DGB Reflections On the 100th Anniversary of Freud and Jung Meeting For The First Time on March 3rd, 1907

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
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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



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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

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This book is the authoritative work for students and professionals in psychology and law.