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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Heinz Kohut
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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
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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...
Friday, January 30, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
DGB Psychology vs. Freud and Psychoanalysis: On Transference (Part 1, Revised Edition, Jan. 30th, 2009)
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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Heinz Kohut
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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
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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...
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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Heinz Kohut
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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
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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...
Saturday, January 17, 2009
DGB Philosophy-Psychology vs. Freud, Masson and Different Derrivatives of Psychoanalysis (Part 3)
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.
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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.
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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"
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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
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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
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
.......................................................
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"
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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
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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
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
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