psychology portal
This box: view • talk • edit
Heinz Kohut (3 May 1913 – 8 October 1981) is best known for his development of Self Psychology, a school of thought within psychodynamic/psychoanalytic theory, psychiatrist Heinz Kohut's contributions transformed the modern practice of analytic and dynamic treatment approaches.

Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Development of Self Psychology
3 Historical Context
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Early life
Kohut was born on 3 May, 1913 to an assimilated Jewish family and received his MD in neurology at the University of Vienna. Like many Jews, including Freud, Kohut fled Nazi occupation of his native Vienna, Austria in 1939. Kohut settled in Chicago and became a prominent member of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. Kohut was such a strong proponent of the traditional psychoanalytic perspective that was dominant in the U.S. that he jokingly called himself "Mr. Psychoanalysis."[1]

[edit] Development of Self Psychology
In the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, Freudian analysis was too focused on individual guilt and failed to reflect the new zeitgeist (the emotional interests and needs of people struggling with issues of identity, meaning, ideals, and self-expression). [2] Though he initially tried to remain true to the traditional analytic viewpoint with which he had become associated and viewed the self as separate but coexistent to the ego, Kohut later rejected Freud's structural theory of the id, ego, and superego. He then developed his ideas around what he called the tripartite (three-part) self.[1]

According to Kohut, this three-part self can only develop when the needs of one's "self states," including one's sense of worth and well-being, are met in relationships with others. In contrast to traditional psychoanalysis, which focuses on drives (instinctual motivations of sex and aggression), internal conflicts, and fantasies, self psychology thus placed a great deal of emphasis on the vicissitudes of relationships.

Kohut demonstrated his interest in how we develop our "sense of self" using narcissism as a model. If a person is narcissistic, it will allow him to suppress feelings of low self-esteem. By talking highly of himself, the person can eliminate his sense of worthlessness.

[edit] Historical Context
Kohut expanded on his theory during the 1970s and 1980s, a time in which aggressive individuality, overindulgence, greed, and restlessness left many people feeling empty, fragile, and fragmented.[1]

Perhaps because of its positive, open, and empathic stance on human nature as a whole as well as the individual, self psychology is considered one of the "four psychologies" (the others being drive theory, ego psychology, and object relations); that is, one of the primary theories on which modern dynamic therapists and theorists rely. According to biographer Charles Strozier, "Kohut...may well have saved psychoanalysis from itself."[3] Without his focus on empathic relationships, dynamic theory might well have faded in comparison to one of the other major psychology orientations (which include humanism and cognitive behavioral therapy) that were being developed around the same time.

Also according to Strozier, Kohut's book The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Analysis of the Treatment of the Narcissistic Personality Disorders [4] "had a significant impact on the field by extending Freud's theory of narcissism and introducing what Kohut called the 'self-object transferences' of mirroring and idealization." In other words, children need to idealize and emotionally "sink into" and identify with the idealized competence of admired figures. They also need to have their self-worth reflected back ("mirrored") by empathic and caregiving others. These experiences allow them to thereby learn the self-soothing and other skills that are necessary for the development of a healthy (cohesive, vigorous) sense of self. For example, therapists become the idealized parent and through transference the patient begins to get the things he has missed. The patient also has the opportunity to reflect on how early the troubling relationship led to personality problems. Narcissism arises from poor attachment at an early age. Freud also believed that narcissism hides low self esteem, and that therapy will reparent them through transference and they begin to get the things they missed. Later, Kohut added the third major self-object theme (and he dropped the hyphen in self-object) of alter-ego/twinship, the theme of being part of a larger human identification with others.

Though dynamic theory tends to place emphasis on childhood development, Kohut believed that the need for such self-object relationships does not end at childhood but continues throughout all stages of a person's life.[2]

In the final week of his life, knowing that his time was at an end, Kohut spent as much time as he could with his family and friends. He fell into a coma on the evening of October 7, 1981, and died of cancer on the morning of October 8.

Heinz Kohut : "Analysis of the Self: Systematic Approach to Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders", Publisher: International Universities Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8236-8002-9

[edit] See also
Narcissism (psychology)
Narcissistic personality disorder
Narcissistic rage

[edit] References
^ a b Flanagan, L.M. (1996). The theory of self psychology. In (Eds.) Berzoff, J., Flanagan, L.M., & Hertz, P. Inside out and outside in, New Jersey:Jason Aronson Inc.)
^ Elson, Miriam. (1986). Self Psychology in Clinical Social Work

......................................................................

We will pick this line of thinking up in 'Transference' (Part 2)

-- DGBN Philosophy-Psychology, January 23rd, 2009

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic-Gap Bridging Negotiations...are still in process...

DGB Psychology vs. Freud and Psychoanalysis: On Transference (Part 1, Revised Edition, Jan. 30th, 2009)

2009-01-23T06:33:00.001-08:00

DGB Philosophy-Psychology vs. Freud, Masson and Different Derrivatives of Psychoanalysis (Part 3)

2009-01-17T14:49:00.000-08:00

Everything is subject to change.

I learned that in Gestalt Therapy, and also from the ancient philosophy of Heraclitus ('You can't step into the same river twice.'). Before both of these even, from General Semantics where everything is 'process', not 'structure', and nouns are often changed to verbs to make the situation at hand more immediate, dynamic, and totally relevant to context as opposed to having 'universal meaning'.

All of these ideas are very appropro in many, if not all, different types of situations.

...................................................................................

1. appropo
Appropriate

Slight modification in spelling and definition of "apropos"

eg. Her choice of attire is appropo given the casual atmosphere of the restaurant.

................................................................................

However, at times, the cliche/truism -- 'The more things change, the more things stay the same' -- is also appropro.

This brings us to our third appropo assertion/truism of the morning:

Context is everything. (I learned that from General Semantics, specifically, S.I. Hayakawa, 'Language in Thought and Action'.)

I'm a Pisces -- born March 3rd, 1955 -- if my memory serves me correctly, 52 years to the day that Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung met for the first time on a Sunday morning and talked non-stop for about 14 hours.

A quick check upstairs in my private library corrects my memory. It was Sunday March 3rd, 1907 that Freud and Jung met for the first time and about 13 hours that they talked non-stop, according to the author, Duane Schultz, Ph.D, of the fabulous book, Intimate Friends, Dangerous Rivals: The Turbulent Relationship Between Freud and Jung.

I love writers who can weave human history and biography with passion and human drama -- the aliveness, trials and tribulations, and contact of everyday human existence.

I hate and disdain the 'hoops' of university academia, brutally dry academia -- where without water, without blood, without air, without proper cognitive-emotional nutrition and sustenance -- and like leaches and vampires, they suck all the students' blood out of their arteries, to become walking dead people, living-dying projective-identifications of the universities themselves.

Not to mention poor. Either born to rich parents or $30,000 in debt or more -- before they hit the age of 25 or 30. Before they step into their first permanent job and/or career. I can't even speculate the number of bankruptcies in our post-college or university grads upon just leaving school. It has to be shockingly high -- at least until the goverment(s) has/have moved to not allow student loans to be subject to bankruptcy laws. I don't have the facts nor the time to fully confront this issue, but the issue is there for some other investigative reporter to fully grab hold of, if this has not been done already. I know that there have been some editorial articles on this subject matter but not enough to make a signficant impact on the full breadth and depth of the problem -- nor possible solution to lower the cost of post-secondary education.

Call this food for another DGB essay, someday somewhere down the DGB priority list. I love what they did in the Scottish Enlightenment -- opened the university doors to the public, charged them a nominal lecture fee, and reaped the economic and motivational-spiritual benefits as Scotland became one of the best educated countries in the world -- especially per capita, and some of the best world inventors, philosophers, politicians, economists, scientists, doctors...did more than their part in helping to revolutionize the modern Industrial revolution. I will come back with two sources in a few minutes. We will take up this line of thought at different time.

Freud and Psychoanalysis.

Memories of the 1980s and early 1990s.

1. Buying all 24 volumes of James Strachey's Standard Edition of The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud -- at a book store on Harbord Street by The University of Toronto, and carrying the full box home on my shoulders, on the Yonge St. subway, to my apartment in mid-Toronto at Mt. Pleasant and Davisville. I think the full set cost me about $700. I don't know what the set is worth today.

2. Buying a couple of old, used, beaten up books from a used book store, again on Harbord St, by St. George St. in the heartland of University of Toronto country. One book -- The Third Volume, First Edition, of Ernest Jones' biography of Freud -- was published by Ernest Jones, and manufactured in the U.S., 1957. The inscription on one of the first inside pages says, 'Nancy, April 14th, 1958'. I would have just turned 3 yrs. old at the time of the inscription, and living in either London, Ontario or Vancouver, B.C. (I will have to consult my parents on the specifics.)

3. The second book I bought that same day as the Ernest Jones book, was an old copy of Freud's 1905 published book -- Jokes and Their Relation to The Unconscious. This particular edition was translated and edited by James Strachey in 1960 and published that same year.

4. I remember being extremely excited at having purchased these last two books (as well of course as having purchased the complete Freud-Strachey, Standard 24 Volume Edition) and again carrying the books home on the same subway route up to Yonge and Davisville, walking to Mt. Pleasant and Davisville. Here the memory gets a little cloudy -- one or two memories probably colliding and colluding with each other. Because my next visual image is of dropping these two books -- or at least the 'Jokes' book I know for sure -- off the subway platform at Yonge and Davisville. I remember doing a quick (seconds, minutes?) calculation on how much time I had til the next subway came along. I think I asked the man standing next to me if he would help pull me back up again if I jumped off the subway platform to retrieve the two books. He said 'yes', down I went, I retrieved the books and placed them back on the platform floor, and my friend of the moment helped me back up. (I'm certainly glad he was a Good Samaratan and didn't lie to me. I hadn't calculated an alternative, back-up plan.)

5. One last book purchase from a bookstore on Queen St. East, around Jarvis or Sherbourne. I'm not sure whether it was Jeffrey Masson's book, 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory' (1984, 1985, 1992); or 'Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst' which I can't find in my archives at the moment. I think it was 'The Assault on Truth' which would probably place the year as being 1992. Masson's books and ideas have certainly had a strong influence on my thinking -- although I haven't 'swallowed them whole'. In Hegel's Hotel we will merge Freudian thinking both before, during and after the 'Seduction Theory' years of around 1895.

I believe that Masson deserves a strong, respected place in the history of Psychoanalysis -- a part of a signficant Hegelian Freud-Masson revolution and evolution of Psychoanalysis which has been accepted and integrated by DGB Philosophy-Psychology -- or at least will be -- while Masson's contribution to the potential revolution and evolution of Psychoanalysis probably remains largely suppressed, ignored, and marginalized, although partly or fully supported in some academic, theoretical and therapeutic fronts -- largely those of non-psychoanalytic perspective, such as with those therapists who strongly support Freud's Traumacy, Seduction, and Childhood Sexual Assault Theory, and Masson's 're-awakening' of these buried and marginalized early Freudian theories and therapies (before 1897 or 1900, take your pick).

...........................................................................

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (born March 28, 1941 as Jeffrey Lloyd Masson in Chicago, Illinois) is an American author, residing in New Zealand, known for his revisionist conclusions about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. In his book The Assault on Truth, Masson argued that Freud may have abandoned his seduction theory because he feared that granting the truth of his female patients' claims that they had been sexually abused would hinder the acceptance of his psychoanalytic methods. He has also written about animals and animal rights.

Contents [hide]
1 Life and career
2 Critique of Freud
3 Recent work
4 Personal life
5 Writings by Masson
5.1 Reviews of his books
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links

Life and career

Masson is the son of Jacques Moussaieff, a French Mizrahi Sephardic Jew of Bukharian ancestry, and Diana (Dina) Zeiger from a Ashkenazi strict Orthodox Jewish family. Both parents were followers of the British mystic Paul Brunton. During the 1940s and 1950s, Brunton often lived with them, eventually designating Jeffrey as his heir apparent. In 1956, Diana and Jacques Masson moved to Uruguay because Brunton believed that a third world war was imminent. Jeffrey and and his sister Linda followed in 1959.

At Brunton's urging, Masson went to Harvard University to study Sanskrit. While at Harvard, Masson became disillusioned with Brunton. Brunton and his influence and the Masson family form the subject of Masson's autobiographical book My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion. Harvard University granted Masson a B.A. in 1964 and a Ph.D. with Honors in 1970. His degrees were in Sanskrit and Indian Studies. While undertaking his Ph.D., Masson also studied, supported by fellowships, at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, the University of Calcutta, and the University of Poona.

He taught Sanskrit and Indian Studies at the University of Toronto, 1969-80, reaching the rank of Professor. He has also held short term appointments at Brown University, the University of California, and the University of Michigan. From 1981 to 1992, he was a Research Associate, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, at the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

[edit] Critique of Freud
In 1970, Masson began studying to become a psychoanalyst at the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute, completing a full clinical training course in 1978. During this time, he befriended the psychoanalyst Kurt Eissler and became acquainted with Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna Freud. Eissler designated Masson to succeed him as Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives after his and Anna Freud's death. Masson learned German and studied the history of psychoanalysis. In 1980 Masson was appointed Projects Director of the Freud Archives, with full access to Freud's correspondence and other unpublished papers. While perusing this material, Masson concluded that Freud might have rejected his so-called seduction theory in order to advance the cause of psychoanalysis and to maintain his own place within the psychoanalytic inner circle. [1] Masson's actions, along with those of Kurt Eissler and Peter Swales, form the subject of In the Freud Archives, an article in the New Yorker by Janet Malcolm, which she later expanded into a book.

In 1981, Masson's controversial conclusions were discussed in a series of New York Times articles by Ralph Blumenthal, to the dismay of the psychoanalytic establishment. Masson was subsequently dismissed from his position as project director of the Freud Archives. and stripped of his membership in psychoanalytic professional societies. Masson was defended by Alice Miller [2] and Muriel Gardiner ("While striving not to take sides," Gardiner said, "I consider him a good and energetic worker and a worthwhile scholar.") [3].

Masson later wrote several books critical of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and psychiatry, including The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. In the introduction to The Assault on Truth, Masson admitted that, "My pessimistic conclusions may possibly be wrong. The documents may in fact allow a very different reading." [4] Janet Malcolm interviewed Masson at length when writing her long New Yorker article on this controversy. Masson sued the New Yorker for defamation, claiming that Malcolm had misquoted him. The ensuing trial drew considerable attention.[5]The decade-long, $US10 million lawsuit came to a close when the court ruled in the New Yorker 's favor.[6]

In 1985, Masson edited and translated the complete correspondence of Freud with Wilhelm Fliess after having convinced Anna Freud to make all of it available. He also looked up the original places and documents in La Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris,[7] where Freud had studied with Charcot. Masson has written that people used to be very interested in himself but as far as the cause was concerned, there is silence from the scientific community. [8]

[edit] Recent work
Since the early 1990s, Masson has written a number of books on the emotional life of animals, one of which, When Elephants Weep, has been translated into 20 languages. He has explained this radical change in the subject of his writings as follows:

“ "I'd written a whole series of books about psychiatry, and nobody bought them. Nobody liked them. Nobody. Psychiatrists hated them, and they were much too abstruse for the general public. It was very hard to make a living, and I thought, 'As long as I'm not making a living, I may as well write about something I really love: animals.'"[9] ”

Masson also wrote a book about his new home country New Zealand, including an interview with Sir Edmund Hillary. [10] Among other things, Masson and Hillary talk about Alexandra David-Neel and the story of her Tulpa, both of them having read her books Magic and Mystery in Tibet, Initiation and Initiates in Tibet and My Journey to Lhasa. Masson says that he met her in 1957 when he was 16, at her country house at Digne in the south of France.

[edit] Personal life
Masson is married to Leila Masson, a pediatrician. [11] They have two sons, Ilan and Manu. He also has a daughter, Simone, by a previous marriage. [12] Masson was once engaged to University of Michigan feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, who wrote the preface to his A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality, and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century.

[edit] Writings by Masson
Bibliography of Masson's writings.

1974. "India and the Unconscious: Erik Erikson on Gandhi," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 55: 519-26. Discussion by T. C. Sinha: 527.
1976. "Perversions-some observations", Israel Ann. Psychiat. rel. Disc., (1976b), 14, 354-61.
1978 (with Terri C. Masson), "Buried Memories on the Acropolis. Freud's Relation to Mysticism and Anti-Semitism", International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 59: 199-208.
1980. The Oceanic Feeling: The Origins of Religious Sentiment in Ancient India. (Table of contents)
1981. The Peacock's Egg: Love Poems from Ancient India, W. S. Merwin and J. Moussaieff Masson, eds. ISBN 0-86547-059-6
1984. The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. Farrar Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-374-10642-8
1984. "Freud and the Seduction Theory A challenge to the foundations of psychoanalysis," The Atlantic Monthly, February 1984.
1985 (editor). The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904. ISBN 0-674-15420-7
1986. A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century. ISBN 0-374-13501-0, last edition 1988
1988. Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing. ISBN 0-689-11929-1
1990. Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of A Psychoanalyst. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-52368-X, new edition 2003
1993. My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion, Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-56778-4
Dogs Never Lie About Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs.
1995. When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Life of Animals.
The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals.
The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey Into the Feline Heart. ISBN 0345448820
The Cat Who Came in from the Cold. Wheeler. ISBN 1587249146
The Emperors Embrace Reflections on Animal Families and Fatherhood.
The Evolution of Fatherhood: A Celebration of Animal and Human Families.
Raising the Peaceable Kingdom: What Animals Can Teach Us about the Social Origins of Tolerance and Friendship.
Lost Prince : The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. [13]
Sex and Yoga: Psychoanalysis and the Indian Religious Experience in VISHNU ON FREUD'S DESK : A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism, T.G. Vaidyanathan & Jeffrey J. Kripal (editors): , Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195658353, Paperback (Edition: 2003)[14]
Slipping into Paradise: Why I live in New Zealand. ISBN 0-345-46634-9
2006. Altruistic Armadillos - Zen-Like Zebras: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals. ISBN 978-0-345-47881-8 (0-345-47881-9)
See Masson's praise of the book by Luna Tarlo, the mother of Andrew Cohen.
1995, "A Note on U.G. Krishnamurti."

[edit] Reviews of his books
The Original Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904: By William McGrath.
Against Therapy:
By Jeanne Stubbs.
By Wray Herbert.
Final Analysis: By Michael Sacks.
Breaking Away From the Cult: By Carol Tavris.

[edit] References
^ "Did Freud's Isolation Lead Him to Reverse Theory on Neurosis?" by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, August 25, 1981
^ PSYCHOLOGIE HEUTE, April 1987, P.21, 22: "Im Gegensatz zu manchen Interpreten, die, wie zum Beispiel Marianne Krüll, Marie Balmary oder Jeffrey Masson, Freuds Abkehr von der Wahrheit als Folge seiner Familiengeschichte deuten, sehe ich diesen Schritt als Folge und Ausdruck unserer jahrtausendealten kinderfeindlichen Tradition, in der wir auch heute noch leben. Die Ergebnisse der oben genannten historischen Forscher können trotzdem korrekt sein, aber ich meine, daß es Freud trotz der persönlichen Familiengeschichte möglich gewesen wäre, seiner Entdeckung treu zu bleiben, wenn die Gesellschaft als Ganzes nicht so kinderfeindlich gewesen wäre, wenn schon damals andere, freiere Erziehungsmuster denkbar gewesen wären. Doch zur Zeit Freuds war es noch absolut unmöglich, die Unschuld der Eltern in Frage zu stellen." Alice Miller in interview entitled Wie Psychotherapien das Kind verraten
^ "Freud Archives Research Chief Removed in Dispute Over Yale Talk" by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times November 9, 1981.
^ Masson, Jeffrey (1992). The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. New York: Harper Perennial. xxxv. ISBN 0-06-097457-5.
^ David Margolick (1994-11-03). "Psychoanalyst Loses Libel Suit Against a New Yorker Reporter", The New York Times.
^ SMH article October 6, 2007
^ History of La Salpêtrière
^ Masson, J., 1990. Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-52368-X.
^ Powells.com Interviews - Jeffrey Masson
^ Masson, J., "A Conversation with a Great Ordinary Kiwi: Sir Edmund Hillary," chpt. 7 in Slipping into Paradise.
^ [1]
^ [2]
^ Review
^ Table of Contents

[edit] Further reading
Kurt R. Eissler, 2001. Freud and the seduction theory: A brief love affair, New York: International Universities Press.
Janet Malcolm, 2002. In the Freud Archives, New York Review of Books. ISBN 159017027X
Sthitaprajna (Perfect Yogi) - Part 2
Luna Tarlo, 1997. The Mother of God. Plover Press. ISBN 9781570270437

[edit] External links
Masson's website.
"Scholars seek the hidden Freud in newly emerging letters." The first of two NYT articles by Ralph Blumenthal, published August 18, 1981.
"Till Press Do Us Part: The Trial of Janet Malcolm and Jeffrey Masson."
"The Lothario who fell for fatherhood."
Transcript of an interview (Jeffrey Masson talking with Kirsten Garrett) first broadcast on The Science Show in 1986, about Sigmund Freud and Emma Eckstein.
"Walking on the Beach with Jeffrey Masson's Cats," November 14, 2002
"Conversation between Masson and Richard Fidler. Related Audio, December 14, 2007.
About Jeff (with new Photo of Jeffrey and his family)
Photo
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Moussaieff_Masson"
Categories: 1941 births | American writers | Animal rights movement | Bukharan Jews | Jewish American writers | Living people | New Zealand writers | American Jews | People from Chicago, IllinoisViewsArticle Discussion Edit this page History Personal toolsLog in / create account Navigation
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Search
Interaction
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact Wikipedia
Donate to Wikipedia
Help
Toolbox
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Printable version
Permanent link
Cite this page

................................................................

I have a few things to say to you Dr. Masson, most of it positive here. (I had a fleeting email contact with you back in the 1990s when you were in New Zealand before you cut off our correspondence -- although you were cordial with me. I wanted to rehash Freud's 'traumacy-seduction theory'. You didn't. That's fine, you have a right to your privacy, and to not wanting to raise the skeletons and ghosts from your dramatic -- and controversial -- Psychoanalytic past.)

However, 'Hegel's Hotel' is my free dialectic-democratic philosophy forum. There is 'freedom of the press' -- as long this principle is not abused in profanity, generalized hate, racism and/or violence.

As best as possible, I try to treat all people respectfully here, even as I either praise and/or 'deconstruct' their philosophical-psychological-political ideas. Quite often both.

Dr. Masson, for what it's worth, I think you are a great writer -- combining your life story, your intellect, and your passion in a very contactful, existential way. You combine your 'existence' with your 'essence'. You are on a short list of my favorite and/or most influential writers:

1. Fritz Perls
2. Nietzsche
3. Masson
4. Janet Malcolm (In The Freud Archives, 1983; Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, 1980,81)
5. Foucault

(I will give a longer list below for those who are interested.)

I think there is a common bond here:

Perls praised Freud -- before he deconstructed him. (Likewise so did Jung, Adler, Fromm, yourself -- Dr Masson, myself, and a whole host of other academics and non-academics who partly loved Freud's ideas, partly hated them -- and were left attempting to sort out and/or integrate the conflictual differences.)

Some flew off in the opposite academic direction as Freud. Others -- probably most others (Adler, Jung, Horney, Klein, Fromm, Perls, myself compromised in their own particular way -- and integrated.

No-one who studied clinical psychology and/or psychotherapy could be left totally unaffected by Freud.

I neither completely buy into Classical Psychoanalysis, nor Traumacy-Seduction Theory as advocated by you, Dr. Masson, nor any other rendition of Psychoanalysis before or after Freud's Classical Oedipal-Sexual Theory, or even his later 'Life-Death Instinct' Theory.

I neither completely advocate any of the above theories. Nor ignore and neglect any of them.

Dr. Masson, I wish that you had stayed around to advance and finish your work in Psychoanalysis -- and/or 'anti-Classical Psychoanalysis'.

One day I will read some of your essays and/or books on 'Emotions in Animals'.

I like the title of one: 'Dogs Never Lie About Love'.

In the meantime, I will integrate your work on Psychoanalyis -- and try to re-establish your rightful place and respect in The History and Evolution of Psychoanalysis.

Which I imagine still means something to you.

Even in New Zealand.

-- dgbn, January 17h, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

Are still in process....

................................................................

Psychology and Law: A Critical Introduction
Author(s): Andreas Kapardis
ISBN10: 052182530X
ISBN13: 9780521825306
Format: Hardcover
Pub. Date: 3/3/2003
Publisher(s): Cambridge University Press

New Price $99.45
List Price $102.00
eVIP Price $94.48
Quantity

New Copy: This item is temporarily unavailable from the publisher, but is expected in soon. Place your order now and we will ship it as soon as it arrives.

Used Price N/A
List Price $102.00
eVIP Price N/A

Marketplace Price $9.98
List Price $102.00

Take 90 Days to Pay on $250 or more
with Quick, Easy, Secure
Subject to credit approval.

This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date discussion of contemporary debates at the interface between psychology and criminal law. The topics surveyed include critiques of eyewitness testimony; the jury; sentencing as a human process; the psychologist as expert witness; persuasion in the courtroom; detecting deception; and psychology and the police. Kapardis draws on sources from Europe, North America and Australia to offer an expert investigation of the subjectivity and human fallibility inherent in our system of justice. He also provides suggestions for minimizing undesirable influences on crucial judicial decision-making. First Edition Hb (1997): 0-521-55321-0 First Edition Pb (1997): 0-521-55738-0

This book is the authoritative work for students and professionals in psychology and law.

......................................................................

Ernest Jones – Freud’s Wizard
in Toronto
Ernest Jones on board ship in 1911 for one of his trans-Atlantic crossings each summer, 1909 to 1913.
Photo loan through the courtesy of his granddaughter, Jackie Jones, and Brenda Maddox.
Both the early career and young adulthood of Dr. Ernest Jones, “Freud’s Wizard” (the title of
Brenda Maddox’s superb new biography) could fairly be characterized as checkered. While
launching his stellar evolution to psychoanalysis, the impulsive and judgmentally-deficient Jones
periodically instigated or compounded grave professional disgrace as well as chaotic personal
life choices. At the same time, he did manage to garner selective admiration and often affection
from towering figures that included medical professors William Osler, Freud, Jung and (later)
Americans such as J.J. Putnam and Adolf Meyer. It was Osler, Regius Professor at Oxford, who
in 1908 took pains to persuade his fellow Canadian Charles Clarke, the newly-installed Professor
of Psychiatry visiting from Toronto, to take advantage of Jones’s professional availability – left
partly languishing through further blotting of his English medical, legal and social copybooks.
Well grounded in neurology, Jones added a term of study under Alzheimer and Kraepelin at the
latter’s clinic in 1907. That credit would certainly have impressed Clarke, although Freud and
Jung worried afterwards that Jones might “defect.” Delighted at being recruited, Jones returned
again to Munich in May of 1908, “recognizing that Kraepelin’s clinic and methods were what the
Canadians wanted to replicate in Toronto.” (Maddox 63) Established in Toronto from the Fall of
Illustrated Vignettes
A sampling of watershed ideas, events & personalities from our first 100 years
Departmental Newsletter feature for Centenary Year, 2007–08
1908 until 1913, Jones enigmatically continued intermingling his periodic lapses, enmities and
near-catastrophes with some notable professional accomplishments. From 1909 he published
several landmark studies; e.g., “On the Nightmare” (reworked in German as Der Alptraum), and
on Hamlet’s Oedipal complex. His creditable and largely enduring scholarship was a product of
additional time on his hands along with genuine pride in his Toronto medical faculty and hospital
appointments. Freud himself believed that Jones’s 1911 promotion to Associate Professor (until
his 1913 separation) would enhance the cause of psychoanalysis, and wrote to congratulate him
as: “My dear Professor Jones, I rejoice in giving you this new title…” (Corresp., 5 Nov. 1911).
Ultimately the official core canon of Freud ‘s psychoanalytic works extended to 19 volumes, 24
in English. Interpreting their vast, technical vocabulary into English was a problem with which
Freud’s translators perennially grappled. Scholars on the evolution of Freudian concepts trace
their origin and variations from the original German – a process made straightforward via the
1996 computer-aided Koncordanz, published in Canada, of all Freudian German terminology.
For example, the entry for Alptraum indicates that Jones’s 1910 study was preceded by a Freud
citation in 1900 (Gesammelten Werken, v.2, 37) and followed in v.15 (1933) by seven mentions.
A set of the comprehensive, six-volume Koncordanz was secured by the CAMH Archives in honour of the
University of Toronto Department of Psychiatry’s centenary year, 2007-08, through the public-spirited
donation of Jennifer Smith of Toronto, daughter of the late co-editor Dr. Philip H. Smith, Jr.
References and more information:
Brenda Maddox, Freud’s Wizard: Ernest Jones and the Transformation of Psychoanalysis.
UK: John Murray (Publishers), 2006. USA: Da Capo Press/ Perseus Books, 2007.
R. Andrew Paskauskas (ed.), The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, 1908 –
1939. USA & UK: Belknap/ Harvard University Press, 1993.
Samuel A. Guttman, Stephen M. Parrish, John Ruffing, and Philip H. Smith, Jr. (eds.), Konkordanz zu
den Gesammelten Werken von Sigmund Freud (6 volumes). North Waterloo Academic Press, 1996.
http://www.nwap.on.ca/freud.html
John_Court@camh.net

.......................................................

Rationality and Irrationality, Man and Gods: Which God(s) Would You Like To Study?

2008-12-17T16:31:00.001-08:00

Rationality and Irrationality, Man and Gods: Which God(s) Would You Like To Study?

Every time I start an essay on man's rationality,
Or at least his capability for rationality,
I get stuck,
And hit the brakes.

Why?

Because their is much more excitement and drama,
In pursuing man's irrationality...
Or at least his or her seeming irrationality...

However, irrationality is a very relative concept.
Irrationality becomes completely rational,
Or at least understandable,
And maybe sometimes 'bizarrely rational',
As soon as you understand,
Which God a person is worshipping,
Which God a person is pursuing,
Which God a person wants to be.

Which God would you sooner learn about?

Apollo -- the Greek God of rationality and ethics, light, and truth?

Or Dionysus (Nietzsche's infatuation -- and mine) -- the Greek God of pleasure and dance, and wine and group celebration, and sexuality and orgasm...pretty much everything Freud summed up in 'The Id'?

Or Freud's later infatuation: Narcissus -- the God of Ego, and Self-Inflation, and Self-Assertion, and Self-Absorption, and 'Will to Power', and 'Will to Fame and Ambition', and 'Will to Possess and Conquer', and 'Will To Revenge', and 'Will To Selfishness'...

Dionysus and Narcissus usually get along pretty well together...
Even throw Eros and Aphrodite into the mix (God and Goddess of Love and Romance),
And you can still have a pretty good party...

It's Apollo who puts the main damper on things,

God of ethics, morals, integrity...

The other Gods are often looking to transgress...

Such ethics, morals, integrity.

Particularly when it starts to get completely out of hand,

And threatens to run uncontrollably amok,

Throwing chaos into law and order, prim and proper...

Eros and Aprhodite -- these are interesting Gods too...

If you've been hit by the 'love bug',

And can feel that famous 'flutter' in your heart...

Then you are chasing

Eros or Aphrodite -- both Gods of love and romance, male and female version...

In contrast, to the more sensual and sexual 'down-to-earth' agendas of Dionysus and Narcissus.

All three/four may get along fine together...

Or not.

Dionysus and Narcissus don't need to have Eros and Apphrodite...

Join in the festivities...

To still have a great party...

Indeed, sometimes Eros and Aphrodite...

Like Apollo,

Only spoil the party...

Bringing possessiveness and jealousy into or onto the scene...

And anger and aggression, that may come with it...

At which point Narcissus and Dionysus may both say...

Go back home, Eros and Aphrodite!

Your spoiling the party...

Eros/Aphrodite, Dionysus, and Narcissus,

Swarming Together,

To lift us up,

And/or bring us down,

What do we call them?

'The Terrific Threesome'?

Or 'The Terrible Threesome?

Or Both?

Obsession, compulsion, addiction, love, lust, sexuality, rejection, betrayal, abandonment, jealousy, envy, anger, grief, rage, aggression, violence, crimes of passion, crimes of transference, identification, projection, compensation, inferiority feelings, superiority striving, the 'darkness of the shadow', sexual fetishes, power and sex, domination and submission, sadism and masochism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, seduction, manipulation, coercion, force, serial crimes, serial rapes, serial killings...

Who would you sooner learn about?

Apollo?

Or Dionysus, Narcissus, and Eros/Aphrodite?

Wrapped together in one chemically charged package...

Transference. Transference Complexes, Transference Games, The Exciting Object, The Rejecting Object, Narcissitic Traumacies, Narcissistic Compensations, Narcissistic Identifications, Identification with The Aggressor, Identification With The Rejector, Identification With The Abandoner, Identification With The Distancer, Identification With The Betrayor, Identification With The Violator, Identification With The Abuser...

The first God -- Apollo -- was the God of The Enlightenment Period,

But I think you can begin to understand why,

Apollo, by himself, was not enough,

To define or describe or summarize,

Human Behavior...

Enter the Dragon,

The Transference Dragon,

Enter...The last three/four Gods -- Dionysus, Narcissus, Eros/Aphrodite...

Who did much to help describe...

The 'Other Side of Human Nature'...

The darker,

Sexier,

Seedier,

More romantic,

More sensual,

More unpredictable,

Side of human behavior...

Which God(s) would you like to study?

Or would you like to study them all?

Which God are you chasing?

Or are you chasing them all?

-- dgbn, Dec. 17th, 2008, modified and updated Dec. 30th, 2008.

-- David Gordon Bain.

A DGB Analysis of The Evolution of Psychoanalysis..Part 1: Hysteria (Background Material From The Internet)

2008-12-14T04:07:00.000-08:00

Part 1: Hysteria and Its Influence on Freud and The Birth of Psychoanalysis

In Freudian Psychology -- i.e., Psychoanalysis -- Freud started out by treating 'hysterical' women -- meaning women who complained of, and/or demonstrated characteristics or 'symptoms' of physical disease, without any doctors being able to find the underylying 'physical causes' or 'roots' of these characteristics/symptoms. Such cases -- rightly or wrongly -- were lumped into the category of 'hysteria' meaning essentially 'case demonstrations of physical disease without the diagnosed underlying physical causes that would normally lead the doctor in the direction of the "cure"'. From the beginning of time practically such diseases have been classified as 'a woman's disease' -- 'hysteria' as it was originally defined (by Hippocrates) meant 'wandering uterus', meaning that it was associated with being a woman, or worse, 'a crazy woman' or 'demonized woman', and throughout the course of history there have been an equally 'crazy and/or not so crazy assortment of "doctor cures" aimed at correcting this diagnosed and/or misdiagnosed 'female problem'...

....................................................................

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the state of mind. For other uses, see Hysteria (disambiguation).

Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excesses. The fear is often caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part or most commonly on an imagined problem with that body part (disease is a common complaint. See also Body dysmorphic disorder and Hypochondriasis. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to the overwhelming fear.

Psychiatrists and other physicians have in theory given up the use of "hysteria", replacing it with more euphemistic terms that are essentially synonyms. These include "psychosomatic", "functional", "nonorganic", "psychogenic", and "medically unexplained". In 1980 the American Psychiatric Association officially changed the diagnosis of "hysterical neurosis, conversion type" to "conversion disorder". Hysteria also has significant overlap with the diagnostic term "somatization disorder" and with somatoform disorders in general.

History

Main article: Female hysteria

The term originates with the Greek medical term, hysterikos. This referred to a medical condition, thought to be particular to women, caused by disturbances of the uterus, hystera in Greek. The term hysteria was coined by Hippocrates, who thought that suffocation and madness arose in women whose uteri had become too light and dry from lack of sexual intercourse and, as a result, wandered upward, compressing the heart, lungs, and diaphragm.

The same general definition, or under the name female hysteria, came into widespread use in the middle and late 19th century to describe what is today generally considered to be sexual dissatisfaction.[1] Typical treatment was massage of the patient's genitalia by the physician and later vibrators or water sprays to cause orgasm.[1] By the early 1900s, the practice and usage of the term had fallen from use until it was again popularized when the writings of Sigmund Freud became known and influential in Britain and the USA in the 1920s. The Freudian psychoanalytic school of psychology uses its own, somewhat controversial, ways to treat hysteria.

The knowledge of hysterical processes was advanced by the work of Jean-Martin Charcot, a French neurologist. However, many now consider hysteria to be a legacy diagnosis (i.e., a catch-all junk diagnosis),[2] particularly due to its long list of possible manifestations: one Victorian physician cataloged 75 pages of possible symptoms of hysteria and called the list incomplete.[3].

Current psychiatric terminology distinguishes two types of hysteria: somatoform and dissociative. Dissociative hysteria includes amnestic fugue states. Somatoform disorders include conversion disorder, somatization disorder, chronic pain disorder, hypochondriasis, and body dysmorphic disorder. In somatoform disorders, the patient exhibits physical symptoms such as low back pain or limb paralysis, without apparent physical cause. Recent neuroscientific research, however, is starting to show that there are characteristic patterns of brain activity associated with these states. All these disorders are thought to be unconscious, not feigned or intentional malingering.

Freudian psychoanalytic theory attributed hysterical symptoms to the subconscious mind's attempt to protect the patient from psychic stress. Subconscious motives include primary gain, in which the symptom directly relieves the stress (as when a patient coughs to release energy pent up from keeping a secret), and secondary gain, in which the symptom provides an independent advantage such as staying home from a hated job. More recent critics have noted the possibility of tertiary gain, when a patient is induced subconsciously to display a symptom because of the desires of others (as when a controlling husband enjoys the docility of his sick wife). There need be no gain at all, however, in a hysterical symptom. A child playing hockey may fall and for several hours believe he is unable to move, because he has recently heard of a famous hockey player who fell and broke his neck.

Jungian psychologist Laurie Layton Schapira explored what she labels a "Cassandra Complex" suffered by those traditionally diagnosed with hysteria, denoting a tendency for those with hysteria to be disbelieved or dismissed when relating the facticity of their experiences to others.[4] Based on clinical experience, she delineates three factors which constitute the Cassandra complex in hysterics: (a). dysfunctional relationships with social manifestations of rationality, order, and reason, leading to; (b). emotional or physical suffering, particularly in the form of somatic, often gynaecological complaints, and (c). being disbelieved or dismissed when attempting to relate the facticity of these experiences to others.[5]

...............................................................................

4. Jean-Martin Charcot

Jean-Martin Charcot
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Jean-Martin Charcot

Born November 29, 1825(1825-11-29)
Paris, France
Died August 16, 1893
Lac des Settons, Nièvre

Residence France
Nationality French
Fields Neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology
Institutions Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital
Jean-Martin Charcot (29 November 1825 – 16 August 1893) was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology.[1] He is known as "the founder of modern neurology" and is "associated with at least 15 medical eponyms", including Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease).[1] His work greatly influenced the developing fields of neurology and psychology. He was the "foremost neurologist of late nineteenth-century France"[2] and has been called "the Napoleon of the neuroses".[3]

...............................................................

Jean-Martin Charcot

(November 29, 1825-August 16, 1893)
French Neurologist

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Influences

Student of:
Influenced by:
Students: Freud, Binet
Influenced:
Time Period: Modern Foundations
Education

Paris Medical School (1843-1853)
Career

Appointed Chef de clinique, Paris Medical School (1853-1855)
Appointed Médecin du Bureau Central, Paris Medical School (1856-1860)
Becomes Associate Professor at the Paris Medical School (1960-1861)
Elected Vice President of Société de Biologie (1861)
Appointed Chef de service, Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris (1862-1872)
Professor and Chair of Pathological Anatomy, Salpêtrière Hospital (1872-1893)
Major Contributions

He was one of the most famous neurologists of all time
He was an influential teacher: Sigmund Freud and Alfred Binet studied under him at the Salpêtrière
He discovered and described a variety of neurologically-based diseases, including Charcot Joint, Charcot Foot, Charcot Disease (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease
He was among the first to match specific anatomical lesions to a variety of neurological disorders, including epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and strokes (Goetz, et al., 1995, p. xix).
Ideas and Interests

21st century psychologists are primarily interested in Charcot's research into the causes of Hysteria. Although this disorder expressed itself differently in each patient, most suffered a combination of physical and psychological symptoms, which could include delirium, paralysis, rigidity and contraction of muscles, blindness, inability to speak, loss of feeling, vomiting, hemorrhaging, seizures, joint deformity and distended abdomens. Many contemporary physicians accused the hysterical patients of malingering and fraud, but Charcot was convinced that the patients believed that their symptoms were real, and that the physical symptoms were indicative of a genuine psychological problem (Fancher, 1985, p. 53).

To investigate his hypothesis, Charcot combined his traditionally meticulous diagnostic methods with novel experimental techniques involving hypnotism, magnetism and electricity. Although modern science acknowledges that both his methods and his conclusions were flawed, he is still recognized as a pioneer in the effort to link physiological and mental processes (Goetz et al., 1995, p. 197-198).

Charcot is also famous for his theatrical teaching style. He replaced traditional hospital rounds at the Salpêtrière with clinical demonstrations and patient interviews in the hospital amphitheater. These dramatic "hysteria shows" (Hunter, 1998) caught the attention of non-medical intellectuals, and aroused public curiosity to the extent that hysteria became almost vogue. Although Charcot was charged with voyeurism and exploitation, he is credited with adding the word "neurology" to the everyday vocabulary of the Parisian populace (Goetz et al., 1995, p. xix).

Charcot's contributions to the history of intelligence testing are fourfold. First, he established and popularized neurology as its own science. Second, his work with hypnotized hysterics blurred the line between physiological and psychological investigation, paving the way for intelligence researchers interested in neurophysiological and genetic correlates for intelligence. Third, he maintained a moderate (and sometimes unpopular) stance on the heredity-environment problem. He was one of the first advocates of the diasthesis-stress model; that is, he believed that hysteric patients inherited a genetic predisposition to the disease, but that the disease became manifest only after exposure to specific environmental stressors. This model is widely accepted today as an explanation for the interaction between genetics and the environment. Fourth, both Alfred Binet and Sigmund Freud spent time working with Charcot at the Salpêtrière.

For five months during 1885 and 1886, Freud attended Charcot's clinical hysteria demonstrations in the Salpêtrière amphitheater. At the time of his visit Freud was a neurologist, and many historians believe that his sojourn with Charcot is partially responsible for his future professional interest in unconscious processes. Indeed, some historians contend that Charcot's investigations into the causes of hysteria may have been a precursor to Freudian psychoanalysis (Goetz et al., 1995, pp. 210, 336).

Alfred Binet spent seven years working with Charcot's hypnotized hysterics, and there is little doubt that the experience changed the course of his career. Charcot had come to believe that susceptibility to hypnosis was an indicator of latent hysteria. He based this belief on the fact that hysterical symptoms could be reproduced by hypnotic suggestions (Fancher, 1985, p. 54). Binet saw Charcot's demonstrations, and wholeheartedly accepted his mentor's hypothesis. He quickly published four articles describing the success of Charcot's experiments. However, when evidence began to mount that Charcot's experimental design was seriously flawed, Binet was forced to admit publicly that he had been wrong (Wolf, 1972, p. 5). This embarrassment taught Binet to be a more careful researcher, so it is likely that the quality of his future intelligence work was positively affected by this experience. Additionally, Charcot's preference for detailed case-study analysis would come to be reflected in Binet's methodology (Fancher, 1985, p. 57).

Selected Publications

Charcot, J.M. (1875). Sur les localizations cérébrales. Comptes-Rendus des Seánces et Mémoires de la Société de Biologie, 24, 400-404.

Charcot, J.M. (1877). Lectures on the diseases of the nervous system, delivered at La Salpêtrière. London.

Charcot, J.M. (1882). Physiologie pathologique. Sur les divers états nerveux déterminés par l'hypnotisation chez les hystériques. [Pathological physiology: On the various nervous states determined by the hypnotisation of hystericals]. Comptes rendus de l'Académie Des Sciences, 94, 403-405.

Charcot, J.M. (1885). Oeuvres complètes. [Complete works]. Paris: Bureau du Progrès Mèdical.

References

Fancher, R.E. (1985). The intelligence men: Makers of the IQ controversy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Goetz, C.G., Bonduelle, M., & Gelfand, T. (1995). Charcot: Constructing neurology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hunter, D. (Ed.). (1998). The makings of Dr. Charcot's hysteria shows. Lampeter, Cerdigion, Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd.

Wolf, T.H. (1973). Alfred Binet. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine

...................................................................

Jean Charcot -- mentioned in three of the internet passages above -- very much influenced the beginning of Freud's psychological career, and demonstrated to Freud, as well as to many others, that hysterical symptoms could be either added or subtracted by his use of hypnosis, persuasion, and 'mind control' on whoever he was able to put into a hypnotic trance. The idea here was to demonstrate that hysterical symptoms were 'psychologically as opposed to physically caused'.

This subject matter -- hysteria, its validity and/or non-validity as a 'legitimately diagnosed disease', and its relation to the birth of Psychoanalysis -- is a very complicated, convoluted issue, with many people disagreeing on many different nuances of the issue.

Freud still has many supporters -- and non-supporters -- and DGB Philosophy-Psychology continues to work as an 'integrative-dialectical theory', weighing the pros and cons of both Freudian supporters and detractors while at the same time adding in its own continually evolving editorial opinions.

Since at least one source of Freud's interconnection of ideas sprang strongly from the ideas of Charcot and particularly, the 'psycho-genesis' of hysteria, often both Freud and Charcot are seen in the same light here, either strongly positively or strongly negatively without too many noticeable people taking a 'middle ground position' which is mainly where DGB Philosophy-Psychology operates out of.

Here are two editorial perspectives, the first coming from a Psychoanalytic organization and website that is 'pro-Charcot and pro-Freud', the second writer who I am just now becoming introduced to, coming out strongly in opposition to the legitimacy of both Charcot's and Freud's ideas and their resulting diagnoses of 'hysteria' back in the 1880s and 1890s...

......................................................................

Some Aspects of Charcot's Influence on Freud

Julian A. Miller, M.D.

IN PREVIOUS PAPERS (15), (22), (23) members of the Workshop on Scientific Methodology have considered the origins and modifications of some early concepts in psychoanalysis. We had been interested in the influences impinging on Freud during the early days of discovery and concept formation. In this context, Freud's trip to Paris to study with Charcot seemed pivotal in his shift from neurological and physiological to psychopathological work. Although Jones (19) traces the principles upon which Freud constructed his theories back to the influence of Brücke, he also states: "It was assuredly the experience with Charcot in Paris that aroused Freud's interest in hysteria, then in psychopathology in general, and so paved the way for resuscitating Breuer's observation and developing psychoanalysis" (Vol. 1, p. 75).

We have examined Charcot's writings (3) as well as some of those who have commented upon his work (5), (16), (17), (18), (24) to understand Charcot's theoretical

[This is a summary or excerpt from the full text of the book or article. The full text of the document is available to subscribers.]

..........................................................................

From the internet...

Freud, Charcot and hysteria: lost in the labyrinth

RICHARD WEBSTER

The origins of psychoanalysis in the diagnostic darkness and medical errors of the late nineteenth century.
www.richardwebster.net/freudandcharcot.html - 48k - Cached - Similar pages

Charcot demonstrates a case of 'hysteria' c. 1885

The following essay consists of four sections from my volume in the Weidenfeld 'Great Philosophers' series: Freud (2003). For a more detailed discussion of the medical diagnosis of hysteria and further comment on Charcot, click here for an extract from Why Freud Was Wrong (1995).

_______________________________

Hysteria, Anna O., and the Invention of Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud was born in 1856, in the small Austro-Hungarian town of Freiberg. Unusually he was born in a caul – a kind of membrane – and his mother immediately took this as a portent of his future fame. She called him ‘mein goldener Sigi’, and throughout his childhood and early adolescence in Vienna he was surrounded by his parents’ adulation and by their urgent expectation of his future greatness. As Freud embarked on a career in medicine, which eventually led him to study in the newly emerging field of neurology, these expectations seem to have become increasingly burdensome. For, although outwardly successful, he appears to have begun to despair of ever being granted the kind of world-redeeming revelation which he felt inwardly compelled to seek.

Freud’s earliest unsuccessful skirmish with fame took place in 1885 when, after experimenting with taking cocaine, he sought medical glory by publishing a paper on the drug as a miracle-therapy. In writing this paper, however, he failed to observe the crucial properties of the drug as a local anaesthetic while simultaneously omitting to warn against cocaine addiction. Freud, however, was not deterred by this unfortunate episode from seeking medical distinction. He almost immediately left Vienna for Paris where, from October 1885 to February 1886, he studied under the famous neurologist Charcot.

Charcot specialised in treating patients who were suffering from a variety of unexplained physical symptoms including paralysis, contractures (muscles which contract and cannot be relaxed) and seizures. Some of these patients sporadically and compulsively adopted a bizarre posture (christened arc-de-cercle) in which they arched their body backwards until they were supported only by their head and their heels. Charcot eventually came to the conclusion that many of his patients were suffering from a form of hysteria which had been induced by their emotional response to a traumatic accident in their past – such as a fall from a scaffold or a railway crash. They suffered, in his view, not from the physical effects of the accident, but from the idea they had formed of it.

Freud was immensely impressed by Charcot’s work on traumatic hysteria and took from it the notion that one of the principal forms of neurosis came about when a traumatic experience led to process of unconscious symptom-formation. He now began to develop this idea, and did so partly by reference to the work of a medical colleague, Josef Breuer. Freud was especially interested in the most unusual of all his colleague’s patients, the celebrated ‘Anna O.’ whom Breuer had begun to treat in 1880.

Anna O. was a twenty-one-year-old woman who had fallen ill while nursing her father who eventually died of a tubercular abscess. Her illness began with a severe cough. She subsequently developed a number of other physical symptoms, including paralysis of the extremities of the right side of her body, contractures, disturbances of vision, hearing and language. She also began to experience lapses of consciousness and hallucinations.

Breuer diagnosed Anna O.’s illness as a case of hysteria and gradually developed a form of therapy which he believed was effective in relieving her symptoms. He came to the conclusion that when he could induce her to relate to him during the evening the content of her daytime hallucinations, she became calm and tranquil. Breuer himself saw this as a way of ‘disposing’ of the ‘products’ of Anna O.’s ‘bad self’ and understood it as a process of emotional catharsis. The patient herself described it as ‘chimney sweeping’, and as her ‘talking cure’.

Breuer went on to extend this therapy. At one point in her illness, for a period of weeks, Anna O. declined to drink and would quench her thirst with fruit and melons. One evening, in a state of self-induced hypnosis, she described an occasion when she said she had been disgusted by the sight of a dog drinking out of a glass. Soon after this she asked for a drink and then woke from her hypnosis with a glass at her lips.

In his published account of the case, written some twelve years later, Breuer treated the story which Anna O. had related in a trance as a true account of an incident which had given rise to her aversion to drinking. He said he had concluded that the way to cure a particular symptom of ‘hysteria’ was to recreate the memory of the incident which had originally led to it and bring about emotional catharsis by inducing the patient to express any feeling associated with it..

The sudden disappearance of one of Anna O.’s many symptoms thus became the basis for what Breuer later described as a ‘therapeutic technical procedure’. According to both Freud and Breuer, this method had been applied systematically to each of Anna’s symptoms and as a result she was cured completely of her hysteria.

The case of Anna O. played a fundamental role in the development of Freud’s thought. She has frequently been described as the first psychoanalytic patient, a view which Freud himself, lecturing at Clark University in the United States, once endorsed:

If it is a merit to have brought psychoanalysis into being, that merit is not mine. I had no share in its earliest beginnings. I was a student and working for my final examinations at the time when another Viennese physician, Dr Josef Breuer first (in 1880-2) made use of this procedure on a girl who was suffering from hysteria. [1]

Freud, however, was understating his own role. Psychoanalysis would never have come into being if he had not transformed Breuer’s ‘talking cure’ by marrying it with Charcot’s views on traumatic hysteria and his own elaborate technique for reconstructing repressed memories through interpretation and free-association.

The patients whom Freud endeavoured to psychoanalyse at this early stage of his career, however, almost all resembled Anna O. in at least one respect; they came to Freud not because they were experiencing emotional distress but because they were suffering from physical symptoms. Freud’s first patient, for example, Frau Emmy von N., suffered speech difficulties, which Freud described as ‘spastic interruptions amounting to a stammer’. She was also plagued ‘by frequent convulsive tic-like movements of her face and the muscles of her neck’ and was compulsively given to making repetitive verbal exclamations and clicking sounds. Another patient, Lucy R., an English governess, suffered from strange olfactory hallucinations centring on the smell of burnt pudding. Yet another, Elisabeth von R., came to Freud because she had been suffering for more than two years from pains in her legs.

In all these cases Freud construed his patients’ illness as hysteria and set about uncovering the traumatic incident which had supposedly given rise to their symptoms. In order to help the process of analysis he developed what he called his ‘pressure technique’. This consisted in applying pressure to his patients’ forehead with his hands and instructing them to report faithfully ‘whatever appeared before their inner eye or passed through their memory at the moment of pressure’. Freud rapidly developed such faith in the effectiveness of this method for evoking pictures, ideas or unconscious ‘memories’ that he came to regard it as infallible, maintaining that if no images or memories were produced by the first application of pressure, repeated pressure would invariably be effective. When, in the course of treating Elisabeth von R. for her lameness, he suspected her of concealing thoughts from him, he decided to reinforce the physical pressure with mental pressure:

I no longer accepted her declaration that nothing had occurred to her, but assured her that something must have occurred to her. Perhaps, I said, she had not been sufficiently attentive, in which case I would be glad to repeat my pressure. Or perhaps she thought that her idea was not the right one. This, I told her, was not her affair; she was under an obligation to remain completely objective and say what had come into her head, whether it was appropriate or not. Finally I declared that I knew very well that something had occurred to her and that she was concealing it from me; but she would never be free of her pains so long as she concealed anything. By thus insisting I brought it about that from that time forward my pressure on her head never failed in its effect. [2]

At this period Freud believed that, in the final stages of therapy, it was helpful ‘if we can guess the ways in which things are connected up and tell the patient before we have uncovered it’. [3] When, however, he presented Elisabeth von R. with his conclusion, namely that her illness had been precipitated by her falling in love with her brother-in-law, she objected that that this was not true. Freud, however, persisted in his explanation and eventually reported that his patient had been cured.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (at this point six or seven sections of the original book are omitted) . . . . . . . . .

Freud and Charcot
The psychoanalytic movement is undoubtedly a powerful one which has endured one century and is likely to endure another. But from its very beginnings it has attracted criticism. This criticism has tended to become better informed with the passing of time. With almost a hundred of years of Freud scholarship to draw on, it is now possible, perhaps for the first time, to offer a considered and balanced judgement on the value both of Freud’s thought and of the movement he founded.

One of the obstacles which, perhaps more than any other, has stood in the way of a full understanding of Freud’s ideas, is that many of those who have written about psychoanalysis, in Europe, in Britain or in America, have been scholars involved in the humanities. Whether writing as champions or critics, they have tended to present psychoanalysis as a humanistic discipline. As a result we often forget that it was in its origins a medical movement.

Psychoanalysis was born not, as is frequently claimed, out of the foibles of emotionally unstable middle-class women who came to consult Freud in Vienna. It was born amidst the florid and sometimes extreme physical symptoms displayed by patients who had been consigned to one of France’s greatest hospitals – La Salpêtrière in Paris. The original begetter of the theory of unconscious symptom-formation – a theory which lies at the heart of psychoanalysis – was not Freud, nor even Breuer, but Jean Martin Charcot.

Charcot was not a psychologist, he was a neurologist. His greatest gift was a genius for anatomical dissection and post-mortem diagnosis. His greatest handicap was that he practised neurology at a time when techniques of tissue-staining were primitive, X rays had not been discovered and the instruments of investigation which have made modern neuroscience possible did not exist. The electroencephalogram (EEG), which would revolutionise neurology and psychiatry, was not in general use until the 1940s. Other techniques for brain-imaging, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), were not introduced until the closing decades of the twentieth century. Even today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the process of charting the brain’s intricate functioning has barely begun. As Rita Carter writes in her book Mapping the Mind, ‘the vision of the brain we have now is probably no more complete or accurate than a sixteenth-century map of the world.’ [4]

In 1886, at the time of Freud’s crucial encounter with Charcot, the map was scarcely drawn at all. Neurologists inhabited a world of almost complete diagnostic darkness, illuminated only by the occasional gleam of medical insight. Perhaps more importantly still, leading neurologists remained blissfully unaware of the depth of their ignorance. Charcot himself believed that the work of neurology was almost complete.

What this meant in practice was that many subtle neurological disorders, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, and frontal-lobe epilepsy, were unrecognised in Charcot’s day. At the same time, the internal pathology of head injuries remained an almost complete mystery. Closed head injuries, which produce concussion without leaving any external injury, were simply not recognised. This was the diagnostic darkness within which the fundamental principles of psychoanalysis were formulated. The medical and intellectual consequences are perhaps best illustrated by Charcot’s classic case of traumatic hysteria – a case involving a patient known as ‘Le Log–––’.

Le Log––– was a florist’s delivery man in Paris. One evening, in October 1885, he was wheeling his barrow home through busy streets when it was hit from the side by a carriage which was being driven at great speed. Le Log–––, who had been holding the handles of his barrow tightly, was spun through the air and landed on the ground. He was picked up completely unconscious. He was then taken to the nearby Beaujon hospital where he remained unconscious for five or six days. Six months later he was transferred to La Salpêtrière. By this time the lower extremities of his body were almost completely paralysed, there was a twitching or tremor in the corner of his mouth, he had a permanent headache and there were ‘blank spaces in the tablet of his memory’. In particular he could not remember the accident itself. But, because there had never been any signs of external injury, Charcot decided that Le Log––– was a victim of traumatic hysteria and that his symptoms had arisen as a result of the psychological trauma he had suffered. Charcot came to this conclusion knowing full well that some weeks after his accident Le Log––– had suffered heavy nose-bleeds and a series of violent seizures – seizures which Charcot deemed hysterical.

In the century which has passed since Charcot made this diagnosis, the face of neurology – and of general medicine – has been transformed. If Le Log––– were to be brought today to a hospital in practically any part of the Western world there can be no doubt that doctors would recognise a case of closed head injury complicated by late epilepsy and raised intracranial pressure.

From this we may derive a conclusion which is both simple and terrible in its implications: Le Log–––, the classic example of a patient who supposedly suffered from traumatic hysteria, did not forget because he was frightened. He forgot because he was concussed. His various symptoms were not produced by an unconscious idea. They were the result of brain damage.

We are here confronted by what may well be the most momentous medical misunderstanding which has taken place in the last two centuries. For Charcot’s failure to recognise cases of closed head injury, and the symptoms they gave rise to, would shape the development of psychoanalysis. It was the main factor which would eventually lead Freud to elaborate his entire theory of unconscious symptom-formation – or ‘repression’.

(If you are interested in reading the rest of this rather provocative Webster article, please visit Richard Webster's rather provocative website. I am still trying to get a full handle on his ideas and what they do and don't mean relative to my own beliefs about Psychoanalysis and the good and bad legacy of Freud relative to the evolution of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and his influence on the still evolving ideas of DGB Philosophy and Psychology which remain extremely significant.)

I will start to explore some of these good and bad ideas, as well as offering a counter-thesis to Webster's thesis here above in Part 2 which will appear above.

-- dgbn, Dec. 14th, 2008, finished Dec. 17th, 2008.

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism,

-- Dialectical Gap-Briding Negotiations...

Are still in process....

...................................................................................

...............................................................

DGB Reflections On the 100th Anniversary of Freud and Jung Meeting For The First Time on March 3rd, 1907

2008-11-30T13:12:00.001-08:00

Sunday, March 3rd, 1907, Freud and Jung Meeting For The First Time -- And Talking For 13 Hours Straight!

Freud and Jung -- theirs was an all too short and tumultous seven year relationship (1907-1914), passionate and explosive, reverent from each side at the beginning, much more rebellious from Jung's side as things progressed, often compared to a common father/son type relationship with Freud maintaining his authoritative paternal boundaries and Jung challenging these same boundaries -- eventually to the point of separation, and the building of two separate schools of psychology with partly siimilar, partly different philosophies and conceptualizations concerning human psychology. They both shared a partly Hegelian, partly Nietzschean philosophy. Freud was more a product of the Enlightenment, Jung a product of Romantic Philosophy. Jung seemed a little more willing to integrate the 'darker side' of human nature in a productive manner with the rest of man's personality, whereas Freud seemed more about 'rationally analyzing' this same dark side with the goal 'of bringing it under more rational, conscious, enlightened control -- but control none the less. Jung was willing to give up more of this control with a trust things would eventually integrate in a more healthy direction. This was one of the main dialectical splits or differences in opinion between Enlightenment and Romantic Philosophy -- just how much reason was man willing to give up and trust that man would still land back on firm ground again -- after some kind of a 'romantic flight' to who knows where.

Jung was more the mythologist, mystic, astrology, occult and para-normal psychologist. Freud didn't seem too comfortable following Jung into these areas. It just happens to be my birthday today -- Jung might be more apt to make a psychological interpretation in this regard, as I try to mediate between Freud and Jung, although I am just speculating here. Besides, if he wouldn't I will.

March 3rd. My birthday. I am a pisces -- often equated with 'two fish swimming towards each other and away from each other at the same time'(or not knowing which way to swim while wanting to swim both ways at the same time). Towards intimacy and committment. And/or away from intimacy and committment and towards more 'individual freedom and self-expression'.

How appropriate that Freud and Jung should meet together for the first time on this 'dualistic and 'dialectic' day. Two very strong-willed and creative men each doing their absolutely very best to 'will to power' their own separate vision and creation while admiring, respecting and learning from each other at the same time. Or at least in the beginning. Until their respective creative visions came into conflict with each other -- and this conflict became stronger and stronger, reaching more and more of an impasse that just would not go away. And then the anger and resentment started to seriously set in and put a fast ending to what had started out as such a strong and passionate relationship with Freud wanting to pass the 'metaphorical Psychoanalytic torch to Jung as his heir-in-waiting. But it was not to be. Psychoanalysis -- at least as Freud defined and described it -- was just too tight a 'theoretical box' for Jung to accept and live with. Jung needed a significantly different theoretical box that he could create himself, accept because it was his -- and thrive in.

And her is me -- a creative post-Hegelian, post-Nietzschean philosophical and psychological Pisces, trying my hardest to create the ultimate multi-dualistic and dialectical philosophy-psychology of all time. Including Freud and Jung who I have both borrowed from their respective 'theoretical boxes' (including Freud's four theoretical boxes: 'unconscious memory-traumacy theory', 'unconscious memory-seduction theory', 'Oedipal theory-childhood sexuality theory', and 'life and death instinct theory'. Perhaps you could even include the beginning of 'Object Relations' as Freud's fifth theory or conversely call this Melanie Klein's theory since she was the one who really grabbed a hold of this last theory and ran with it.)

DGBN Philosophy-Pscyhology -- the multi-dialectic bridge between any and all human differences, splits, conflicts, and paradoxes. Ideally, anyway, if not in reality. Some people just do not want to compromise and/or integrate their differences. They want the whole cake and eat it too. For these people, there are no compromises, no negotiations, no integrations. Just a very strong 'will to power' -- and how far that gets them either rhetorically and/or by exploitation, manipulation, bribery, blackmail, seduction, force and/or violence.

DGBN Philosophy-Psychology -- most importantly for our purposes here -- a philosphical and psychological dialectical bridge between the abyss of Freud and Jung.

But first, let us talk about a dialectical bridge beween Freud before and after his short little essay, 'Screen Memories' (1899), the major turning point between his 'pre-psychoanalytic traumatic and seduction theories' and his soon-to-be 'Psychoanalysis-proper' as trumpeted by the publication of his famous book, 'The Interpretation of Dreams' (1900).

Much has been made of this controversial theoretical and clinical turning-point in the evolution of Psychoanalysis: many -- particularly feminists knowledgeable with what went down here -- would say that Freud basically abandoned women -- abandoned alleged female victims of childhood sexual assault -- and turned Psychoanalysis into a much more 'chauvanist men's club' that suppressed and distorted all evidence of childhood sexual assaults under the guise of 'childhood and adolescent sexual fantasy' -- most particulary, relative to a girl's love for her father.

I remember running into this issue for the first time when I picked up Masson's controversial book in the mid to late 1980s, 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory' (1984, 1985, 1992). I even remember contacting Mr. Masson in New Zealand by email -- years after he had broken away (and/or been banished) from numerous psychoanalytic societies that he had belonged to (the International Psychoanalytical Association, the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society, and I believe, the San Francisico Psychonalytic Society. Cited from another of Masson's books, 'Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst', 1990,1991.)

My first email to Masson was responded to by Masson with reasonable warmth as he wished me good luck in my work but still he did not wish to re-hash the Seduction Theory Controversy. My second email to him was not treated as warmly -- understandable I suppose in light of all the grief he had taken during those years, and/or also my lack of 'sufficient professional' credentials on the same subject manner.

Now here is the point I wish to make. As much as I loved reading 'Final Analysis' and 'The Assault on Truth' and Janet Malcolm's 'In The Freud Archives'(1983,84), and I probably side closer to Masson's last published points of view, and Freud's pre-1897 point of view rather than Freud's evolving post-1897 point of view: still, most memories -- plain and simple -- from an 'objective' epistemological point of view, cannot be fully or often even at all significantly trusted.

Let us just look at the anectdotal evidence we have here. It has been at least 15 years since I last theoretically invested any time and energy into this remarkable controversy, so excuse me if my own memory is a little rusty here: I said that I picked up Masson's book, 'The Assault on Truth' in the mid to late 1980s. Wrong! I just fished the book out of my personal library here, dusted off the cobwebs, and found out that the last publication date on the book was 1992. That means that I obviously bought the book sometime in or after 1992 but I 'remembered' it to be in the mid to late 1980s. So much for my memory. I read all three of those books that I just cited above but do I remember which book I read when, and in which order, and how far apart the readings were? I am obviously more than a little suspicious of my own memory at this point. Logically speaking, I would imagine I read 'Assault' first, then 'Final Analysis', then Malcolm's 'In the Freud Archives'. But don't quote me on that -- and I certainly would not want to put my hand on a bible in a court of law because if I did, I would probably have to say simply, 'I don't know'. Do I remember what year it was that I emailed Masson in New Zealand. He was working on 'animal psychology', I believe, by that point in time. (Certainly less stressful than 'human psychology' -- especially when it comes to the subject of 'sex' and 'sexuality'.) Maybe one day I will find the email in my own archives here with a date attached to it. But other than that I can only guess that it was somewhere around 1995-97. Again, don't quote me on that because my memory right now is not holding up to the test. It is certainly flawed.

Do I at least partly make my point? A therapist has no right to totally or even necessarily partly trust' the 'objective epistemological correctness' of any memory that a client cites to him or her for the simple reason that it is a 'memory' and memories can easily fail, distort, embellish, discard...in short, they are very narcissistically biased'. To trust a memory in a court of law -- without substantiating empirical evidence and other credible witness reports is downright ludicrous -- putting a man (i.e., it is usually but not always a man who is being accused when it comes to issues of 'past childhood sexual assaults') in jail on the basis of the unsubstantiated memories and testimony of an alleged victim is hugely dangerous and I would even say ethically and legally reprehensible unless these memories and testimony are otherwise substantiated. (And as far as 'narcissistic bias', let us not forget that you have lawyers who are functioning like 'pre-Socratic Sophist mercenaries' who are paid handsomely to deliver fancy rhetoric and persuasive logic that is designed to narcissistically serve their clients goals and wishes regardless of how close or how far their clients' goals and wishes are connected to any form of 'objective, epistemological truth'.

We have come full circle and the epistemological and legal dangers that Freud ran into in the mid to late 1890s when he started to have second thoughts, and then abandon, his infamous Seduction Theory, are as real and dangerous today as they were back then. 'Subjective clinical-therapy memories' have no business being called 'epistemological truths' -- regardless of how 'epistemologically real' they may seem. The same point needs to be made with a hundred times more force when we start to talk about an alleged 'unconscious' and/or 'reconstructed' memory. None of these memories should have any legal force in a court of law unless they can be 'empirically substantiated beyond any reasonable doubt' by other much more credible and stronger forms of evidence. And this does not mean a woman's 'psychological/emotional/physical symptoms' or a psychologist's so-called professional testimony.

Psychologists and psychiatrists can be hugely narcissistically biased simply by the orientation of their training. Who's giving the testimony -- an orthodox, Oedipal Complex believing, Psychoanalyst? Or a 21st century feminist psychologist who may have been sexually assaulted herself and who may be projecting her own situation onto her client (in Psychoanalysis this is called 'counter-transference') and 'subconsciously looking' for evidence of a sexual assault in her client in practically every symptom that she portrays, and in every memory, conscious or unconscious, legitimately told to her or 'interpretively reconstructed' by the therapist. This presents a huge 'epistemological and ethical danger' not only to psychotherapy in general -- regardless of psychological orientation, orthodox Psychoanalytic or the opposite -- but even more so once this whole psychological and epistemological charade moves into a court of law.

Do I believe that guilty men should be held accountable for their 'sexual assaults'? Of course, I do -- if they can be legitimately proven in a court of law -- and allowing for the fact that there is a very big difference between 'inappropriately making a pass at a woman' and 'rape'. They should not be treated the same -- and even as I speak there are many men terrified of making a pass at a woman, even having sex with a woman for the first time without the petrifiying thought that she could ruin his life just by 'turning on him' the next morning.

The laws for 'sexual assault' and nowadays 'domestic assault' are getting broader and broader, with less and less 'empirical evidence' needed to get a legal conviction.

In effect, this means that we are now getting more and more of the opposite kind of problem than we used to have. Now, instead of far too many men get away with serious sexual crimes that they should have been convicted of with significant sentences, now we are convicting men and throwing men into jail left, right, and centre, on the basis of laws that are narcissistically biased in favor of women and on the basis of 'narcissistically biased evidence' that would never have been considered 'empirical evidence' back before our domestic and sexual assault laws started to change.

In effect, the Seduction Theory rules again in North American law -- whether we are talking about recent adult or childhood memories -- with or without any kind of 'legitimate supporting empirical and/or witness evidence'. North American domestic law used to be narcissistically biased in favor of men. Now it is narcissisically biased in favor of women.

As if women are incapable of lying, manipulating evidence, embellishing and distorting facts, creating false testimony, making themselves out to be 'angels' and 'victims', noncapable of violence themselves of course, non-capable of 'instigating trouble', or 'retaliating to rejection' or 'seducing men in their own right'...all of these potential complications to the 'epistemological truth' in both a psychotherapist's office and even more so in a court of law go out the window in today's North American world of 'feminine -- and feminist -- overprotection'.

So how in the name of God or Zeus or Apollo could Freud give any pretense to 'finding epistemological memory truth' in his clinical office in 1895 when in 2007 we are no further ahead -- epistemologically poisoned equally from both sides by an overbelief in both Freud and/or the opposite pro-feminist, anti-Freud point of view on 'memories' and 'unsubtantiated narcissistcally biased, one-sided testimony'. 'Memories' and 'unsubstantiated, narcissistically biased, one-sided testimony' need to be thrown out of all courts of law until this whole 'epistemological and ethical mess' is put back into proper balanced perspective. Right now our domestic courts are making a mockery of the name 'justice'. Both Freud's Seduction Theory and his Childhood Sexuality and Oedipal Complex theories were one-sidedly biased but today in our domestic courts of law we are all seeing the evidence of his 'Seduction Theory Gone Mad'...

What is it -- something like 70 to 90 of all men in jail now are there on 'domestic crimes'. Where are all the women filling up the women's jails? I don't see the same problem in the women's jails these days. What does that mean? Women don't know how to throw a punch? Push a man? Grab a man by the ear? Throw a piece of furniture at a man? Seduce a man -- or consent to being seduced by a man -- and then 'flip' the next day when she has sobred up or things didn't turn out exactly the way she wanted them to?

The epistemological, ethical, and legal problem that we are facing today -- as originally uncovered at least partly by Freud in the 1890s -- is at least partly this: Is it better to 'have not enough men in jail who have committed sexual and/or domestic assault'? Or is it better to 'throw too many men in jail who are not guilty of the crimes they allegedly committed and/or are being punished for crimes that their accusers were at least equally guilty of -- and who are getting off scott free with no tarnishment of their legal reputations.' Why should a democratic law that is supposed to be equal to all citizens, male and female, black and white, have an overt and/or covert 'threshold of guilt' that is obviously very low when it comes to transgressions committed by a man against a woman, and so high when it comes to transgressions committed by a woman against a man. And that is amongst those transgressions committed by women that even make it to a court of law. Most of them are either not reported, and/or if they are reported, they are not taken seriously by police unless the evidence is overwhelming.

So from a psychotherapeutic and clinical point of view, the problem then becomes this: where do we find a 'workable bridge' between Freud's 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' and his later 'Childhood Sexuality and Oedipal Complex' theories. Or put another way -- between 'Traumacy Theory' and 'Narcissistic (Compensation) Theory'.

I will leave you with this theoretical and practical problem for now. And that is my take on Freud for today, March 3rd, 2007, and modified on March 5th, 2007, then modified again on Monday January 19th, 2009.

-- dgbn, Jan. 20th, 2009

-- David Gordon Bain
..................................................................................

Psychology and Law: A Critical Introduction
Author(s): Andreas Kapardis
ISBN10: 052182530X
ISBN13: 9780521825306
Format: Hardcover
Pub. Date: 3/3/2003
Publisher(s): Cambridge University Press

New Price $99.45
List Price $102.00
eVIP Price $94.48
Quantity

New Copy: This item is temporarily unavailable from the publisher, but is expected in soon. Place your order now and we will ship it as soon as it arrives.

Used Price N/A
List Price $102.00
eVIP Price N/A

Marketplace Price $9.98
List Price $102.00

Take 90 Days to Pay on $250 or more
with Quick, Easy, Secure
Subject to credit approval.

This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date discussion of contemporary debates at the interface between psychology and criminal law. The topics surveyed include critiques of eyewitness testimony; the jury; sentencing as a human process; the psychologist as expert witness; persuasion in the courtroom; detecting deception; and psychology and the police. Kapardis draws on sources from Europe, North America and Australia to offer an expert investigation of the subjectivity and human fallibility inherent in our system of justice. He also provides suggestions for minimizing undesirable influences on crucial judicial decision-making. First Edition Hb (1997): 0-521-55321-0 First Edition Pb (1997): 0-521-55738-0

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This book is the authoritative work for students and professionals in psychology and law.