Freud's Hotel: DGB Neo-Psychoanalysis (A Multi-Integrative Re-Working of Psychoanalysis)

Biology, Psychoanalysis, and Daoism: Sexual Energy, Id Energy, and Qi Energy

2015-06-10T18:39:00.001-07:00

June 26th, 27th, 2015

Finished!

I am going to do a little 'time-traveling' in this essay. Sometimes the most important ideas in human philosophy are the ones that go the furthest back in human history. In this regard, the idea of 'bipolarity' goes back about as far in human philosophy as recorded human philosophy goes.

For good reason. Look around you and the phenomenon of polarity or bipolarity can be found almost anywhere you look. Male and female. Old and young. Or old and new. Big and small. Alive and dead. Left and right. Conservative and Liberal. Up and down. Air and earth. Fire and Water...

On and on we could go both with these 'polar phenomena' in themselves, and with the words that I use to represent them -- words generally being used to 'represent' the phenomena that we 'see' or 'infer' or 'value' in the world we live in, in the same sense that a 'map' is used to 'structurally represent' the 'real territory' that this map is supposed to (but sometimes doesn't accurately) represent. (Koryzybski, General Semantics).

Now I view Korzybski's work (Science and Sanity) in the 1930s as being some of the best work on Language, Meaning, Philosophy, and Psychology that Western history has ever seen. Korzybski's work overlaps with Wittgenstein's philosophy/epistemology, the latter of whom wrote about some of the same core ideas as Korzybski relative to 'accurate representation' (you could probably put Bertrand Russell in that group as well) but not in the same kind of drawn out 'treatise-like detail (General Semantics) that Korzybski did. Stretching back further into history than these three philosopher-epistemologists was Kant who basically claimed that we 'kant know anything' -- a rather provocative, controversial statement when Kant finally finished writing 'The Critique of Pure Reason'.

Based on epistemological scepticism of an only slightly lesser degree than his predecessor, David Hume -- the ultimate empiricist who said 'if you can't see it, don't believe it -- Kant posited a 'sensory-perceptual-conceptual-theoretical bubble' between man's 'intake' of 'knowledge' (the 'phenomenal' world) and the world of 'things-in-themselves' (the 'noumenal world) which man could never truly 'know' without 'perceptual-conceptual distortion'.

From this rather 'distressing' idea of Kant's (at least to some), and the fact that I like to think in terms of metaphors and symbolism and mythologies as well as 'juxtaposing bipolar ideas' together in rather odd, unorthodox, 'post- Hegelian dialectic ways' -- comes my own bipolar dialectic concepts of 'fictional facts' or 'factual fictions' or 'functional mythologies' of which this developing work here is likely going to be full of them.

I like to develop functional clinical metaphors and mythologies -- which involve comparisons between different realms of human study such as between biology, mythology, cosmology, philosophy, psychology, spirituality -- with psychoanalysis being at the centre of this comparative, associative universe -- where, for example, biology, psychology, and bio-psychology can be viewed as involving the 'introjection' of certain mythological-spiritual and philosophical schools of thought (Greek Mythology, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao tse, Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Korzybski...) and conversely -- and dialectically -- human mythology-spirituality, and philosophy can be viewed as involving the 'projection' of man's inner biology and 'bio-psychology'.

It is upon this idea, this assumption that I started building my 'multi-bipolar model of the human psyche' with Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Korzybski, and Cannon providing much of the unconscious, bio-psychological base of this model. Specifically, as Anaximander was postulating a universe that started with 'Chaos' or 'The Apeiron', so too, I was postulating an 'internal bio-psychology' that started with an 'internal Abyss' and a 'Chaotic-Disorganized-Mystifying-Needful-Driving-Passionate Dionysian Id-Ego' (Freud's Id) which starts to evolve and develop with a combination of internal 'God-Nature-Genetic-Given-Capabilities-or-Gifts' and the onset/onslaught of 'life experiences' of a new-born baby being 'evicted' from the womb -- and thrown out into an 'Abyss' of 'Chaos'.

Here -- unlike Freud, but more like Lacan -- I postulate a more 'organized and organizing, associating, differentiating, classifying, bipolarizing Apollonian Id-Ego'. Family and culture start to play a bigger and bigger influence on the evolving development of the 'id-ego' as from a more 'uncivilized state' it moves -- in most cases -- to a more and more 'civilized-id-restraining state of consciousness.

As our more 'uncivilized' and 'civilized' id-ego states clash with each other -- much like hundreds or thousands or millions of bipolar phenomena clash with each other in different ways -- for dominance in a way that is beautifully described by Anaximander back somewhere before 550 BC in his 'chaos-bipolarity-conflict' theory that nets a 'winning, dominant' polarity' and a 'losing, submissive polarity' -- the first taking over 'the limelight' of cosmic existence, the second being relegated to 'the shadows' of cosmic existence -- and what Anaximander was describing philosophically in this manner, I am describing as a 'factual fiction' inside our human body, mind, and 'bio-psychology'.

In this regard, extrapolating from Anaximander's ancient philosophy, I time-travel again and borrow from Jung when Jung says that what is dominant in our conscious mind (the limelight) tends to be submissive in our unconscious mind (the shadows), and what is dominant in our unconscious mind (the shadows) tends to be submissive in our conscious mind (the limelight).

Thus, in this respect, our subconscious or unconscious mind tends to both support and compensate for the 'gaps' in our often 'one-sided', conscious mind. In other words, the human mind -- and body -- is built -- created -- on what might be called 'dialectic-bipolar evolutionary growth'.

Now, it is this dialectic-bipolar-evolutionary-growth principle that is the fundamental principle of Anaximander's brilliant 'Chaotic-Bipolar-Conflict-and-Evolution' philosophical theory from sometime before 550 BC that stretches and time-travels (as well as distance-travels but we will get to this shortly) all the way to Hegel's classic philosophical work -- arguably the most important philosophical treatise and grand narrative in Western human history -- 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1806?) -- that I now 'introject bio-psychologically into the 'essence of the human soul' that becomes the most important component of the humanistic-existential-psychoanalytic-spiritual-pantheistic model that I am trying to communicate to you -- or with you.

It is this model that I call 'Hegel's Hotel' which can be viewed as a metaphor that we can either 'project externally into a philosophy and/or even build as an architectural philosophy-psychology-spiritual institute, and/or alternatively it can be 'introjected' into a 'model of the personality' that is meant to describe in a 'mindful way, the splitting or dividing up of the inside of our mind in such a fashion that, once we learn this model, can allow us to follow our cognitive-emotional activities into whatever 'ego-state' or 'ego-position' that these activities may take us (as classified by the model which can be viewed as a 'fictional-factual-spiritual-mythology').
Still with me? We have already done a lot of time-traveling. I have a few more places that I would like to go such as firstly -- Nietzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy'.

This fabulous little book -- Nietzsche's first work that was a brilliant extrapolation of Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit but shortly afterwards rejected by Nietzsche himself as being 'too Hegelian' -- adds another dichotomous, paradoxical, bipolar element to 'Hegel's Hotel'.
Nietzsche's thesis in this important but largely overlooked philosophical work, adds a 'tragic' element to Hegel's dialectic philosophy that harks back also to Anaximander's philosophy of 'clashing, warring opposites' -- and that is that what can 'lead us to spiritual human bliss in terms of either a 'homeostatic-dialectic-philosophical-psychological-spiritual balance' and/or a 'celebration of extreme human achievement and self-empowerment' (which we can call 'Nietzsche's or Zarathustra's Mountain') can also end tragically and horrifically in human despair when we can't get to this place of human accomplishment and/or human balance -- when the clash between Dionysus and Apollo, between the more civilized and less civilized man, between polar opposites -- between superego and id, between persona and shadow, between inferior and superior, secure and insecure self -- doesn't reach harmony at all but rather -- 'drops off of Nietzsche's Existential Rope' -- and back down into our deepest abyss, either death or the closest thing to it -- Chaos -- which we can either perish in, or climb our way back out of again...like we did when we were born into this existence -- unknowing of anything, until we start to exercise our 'gifts', our 'capabilities' -- or not.

So here I will postulate the meeting of Freud's life and death instinct -- in man's phenomenology of spirit -- or phenomenology of tragedy. 'To be or not to be -- that is the question.' (Hamlet, Shakespeare).

More time traveling. Let's travel back to ancient China at about the same time that Anaximander was philosophizing in that part of Europe that would now be called Turkey. Asian Turkey Back then, it was a part of Greece. Miletus, Ionia. Right on the borderline between Europe and Asia and close to Persia as well.

Should we consider it entirely coincidental that one of the forefathers of ancient Chinese philosophy -- Lao tse -- one of the main creators of one of the main schools of Chinese philosophy -- Daoism/Taoism -- developed a school of philosophy that can easily be compared to the philosophy of Anaximander from Miletus, Ionia?

Both created 'dialectic bipolar philosophies'. The biggest difference between the two schools of philosophy is that Anaximander's philosophy was mainly one of 'dialectic competition and conflict' -- the opposite bipolarities in a dialectic, bipolar spectrum taking turns 'dominating' each other and 'submitting' to each other, the first dominating the limelight, the second dominating the shadows; whereas in Lao tse's school of Daoism the two 'conflicting parts in a bipolar spectrum' -- 'yin' 'and 'yang' -- can be balanced in 'co-operation' and 'dialectic harmony' or in biological language -- 'homeostatically balanced' -- to create 'The Path' with 'qi energy' being labelled as the 'essential life energy force'.

In this regard, Anaximander's dialectic philosophy can be viewed as a 'dualistic-dialectic competition and conflict for power' model of philosophy which if not 'dialectically balanced towards equilibrium and harmony' in a Lao-tse/Daoist type manner of 'balancing yin and yang' can result in what Nietzsche labeled as 'The Birth of Tragedy' and what Freud labeled as 'the death instinct'.

Hegel straddles the middle -- determininstically in a historical manner-- arguing (my extrapolation) that whether the dialectic conflict within any bipolar spectrum is balanced peacefully (Lao tse), or whether it is balanced over time by competition, power, war and strife, is a moot point -- either way, 'dialectic evolution' is going to take place through the dialectic process of what we can now view as a 'triadic' or 'triangular' model of: 1. 'thesis'; 2. 'anti-thesis'; and 3. 'synthesis'.

However, ideally for mankind, it is better to aim to achieve dialectic evolution or 'trialectic equilibrium and synergy' the Lao tse (democratically dialectic way) as opposed to the Anaximander (power-driven, dualistic, take no prisoners, leave no survivors, way).

The history and evolution of mankind can be viewed as an oscillation between the Anaximander-power-driven, conquest and conquer, approach to dialectic evolution as opposed to the more 'yin-yang', democratic-negotiation, let's aim for peace and harmony, equilibrium and harmony, approach to dialectic evolution.

The dichotomy and paradox of the oscillation of these two opposing approaches to dialectic evolution -- dictatorship vs. democracy -- can be viewed as constituting the essential paradox of man's internal 'phenomenology of spirit' as can also be construed as an internal playoff between what Freud called 'the life instinct vs. the death instinct' -- because the power and war-driven dictatorship vs. rebellion and anarchy approach is invariably going to lead to much more 'pre-mature and violent death'.

What we have here is the essence of a 'TOE' theory -- a 'Theory of Everything' that -- philosophically speaking -- can be viewed as being bigger than the Persian or Macedonian or Mongolian Empire -- all put together -- that can be viewed as connecting, Cosmology, Mythology, Spirituality, Religion, Science, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Neurology, Psychology, Bio-Psychology and Philosophy, Politics.... Normalcy vs. Pathology...and The Pathology of Normalcy...

What we have here could quite possibly be viewed as 'The Grandest of all Grand Narratives'.

What other connecting links can I make here? Lao tse and Jung. Lao tse's 'qi energy' being linked to Jung's definition of 'libido' as 'life energy'.
Now to bring Freud back into the picture, we need to do a little more 'energy translating'. Freud's 'id energy' can be construed either more concretely as 'sexual energy' when compared and contrasted to Lao tse's qi energy and Jung's life energy, and/or Freud's id energy could be construed as a 'mixture of life and death energy (Eros and Thanatos) in man's 'Phenomenology of Life vs. Death Spirit' as construed by man's oscillation between the drive for control and power vs. the drive for democracy and egalitarian civil rights and participation in the democratic.

The resulting 'direction of this dialectically and/or trialectically charged Path' can take us towards either 'Nietzsche's Birth and Path of Tragedy' or it can take us towards 'Nietzsche's Celebration of The Synthesis and Synergy of The Apollonian-Dionysian Spirit and Achievement of man' whether this be on the metaphorically 'tallest mountain' or whether this be in 'the re-integration of Apollo and Dionysus in 'the caves of our unconscious'.

What we now need to do in terms of defining 'The Pathology of Normalcy' is to describe the different types of 'blockages of energy' whether this be construed as 'qi energy', 'life energy', and/or 'sexual energy'.

And in order to do this, we need to return to Freud's 'old brand of bio-psychology -- and his supposedly outdated, and often dismissed hydraulic model'.

We will do this in the next essay.

Have a great day!

-- dgb, June 27th, 2015,

-- David Gordon Bain

Capitalism As The Titanic

2015-03-24T09:59:00.004-07:00

Above all else, ethics and humans caring about humans is the key to repairing the Titanic -- Capitalism -- before it sinks with millions of people inside it.

Essay 2: A Tribute To Jeffrey Masson's Re-Emphasis Of Trauma Theory in Psychoanalysis

2015-02-26T10:06:00.003-08:00

Updated and re-written November 6th-8th, 2014, and Feb. 25th, 2015; originally written on March 14th, 2014.

I have told this story online in different parts and different ways in different essays and other transactions.

However, this rendition probably covers most of the essentials of what I want to communicate about the major influence that Dr. Jeffrey Masson had on my life in terms of: 1. becoming deeply involved in 'The Seduction Theory Controversy'; 2. meeting Dr. Masson by email, and interviewing him by email in March, 2010; and 3. becoming 'obsessed' with integrating early Freudian 'reality-trauma-seduction theory' (pre-1897) with his partly simultaneously (1895-1938) evolving 'impulse-drive-childhood sexuality-Oedipus-fantasy theory'.

I remember walking into a Queen Street East bookstore in Toronto, I think around 1994 or 1995 and walking over to the psychology section, and seeing three books jump out at me by an author who I was totally unfamiliar with.

The titles of the books, respectively, in about the order that they caught my attention were: 1. 'Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst'; 2. 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory'; and 3. 'The Unabridged Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904' -- the first two written, the third edited, by the unknown writer (at least to me at that time), Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.

I believe I bought the first two books and left the bookstore; the third one I bought at a later date. Somewhere in this mix, I also bought Janet Malcolm's highly entertaining (but I learned later editorially skewed) 'In The Freud Archives' -- all four books dealing with the same controversial subject matter: Freud's (1896 to 2014...still ticking...) Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory vs. his later Oedipus (Childhood Sexual Fantasy) Theory.

Basically the controversy boiled down to 'which was more right' and 'which was more wrong' relative to the childhood etiology/causality of hysteria and obsessional neurosis -- it was like a 'Copernican 180 degree shift' in how Freud viewed the cause of neurosis -- and it all further boiled down to what Freud was and was not thinking in 1895-1896, which of course, will never be definitively known or proven other than in the leftover circumstantial evidence that can be found in Freud's letters to Fliess during these two psychoanalysis-revolutionizing years. And Freud was the primary revolutionary deconstructionist and reconstructionist (with assistance from Fliess) during these two most controversial years of the building of psychoanalysis.

Did Freud get it 'more right' in his first theory (his trauma-seduction theory) or in his 'second theory' (his childhood sexuality fantasy theory) -- or were there elements of 'right' and 'wrong' in both of these respective bipolar opposite theories that Freud didn't know how to bring 'under the same roof' -- like, for example, the way physicists were able to unite the 'particle' and 'wavelength' theories into one bipolar 'particle-wavelength' theory of matter and energy that was 'stronger' than both the 'partially right' theories previously.

If you think about it, all theories are inherently reductionistic and generally one-sided, pointing in 'this' direction but not in 'that' direction, unless or until you start to unite opposing bipolar theories into one package. This is how we get to the Hegelian idea that all theories (or at least the biased, one-sided theories) are inherently self-destructive as soon as they try to explain what they can't properly explain because what needs to be explained 'lies outside of the theoretical box' of what is trying to be explained.

If we have a case of 'innocent childhood sexual exploration' we don't want to confuse this with 'childhood sexual abuse' unless there is an adult or older child exploiting the situation; whereas if we have a case of 'real childhood sexual abuse, manipulation, exploitation', we don't want to confuse this with 'innocent childhood sexual exploration'. Certainly, we don't want to confuse theoretically interpreted sexual fantasies with real memories of childhood sexual abuse anymore than we want to confuse false or distorted memories with real ones.

A one-sided theory cannot explain everything on both sides of a bipolar issue that the one-sided theory takes a one-sided stance on. In contrast, a two-sided dualistic-dialectic theory can.

For example, people can initiate their own sexual impulses, whether child or adult, AND people can also be sexually manipulated, coerced, exploited, forced... by someone who has more power than them. Stated differently, sexual trauma and sexual fantasy, desire, and drive are not necessarily mutually exclusive phenomena. A two-sided dualistic-dialectic theory can account for this. A one-sided unilateral theory can't.

Capitalism and socialism both have 'human value' and 'dis-value' attached to them, depending on how and to what extent each of them they are applied, and to what extent they are connected to 'humanistic ethics' (allowing for the fact that there is still plenty of room for debate and human disagreement). Often, you see a right wing political ideology following on the footsteps of a left wing political ideology and visa versa because over time a one-sided ideological theory is going to expose itself as narcissistically favoring one side of the political ideological equation while neglecting and suppressing the other side of the equation that needs to be 'homeostatically balanced' with a more left wing-right wing dialectically integrative ideology that addresses both side of the political and ideological equation.

In this same fashion, after 1896, we have a Freudian ideology that emphasized 'human and childhood sexuality and drive' as opposed to 'human and childhood sexual abuse', and both theories were partly right, partly wrong which is why we are still arguing about them and which is 'more right' than the other.
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Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Education is the art of making man ethical.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

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Thus, the one-sided idealist and/or ideologist is always going to be partly 'right' and partly 'wrong', partly ethical and partly unethical -- the 'unethical' part being attached to that part of his or her one-sided theory that does not cover the 'blind spot' of the 'territory' that is covered by his or her dualistic and dialectic opponent -- the idealist and/or ideologist who is covering that part of the 'wholistic territory' that is not covered by the first idealist and/or ideologist.

Thus, every theory -- or at least every one-sided theory -- is going to be at least partly 'neurotic' -- it is going to try to explain that part of reality that is its 'blind spot', and the blind spot is the other side of the fence of the unilateral theory.

Bipolar, dualistic-dialectic theories -- like 'the particle-wave theory' or 'quantum theory' -- do much better at capturing the blind spots that are missed by each respective unilateral theory that needs the opposite side of the united bipolar theory to cover its unilateral 'blind spots'. Dare I say that it is often a lot like marriage. Opposites attract for a reason. Each helps to alleviate the other's blind spots.

Thus, the need for a 'reality-fantasy' theory in Classical Psychoanalysis that unites Freud's work both before and after 1896 -- something that Freud couldn't see, something that The Psychoanalytic Establishment (most notably Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler) in 1982 couldn't see, and something that even Jeffrey Masson couldn't see. They all had their 'psychoanalytic blind spots' that were reinforced by the nature of their opposing one-sided Freudian theories that each righteously adhered to and defended while declaring that the opposite theory was 'wrong'.

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You were right from your side, and I was right from mine,

We're just one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind...- Bob Dylan

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Two opposing partial truths -- or at least the theories that represent these opposing partial truths -- when synthesized together make for a better all-encompassing theory than either theory working unilaterally by itself trying to cover a part of reality that is just not covered by the unilateral, one-sided theory.

I plan to fix this problem with a united Freudian and Post-Freudian 'reality-trauma-defense-fantasy-impulse-drive theory' that covers all of Freud's psychological work from 1893 to 1938 -- 45 years -- not the 39 years that is called 'Classical' Psychoanalysis. It should be called 'Classical One-Sided Psychoanalysis'.

-- dgb, Nov. 8th, 2014, updated, Feb. 25th, 2014,

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations and Creations...

-- Are Still in Process...

Essay 1: An Introduction To DGB Multi-Integrative Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis

2015-02-26T09:56:00.001-08:00

Essay 1: An Introduction To DGB Multi-Integrative Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis

Oct 31, 2014

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Good day!

Please read my profile on Linked In to see how I came to meet Dr. Jeffrey Masson by email, to the point where I became 'obsessed' with generating my own conclusions regarding the still very controversial 'Seduction Theory Controversy' that led to Dr. Masson going public with his complaints about his perspective on Freud's alleged 'suppression' of his early (1896) Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory.

On a fateful meeting on April 21st, 1896, Freud read his highly provocative theory on 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' to The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society connecting early childhood sexual abuse with hysteria (passive sexual abuse) as well as to obsessional neurosis (active childhood sexual abuse).

After the reading of his paper, the leader of the Society, Dr. Krafft-Ebing, called Freud's paper a 'scientific fairy tale' -- and Freud walked off into the evening, writing Fliess a few days later and calling the members of the Society 'jackasses' for rejecting his paper. Freud still wrote up the paper and had it published later in May of 1896.

However, Freud seemed to be waffling on his childhood sexual abuse theory, even as early as January, 1896, calling hysteria a mixture of, and conflict between, pleasurable and unpleasurable early childhood sexual experience, of either the passive (hysteria) or active (obsessional neurosis) type..

Over the next few years, say from the beginning of 1896 to the end of 1899, and even up to 1905, (Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality), Freud basically turned his early theory of trauma and childhood sexual abuse upside down, creating a new 'fantasy-drive-libido' theory' where 'infantile and childhood sexuality' was viewed as the breeding ground for much later 'adult perversions', 'fixations', 'regressions', 'obsessive compulsions' and the like that separated the 'neurotics' sexual behavior from what might be called the more 'centrally based adult sexual behavior' that more 'normal-neurotics' engage in. Still, we all have our 'signature fantasies' based on early childhood experience.

Today, this second take on human neurosis and sexual behavior stands out as as what is usually called : Fantasy, Drive, Childhood Sexuality, and Ego-Defense Theory which collectively is usually referred to as Classical (Freudian) Psychoanalysis whereas as his early trauma and childhood sexual abuse theory (and the beginning of ego-defense theory) are usually referred to collectively as Freud's 'Pre-Psychoanalytic theories' (meaning they were written and believed in pre-1897, before later being largely rejected).

Classical theory started to take its early shape in 1896 and 1897 as Freud began to trumpet the ideas of 'wish fulfillment', 'instincts' or 'drives', 'infantile and childhood sexuality', and the beginning of 'The Oedipus Complex' in a private letter to Wilhelm Fliess in October of 1897 -- . 'Screen Memories' and 'The Interpretation of Dreams would not be finished and published until 1899, although the publication date listed on The Interpretation of Dreams was, and still is1900, to freshly bring in the 20th century with a new Copernican-like, Darwin-like conception of the human mind and unconscious psycho-dynamics controlling our conscious thoughts and behavior much more than we previously believed. Bringing in this new conceputalization of the mind both before and after 1896 remains Freud's legacy as being one of the most creative and provocative minds of the late 19th and early 20th century..

Relative to Masson in the 1980s, he probably would not have lost his very high profile job as The Projects Director of The Freud Archives if he hadn't brought into question the very moral integrity of Freud's character.

However, he did, and for this Masson paid with his short but very charismatic career, claiming in interviews in the early 1980s that Freud during and/or after 1896 started to 'lose moral integrity' as he began to 'suppress' his earlier findings and theories on the causal/etiological relationship between hysteria and his Trauma-Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory which later took the limelight off of adult male sexual abusers, and instead shone the light on 'childhood sexual instinct' to the point of even 'inventing' allegedly 'false or distorted memories' that were allegedly created, according to the later Freud, by underlying childhood erotic desires which turned into adult unconscious/repressed adult erotic desires of the same basic childhood background combing genetic instinct with 'environmental coincidences' or 'accidents'.

Masson argued publicly in the 1980s that Freud's 'instinct, fantasy, childhood sexuality, and Oedipus Complex theories were all part of Freud's 'loss of moral integrity' in terms of his post 1896 insisting that many of his previous female patients had not been sexually abused at all but were simply unconsciously relating to Freud the childhood desires of The Oedipus Complex and childhood sexual fantasies woven into what he now called 'distorted memories' of incestuous fantasies which he had previously insisted were real cases of childhood sexual abuse.

Masson lost his high profile job in the fall of 1982 -- and indeed began to leave or be evicted from all the different psychoanalytic societies he was involved in.

After writing a series of 'anti-theory', 'anti-psychiatry' and 'anti-psychoanalysis' books in the mid 1980s and early 1990s, Masson eventually pulled away from this scene altogether, became an animal psychologist specializing on 'emotions in animals', and around the mid 1990s, left for New Zealand with his wife to raise a family and to continue to study animal psychology and emotions, publishing a series of very popular books in this domain.

Masson still resides in New Zealand today, and did his 2010 interview with me by email from New Zealand.

Who was right? Freud and The Psychoanalytic Society on their mutual defense of the 'clinical legitimacy' of Freud's 180 degree change in theory starting in 1896?

Or Masson and his claim that Freud 'lost moral courage' in order basically not to be blackballed and thrown out of his profession by his surrounding members of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society?

This subject matter still remains a very controversial -- albeit now largely 'dormant' but still very sensitive -- subject matter both within and outside of Psychoanalysis today.
More and more psychoanalysts, for their part, have probably left Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis for now less controversial theories such as 'Object Relations' Theory (Klein, Winnicott, Fairbairn, Guntrip...), 'Attachment Theory', 'Self-Psychology (Kohut and others...), Lacan, Bion -- none of these theories which contain Freud's arguably 'most controversial theory' -- the Oedipus Theory (as well as his later 'Life and Death Instinct Theory' (1920 and onward) which contains the sometimes huge epistemological problem of 'real' vs. 'distorted and/or entirely false' conscious and/or unconscious memories -- but especially unconscious ones.

I aim to integrate, re-work, and expand all 45 years of Freud's professional theorizing (1893 to 1938), both relative to Freud's early trauma and seduction theories as well as his later fantasy theories, and then on to largely post-Freudian Object Relations, Self Psychology, and Neo-Psychoanalytic, Adlerian Psychology, Stekel's Psychology, Ferenczi's, Rank's, Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Fromm, Horney, Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis, my own modified brand of Nietzsche's early and later Humanistic-Existentialism, and elements of Korzybski's and Hayakawa's ideas from General Semantics, and other forms of 'Cognitive-Emotional-Behavior Theory and Therapy (Ellis, Beck, Kelly, Maxwell Maltz, Nathaniel Branden, and Donald Meichenbaum who I wrote my final thesis for in 1979 at The University of Waterloo, to get my Honours B.A, in Psychology before getting involved with both The Adlerian Institute of Ontario (1980-81), and The Gestalt Institute of Toronto (off and on between 1979 and 1991), hearing the famous Dr. Harold Mosak speak from The Adlerian Institute in Chicago, and training under two of the last three Directors of The Gestlt Institute of Toronto (Jorge Rosner and JoAnne Greenham).

After spending a lot of time investigating -- and drawing my own integrative conclusions -- on Freud's infamous Seduction Theory, my 'obsessional interest' in psychoanalysis became more than this, leading to what I am calling a full integrative and unique brand of 'DGB Neo-Psychoanalysis'.
Incidentally, I tend to side more with Masson's side of the argument although unlike Masson, I have found a way to integrate Freud's early reality and trauma theory with his later fantasy theory whereas Masson believed that Freud's early (pre-1897) reality-trauma-seduction theory was simply a superior brand of psychoanalysis to his later fantasy (Classical) theory.

I found and offer a 'peace bridge' between Masson and The Psychoanalytic Establishment as unlikely as that is to happen some 30 years after this conflict resulted in a rather nasty 'psychoanalytic divorce'.

'You're right from your side; I'm right from mine. We're both just one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind.' -- Bob Dylan

Welcome aboard for those of you who wish to follow my re-working of all 45 years of Freud's theorizing (1893 to 1938); not just the last 38 years (1900 to 1938).

Cheers!

-- dgb, David Gordon Bain, October 31st, 2014.

Dr. Ewa Carlton 1^st

Teacher of Psychology and Health and Social Care at Great Marlow School

I am a huge fan of Jeffrey Masson. Insofar, this is my favourite piece of your writings. I like your realistic depiction of Psychoanalysis.

The First True Case of Psychoanalysis (Revised, Edition, Dec. 18th, 2014)

2014-12-19T05:36:00.002-08:00

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Name of Theory

3. Foundational Influences

4. Theory

5. Application: The First True Case of Psychoanalysis

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This essay is driving me crazy. Sometimes the best essay you write is your first edition. Ten editions later, something has been lost relative to the freshness and spontaneity of the essay. And yet you can't go back -- or don't feel like you can go back. Four or five years have passed since I first wrote this essay in 2009 or 2010.

A lot of theoretical evolution has happened in my mind in those 4 or 5 years. And yet this remains one of my potentially most important essays -- my signature essay that separates my integrative work in psychoanalysis and neo-psychoanalysis from anything else that is out there on the market.

How can I most succinctly and simply 'mark my territory' here in a way that defines the essence of my work?

The range of my integrative brand of psychoanalysis-neo-psychoanalysis is extensive yet how can I communicate this range in as clear and simple a manner as possible? Obviously, I can't do it all in one essay.

So let's start with the name of this -- about the 1000th evolutionary mutation of psychoanalysis.

2. Name

Full Name: GAP (Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic) -DGB (Dialectic Gap-Bridging) Neo-Psychoanalysis;

Abbreviated Name: DGB Neo-Psychoanalysis;

Parallel, Synonymous Name: TIME (Transference-Immediacy-Mediation-Engagement) Theory and Therapy

3. Main Foundational Influences

a) Philosophical Influences

i) Dialectic Influences: Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Hegel, Derrida;

ii) Wholism and Pantheism: Spinoza;

iii) Epistemological Influences: Sir Francis Bacon, Locke, Kant, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida;

iv) Humanistic-Existential Influences: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Fromm;

v) Economic Influences: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Erich Fromm, Ayn Rand;

b) Psychoanalytic Influences:

i) Freud before 1897 (Pre-Classical Freudian Theory);

ii) Freud after 1896 (Classical Psychoanalysis);

iii) Object Relations, Self Psychology;

iv) Self-Psychology;

c) Neo-Psychoanalytic Influences:

i) Alfred Adler;

ii Carl Jung;

iii) Otto Rank;

iv. Wilhelm Reich;

v) Fritz Perls;

vi) Eric Fromm;

vii) Erich Berne;

viii) Karen Horney;

ix) Carl Rogers;

x) Arthur Janov

d) Cognitive-Behavioral Influences

i) Immanuel Kant;

ii) Wittgenstein and Alfred Korzybski

iii) S.I. Hayakawa;

iv) Albert Ellis;

v) Aaron Beck;

vi) George Kelley;

vii) Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden;

viii) Donald Meichenbaum

4. Theory

I am going to summarize in this essay 40 years of work in one sentence: an emphasis on transference-lifestyle(lifeline), immediacy; Oedipal trauma, splitting, defenses, and fantasies; intimacy in relationships, humanistic-existential meaning and striving in work, blockages in intimacy, blockages in humanistic-existential meaning and striving, gaps in personality wholism, obsessions, compulsions, fixations, dialectic engagement and bipolar integrations back towards personality wholism.

5. A Transference-Lifeline Interpretation of a Conscious Early Childhood Memory: The First True Case of Psychoanalysis

Little Siggy, about 3 years old, burst into his parents bedroom and was shocked by what he saw. His mom and dad were obviously having sex together and we can only imagine what little Siggy saw -- his dad probably perched over his mom like he was 'peeing' on her -- interrupted in whatever they were doing, Siggy's dad yelled at him to get out of the room and close the door behind him.

This was not a repressed memory. It was one of Sigmund Freud's earliest -- probably the earliest -- conscious childhood memory that he could remember.

Ernest Jones, Freud's first main biographer, viewed the memory 'flippantly' because it was not a 'repressed' memory.

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Among the (consciously) remembered ones (memories) are a few, banal enough in themselves, which are of interest only in standing out in the sea of amnesia. One was of penetrating into his parents' bedroom out of (sexual) curiosity and being ordered out by his irate father. (Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, p. 7).

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In contrast to Jones's casual perspective on this memory -- biased undoubtedly by Freud's own perspective on the relative non-importance of conscious early childhood memories except as possible 'screen memories' to other 'unconscious, repressed memories and/or fantasies' (Freud, Screen Memories, 1899) -- my perspective on this memory is 100 percent different. I believe that upon its 'template' in Freud's network of 'conscious transference memories', rests the whole foundation of psychoanalysis. This would make Freud, in contrast to Anna O., the first true case of psychoanalysis. Let us see how I get there.

Stepping into Adlerian Theory, our conscious early childhood memories are like 'metaphors -- or Stories -- of our lives. Bringing Adlerian Theory back into Psychoanalysis, these conscious early memories -- generally passed over lightly in psychoanalysis as being 'screen memories' to other more important 'repressed' memories and/or fantasies -- become the crux of psychoanalysis. They become 'narcissistic transference fixations, repetition compulsions, and defensive-fantasy mastery compulsions'. Both Oedipal trauma and the foundational basis for later Oedipal fantasies can be found in the same memory, assuming it has a traumatic base.

The ego and the id are mainly 'non-differentiated' at this point in the young child's development (2 to 6 years old) and thus, can be called 'the ego-id' (or 'the id-ego') (Freud, 1938, Outline of Psychoanalysis).

Trauma strikes in the Oedipal period and thus I call this trauma 'Oedipal Trauma' (which it is to a child of that young an age even though it might not be to a fully grown adult). The trauma is often (but not always) represented in one of a person's main conscious early chidhood memories -- often the first one recalled, or the one of youngest age.

Trauma causes 'personality splitting' or 'ego-id splitting' at this young an age. In Adlerian terminology, the 'inferiority feeling' -- under the stress of trauma -- is cemented for a lifetime.

The young ego-id rushes in to defend the young child against such trauma happening again in the future. Compensatory defenses -- and later Oedipal fantasies -- are established. The personality splitting begins:

1. The Assertive Ego-Id (Before the Oedipal trauma);

2. The Sensitive-(Approval-Seeking-Disapproval-Avoiding) Ego-Id (After the Oedipal trauma);

3. The Depressive Position (Mom or Dad -- or someone else -- doesn't love me for what I did);

4. The Phobic-Schizoid Position (I make sure I stay away from repeating the type of action that led to my mom or dad's disapproval and my traumatized ego-id);

The four positions above can all be classified as 'under-ego positions' that follow the formula of: I'm not okay; you are okay.

5. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic (Dionysian) Position: Pleasure-Seeking ego-id impulses;

6. The Paranoid-Schizoid (Passive-Aggressive) Position: I suppress or repress my angry feelings towards you but get my 'digs' in through passive aggressive behavior);

7. The Paranoid-Confrontational Position: My anger, my rage, is coming at you overtly, directly or indirectly, but explosively ('anal-righteous-explosiveness');

These last three positions all follow the formula of: I'm okay, you're not okay.

The first position can be viewed as being either/or 'identity-seeking', 'object-attachment seeking', and/or self-esteem seeking.

The next three positions can be viewed as 'object-attachment and self-esteem seeking'.

The last three under-ego positions can be viewed as 'identity-and-self-esteem seeking'.

All seven ego-positions or ego-states or ego-compartments can be -- and generally are -- duplicated as 'superego' or 'over-ego states'. These 'over-ego states' can often also be viewed as 'defensive fantasy ego-states' -- to be striven for.

We now have 14 defensive-fantasy ego-states.

To this, I add 7 more 'middle zone' ego-compartments:

15. The Social Persona Ego;

16. The Central-Mediating-Synthesizing Ego;

17. The Private Shadow-Id-Ego;

18. The Fantasy Ego;

19. The Body (Symptom) Ego;

20. The Projective-Displacement-Sublimation Ego;

21. The Introjective-Identification-Assimilation Ego;

And to this, I add 7 more preconscious-subconscious ego-structures and processes:

22. 'Unbound' transference-immediacy complexes and superego-id-ego complexes;

23. The Main Superego-Id-Ego Vault (Containing 'Bound' Complexes);

24. The Transference Memory and Fantasy Complex-Templates

25. The Subconscious Ego-Id;

26. The Abyss Ledge;

27. Nietzsche's Abyss;

28. The Rope and The Climb;

29. The Genetic-Existential-Mythological Self;

30/1. Nietzsche's (Zarathustra-Apollo-Dionysus) Mountain.

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How do I work this metaphorical, metaphysical, and mythological model?

The memory -- Freud's conscious early childhood memory described above -- can be viewed as a metaphor -- a metaphor or story of Freud's Life. It can be viewed as his 'transference-lifeline', his main 'transference memory-fantasy complex'.

Freud's main transference self-esteem issue was with his father -- of which this issue was 'bundled into a transference complex' and 'transferred' onto most of his adult, male working partners. If you view Psychoanalysis as being Freud's 'Secret Society' where you were either 'in' or 'out', the number of 'evicted' or 'departed outcasts' of male working partners grew in repetitive, significant number over time -- Breuer, Fliess, Adler, Jung, Stekel, Rank, Ferenczi, Reich, Perls....all 'transference surrogates' of either Freud's father -- or Freud himself -- spread over the course of his lifetime, evicted or departed like little Siggy was evicted and departed from him parents' 'Secret Society' -- 'the primal scene' -- 'the transference bedroom' -- projected some 35 to 40 years later into both 'the psychoanalytic room with its couch like a bed and the patient lying prone on the couch'; and 'The Vienna Society' which would eventually evolve into 'Psychoanalytic Societies' all over the world, and 'The International Psychoanalytic Society' linking them all together.

Freud had an 'erotic transference fixation' relative to 'triadic psychological interactions and formulas' and 'threesomes'. The template was his primal transference scene.

1. The impulsive-desire-drive, and/or fantasy; 2. The object; and 3. The resistance-defense to the impulse-drive-fantasy. Missing from this equation after 1896 was 4. The traumatic-transference scene and recalled memory of the scene.

In the psychoanalytic room, the patient (usually a woman) played the transference surrogate of his mom lying on the bed/couch, the 'resistance' was the projection of his dad's resistance into the psychoanalytic transference scene, and Freud played the role of 'little Siggy' who subconsciously or unconsciously wanted to 're-live his primal transference scene through his 'repetition and mastery compulsion' of fantasizing the original transference scene to a more erotically and voyeuristically satisfying conclusion (with Freud inside, not outside the primal room, finding out what was 'really going on inside the room' via transference projection into the psychoanalytic room -- and breaking through the woman's (Freud's internalized dad's) resistance/defense, to the 'Impulse-Desire' (ID).

Psychoanalytic Transference-Sublimation Fantasy completed (in his cases that worked well -- obviously, he didn't like the 'Dora' case but provided a negative transference explanation afterwards).

Freud's 'hankering' for threesomes -- a man, a woman, and Freud -- as found in the template of his primal transference scene-memory he projected later into his 'Screen Memories' essay (1899) where he describes a 'screen memory-fantasy' of a 'threesome' involving his older male cousin, a girl cousin, and himself. This 'Oedipal Fantasy' would play itself out in a transference-sublimation-fantasy in Freud's adult professional life (Freud, Fliess, and Emma Ekstein) unfortunately with a traumatic-tragic-scandalous ending.

Freud's worst failures and darkest hours can be captured by the idea of 'Nietzsche's Abyss' -- and his best successes can be captured by the idea of 'Nietzsche's Mountain'.

I would have to say that Freud's full exposition of psychoanalysis has to be viewed as a steep climb to the top of Nietzsche's Mountain.

And his first conscious, early childhood (transference) memory -- and its transference interpretation -- has to be viewed as....

The First True Case of Psychoanalysis.

-- David Gordon Bain (Revised Edition, December 18th, 2014).

Some Points of Distinction Between Freud's Concept of The Id and My Modified Freudian Concept of 'The Id-Ego'

2014-09-13T20:36:00.003-07:00

Is it worth the time and energy required to try to re-define and re-describe Freud's concept of 'the id' as 'the id-ego' or 'the narcissistic ego' or the 'narcissistic id-ego'?

This would go against the grain of 91 years (1923 to 2014) of 'Classical Freudian' teaching and training.

Having said this, there are probably a good proportion of practicing Object Relations Psychoanalysts out there who don't even use the concept of the id anymore, or if they do, they use it sparingly, cautiously, perhaps as an adjective more than a noun, to the point where in many psychoanalytic circles it may have already become like a spare tire on an old, used car.

If you look at the Object Relations psychoanalysis of Fairbairn and Winnicott in particular, they have tried to move Psychoanalysis -- or at least Object Relations Psychoanalysis -- from an 'Instinct and/or Impulse-Drive Psychoanalysis/Psychology' (it is nice how ID Psychology could/can be used as an acronym for 'Impulse-Drive Psychoanalysis/Psychology) to an 'Object-Attachment-Seeking Psychoanalysis/and Psychology' (where the term 'object' is used technically to mean 'person' or 'image of a person' although it could mean 'image of a non-person object' as well).

From 'Classical (Fantasy) Psychoanalysis' to 'Greater Classical (Reality-Fantasy) Psychoanalysis'

2014-08-09T04:37:00.001-07:00

Modified and updated Aug. 19th, 29th, Sept 7, 2014...dgb

Change the way you conceptualize something -- thinking outside the box to use the now common expression -- and you change the direction of your thought process.

Freud changed the direction of psychoanalysis when he rejected after 1896 his hard-earned reality-memory-trauma-seduction (childhood sexual abuse) theory which is often now referred to as 'Pre'-Psychoanalysis (1893-1896) in favor of the freshly evolving theory in his mind at the time that would carry his thinking the rest of his life -- i.e., his 'instinct-fantasy-drive-childhood sexuality-Oedipal' theory that Freud is now mainly famous (or infamous) for, which, together, is generally referred to as 'Classical' Psychoanalysis (1897-1939).

But what if Freud made a mistake rejecting his early reality theory to the extent that he did, which is a question that many serious analysts and non-analysts alike have asked themselves over the years -- especially when it came down to Freud choosing 'imagined' childhood sexual abuse (The Oedipus or Electra Complex in young girls) over the 'real' childhood sexual abuse that Freud was hearing about from is clients in his earliest years of investigation (1893-1896, and even before)?

This is the question that basically triggered the Psychoanalytic Scandal of the early 1980s involving
The Projects Director of The Freud Archives at the time -- Dr. Jeffrey Masson -- telling the whole world that Freud had turned his back on, and 'suppressed', childhood sexual abuse after 1896 with a growing strength of inflexible dogma the more years he put behind him after 1896, and that he did this as an act of 'moral loss of courage' in order to perhaps save his job and career, and not clash swords with the people who had power over his destiny -- the members (all men) of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society.

This paints a less than idealistic picture of Freud and his possible moral choice at the time. It could be that he was under a lot of duress from The Society -- basically being blacklisted by them, while Freud had a rapidly growing family to feed, Anna Freud having just been born in December, 1895. Or we can choose to believe what Psychoanalysis has told us to believe, and that is that Freud basically rejected his trauma-sexual abuse theory because it was an 'inferior' theory to his evolving fantasy theory, and/or that Freud never really completely abandoned his trauma theory -- it just played a subsidiary role in his thinking after 1896.

But how often do we hear of a theorist-therapist making such a radical 180 degree turn in theory in such a very short time -- proclaiming in the spring of 1896 that ALL of his cases of hysteria and obsessional neurosis had at their roots a history of childhood sexual abuse -- and that the members of The Vienna Society were 'jackasses' for not listening to him; and then turning around within the next year and a half and saying that he was wrong -- that the number of childhood sexual abuse theories that he had before believed were 'real', could not have possibly been real, that there were too many such cases to be 'credibly' deemed real, all the things that the Society had thrown at Freud a year and a half earlier, calling his theory a 'scientific fairy tale' -- Freud although initially rebelling against them and calling them 'jackasses' for not believing in the reality of his theory, well, it seems that Freud, between 1896 and 1897 basically internalized their argument, as well as finding an alternative set of theories that would take Psychoanalysis in a whole new direction -- for better, and/or for worse.

Looking back at it now, doesn't this whole series of events seem highly suspicious -- Freud basically going from rebelling to succumbing to the what The Society wanted to hear from him? This is what Masson argued throughout the 1980s and early 1990s (and still believes now) although The International Psychoanalytic Institute would not have anything to do with such an argument -- especially the part about Freud 'losing moral courage' -- and still will not to this day, although silently 'childhood trauma' has re-emerged as a heavy factor in contemporary psychoanalytic theory, whether that be from an Object Relations perspective, and Attachment Theory perspective, or a Self-Psychology perspective -- just not from Freud's original 1893 to 1896 perspective, which in my opinion, remains the proper foundation of ALL psychoanalysis, and, in large part, most brands of non-psychoanalytic therapy. Did patriarchal Vienna politics change psychoanalysis in 1896?

It certainly looks like it to me -- especially when you factor in the February, 1895 Emma Ekstein nasal surgery fiasco, and the birth of Freud's (and Fliess's?) 'wish fulfillment' theory between the rest of 1895 and 1896 -- small snippets of it visible in Freud's April-May, 1896 essay on hysteria being caused by childhood sexual abuse, foreshadowing the 180 degree radical turn of psychoanalysis to shortly come, the part about childhood sexual abuse being left behind, and the rise of The Oedipal Complex and the 'little girls erotic fantasies towards her dad 'allegedly distorting' her 'allegedly real' memories of childhood sexual abuse -- taking the place of the former childhood sexual abuse theory.

Looking back at this whole sequence of events from my 2014 historical pedestal, as Masson was in the 1980s, I am more inclined to support the opinion of Masson than The International Psychoanalytic Institute that 'something still smells rotten in the town of Vienna in the year of 1896.

Freud could have been a very early and brave women's and children's social activist around the implementation of better political and legal services to protect against the abuse of women and children in the family. For a very brief period in history -- April-May, 1896 -- he was. And then everything turned around and folded like a house of cards -- and now Freud remains heavily criticized -- rightly so -- for being the creator of a set of patriarchal assumptive biases that were built into (the poisoned?) heart and soul of Classical Psychoanalysis. How often after 1896 has real childhood sexual abuse been overlooked, ignored, suppressed in Classical Psychoanalytic offices around the world? That is a very scary question. Masson was quoted as saying that Psychoanalysis would have to recall all patients starting in 1900 (maybe earlier) like Ford had to recall all its Pintos!
Couldn't Freud have worked out an integrative 'reality-fantasy' theory that was at least more reality based than what he ended up creating? Or that wouldn't have satisfied the narcissistic demands of The Vienna Society who, it would certainly seem, didn't want to hear any more theories about childhood sexual abuse?

Psychoanalysis, over the years, became more and more criticized as being an 'Old Boys Club' -- a proponent of Victorian Patriarchal Bias as opposed to the proponent of 'Women's and Children's Civil Rights and Protections' that it could have become if Freud had stayed on his original path -- blowing the whistle on childhood sexual abuse, and continuing to blow it until changes were made in the rights and protections of women and children in abusive family settings.

Now, the opposite might have happened if Freud had persisted in the direction he was going in his April-May 1896 essay on childhood sexual abuse. He might have lost patients -- which in the letter of May 4th, 1896 to Fliess, Freud said that he had -- that his waiting room was empty and that he had been blackballed by The Vienna Society, doctors no longer referring patients to him. If this had continued, he would have been out of business, perhaps his career destroyed, and we might have never heard from Freud again. All speculation of course. But worthy of strong consideration -- the circumstantial, historical evidence, especially in the unabridged Freud to Fliess letters edited by Masson, seems strong enough to suggest that Freud purposely steered clear of any more serious talk about childhood sexual abuse. The 'erotic fantasies of children' took its place -- some might say a little too 'coincidentally' so.

Well, I intend to integrate the two bipolar opposite theories -- trauma theory and fantasy theory -- that Freud never integrated.

Masson said that he didn't believe it could be done although he liked my seemingly passionate spirit in trying. That was back in 2010. Probably, he would be less generous if he were to comment today -- although I am only surmising.

In one sense, this would require a rather massive integration -- connecting Freud's work of 1893 to 1896 harmoniously and logically with the rest of his work from 1897 to 1939.

But in another sense, it is a relatively easy integration -- or at least the crucial part of it.

Let us say that 'hysterics' -- a label that is not used much anymore (perhaps replaced in good part by the label of 'borderline personality') -- as well as almost all other 'neurotics' (another label that is not much used today but I will continue to use it) -- suffer from what might be called 'Early Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder' (EPTSD). Well, a part of the customary 'fallout' of this disorder is something that might be called 'Post-Traumatic-Fantasy-Defense and/or Compensation' (PTFDC).

And right there -- in that paragraph above -- is the essence of the main idea that we need to integrate Freudian early trauma theory with his later fantasy theory.

On this note, we will stop for today, and continue on this path, in the essays that follow.

-- dgb, Sept 7th, 2014.

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging...

-- Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process....

The New, Introductory Essays to DGB Neo-Psychoanalysis: Essay 3: Key Connection Points Between Freud, Adler, and Freudian Trauma vs. Fantasy Theory

2014-07-30T07:33:00.003-07:00

Let us imagine the life of a newborn infant -- first in Freudian terms, then in Kleinian terms, then we will split from both Freud and Klein, and move in a different direction.

According to Freud, the newborn infant is 'all id' (1923) -- and all 'primary narcissism' (1914).

Connecting these two concepts is important.

Freud officially introduced his new concept -- narcissism -- in his 1914 essay, 'On Narcissism'.

Perhaps it was partly introduced as a 'counter-concept' to Jung's concept of 'life libido' (as opposed to Freud's 'sex libido'), and Adler's concept of 'The Masculine Protest' (which would eventually become 'superiority striving'.)

Freud's concept of narcissism gave him a concept that had a little more 'generalization capability' than sexuality (although Freud generalized 'sexuality' to the max, and probably beyond).

To be sure, narcissism and sexuality were -- and are -- often intimately connected, but still, narcissism approached the subject of 'self', 'self-interest', 'self-absorption', 'selfishness', and 'self-esteem' (its presence and/or absence) in a partly new and different way than 'sexuality' did.

Narcissism can also be more closely connected to the 'will to survive', the 'will to power', and the 'will to self-empowerment' than sexuality can, although again, the two different factors can be partly or closely tied together in this regard.

So let us get this clear -- by 1914 both Adler (1911) and Jung (1913) had left and/or been left by Freud -- thus, by 1914 (On Narcissism), Freud was rhetorically and theoretical 'doing battle' with both Adler and Jung in public print (on top of past personal correspondence and/or private arguments.)

Now paradoxically -- let's start with Adler here -- two of the respective concepts that were driving Freud and Adler apart -- narcissism (Freud) vs. the masculine protest or later superiority-striving (Adler) -- also could be used as a partial bridge to bring them back together again (albeit that was not going to happen in either of their respective lifetimes. But in my fantasy, I can bring some of their ideas back into harmony with each other).

Paradoxically, as well, both concepts can be seen to have been essentially born as 'twin concepts' from the same Vienna Society Scientific Meeting -- in which Freud and Adler were very much on the same page -- November 7th, 1906. (As a historical aside, Freud would meet Jung in person a year and four months later, March 3rd, 1907, according to Duane Schultz, author of 'Intimate Friends, Dangerous Enemies: The Turbulent Relationship Between Freud and Jung', 1990, p. 64.

Adler was the presenter in this meeting -- about to publish a forthcoming essay and/or book on
'Organ Inferiority and Overcompensation' which was the subject of Adler's presentation.

According to Herman Nunberg and Ernst Federn, co-editors of the 'Minutes Of The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, Voume1, 1906-1908' (1962, p. 42)....

Freud attributed great importance to Adler's work; it has brought his own work a step further. To judge from the immediate impression, much of what Adler said may be correct.

He singled out two leading ideas as significant and fertile: 1. the concept of compensation, according to which an organic inferiority is counterbalanced by a supervalent cerebral activity; and 2. that the repression is accomplished by the formation of a psychic superstructure. A similar formulation had occurred to him.

(More from the editors...) He (Freud? Adler?) can adduce the fact that in persons whose egotism, excessive ambition, and the like are prominent, analysis uncovers serious organic defects as the deepest cause. (DGB note: In Adler's later work, 'organic defects' would be generalized to 'inferiority feelings', 'inferiority complexes', and the 'compensation' would become 'superiority striving'.)

Nunberg and Federn note: It seems that Freud had in mind what was later characterized as an overcompensation or counterbalance for a narcissistic 'injury' although he uses anatomical language here. Nunberg and Federn also note: By the formulation of a 'psychic superstructure', Freud's similar formulation may have been referring to the formulation that repression is accomplished by the ego.

DGB note: If we combine Freudian and Adlerian language, including still later to come respective conceptuology, we might say (my integration) that early childhood 'ego traumacy' or 'narcissistic injury' results in sustained 'self-esteem damage' and a 'supervalent narcissistic fixation' around this 'injury' -- like inflammation around a physical wound -- that is ongoing, like a wound that never heals (unless it does heal), and an 'immuno-self-esteem-defensive-compensation reaction' that never quits as long as the 'psychic wound' doesn't heal, which tends to often be the case.

The 'immune-self-esteem-defensive-compensation reaction' can take almost an endless variety of customized defensive efforts of which some of the more generic reactions include: distancing (phobic and/or paranoid schizoid behavior), aggression, approval-seeking, addiction, obsessive-compulsion, compromise formation, displacement, sublimation, transference, disavowal (dissociation), projection, reaction formation, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, hysteria, hypochondria, psychosis, and I could keep going, but this is off the top of my head....

One last point here before we stop: It should be noted that the 'shift' in the personality from traumacy and self-esteem injury (inferiority complex) to defense and compensation involves one very important defensive compensation that still needs to be discussed -- specifically, fantasy.

Thus, we have a connecting point between Freudian trauma theory and his later fantasy theory that Freud himself never noticed enough to turn his 'trauma theory' and his 'fantasy theory' into a 'trauma-defensive compensation-fantasy' theory.

This is a huge revelation as it integrates Massonian criticisms of Freud's fantasy theory (and his 'suppression' and/or at least partial -- if not more than partial -- abandonment of his earlier trauma-seduction theory (1893-1896), at the expense of the 'birth' of Freud's burgeoning instinct and fantasy theory after 1896 until the year he died (1939).

1. Thesis: Freud's trauma-seduction (childhood sexual assault) theory;

2. Counter-Thesis: Freud's instinct-fantasy theory from 1897 to 1939, as supported by Anna Freud in 1981-82 before she died (and backed up by Kurt Eissler and the rest of The International Psychoanalytic Board of Directors);

3. Synthesis: DGB Traumacy-(Defensive-Compensation)-Fantasy (T-F) Theory.

This is where I will leave you today.

In our next essay, we will delve deeper into Freud's use of 'the id' as a primary personality construct, and whether this construct is still useful, needs to be modified, and/or needs to be scrapped altogether.

-- dgb, August 3rd, 2014.

-- David Gordon Bain, dgbainsky@yahoo.com

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Associative-Integrative Negotiations....

-- Are Still in Process....

The New, Introductory Essays to DGB Neo-Psychoanalysis: Essay 2: Should Psychoanalysis Keep Freud's Concept of 'The Id'?

2014-07-27T04:51:00.000-07:00

My goal here is to integrate Freud's 'Early' Psychoanalysis (1893-1896), his 'Classical' Psychoanalysis (1897-1939), Object Relations, and Self Psychology. I will even invent a new label here -- 'Greater Classical' Psychoanalysis which will include both Freud's Early Psychoanalysis and his later Classical Psychoanalysis.

Our starting point for this integration will be Freud's concept of 'the id'. How do we integrate Freud's 'bio-psychoanalysis' with Melanie Klein's and Ronald Fairbairn's respective brands of Object Relations. Melanie Klein already gave us her conceptualization of this integration which included Freud's concept of the id and the 'life' and 'death instincts'.

In contrast, Fairbairn more or less turned away from Freud's bio-psychoanalysis to focus on the 'object attachment seeking goals' of people as opposed to their 'pleasure-seeking (or 'beyond pleasure-seeking') biological drives' (primarily in Freud's view, sex and aggression). Nobody says that this distinction between biological drives (Freud's life and death instincts) and Fairbairn's 'object-attachment seeking wishes, impulses, and/or goals' has to be an 'either/or' proposition. Klein certainly tried to integrate the two sets of motivations, which some psychoanalysts liked and others didn't. In the resulting 'battle' between 'The Anna Freudians' (who didn't like Klein's re-working of Freud's Classical Psychoanalysis) and 'The Kleinians' (who did), Fairbairn positioned his 'school' (which he didn't even like viewing as a school) as 'The Middle School' (which stayed out of the Anna Freud vs. Melanie Klein theoretical feud).

Well, I like Fairbairn's work a lot. However, I am going to try to re-integrate Fairbairn's work with both Melanie Klein's work and Freud's Greater Classical Psychoanalysis (as well as -- later -- to both Adler's work on lifestyle and conscious early memories, and inferiority feelings and superiority striving' as well as to Kohut's work on self-psychology, narcissism, and 'narcissistic transferences').

We have a lot of work ahead of us, and we are just beginning.

Let us start with Freud's concept of 'the id'.

In the divergence of Object Relations (OR) from Classical Psychoanalysis, some OR theorists have hung onto Freud's concept of the id (Melanie Klein and her followers, Hartman, Erickson, Winnicott) while other have not (Sullivan, Fairbairn, Guntrip) (Guntrip, 1971,1973, Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and The Self.) My thoughts that are unfolding below are based very much on this editorial summation on Guntrip's part of the evolution of OR thinking from the dualism of Freud's combined 'psycho-biology' and 'preliminary OR thinking').

In the OR group mentioned in the last paragraph, I probably have been influenced mostly by Fairbairn and Klein, partly by Guntrip in his conceptualization of the 'schizoid personality' often underlying more 'normal' and/or 'normal-neurotic' behavior.

However, I fall into line with the first group of OR thinkers who hung onto Freud's conceptualization of the id, as opposed to Guntrip who believed that psychodynamic thinking -- or at least OR psychodynamic thinking -- was being chained down by Freud's psycho-biological (id) conceptualizations. I disagree with that belief on Guntrip's part but will make my own effort below to more harmoniously integrate Freudian, Kleinian, and Fairbairnian thinking.

If you are a beginning Freud student, you can look up Freud's conceptualization of the id just by googling 'the id' for starters. That is our starting point. My conceptualization of the id can be either viewed as very similar to Freud's -- or very different -- depending on your perspective. Mine is a more OR conceptualization of the id which perhaps may bring the id more in line with Object Relations thinking -- not only of the Kleinian type but also of the Fairbairnian type (which doesn't include the concept of the id).

Basically, the first thing I am trying to do is to turn the id into a functional part of the ego, and visa versa. Freud's conceptualization of the id as being like a 'cauldron' or a 'reservoir' containing 'the life and death instincts' is rather mechanistic and inorganic -- a 'thing', a 'container' -- compared to the idea of the id as a thinking, feeling, driving, wanting, lusting part of the personality. I would conceptualize the id by connecting it to another name -- 'the narcissistic id-ego'. (There is some Kohutian-type thinking entering the picture here).

However, I will distinguish between two parts of the id -- the part mainly defined by Freud as being unconscious (subconscious, below our consciousness) -- as opposed to the part of the id -- our subjective id -- that either 'sneaks' its way up into our conscious personality -- or 'drives' and 'over powers' the defenses of our more 'socialized, morality-reality-based ego' on its way up there, and sometimes into blunt, direct action.

This is entirely different than Freud's insistence that we can only interpret the full desires of the id (which, according to Freud, is totally operating below consciousness), symbolically and symptomatically through 'the vicissitudes of the id' (does this semantic distinction really have any viable, functional meaning?) i.e., through phenomena like dreams, neurotic symptoms, jokes, projections, creations, sublimations, and the like. One way or the other, the subjective desires of our id -- or our 'id-ego' or our 'narcissistic ego' -- whether operating consciously or subconsciously -- are fully active in our personality at all times. Our 'id' is not like an 'alien' inside of ourselves (although sometimes it may feel like it) -- it is ourselves. It is that part of our personality that exists before and after socialization and morality are burned into our ego and superego. Our id and id-ego or narcissistic ego reflect what we want 'selfishly' before empathy and altruism and morality and ethics enter the picture.

So, in effect, our ego is part of our id, and our id is part of our ego. However, there is a part of our ego that identifies with our id, versus another part of our ego that both identifies with our superego (as well as external socialization, morality, ethics, law...) and in this identification defends against our 'idian desires'.

Thus, we can say that our ego is 'split within itself' (actually many ways if we want to classify our 'metaphysical ego-functions and ego-states or ego-compartments' in this manner.)

Or if you go back to Freud's conceptualization, we would have to say that our first 'split' is a 'splitting of the id into the id and the ego' -- or a splitting of our primary, primal, uncivil id-ego into a more civil, socialized, evolving id-ego

Either way, we have to say that our basic, primal-primary id or id-ego either expands or splits in a manner that our more conscious id-ego or ego is caught between a rock and a hard place, or 'internally split in two' -- identifying with either and/or both the narcissistic desires of the id or id-ego as well as the more socialized, civil restraints of that part of the id-ego or ego that identifies with our internalized superego and the external forces of both reality and moral-legal civilization.

Now, let us say for argument sake, that the id splits first into the ego. Before that, at birth, and for the first little while (a highly debatable time period) -- or metaphysically, maybe we are just 'imagining' this 'split' but need to classify it as happening 'conceptually-theoretically' -- the id and ego can be viewed as 'undifferentiated' and even Freud in one of his two last papers, 'The Origin of Psychoanalysis' (1938/39), used the term 'ego-id' right at the beginning of the paper.

So, at this point, we can either go Melanie Klein's route and say that the id and ego start to split at birth, during the relationship between the newborn infant and the mother (or mother's breast); or conversely, we can wait a little bit longer in the toddler's development, and say that the splitting of the id and ego -- or both, or both together -- starts to take place around 3 or 4 years old, 'the Oedipus period of development' -- and can start to be traced by more 'conscious memories of early childhood experiences'.

For purposes of my conceptualization here, I am going to say that the splitting of the id and the ego -- though certainly hugely influenced by the earliest child-mother relationship -- from a more 'subjectively empirical psychoanalytic perspective', can start to be traced with the client's/person's first conscious childhood memory. (Here, I am influenced by Adler).

This will be our working hypothesis as I 'introject' (or project) a hugely important element of Adlerian theory (from about the 1920s) into early Freudian Psychoanalysis (1893-1896).

At this point, I am going to say that 'creativity' starts significantly from our 'id' or 'id-ego' because the id, according to Freud, and supported by me, operates by 'no boundaries' and/or 'the seemingly paradoxical collision' of opposing (bipolar) ideas that can be 'integrated dialectically' as I am about to do.

So without trying to explain why, let me do something highly unorthodox and unique here -- and that is, pull an important part of Adlerian theory (lifestyle theory and the interpretation of conscious early memories) into early Freudian trauma theory.

Next, I will say that important 'lifelong, lifestyle-transference scripts' can be viewed as starting to form -- or at least become visible to a theorist-therapist who knows how to interpret them -- in the person's/client's first conscious memory -- and particularly, usually, the person's/client's first conscious traumatic memory (even if by 'traumatic' here, we mean what might be viewed as 'subjectively traumatic in the eyes and experience of a 3 or 4 year old toddler'. Early childhood rejections, exclusions, and/or perceived failures are very likely to stand out in this regard.

From these experiences -- and their opposites (triumphs, accomplishments, encouragements, and 'narcissistic fixations' of a positive as opposed to a negative, traumatic, sort), can be interpreted in partly psychoanalytic, partly Adlerian fashion, in a way that we (meaning the theorist and/or therapist) can start to 'profile' a person's most important 'transference scripts' (an Eric Berne influence here). These transference scripts can be interpreted from conscious early memories of scenes that we will call 'transference memories' of 'transference scenes'.

And that is where we will stop today.

-- dgb, Monday, July 27th, 2014,

-- David Gordon Bain

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The New, Introductory Essays to DGB Neo-Psychoanalysis: Essay 1: Some Definitions of Different Types and Schools of Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis

2014-06-24T20:23:00.001-07:00

Comments, feedback to David Bain, dgbainsky@yahoo.com

July 26, 2014

1. Introduction To This Multi-Integrative-Dialectic Project

Let me warn you ahead of time. If you are going to read my work -- and I certainly hope you will -- be prepared to read an integrative combination of orthodox Freudian theory, Object Relations and Self Psychology, different brands of neo-psychoanalysis and cognitive theory/therapy, and my own original, orthodox and unorthodox, formal contributions laid out here for the first time, having studied in the field of psychology as a passionate, obsessional hobby for over 40 years.

I think I have a sufficient academic resume to hold decent credibility of what I write about. I have an Honours BA in Psychology and Human Relations and Counselling Studies from The University of Waterloo (1974-1979), wrote my Honours Thesis for the highly acclaimed Cognitive-Behavioral Therapist, Dr. Donald Meichenbaum, spent two years studying/training at The Adler Institute of Ontario (1980-81), including attending a weekend seminar conducted by one of the founders of The Adler Institute, Dr. Harold Mosak, attended various workshops at The Gestalt Institute of Toronto, including seminars being run by two of the past Directors of The Toronto Gestalt Institute -- the late Jorge Rosner, and Joanne Greenham.

In 2010, I interviewed Dr. Jeffrey Masson in Hegel's Hotel (The Jeffrey Masson Interview) -- it was Masson who ignited my passion for Psychoanalysis ironically after he had already exited it.

On Linked In, you can find the rest of my resume online, including various commendations from an impressive assortment of different psychologists practicing all over the world. There will always be a list of psychologists who do not like what I have to write, but that is the case in any field of endeavor you work in, and it is the positive feedback that helps to keep me going.

All told, I have spent some 40 years of my adult life studying psychology as a hobby -- particularly the research and theory end of things -- and can converse with relative ease, and move in and out of, most of the main schools of psychotherapy that can be classified under one of the following headings: 1. Psychoanalysis, 2.Neo-Psychoanalysis, 3. Humanistic-Existentialism, 4. Cognitive Therapy, 5. Transactional Analysis, 6. Client-Centered Therapy, 7. Gestalt Therapy -- call them 'The Magnificent 7' in the field of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy.

My mission is to 'synthesize and synergize' The Magnificent 7 into one mulit-dialectic-integrative school of psychology that I will call 'Quantum Psychoanalysis and Neo-Post-Psychoanalysis'.

I will do my best to communicate the main essence of this 'Multi-Dialectic-Integrative (Quantum) Psychoanalysis in about 50 mini-lecture-essays that you can read here on Hegel's Hotel -- starting with this one.

I am always working to try to improve my evolving model of the human psyche -- based very much on different parts of Freudian theory with a lot more 'compartments' than Freud's famous triadic model -- id, ego, and superego, as I 'split the ego' not only in partly Freudian, partly Object Relations style, but also 'split the id' and 'split the superego' as well.

Metaphorically speaking, Freud's 'Victorian house' becomes a much larger 'monster home' in the 21st century -- indeed, you can say that it becomes the most important part of my now 8 year old 'Hegel's Hotel' project and contribution, the metaphor being for a 'symbolic hotel' that is built from -- say 50 to 100 philosophers and psychologists or more, each with their own 'room' or 'set of rooms' or 'entire floor', or more.

Certainly, Freud deserves 'numerous floors' in Hegel's Hotel, from the basement up to about the 30th floor, if not an entire 'hotel' in his own name.

Some of the most unorthodox -- and stretching outside the boundaries of 'normal' psychoanalytic thinking -- psychoanalytic ideas back in Freud's lifetime were called 'wild' psychoanalysis by Freud, to indicate their 'crossing' of usual psychoanalytic boundaries into a realm that lay 'outside' of usual psychoanalytic practice. Freud once wrote an essay on 'wild' psychoanalysis towards the end of his career.

Otto Gross and Wilhelm Reich stand out in my mind, and probably Ferenczi towards the end of his career, maybe even Rank as well. All had important contributions to make to psychoanalysis and/or what would eventually become different brands of neo-psychoanalysis.

So I feel that I am in good company and don't mind if you call me a 'wild' (underground) psychoanalytic thinker. In fact, I quite like it.

As long as I can make my case for the rationale behind what I about to write about here. In this regard, there will be lots of quotes from Freud at different times in his professional career, as well as a further assortment of psychoanalytic, neo-post-psychoanalytic, and even some 'wild' psychoanalytic thinkers, all screened and sometimes modified through the brain of yours truly here.

Even Melanie Klein was a 'wild' psychoanalytic thinker when she first introduced her own ideas into psychoanalysis. 'Wild' can mean 'free thinking' and 'creative thinking' as well, in some cases, referring to 'quackery'. I would prefer to stay away from the latter label.

'Quantum' refers to the idea of 'multi-dialectic-multi-bipolar-integrative thinking'.

To the best of my ability, I want to keep these presentations short and simple...

And also, educationally entertaining...

If you are still with me, I am happy, and we will turn to a discussion of 'the id'.

Cheers for those of you who choose to stay on board with me here, and in the presentations about to come..

I will be working hard for you to keep this subject matter interesting, stimulating, intriguing, and aimed at 'stretching' your own personal and professional concepts, theories, paradigms, and boundaries beyond the realm of any type of 'orthodox' psychoanalytic theory being taught today.

There is only one place in the world that you will find the integrative type of theory that is going to be presented here.

And that is here.

We all need a little 'wildness' in our lives to keep it interesting, and to keep ourselves both interested and interesting. Beyond a certain extreme -- well, I don't intend to drop off the deep end here, or at anywhere in my future presentations. I aim to avoid all 'abysses' as we strive to climb to top of Mt. Everest, or alternatively, referring back to my earlier metaphor, build Hegel's Hotel high into the sky. Please join me all motivated climbers and builders.

-- dgb, July 26th, 2014

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Essay 13: A 'Universal' Element in Most Different Schools of Psychotherapy

2014-05-27T05:57:00.001-07:00

There is a more or less universal element in most major schools of psychotherapy that perhaps I can describe the essence of here.

Specifically, we all tend to 'dissociate' some of our more 'unsocial (unpalatable, irreconcilable, unbearable) emotions'; they tend to get locked up in what might be called a 'stress bin' or an 'emotional dissociation vault'....and over time this bin or vault full of stressed out, often toxically unexpressed emotions, can make us sick...(and/or miserable to live with).

Release the troubling elixir of emotions from our 'dissociation vault' -- and we relieve stress in both our mind and body...We feel better....

What person does not become 'emotionally out of balance' depending on particular context situations...from time to time? Some obviously more than others, and some obviously to a greater extent than others.... But it is by working through this process -- in the here and now -- that we all can 'alleviate' the stress that may be building up inside our 'Dissociated Stress Vault or Bin (DSV or DSB or just Stress Bin)'

Now, we all have 'Signature Methods of Operation' (SMOs) or 'Signature Transference-Immediacy Constructions' (STICs) or 'Signature Serial Behavior Patterns (SSBPs)' that we create and that we are responsible for both what we put into our Stress Bin and how we vicariously or subconsciously deal with what we put in there. Sometimes what we put in there goes back to our earliest childhood memories....

'Transference' issues belong to the 'there and then' -- these are past learnings and compensations from our often earliest learnings that we 'transfer' or 'associate' with new things (immediacy issues) that are happening in our present day life .

Transference and immediacy issues exist in different parts of the personality. But every now and again -- actually, to different degrees of intensity and urgency -- they are connecting all the time. We base our present experiences and perceptions, interpretations, judgments, very much on what we have experienced, learned, interpreted, judged, and compensated for in the past. Thus, immediacy issues become 'trigger stimuli' for the release of 'unfinished or unresolved transference issues' -- and visa versa.

These are what I call 'TICs' and/or 'TIPs' or 'TIPIs' or 'TIPS' (Transference-Immediacy Constructions, Transference Immediacy Projections, Transference-Immediacy-Projective-Identifications, Transference-Immediacy-Projective-Sublimations'...respectively...)

After a while of watching -- or reading in this case -- a person in action, one can start to get a feel for his or her SMO or STIC...or transference complexes/serial behavior patterns.

If you are a therapist, processing a client's SMO (again, signature method of operation) or his or her transference complexes -- as well as our own SMO based on counter-transference complexes -- is essentially what a therapist should be doing -- or at least a significant part of what a therapist should be doing -- both diagnostically and therapeutically in the therapeutic relationship...

That is what a psychoanalyst does, that is what an Adlerian psychologist does, that is what a Gestalt therapist does, that is what a transactional analyst or cognitive-behavior therapist does (relative to the 'games people play' in TA, and relative to the 'unbearable ideas' that cognitive therapy is looking for...

They diagnose and treat SMOs, STICs, serial behavior patterns, underlying transference complexes and the 'unbearable ideas and feelings' that these transference complexes are based on....
In other words, there is a certain 'degree of universality' to what most therapists are trying to help a client work through in the therapeutic process...

-- dgb, May 27th, 2014...

-- David Gordon Bain...

-- Dialectic GAP -- Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic -- Bridging Associations, Integrations, and Negotiations...Are Still in Process....

Essay 12: Hegel's Hotel: Dichotomies and Integrations of The Human Spirit: Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Adler, Klein, Fairbairn, Horney, Perls, Fromm...

2014-05-15T03:25:00.002-07:00

Table of Contents

Part 1: Vision and Mission Statement: Homeostatic Balance and Humanistic-Existential Self-and-Social Acceptance-Actualization-Achievement, Contact and Celebration of Excellence;

A/ Hegel's Dialectic Hotel: Thesis, Counter-Thesis, Synthesis, and Start All Over Again (Hopefully At a 'Higher' Level of Evolution)

B/ Nietzsche's Dionysian Superman -- and Apollonian Nemesis: Institutionalized Thinking;

C/ Freud's Dualistic and Dialectic (Triangulated) Man: The Id, The Superego, and The Ego

D/ Other Philosophical Influences;

E/ Other Psychological Influences:

F/ Introducing GAP-DGB Philosophy-Psychology and The Dichotomized Phenomenology of The Human Spirit -- Good and Bad -- Unified and Split -- Ecstatically Achieving and Despairingly Failing;

Part 2: Theory and Therapy;

A/ GAP-DGB Ego-State Theory and Therapy: The Splitting of The Ego, Superego, and Id In The Process of Learning, Transference, Specialized Function, and Compensatory Defense

B/ The Nurturing Superego: Loving, Encouragement, Altruism, and Self-Esteem Enhancement

C/ Turning 'The Terrible Internal Trio' -- 1. The Critical-Righteous Alpha Superego; 2. The Rebellious-(Anarchist-Deconstructive, Counter-Critical and Counter-Righteous) Beta Under-ego; and 3. The Anxiety-Ridden, Attachment-Seeking, Omega Under-ego -- into 'The Terrific Internal Trio';

D/ GAP-DGB Central Ego Theory and Therapy ('SPICIER' versions of CBT: The Cognitive Awareness-Emotional Contact-Behavioral Achievement Wheel, The Communication Awareness Wheel, Dreams-Goals-Behaviors-Achievements, Integrations, Next...);

E/ GAP-DGB Depth Psychology: Education, Diagnosis and Psychotherapy ('FAULT' Freudian-Adlerian-Universal-Lifestyle-Transference 'TIPS' (Trauma, Identifications and Introjections, Projections and Phobias, Sublimations and other Super-Charged Compensations, Complexes, Creations...)

F/ GAP-DGB Re-Attachment Theory and Therapy;

1. Better Internal Object (Subject-Object-Self) Relations;

2. Better External Object (Subject-Object-Social) Relations;

3. Better Self-Work Relations (Searching for Self-Excellence Inside and Outside Ourselves Through Our Spiritual Passion For Our Work)

4. Uniting Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Adler, Jung, Klein, Horney, Fromm, Perls, and Other Philosophical and Psychological Mentors Inside Ourselves to Create Our 'Own Path' Inside 'Hegel's Hotel', Our Heart Beating To The Drum of Our Own 'Phenomenology of Spirit', and to The Potential of Our Own 'Superman' or 'Superwoman'....Who Dares To Challenge and Traverse 'Nietzsche's Rope' Overlooking 'Nietzsche's Abyss' on the way From Our 'Old' Mountain of Entropy, Apathy, and Sterile Non-Being...to Our 'New' Mountain Plateau of Being, Becoming, Self-Awareness, Self-Contact, Self-Achievement, Self-Excellence... -- Diogenes, Dionysus, and Apollo All Dancing Together Inside Us in United Fashion To 'The Beating of Our Heart and Our Phenomenology of The Human Spirit United and at Its Best....

-- dgb, May 24th, 2014,

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic, Gap-Bridging, Attainable, Integrative Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...

Essay 11: Cognitive-Behavior Theory, Early Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory (1893-1895), and a Movement Towards Integration

2014-05-13T05:08:00.001-07:00

Good morning everyone,

In the 1960s, the Behaviorists -- specifically, I believe it was B.F. Skinner -- came up with the idea of 'The Black Box' model-theory, in connection with his/their 'Stimulus-Response' model-theory.

The idea -- or assumption -- was (in very loose, layperson's terms), that if an experimenter gave an experimentee a 'provocative, conditioning stimulus' over and over again -- like a shock if a rat didn't run the maze right, or some food if it did -- then, applying this theory to humans, you wouldn't need a 'psychology of the mind' -- but simply leave it alone as an 'untouched' 'Black Box' inside our 'Brain' or 'Brain-Mind'. Experimenters didn't need to know about 'the Black Box' or man's 'Brain' or 'Brain-Mind' because they could control the 'response' elicited from the Black Box-Brain simply by 'controlling the variables' and the 'provocative conditioning stimuli' that could give the experimenter a reliable prediction of how the rat/human experimentee was going to behave. Welcome to Skinner's view of 'Utopia' -- Walden 2.

Then as a counter-reaction against Skinner's view of 'Utopia' and only 'scientifically investigating' man's 'observable behavior' as opposed to his 'internal, invisible, thought-feeling-impulse mind-brain (black box) process', along came the human-existentialists (actually they were already present), and the 'cognitive theorists and therapists' (they were just beginning to surface in the 50s and 60s), and also an 'integrative cognitive-behavior theorist and therapist' who I wrote my Honours Thesis in psychology for in 1979 (Dr. Donald Meichenbaum) at The University of Waterloo.

And in my Honours Thesis, I created a rather crude, robotic model-theory of man's 'black box-mind-brain' that went a little bit beyond the work of the already existing cognitive theorists/therapists at the time (Aaron Beck, George Kelly, Albert Ellis, before any of them in the 1930s -- Alfred Korzybski followed by S.I. Hayakawa -- and before any of them in ancient Greece, Epictetus -- 'Man is not disturbed by things but by the view he takes of them.', and the cognitive-behavior theorist who I was writing for and who was very familiar with the work of all these cognitive theorists mentioned above -- Dr. Meichenbaum -- who became very well recognized and appreciated for both his clinical-therapeutic work, and his theoretical academic essays and books

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

Donald Meichenbaum is a psychologist noted for his contributions to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). He developed a therapeutic technique called cognitive behavior modification (CBM), which focuses on identifying dysfunctional self-talk in order to change unwanted behaviors. In other words, Dr. Meichenbaum views behaviors as outcomes of our own self-verbalizations.
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Now, the essay I wrote back in 1979 can be represented (in updated fashion) by the model you see below you, as labelled by the acronym 'SPICIER'.

S -- Stimulus/Sensory...
P -- Perception,,,
I -- Interest (or lack of it, or Anti-Interest)...
C -- Choice of...
I -- Interpretive...
E -- Evaluative...
R -- Response...

You see, this is meant to be a 'SPICIER' model than Skinner's 'Black Box' theory because Skinner's Black Box theory tells us nothing about what is going on inside our 'Black Box' -- meaning our 'Brain'.

It is also a SPICIER model than the cognitive SBR model as supported by such Cognitive Therapists and Theorists as...Albert Ellis, Jerome Frank, Aaron Beck, George Kelley...

Because it delves deeper into the black box or belief or brain theory or brain-mind (SBMR) theory than what you get from just the word 'belief'....which can mean many things...assumptions, associations, inferences, interpretations, perceptions, evaluations, values, transferences....And the SPICIER model introduces the gestalt idea of 'interest' and the humanistic existential idea of 'choice'.

Now, if I wanted to present a 'SPITE-IER' model, then I would introduce the idea of 'Transference' -- and we would have -- Sensual Perception-Interest-Transference Energy-Interpretative-Evaluative-Response'...transference energy adding positive or negative energy to the already existing 'immediacy' or 'here-and-now' energy of the mind-brain's eco-system.

Now, if we introduce one of Freud's first 'neurotic formulas' back in 1893-1895, we come up with something like this -- creatively extrapolated on by yours truly and labelled with another acronym...

N equals DUIT which can mean a number of associated different things...

Neurosis equals Defense against Unbearable, Irreconcilable Transferences...

Neurosis equal Defense against Unbearable, Irreconcilable Theories...

We will leave things here for future discussion...

-- DGBN, May 13, 2014,

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...

Essay 10: A Multi-Integrative Psychoanalytic and Existential Model of The Human Personality

2014-05-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

A/ The Purpose of Models, Theories, and Paradigms

We must not forget that models are models, theories are theories, concepts are concepts, and things are things -- objects, persons, phenomena, processes...

Models are meant to help us understand and explain reality but they will never replace reality -- they are simply good, bad, or ugly representations of reality. As such, models are a mixture of 'representative reality' and 'fiction'. The more 'reality represented', usually the better the model. Reality will always have the last word. Models will always be subject to imperfection and criticism relative to what they attempt to do and explain.

With models and theories, we may put up 'arbitrary structural boundaries' where no such boundaries exist in real life. We make 'chunk' reality into 'compartments' that make it easier for us to study what we are studying but in the end, these 'arbitrary conceptual boundaries' and 'fictional compartments' are what they are -- and that is 'convenient fictional-fantasy devices' that can help make it easier to teach what we are teaching, and to study what we are studying, but still, we must not forget that these devices contain as much 'fantasy element' in their 'structural makeup' as they do 'reality representation'. We must not forget the 'as if' element to our model -- for example, our mind-brain and self-personality-character structure seems to function (and dysfunction) 'as if' the inside of our psyche looks and operates like this...

Different models can be used for different functions.

For example, my old 'Hegel's Hotel' model which is in the process of being integrated into the larger (or when I think about it, smaller) model you see represented by the title above: 'The Hegel-Nietzsche-Freud Estate Complex' -- was, and still is -- meant to convey the idea of a massive philosophy-psychology 'hotel' or 'estate' in which you can walk into -- say 50 different rooms -- and study a different philosopher or psychologist, or a different time period in philosophy, or the different cultures and countries associated with different philosophers and philosophies, or different paradigms in psychology....And then we would have The Great Hegelian-Dialectic Common Room -- spearheaded by the dialectic logic of 1.thesis; 2. counter-thesis; and 3. synthesis-integration-synergy.

In contrast, this DGB model of the human psyche -- or named differently after three great philosophical and psychological influences on my work -- Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud -- thus, the current name: 'The Hegel-Nietzsche-Freud Hotel' is a metaphor of the inside of the functioning (and dysfunctioning) 'human mind-brain and personality-character structure-Self'. Different models for different purposes.

Anyway, this is the spirit in which the model below is to be viewed and 'tried out for size' -- not only as a rather 'large' or 'over-sized' (depending on who's interpretation and who's judgment) 30 room 'monster house' or 'hotel' compared to Freud's much smaller and simpler 'three room house' model (id, ego, superego). This does not mean that -- 'implicitly speaking' -- there weren't more 'rooms' in Freud's 1923 model. It is just that my current DGB model aims to add some Object Relations and Existential 'rooms' that were not fully or even barely spelled out in the 1923 model, and just starting to surface in Freud's last two papers in 1938 -- 'Splitting of The Ego in The Process of Defence', and 'Outlines in Psychoanalysis'.

Although there are certain elements of Freud's triadic ego-id-superego model that still work very well -- indeed, it matches up very easily with Hegel's 'thesis-anti-thesis-synthesis' dialectic (or trialectic) formula -- still, this is the 21st century and not Victorian Europe; meaning that there have been significant expansions in Psychoanalytic theory since Freud died in 1939, especially down the Object Relations trail, and if Classical Psychoanalysts and/or extreme Freudian loyalists are not utterly intent on keeping Classical Psychoanalysis exactly the way he created it, then there is plenty of room to expand on the original Freudian model in order to better integrate it with both Object Relations and Humanistic-Existential psychology.

So here below, I have developed what I believe to be a much more 'multi-integrative mainly psychoanalytic' model, that can be used either in its entirety, and/or in its more specific regions and smaller parts. For different functions, we may need only to use 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 'compartments' of the model as opposed to the '30 compartment model'.

This 30 room 'Super-House' is not really as baffling as it might sound like it is -- indeed, I invite you to explore not only all the different rooms but also, all the different 'staircases', 'nooks and crannies' in this (hopefully beautiful) Classic Post Victorian House. If you have ever been to Toronto, imagine Casa Loma (or google it).

Hopefully, the brief synopsis of the model, as described below, will bring some clarity to the essence of the model.

Thus, without further adieu, let me try to briefly explain and summarize this new DGB model of the personality from mainly within the paradigm of psychoanalytic thinking.

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B/ The Newest DGB Model of The Personality Under The Influence of Multi-Integrative-Dialectic (Quantum) Psychoanalytic Thinking: Part 1: Largely Subconscious and Pre-Conscious 'Psycho-Structures' and 'Psycho-Dynamics' in The Personality

1. If we start with the concept of 'The GPS' -- our 'Genetic-Potential-Self' ('The Path', Part 1) with all our inborn potential skills, abilities, and a honing device down 'our Existential Path' that we feel most passionate, comfortable, and at home going down...

2. And then we think of a newborn baby being 'ejected' from the mom's womb into what basically amounts to an 'existential abyss' that is entirely dependent on the mother's good will, willingness, and ability to look after the needs of her newborn son or daughter....

3. Freud said that the newborn baby is all 'id' -- all 'need', 'desire', 'impulse', and 'demanding of satisfaction' of his or her biological needs -- specifically, and I am extrapolating and modifying here on Freud's 'psycho-sexual stages of development' -- his or her 'oral' need of 'sucking' and bringing 'nutrition' into his or her little body to keep it alive; and on the other side of the fences, his or her 'anal-detoxification' need to be cleaned up after having expelled waste matter from the body; and finally, the maternal nurturing and touch of the mother to generate a 'trust bond' and 'attachment' figure that the baby can generally count on to not only satisfy its nutritional and detoxification needs, but also its attachment needs as well.

4. To modify Freud's concept of the 'Id' in order to make it more compatible with Kleinian theory and Fairbairnian theories of Object Relations, and 'the splitting of the ego', I have created a concept that Freud mentioned oh so briefly in the last paper of his life, An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1939), and which is more in tune with my own 'dialectically integrative way of thinking' -- specifically, Freud used the term 'id-ego' or 'ego-id', either of which I fully endorse, not as a concept that is only relevant in the child's infancy when his or her 'ego-id' is as of yet 'undifferentiated'... but will become differentiated, according to Freud, and at that point we will no longer have any use for the term 'ego-id' or 'id-ego', so sayeth Freud.

5. Well, I have lots of use for the concept of the id-ego -- even in our adulthood -- but first, I will describe how either the 'Pre-Oedipal' or 'Oedipal' id-ego -- and I will focus here on the latter can SPLIT during the process of a 'compensatory network of possible defenses' that are created under the influence of what I will call 'OPTSDT' which stands for 'Oedipal Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder-Transference'.

6. Here is how the id-ego can 'split' utilizing and extrapolating on probably the most important aspect of Kleinian Object Relations theory:

i/ The Love-and-Acceptance Wanting Id-Ego;

ii/ The Assertive-Problem-Solving Id-Ego;

iii/ The Phobic-Schizoid (Scared, Withdrawn, Distancing) Id-Ego;

iv/ The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Id-Ego;

v/ The Depressed (Chronically and/or Acutely Frustrated) Id-Ego;

vi/ The Paranoid-Schizoid (Angry, Withdrawn, Distancing) Id-Ego;

vii/ The Paranoid-Confrontational (Angry, Assertive, Righteous) Id-Ego;

7. These 'Post-Kleinian-DGB Positions' listed above become crystalized and locked up inside our 'EMLCDF' -- 'Experience-Memory-Learning-Compensatory-Defense-Fantasy' Transference Templates...as a network of different possible ways to deal with a similar type of 'trauma' in the future of which usually one or two different types of defenses are prototypically emphasized and dominant to the person's 'transference-lifestyle repetition compulsion and profile pattern'.

8. At this point, the ego-id's or id-ego's freshly learned 'Traumacy-Fantasy Transference Complexes' (TFTCs) become 'screened and/or edited the first time over' as they either attempt to 'escape' or are 'conditionally or unconditionally released' from the transference templates and funnelled into what I will call 'The Ego-Id or Id-Ego Vault'. At this point, a more differentiated and adult or parentally introjected part of the id 'splits again'. This time we have one part of the 'Main Adult Ego' 'identifying' with the needs and impulses of 'the more childish id-ego', while the other part of the main adult ego identifies with the 'parental, righteous superego'... The first part of our main adult ego is more prone to let our 'id-ego' out of the 'dissociative-isolation ward' of the id-ego vault and into the conscious or pre-conscious personality. The second part of our main adult ego which is more stringently identifying with our paternal, righteous superego is more prone to keeping our id-ego locked up tightly inside our id-ego vault.

9. A third part of the main adult ego splits again, this time into a 'pre-conscious, compromise-forming, 'symptom-forming', 'dream, fantasy, and nightmare creating', 'projecting', 'sublimating', 'projectively-identifying', 'displacing', 'transferring' ego-state which we will call the 'pre-conscious ego';

10. To summarize so far, from the deepest depth of the personality to the 'pre-conscious' personality, these are the ego-states, the psycho-structures, and the psycho-dynamics that I will be using...

C/ First Stage (Deepest, Most Primal) Sub-Ego-States

1. The GPS (Genetic Potential Self);
2. The Deepest Abyss;
3. The Primal, (Disorganized, and Partly Organizing) Ego-Id;
4. The Trauma-Fantasy Transference Templates;
5. The Ego-Id Vault;
6. The Pre-Conscious, Compromising Ego;

Part 2: The Unconscious, Pre-Conscious, and Conscious Ego-States

10. At this point, the 'split ego complexes' of the Pre-Oedipal and Oedipal period (birth to 6 or 7 years old) become transplanted into the adult ego complex -- even if there is still an underlying 'child-like' current to these 7 conceptualized ego-states (not unlike Berne's TA model);

D/ Second Stage, Mainly 'Child-Like' or 'Under'-Ego-States

7. The Love and Acceptance Wanting ('Omega') Ego-Id;
8. The Assertive, Problem-Solving Adult-Becoming Ego-Id;
9. The Phobic-Schizoid (Omega) Ego-Id;
10. The (Manic) Depressive (Omega-Beta) Ego-Id;
11. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic (Beta) Ego-Id;
12. The Paranoid-Schizoid (Beta) Ego-Id;
13. The Paranoid-Confrontational ('Beta') Ego-Id;

E/ Third Stage, Life Challenges, Ego-States

14. Home Base or Base Camp (Family and Friend Rootedness);
15. Nietzsche's Rope;
16. The Top of Nietzsche's Abyss Under The Rope, Under The Friendly Mountain of Comfortable, Stable Being, and Under The Mountain of Uncomfortable, Anxiety-Provoking, Becoming;
17. The 'Bipolar Twin Mountains of Being and Becoming';
18. The Mountain Top of Having Become -- and Celebrating this 'Becomingness' or 'Self-Actualization' (The Path, Part 3);

F/ Fourth Stage, Adult Ego-States;

19. The Public Persona Ego;
20. The Main Adult Problem-Solving Ego;
21. The Private-Shadow (Primal, Uncivilized) Id-Ego;
22. The Feeling Ego and Phenomenology of Spirit (The Path, Part 2);
23. The Creative (and Destructive) Fantasy, Projection, Dream and Sublimation Ego;
24. The Body Ego;

G/ Fifth Stage Parental Super-ego States;

25. The Overt, Righteous, Conditionally Loving Superego;
26. The Covert, Paranoid-Schizoid Superego;
27. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Superego;
28. The (Manic) Depressive Superego;
29. The Phobic, Non-Nurturing Superego;
30. The Overt, Encouraging, Nurturing Superego.

That will do for now.

Yeah, I know it's kind of overwhelming...

And to be sure it is far from perfect....

However, it does allow us -- both as theorists and as a therapists -- to do a few extra things with the model, that you can't do with the old Freudian one.

So for now, we will let it stand as it is.

Cheers!

-- dgb, May 9th, 2014,

-- David Gordon Bain

Essay 9: Old Freudian Theory: Reportive and Editorial Commentary on Freud's 1892 'Sketches For The Preliminary Communication of 1893' : Part 1: Introduction

2014-04-30T04:32:00.002-07:00

This is the first of many forecasted editorial commentaries on Freud's always evolving psychological essays and theories from 1892 to 1939.

Now, to a greater or lesser extent, this path has been 'beaten down' by hundreds if not thousands of Freudian commentators before me. You have the 'main beaten path', and then you have a few commentators deviating from this 'main beaten path' to some greater or lesser extent.

Well, I want to go down a relatively unbeaten path (or perhaps an unbeaten path off a beaten path) examining in particular Freud's earliest psychology papers between 1892 and 1897 and find out for myself whether Freud might not have done a better job integrating his early evolving 'reality-sexual abuse-trauma-repressed-memory-return of the repressed through the symptom' theory with his later evolving 'instinct and fantasy' theory, as opposed to declaring them 'mutually exclusive' and stating that his pre-1897 reality-trauma-seduction work was basically a 'mistake', or a 'misinterpretation' of what was really happening, and had to be 'replaced' by his post-1896 evolving 'repressed-instinct/impulse-desire/drive-fantasy-Oedipal' theory.

Being the 'post-Hegelian, dialectic logic, thesis-anti-thesis-synthesis' philosopher that I am, and bringing this Hegelian paradigm perspective into my thinking about Psychoanalysis, I basically look at The International Psychoanalytic Establishment and Jeffrey Masson as having 'landed at two opposite ends of the same dialectically bipolar and potentially integrative spectrum', Masson having supported Freud's early reality-trauma-seduction theory whereas The International Psychoanalytic Establishment -- in maintaining consistency with Freud's interpretation and evaluation of the situation -- chose to, and basically still chooses to, support Freud's later evolving instinct-fantasy-Oedipal theory.

Both positions, in my opinion, need to be 'reconciled' and 'synthesized' in the middle such that the second wave of Freudian theories (instinct/impulse-desire-drive-fantasy-Oedipal) needs to rest on the foundation of the first wave of Freudian theories (reality-memory-trauma-seduction).

Now, in their own way, to what I can see from the information coming out of The Psychoanalytic Institute that I am closest to these days (The Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute'), Psychoanalysis does seem to be very focused on the same basic goal that I just mentioned above -- specifically, examining different 'brands' of existing trauma theory in Psychoanalysis today, coming mainly out of Object Relations, Self Psychology, and Attachment Theory -- but no one that I can see is going back to the origin of Freud's earliest trauma theory between 1892 and 1895.

This being the case, I will take on this job of 'integrating' the two opposing 1. 'Pre-Classical'; and 2. 'Classical' theoretical positions into one combined 'bipolar theory'. .

We start in 1892.

Essay 8: Re-Working Freud's Ego, Id, and Superego Theory (Part 3): Integrating Trauma Theory and Fantasy Theory; Classical Psychoanalysis and Object Relations

2014-04-17T13:56:00.001-07:00

Updated April 20th, 2014

I was starting to read 'An Outline of Psychoanalysis' (1938) the other day -- and there it was, or at least the essence of it -- a concept and label that I have been 'playing around' with for a while now -- the concept of 'id-ego' or 'ego-id' (Freud used the latter on page 149 of V. 23 of Strachey's Standard Edition, Chapter 2, 'The Theory Of The Instincts').

Wrote Freud in his last essay, a year before he died,

'We may picture an initial state as one in which the total available energy of Eros which henceforward we shall speak of as 'libido' is present in the still undifferentiated ego-id and serves to neutralize the destructive tendencies which are simultaneously present.' (p.149-150).

Well, far be it for me to challenge but I am going to do it anyway (not unlike thousands of critics or 'reformers' before me).

Who says that the id-ego ever differentiates itself the way Freud claims it does -- and in effect, locks itself in a deep, unconscious chamber, or is locked down there by the evolving ego and superego, and only let's itself be known by its 'instincts and their vicissitudes'.

Just for a minute, let us entertain the idea that the id-ego is capable of doing exactly the same thing that both the superego and ego are capable of doing -- specifically, moving up and down through different degrees of consciousness from unconscious to preconscious, to conscious elements of the Self.

Thus, we could and can differentiate between a thinking, feeling, wanting, driving, unconscious id-ego, pre-conscious id-ego, and conscious id-ego.

Most importantly, that does two different things: one, it puts the id-ego in the same light (and darkness) as the ego and superego. And two, it brings the 'id-ego' into the confines of 'The Wholistic Ego or Self' -- in other words, it doesn't separate the id from the ego like it is some 'alien from Mars' (even if it may seem or feel that way sometimes).

In even different words, if we imagine and subscribe to Freud's conceptual assumption that the id is the 'primal uncivilized ego at birth and through our earliest development when we don't have any idea what is 'socially appropriate' and what is 'socially inappropriate' and in need of 'self-censorship' -- until the internalization (introjection) of greater and greater socialization teaches us to create a 'split within ourselves' that separates our 'undifferentiated, primal, uncivilized, unsocialized id-ego or ego-id' from our evolving, more 'civilized and/or socialized ego' that 1. helps us to better meet 'social and cultural expectations'; and 2. creates a 'barrier' or 'shield' between our more primitive, uncivilized id-ego and our more socialized 'restraining reality-ego'. Finally, we might entertain -- at least I am -- the addition of one more 'ego-split' in this immediate context here and that is 'The Central Mediating (and 'Symptom-Forming') which negotiates 'solutions' between the more primal, uncivilized demands of our id-ego and our more 'restraining impulses of our reality-ego' which is taken to another level of 'splitting' in our 'Ego-Ideal' and 'Superego'.

Now, depending on how conservative or 'anally stringent' you want to be, this re-working of Freud's Classical Psychoanalysis Personality Theory is not that great a stretch upwards and outwards.

I mean think about it. In his last paper, An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1938), Freud describes the 'undifferentiated ego-id' (before the id and the ego 'split' and each become what Freud ultimately defined and described them as).

Well, this is a far cry from Freud's 1923 definition and description of the id as a 'reservoir' or 'cauldron' containing the 'life' and 'death' instincts....that at different times 'escape' or are 'released' from the restricting confines of the id, and start 'free-floating' as 'vicissitudes of the id' up towards the pre-conscious and conscious personality, and eventually present themselves as 'neurotically and/or psychotically (or in dream-fashion)' as 'unconscious symptoms' in the surface psycho-dynamics of the personality.

We have to synchronize what Freud was writing in 1923 with what he was writing in 1938, just before he died. I concur with Harry Guntrip (1971, 1973, Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and The Self) when Guntrip said that Freud was just starting to become more of a serious Object Relations theorist in 1938 before he died in 1939.

The two essays he wrote in 1938 -- 'Splitting of The Ego in The Process of Defense'; and the already mentioned 'An Outline of Psychoanalysis' were certainly heading in a Object Relations direction, although 'Splitting' seemed like a 'tidbit' of an Object Relations paper stuck inside a very Victorian, Freudian, Classical Psychoanalysis paper. Specifically, in the last part of 'Splitting', Freud came back to -- what I would call his largely outdated concept of 'castration anxiety' to explain the client's creation of a 'fetish' to presumably ward off the castration anxiety somehow. Today, I think there would be easier, less convoluted ways of explaining the fetish -- like 'performance anxiety' as opposed to 'castration anxiety'.

In this view, from a client of this type's perspective, 'all women' become viewed as 'hostile, rejecting objects/figures/persons' that/who take away his ability to perform.

Thus, instead, he chooses a 'non-judging fetish object' to 'excite' him without 'having to deal with the projected and/or real negative judgments of the imagined or real 'hostile, critical woman' that he doesn't want to engage with ('castration anxiety' which should probably be viewed as a Victorian-relevant label for what we might now call 'performance-rejection anxiety' and the 'unbearable idea' attached to it -- specifically, something like this: If I do not perform properly, then I am something less than a 'real man' which fits with Adler's idea of 'the masculine protest' -- some men and women will go to great lengths to avoid such a 'masculinity-threatening' or 'feminine-threatening performance challenge').

In the first part of 'Splitting', Freud was coming back to one of his earliest ideas (1893, 1894) -- or rather Janet's which Freud undoubtedly perceived the need to differentiate himself from.

Indeed, Freud found a way with his concept of 'repression' -- and the idea of let us say a 'vertical splitting of consciousness from unconsciousness' (which would eventually become 'the splitting of the ego from the id' in 1923) as opposed to Janet's early idea of a 'splitting of consciousness' which is more of a precursor to an Object Relations type of model and suggests the visualization of a 'horizontal splitting of consciousness or the ego' into -- let us say -- 'the ego' and 'the alter-ego' -- like in the 'Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' which had been written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886 -- and was an idea followed up by Janet around 1892 just as Freud was starting to enter the 'clinical psychology and psychotherapy' picture.

What we are interested in here, is the synthesis of not only Freud's early trauma theory with his later fantasy theory, but also with the synthesis between Classical Psychoanalysis with Object Relations and Self Psychology, is the idea of 'the ego-id' (or 'id-ego) being a thinking, feeling, wanting, impulsively driving 'primal ego-state' that is with us from the day we are born to the day we die (but tends to 'go under cover' for much our life because of its 'uncivil, primal nature').

Call the id-ego not only our primal ego but also our primary ego until socialization and our 'cerebral cortex' starts to take over the more complex tasks of what Freud called our 'secondary process'. The cerebral cortex, and particularly within the cerebral cortex, the pre-frontal cortex (one of four regions of this area of the brain) is that part of our brain that, from a psychological and psychoanalytic perspective, we are calling 'The Reality Ego' and or 'The Central Mediating and Executive Ego' -- that part our mind-brain that deals with reality in whatever manner we choose to deal with it.

Topographically, the type of model I am using is much more 'compartment-laden' than Freud's easy to remember 'id-ego-superego' model, or Gestalt Therapy's 'topdog-underdog' model. Rather, it looks more like Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis model (which was built partly from an Object Relations model). From top to bottom, the DGB Multi-Integrative (Quantum) Psychoanalytic and Neo-Psychoanalytic model looks presently like this:

A/ Superego Compartments

1. The Nurturing-Unconditional Attachment Ego-Ideal and Superego;
2. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic (Pleasure-Seeking) Ego-Ideal and Superego;
3. The Righteous-Critical-Conditional Attachment Ego-Ideal and Superego;

B/ Ego Compartments

4. The Private-Shadow Ego;
5. The Central Mediating and Executive Ego;
6. The Reality Ego and Public Persona;

C/ Underego Compartments

7. The Nurturing-Unconditional Attachment Underego;
8. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic (Pleasure-Seeking) Underego;
9. The Righteous-Critical-Conditional Attachment Underego;

D/ Subsidiary Conscious, Pre-Conscious, and Unconscious Psycho-Dynamic and/or Defense-Mechanism, Ego Compartments

10. The Feeling Ego and Phenomenology of Spirit;
11. The Body Ego;
12. The Dream and Fantasy Ego;

13. The Transference Ego;
14. The Identification and Introjection Ego;
15. The Projection Ego;

16. The Sublimation Ego;
17. The Displacement Ego;
18. The Reaction-Formation Ego;

19. The 'Manic', 'Anal-OCD' and/or 'Oral-Genital Addiction' Ego-Compartment
20. The Paranoid-Schizoid (Distancing/Dissociative) and/or Borderline Personality Ego-Compartment;
21. The Depressive Personality Ego;
22. The Ambivalent, Bipolar Ego;

E/ Pre-Conscious and Unconscious Ego Processes

23. The Screening Ego and Symptom Converter

24. 'Free-Floating' Id and Transference Complexes;

25. The Id and Transference Vault;

26. The Experience-Memory-Learning-Transference (EMLT) Templates;

27. The Unconscious Id-Ego;

28. The Abyss-Ledge;

29. The Abyss;

30. The Genetic Potential Self.

-- dgb, April 28th, 2014...

-- David Gordon Bain...

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Creations...

-- Are Still in Process

Essay 7: Re-Working Freud's Ego, Id, and Superego Theory (Part 2)

2014-04-10T11:11:00.001-07:00

One thing that I have come to understand when I am reading Freud: Specifically, never underestimate him. Love him, hate him -- but never underestimate him. Because whenever I think that I have something spectacularly new to add to Freudian theory, I find that in one shape or form, Freud has usually and/or in essence -- been there first.

I want to be clear that even in my most critical moments of taking Freud to task for something that he has written or not written, done or not done, I am not some kind of anti-Freudian who wants to put Classical Psychoanalysis on the shelf -- permanently -- and/or into some Vienna and/or London museum -- with all psychoanalysts under the strict order to cease practicing it.

Sure I want to reformulate Freudian theory, revise it, and integrate it with other brands of Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis. However, first and foremost, I want to take everything inside of Strachey's 24 Volume Standard Edition of Sigmund Freud's Complete Works -- and I want this to be my main arena or work forum for my reformation of Classical Psychoanalysis into what I will call a 'Multi-Integrative-Dialectic (MID) Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis'.

Be clear that all schools of 'neo-psychoanalysis' were originally created by theorist and therapists who were originally 'psychoanalysts' and belonged to psychoanalysis -- so it is not a far stretch to say that if Freud had not been so 'anal-retentive' and 'anal-righteous' relative to all (male) psychoanalysts belonging to his 'secret society' and subscribing to only his perceived, core, essential ideas and assumptions/presumptions relative to the evolution of psychoanalysis, well, today psychoanalysis would probably own an almost complete monopoly of all schools of psychology and psychotherapy (except for perhaps behavior theory and therapy).

The other name that I have been using in one form or another, longer or shorter version, is 'GAP-DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis'. Both names I have been using at different times for quite a while now.

The name 'GAP' has two connotations. One it is an acronym standing for 'Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalysis'. And two, the idea of 'gaps' in memory was with Freud almost from day one -- the idea of 'making the unconscious, conscious' to the client, and thus filling in the client's 'gap in memory', or his or her 'functional amnesia' that holds 'the neurotic symptom or symptoms' in place because of the client's lack of 'associative connection' between the memory (and/or fantasy) and the symptom.

Thus, according to Freud, the troublesome symptom has taken the place of the underlying, unconscious 'etiology-memory-fantasy-id ideas and impulses (in the form of a 'fixation' and/or 'regression' that is 'neurotic' meaning 'maladaptive', 'dysfunctional', 'self-destructive and/or destructive') that has in effect been 'dissociated, disowned, avoided, denied, suppressed, repressed, projected, displaced, transferred, sublimated'...from our conscious, working, thinking, problem-solving, conflict-resolving self or ego...

I would even go so far to say that sometimes -- indeed, oftentimes -- even when the 'symptom' is laid bare in term of its 'etiological (biological-trauma-fantasy-transference) predispositions' and current here-and-now 'trigger causes' -- still, the neurotic symptom may persist because it has been a long ingrained and 'conditioned' response-habit that is not likely going to change overnight simply because of some 'aha' insight and/or emotional catharsis.

This is where the idea of 'working through' (the resistance and the old conditioned response, and 'learning a whole set of new conditioned responses') generally becomes essential to the overall success of any psychoanalytic and/or any other school of psychotherapy....

Coming back to my goals here, I want to bring Freud's old 'reality-trauma-seduction theories' into line with his post 1896, evolving biological instinct (or impulse) and fantasy theories, and after that, even elements of Object Relations, Self-Psychology, Bionian Psychoanalysis, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Ferenczi, Reich...as well as all the different 'neo-psychoanalyses' of such noted theorists as Adler, Rank, Horney, Sullivan, Erickson, Fromm, Berne, Perls, Janov....

Obviously, this is a big project.

But one step at a time.

First, I want to do something as far as reformulating Freud's id and ego theory that hopefully is not too painful to my pro-Freudian readers.

Essay 6: An Unlikely But DGB Fantasized Reunion Between The Psychoanalytic Establishment and Jeffrey Masson

2014-03-20T07:48:00.004-07:00

Updated, April 7th, 2014

I will not stop, I will not rest,

Until Chaos and Order,

Dionysus and Apollo,

Diogenes and Alexander the Great,

Plato and Aristotle,

Science and Art,

Science and Spirituality,

The Enlightenment and The Romantic Movement,

Hegel and Schopenhauer,

Hegel and Kierkegaard,

Hegel and Nietzsche,

The Phenomenology of Spirit and The Birth of Tragedy,

Construction(ism) and Deconstruction(ism),

Deconstruction(ism) and Reconstruction(ism),

Thesis and Anti-thesis,

Breuer and Freud,

Freud and Adler,

Freud and Jung,

Anna Freud and Melanie Klein,

Masson and Anna Freud,

Masson and Eissler,

Masson and Sigmund Freud,

Masson and The Psychoanalytic Establishment,

Can dance together again in Hegel's Hotel,

My metaphysical and hopefully one day physical....

Meeting place of convergent and divergent, integrative minds and spirits,

Looking for that special homeostatic-dialectic balance...

Between Unity and Individuality...

Between Idea and Counter-Idea...

Without becoming defensive, scared, angry, righteously blinded...

By what challenges our most personal values...

We need a 'Phenomenology of Spirit'...

That challenges our spirit...

That challenges our hearts and minds...

To look at life through an opposite perspective, an opposite paradigm...

A philosophical-psychological box outside of our philosophical box...

A Place of Dialogue and Debate For The Integration-Seeking, Harmonizing, Balancing,,

Synthesizing and Synergizing Spirit --

Personally, the lifeblood of my soul.

Ah, but it is so easy to look at life through our own eyes...

But through an other's eyes...

That is more challenging....

'Seek first to understand, then to be understood,

Stephen Covey wrote that...

Inside 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People'...

Similarly, I seek synergy inside...

Hegel's Hotel....

Where (A More Liberal-Minded) Masson and Any Liberal-Minded Psychoanalyst...

Might Walk Into the Same Lobby....

And contemplate the possibility of an integration...

Between Freudian Trauma...

And Freudian Fantasy Theory...

Both partly representing the intricacies...

The convergences and divergences of the human mind...

A dialectic trauma-fantasy theory that synthesizes black and white in that middle zone of gray....

But more than this,

A 'Thesis-Anti-Thesis-Synthesis' Hotel,

Where opposing theorists

Can enter with the willingness and open-mindedness to be ready to think...

Both inside and outside their own theoretical box...

And not go ballistic when someone disagrees with them...

Or presents something so uniquely unorthodox and new....

As to take a wrecking ball to everything that we have previously learned...

A theory is a representation of reality that can be changed...

Or modified...

In a single moment's change of outlook....

Superseded by a better theory...

Often, an imaginative, integrative theory...

That bridges two opposing theories in the middle...

Like the 'particle-wavelength dialectic theory'...

Splitting the difference between particle theory and wavelength theory...

And productively leading to 'Quantum Physics and Mechanics'....

So too will the intercourse....

Of Freud's Bipolar Trauma and Fantasy Theories...

Lead to the genetics....

Of what I will call 'Greater Classical Psychoanalysis....

Or integrate again, say between Greater Classical Psychoanalysis, Object Relations, and Self Psychology...

And now we have a 'Quantum Leap for Psychoanalysis..'...

Or what I will call...'Quantum' Psychoanalysis...

When opposing ideas, theories, perspectives, paradigms...

Metaphorically writing...

Copulate....(how Freudian!)

Oftentimes, you get a better breed of idea, theory, perspective, paradigm...

Than the 'polar-less' ideas and theories you left behind...

Thus Spoke...

Heraclitus, Lao Tse...

Hegel, Darwin..

Derrida....

The 'yin' and the 'yang' of human existence...

The estrogen and testosterone of human biology...

Competing, co-operating, breeding, loving, hating...

The paradoxes within psychoanalysis...

Need to match...

The paradoxes in human existence...

One minute I love you...

The next minute I hate you...

How do we deal with the ambivalence of 'love-hate'?

Great energy stems from great tension between opposites...

Exploding in love...

And/or exploding in hatred...

Where doves fly...

Or doves cry...

-- dgb, March 28, 2014

Happy Birthday, Jeffrey Masson!

Essay 5: A Tribute To The Psychoanalytic Work of Jeffrey Masson -- The Man Who Ironically Created My Passion For Psychoanalysis

2014-03-19T11:38:00.001-07:00

I may have told this story before online but I will tell it again.

I remember walking into a Queen Street East bookstore in Toronto, I think in the early 1990s -- probably between 1992 and 1994 -- and walking over to the psychology section, and seeing three books jump out at me by an author who I was totally unfamiliar with. The titles of the books, respectively, in no particular order, were: 1. 'Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst'; 2. 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory'; and 3. 'The Unabridged Complete Letter of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904' -- the first two written, the third edited, by the unknown writer (at least to me at that time), Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.

I bought the first two books and left the bookstore.

Final Analysis, I read in a few days with increasing curiosity and mounting passion. Jeffrey Masson sounded like 'the Bob Dylan of Psychoanalysis' (for me that was exciting, 'a rebel with a cause') -- at least until he left psychoanalysis over a decade earlier than when I was reading this book, but still apparently working off 'unfinished psychoanalytic business' in this, his latest book which, from his own subjective mindset, summarized his rise to the top of The Psychoanalytic Establishment (or at least 3rd from the top behind Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler). And, to me, this was an exciting story with a rather traumatic, tragic ending -- Masson's splitting from The Psychoanalytic Establishment, and from his close friendship with the old veteran psychoanalyst, Dr. Kurt Eissler, a long time loyal Freudian analyst.

At some point in the 1990s (the late 1990s probably) -- by this time Masson had switched to being an animal psychologist living in New Zealand -- I got a hold of Masson's email address and sent a couple of emails to him with Jeffrey's reply that he was basically no longer interested in psychoanalysis.

A number of years later -- probably moving into the mid to late 2000s by now (say, 2008 to 2010) -- I contacted Masson again, got a few replies from him (I could tell which emails he didn't particularly care for, or about, because he didn't reply to them). But at the end of 2009, I think I asked him if I could get a short, online interview with him in January, 2010. I think he said maybe. The interview didn't happen in January 2010, but in March 2010, I emailed him the questions I would ask him -- and he answered them. I got Dr. Masson to proofread the final interview piece, he said it looked fine, and presto, I had my first interview on line in Hegel's Hotel with a much esteemed interviewee -- the man who was ironically and paradoxically fueling my passion for psychoanalysis -- Dr. Jeffrey Masson.

I was thrilled -- and I agreed with many of his criticisms of Classical Psychoanalysis -- particularly, the more or less abandonment of Freud's early trauma theory (1893-1896), and his criticism of the Oedipus Complex as an intentional or non-intentional 'potential and/or actual cover-up' for real childhood sexual abuse, particularly between a female psychoanalytic client and her father, as reported by the client in a childhood memory or memories which she communicated to her analyst.

Well, what kind of a theory would or could deliberately, or by ignorance disguised as 'knowledge', actually allow an analyst to unequivocally 're-interpret' a female client's reported childhood sexual abuse as 'her own distorted childhood sexual fantasy -- courtesy of the Oedipus Complex'. You would think that feminist social activists would be protesting in front of Classical Psychoanalysts' offices at this inherent sexual bias and discrimination.

Well, it was this type of editorial comment and protest that Masson started to issue in public forums to active newspaper and magazine journalists (particularly, Janet Malcolm), and particularly his comment about Freud 'losing moral courage' (relative to standing up against Vienna patriarchal and narcissistically biased doctors who had power over the success or failure of his new and budding career) that got Masson, himself, in trouble with The International Psychoanalytic Establishment -- and ultimately, his 'non-extension' of his position as 'The Projects Director of The Freud Archives' (which is where Masson found and read Freud's unabridged and complete letters to Wilhelm Fliess which led Masson to conclude that there was something 'fishy' that happened in Vienna after April 21st of 1896, that motivated Freud to do a one hundred and eighty Copernican switch from his 'disappearing trauma theory' to his 'freshly evolving fantasy theory'.

Thesis, anti-thesis, and...synthesis...

In cases like this, unlike Masson and Freud, I do not believe in 'either/or'.

I do not believe in polar, unilateral theories that generally capture one end of a polar spectrum -- but not the other opposite side of the spectrum.

DGB stands for the initials of my name, but more than this, in the context of Hegel's Hotel here, it stands for 'Dialectic-Gap-Bridging' (Theories)...In other words, it stands for integrative or synthetic, even 'multi-integrative' or 'quantum-dialectic' theories...

That is the whole essence of Hegel's Hotel -- indeed, call me a 'post or neo-Hegelian-Humanistic-Existential' theorist...who is always looking for creative, integrative theories to 'bridge the gap' between 'polar opposite theories'...

The apparent disconnection, alienation, dissociation...between Freud's early trauma-seduction theory and his later fantasy-impulse-drive theory virtually demands a synthesis...

As much as Freud's post-1897 -- or post-1900 publicly -- use of the Oedipal Complex as a potential 'cover-up for real childhood sexual abuse', still, Freud couldn't have developed his fantasy-impulse-drive theory for some 42 years, maybe even 44 years stretching back to Freud's aborted 'Project for a Scientific Psychology' (1895) where you could start to see Freud's the hugely foretelling use of the word 'wish'...combined with the fact that Freud was starting to write 'The Interpretation of Dreams' in 1895 where again the word 'wish' -- as in fantasy -- would dominate -- to finish this long sentence off, Freud could not have upheld his 'fantasy theory' for some 44 years as a 'cover up' for avoiding any more discussion of childhood sexual abuse which unfavorable put The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society into a righteous frenzy, calling Freud's 'childhood sexual abuse theory' of hysteria a 'scientific fairy tale' on the infamous evening of April 21st, 1896....

Nor could the now infamous botched 'nasal-sexual surgery' by Fliess on Freud's patient, Emma Ekstein, in February of 1895, who would later would become disfigured by all the follow-up surgeries aimed at stopping her repetitive 'nasal hemorrhages' that more logically seemed to be more connected to the first botched surgery by Fliess and Freud, rather than any later concocted (guilt) theory of 'Emma's unconscious wish for Freud to return to her bedside by her 'use' of 'nasal hemorrhaging' to get him there'...

It would be a very sad day for psychoanalysis if poor Emma was Freud's first 'fantasy, wish-fulfillment' patient -- which by all circumstantial evidence -- it certainly looks like she was.

What a tragic, traumatic beginning for Freud's fantasy theory!

Who's 'neurosis' was, and still is, exploding off the page here -- Emma's or Freud's own 'wish-fulfillment theory' to cover up the part played by himself in this horrific, tragic-traumatic accident -- meant with seemingly the best of intentions for Emma but built from dangerous, untested, 'false knowledge' that both Fliess and Freud -- acting like 'The Keystone Kops' in this case -- thought was true? And as Freud asserted later, he had no thought whatsoever of any such dangerous negative side-effect happening from what he thought was an 'innocuous, danger-free' surgery. Little did he know that Fliess was going to leave a long piece of gauze in Emma's nasal passage, not tell anyone, and then trip back to Berlin from Vienna where the operation was conducted...

And so the word 'wish' was born from the fertile minds of Fliess and Freud during this very eventful year of the beginning of 'The Interpretation of Dreams' and Freud's aborted 'Project For a Scientific Psychology'...which also contained the word 'wish'...

I mean, with all due respect to Freud and many of his creatively brilliant ideas -- as hard as it may be -- and indeed, it was more or less impossible for both Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler to get their respective heads around the idea that their mutual idol -- and Anna's father -- could possibly commit such a gross transgression of both medical and theoretical ethics....still.... Freud wrote many brilliant -- and still standing strong -- essays after 1897, starting with The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899/1900.

So how do we integrate this possible moral transgression with creatively brilliant, and long-standing essays that were written after this moral transgression, but perhaps still a part of it, indeed, possibly around, and/or through, this possible 'moral-theory-creating-transgression'? Had 'Freud the neurotic' -- using a neurotic defense mechanism -- created at least a partly 'neurotic theory' out of his own personal, morally neurotic defence mechanism? The answer -- in my humble opinion -- is quite likely 'yes'. Which is why Classical Psychoanalysis has attracted so much criticism over the years -- both inside and outside Psychoanalysis -- and most telling of all, perhaps, is that Classical Psychoanalysis is particularly unattractive and unfriendly to women -- and particularly among active feminists who go after Freud's patriarchal narcissistic bias. Where were these feminists when Masson was being 'professionally lynched'?

So Masson became vilified -- demeaned and dismissed -- stereotyped as a 'charlatan' and a 'narcissistic opportunist' (come on, people, if he was a 'narcissistic opportunist', why would he ever have been so 'politically naïve and/or stupid' to have dared to open his mouth and give the public interviews that he did?).

To keep Psychoanalysis on the 'morally up and up' -- Psychoanalysis needed a 'witch' to 'burn' -- and they found an author to help them do that -- Janet Malcolm, who first seduced, then betrayed and 'murdered' her prime interviewee -- Dr. Jeffrey Masson....lumping him in with Jung and Adler and all the other 'ex-psychoanalysts' who Malcolm editorialized just didn't understand the 'full depth' of psychoanalysis like Freud and his loyalists did?

Right! And Martin Luther King didn't know anything about 'equal rights'!

Classical Psychoanalysis -- to the extent that it purports to be a legitimate 21st century 'school of psychotherapy' -- has to 'overturn' Freud's Victorian biases and particularly anything that could conceivably be connected to Freud's sudden and/or gradual abandonment of his trauma-seduction theory after 1896. Particularly to make it more 'customer-friendly' for women who deserve to know that they walk into an office to start analysis with a 'Classical' psychoanalysis -- and God forbid, that they may have been sexually abused by their dad as a child -- that they are going to get the same type of treatment that a man would -- and that their memory or memories of childhood sexual abuse will be accepted and respected as they are told -- all else being equal (unless this memory can unequivocally be proven to be wrong which is hard enough for a judge to prove one way or the other, let alone a psychoanalyst...). As far as I am concerned if I were put into a Classical Psychoanalyst's position, upon hearing such a memory, I am going to go with it as 'the truth' -- or at least have some kernel of truth in it -- unless or until something substantially different comes out from the client and/or someone else -- that puts this 'truth' into the category of 'significant skepticism'...
Remember, philosophers -- and all men and women -- have been arguing about 'epistemological truths' from probably the beginning of time....Power, narcissistic bias, and 'conflict of interest' should not rule on matters of 'truth'.

Did Freud 'lose moral courage'? I would suggest -- as hard as this may be for all of us to bear -- that there is very strong circumstantial between the Emma Ekstein sad story and the April 21st Psychiatry Meeting' to suggest that he did...

It is -- or will be dedicated to Dr. Jeffrey Masson and all the hard work -- important work -- that he did in Psychoanalysis in the 1970s and early 80s, aimed at telling The Psychoanalytic Establishment in specific, and the world, in general, that a very important part of psychoanalysis -- the work Freud did before 1897 -- was 'squashed' and 'dissociated' from psychoanalysis, or at least a very significant part of it, by Freud himself, which created a type of 'dissociative neurosis' in
Psychoanalysis, that to this day, has still not been properly repaired.

To repair all the inherent 'problem' in Classical Psychoanalysis would require a smooth, coherent, logical, and viable, practical integration between Pre-Psychoanalysis (reality-trauma-seduction theory) and Classical Psychoanalysis (fantasy theory, instinct, desire, and/or drive theory, infantile-childhood sexuality theory, and Oedipal Theory).

One of my primary goals in this network of 100 essays of psychoanalysis is to create such an 'integrative Pre-Psychoanalytic-Classical Psychoanalytic' integration and viable, practical theory-therapy. There will be other integrations on top of this one but this I view as being probably my most important one.

For those of you who may not know, Masson rose exceedingly quickly, passing all older psychoanalysts than him to the third highest spot on the Psychoanalytic Hierarchy, behind only Anna Freud herself, and Dr. Kurt Eissler.(one of, if not, the oldest, most longstanding, and loyal Freudians up until his death in the late 1990s.)

Then, with Masson first getting permission from Anna Freud to publish Freud's complete letters to Wilhelm Fliess, and then, due to Masson reading all of the unpublished letters that told a different story than the already published letters, Masson, in the early 1980s, reopened the highly controversial and provocative 'Seduction Theory' issue -- and what became a major public psychoanalytic scandal in the early 1980s....Masson accusing Freud of having 'lost moral courage' when he gave up his 1896 theory of the link between hysteria and childhood sexual abuse.

Which in my opinion, Freud probably partly did, based on a combination of political, professional, and financial duress -- and leverage he didn't have relative to the Vienna Psychiatric and Neurological Society and all the doctors in it having the power to 'pull' their patient referrals away from Freud if he continued to trumpet his theory of hysteria and childhood sexual abuse, which did not go over very well in Victorian Vienna, with the good Vienna (patriarchal) doctors.

For whatever reason -- political and/or theoretical -- Freud basically 'abandoned' his Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) theory, and turned this theory on its head -- by 1897 starting to advance the ideas of 'The Oedipus Complex', 'Childhood and Infantile Sexuality', Instinct and Fantasy theory in place of his earlier 'reality-trauma-seduction' theory..

I have no wish to re-open The Seduction Theory Controversy although if someone asks my opinion on it, I will be straight about what I believe which is that I think that there were perhaps a mixture of theoretical and political reasons for Freud's abandoning his early work so abruptly. Political reasons may have sped up this process or prevented a 'smoother evolution in his thinking'.

Ideally, I believe that Freud should have integrated the two sets of theories -- Pre-Psychoanalysis (reality-trauma-seduction theory) and Classical Psychoanalysis (Oedipus-Instinct-Fantasy-Childhood Sexuality) -- together. But having failed this, it has given me a mission to 'synthesize' what The Psychoanalytic Establishment should have many years ago synthesized.

I hold this advantage. I am on the outside looking in, rather than the inside looking out. No overt or covert political 'shoulds and should nots' staring over my shoulder. Making me nervous. No possible 'banishment' from an Establishment I have not joined.

Sometimes being outside of a 'biased, over-regulated, situation' -- is a good situation.

More possibility of 'breaking free' of 'Establishment-regulated dysfunctional assumptions'.

Psychoanalysis is changing, evolving, for the better...

But sometimes it seems like it is the Titanic turning...

It doesn't happen quickly....

Which is not good if there are icebergs in the water...

Gotta go for now, but Masson's birthday is coming up (March 28th)...and I will probably write the poem on here tomorrow morning....

Essay 4: Re-Working Freud's Ego, Id, and Superego Theory (Part 1)

2014-03-19T06:39:00.002-07:00

Freud viewed 'the id' -- a concept he created to help people better understand the nature and basically every type of energy and behavior emulating from the 'bottom' of the psyche -- but here we arrive at a logical inconsistency in the way Freud described the id.

Specifically, Freud defined and described the id as being like a 'container' or a 'reservoir' that contained 'the polar life and death instincts or drives' -- not as the energy within the container that is the combined mixture of the life and death forces that propel the human organism forward, and/or self-sabotage the organism backward towards its/our ultimate death and/or (self)-destruction...

Over time, the id -- beyond all definitional technicalities -- came to be viewed as this energy source anyway -- and to boot (here he introduced another definitional technicality) -- unconscious energy and ideational as well as affective and impulsive motivational material that provided the 'foundational building blocks' for everything developing in the conscious human personality or psyche.

That is, Freud viewed the human personality in its infancy as being 'all id' which -- to introduce another logical inconsistency in the way Freud viewed the id and the personality as a whole -- can, if you read other parts of Freudian theory (1914, 'On Narcissism') basically be equated with what I will call 'the primal, narcissistic ego' even though Freud never created such as term-concept (although he did briefly create the term-concept 'pleasure-ego' and contrasted it against 'the reality ego' around the same time-period as 'On Narcissism' (in another one or more of his 'metapsychological papers', 1915, five years before Freud wrote 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle, 1920, where he introduced the life and death instincts, and eight years before Freud wrote 'The Ego and The Id', 1923, where he introduced 'the ego', 'the id', and 'the superego').

What I am getting at is this. Freud started to get himself and psychoanalysis into 'conceptual trouble' when he started to 'reify' and 'objectify' and 'dehumanize' the human personality -- which many critics would complain about over the years -- because Freud 'dissociated' the id from the ego -- as opposed to 'splitting the ego' into two opposing or simply different 'ego-states': 1. 'the id-ego (or primal-narcissistic ego)'; 2. 'the mediating, central ego'; and 3. 'the restraining ego' -- or 'righteous-critical superego'.

In one of Freud's earliest work (1894, 'The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence'), Freud was struggling with Janet's idea of 'the splitting of consciousness'.

Why would Freud take issue with this idea of Janet's of 'the splitting of consciousness'? Well, probably, at least significantly, because it was Janet's idea -- and not his own; if I be so bold to say, Freud wanted to 'stake out' his own theoretical territory that was different than Janet's, contrasted against Janet's; (as well as everyone else's work -- Charcot, Breuer -- who he had learned from, was working with, and/or competing against.

However, more than this, I can see Freud struggling with Janet's idea of 'the splitting of consciousness' because what Freud had in mind was something either a tad bit different, or very different -- and that was a 'splitting between consciousness and unconsciousness'.

Let us be aware that in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson had first published his classic book, 'Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde'.

So the idea of 'split personalities' and 'egos' vs. 'alter-egos' was alive and percolating in this time period -- actually before this time period in 1894 (Breuer and Charcot in the 1880s with Freud learning from them both in the late 1880s).

Now, would we view 'Mr. Hyde' as an 'id personality' or an 'alter-ego personality' or as a 'primal, narcissistic personality' -- or all of the above.

I opt for all of the above.

Which tells us that the term-concept of 'id-ego' is not that far removed from any of the writers and/or theorists mentioned above: Robert Louis Stevenson, Charcot, Breuer, Janet, Freud...) 'A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.' A thorn by any other name would still hurt if you unknowingly contacted it. And 'the id' by any other name -- the 'alter-ego', 'the primal narcissistic ego' or 'the id-ego' would still be 'the id'.

It is just a matter of 'conceptual primacy'.

We could talk about 'the splitting of the ego' (in the process of 'civilization and its discontents') into: 1. 'the (primal-narcissistic) id-ego'; 2. 'the central mediating ego'; and 3. 'the ego-ideal and critical-righteous superego'.

Or we could talk about 'the splitting of the id' into: 1. the id; 2. the ego; and 3. the superego.

A name is just a name. And concepts are just concepts. And roses by any other name would still smell sweet, while thorns if you touched them unknowingly, would still hurt.

I will advance these ideas tomorrow morning...

Essay 3: New DGB Theory: Transposing -- and Re-Working -- Freud's 1923 Concepts of 'Id', 'Ego', and 'Superego' Back in History Into Freud's Early 'Pre-Psychoanalytic' Essays -- Most Specifically, Freud's 1894 Essay, 'The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence'

2014-03-12T07:22:00.001-07:00

Updated March 16th, 2014 -- dgb

Do you support Freud's early 'reality-traumacy' theory(1893-1896)? Or do you support Freud's later 'instinct-fantasy' theory (1897-1939)?

Freud himself set this up as an 'either/or' question and opted after 1896 for the latter instinct-fantasy theory

There has been controversy ever since then, as a good number of theorists both inside and outside of psychoanalysis believed or believe that Freud 'got it right' the first time round, and made a 'mistake' turning away from reality-traumacy theory in favour of instinct-fantasy theory.

Freud, on the other hand, believed that he made the 'mistake' in his first theory (his combined 'reality-memory-trauma-seduction theory') -- and got it 'right' in his polar opposite theory -- his instinct-fantasy theory which he spent the rest of his life after 1896 developing, modifying, mutating, but generally speaking, staying 'true' to.

Other brands or 'schools' or 'sub-schools' of psychoanalysis have strayed away from Freud's 'Classical' brand of Psychoanalysis ('Classical' Psychoanalysis being the more general name for Freud's post-1896 'instinct-fantasy' brand of psychoanalysis) to different degrees -- some leaving it more or less completely behind in favor of newer brands or schools or sub-schools of Psychoanalysis. And that is not including the 'ex-psychoanalytic theorists and therapists who left Psychoanalysis altogether.

Some psychoanalysts -- I do not know what percentage we are talking about but I would guess something under 30 percent -- have remained true to Classical Psychoanalysis.

Others have developed or are developing a more 'eclectic' approach that either integrates or at least utilizes ideas from all the 'main current brands' of psychoanalysis (Object Relations, Self Psychology, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Bionian Psychoanalysis...) but most, to my limited knowledge, I do not believe have opted to return to Freud's pre-1897 'reality-memory-trauma-seduction' ideas. 'Trauma' theory may have been re-introduced, however, in different ways, by different schools of psychoanalysis such as the ones just mentioned above.

No one, to my knowledge, has opted to try to put together an 'intertwined, dialectical reality-fantasy theory' where both of Freud's 'bipolar' theories 'reality theory' vs. 'fantasy theory' (before 1897, and after 1896) are meshed together into one 'full spectrum' dialectic theory like the 'particle-wave' theory was introduced into physics.

That is what I wish to do in psychoanalysis.

Why? Because Freud, whether you are a supporter of his early reality-trauma theory or his later fantasy-instinct theory, in both cases, created a one-dimensional, one-directional, and unilateral theory of the human psyche, each side largely ignoring the other. In effect, he created two different 'dissociation' theories -- each theory 'dissociating' itself from the other which seems to me to be highly ironical because this is exactly what his 'neurotic' clients were doing relative to particular 'subjectively perceived sensitive life experiences, issues, stressors, and underlying unbearable ideas, affects, and/or impulses pertaining to these stressors'.

Did Freud create a 'Dissociative brand of Psychoanalysis', in particular, after 1896, i.e., relative to his 'Classical' brand of Psychoanalysis when he no longer associated himself and his theory with his previous 'Reality-Memory-Trauma-Seduction theory (let's call this Freud's pre-1897 combined 'RMTS' theory)?

I believe that Freud's 'fantasy-impulse' (I prefer 'impulse' to 'instinct') theory, if explored deeply enough, can be seen to rest on, or be built from, his previous RMTS theory. The two bipolar theories are not at all 'mutually exclusive' but rather are intimately and dialectically connected to each other. Specifically, from 'trauma', we 'compensate' with 'fantasies'.

A person may spend his or her whole life, unconsciously or semi-consciously, trying to 'rebuild lost childhood self-esteem' (Adler, 'inferiority feelings' and 'superiority striving' -- 'the masculine/feminine protest') due to early childhood trauma, either big or small or somewhere in between, but the important thing here is -- subjectively perceived as 'trauma' or 'traumatic'.

Extrapolating from Freudian narcissistic theory (On Narcissism, 1914), -- adding a partly Adlerian bend to it (this Freudian paper above was written significantly to 'compete' with both Jungian and Adlerian ideas and critiques, that much criticized Freud's 'sexually reductionistic' strict Classical theory').

In effect, with the concept of 'narcissism', Freud was at least moving partly towards Adler (Adler was still a Freudian when the two of them started talking about 'narcissism' and 'narcissistic injury' together in The Vienna Meetings, which in Adlerian terminology grew out of his ideas of 'organ inferiority' and 'overcompensation', later moving more generally into 'self-esteem injury' and 'inferiority feelings', and then later the 'compensatory masculine protest', and later still the 'compensatory superiority feelings', which took Adler away from Freud's 'sexual foundation' but still, Freud could argue back that the adult 'neurotic' client is essentially looking for a 'return to primary narcissistic satisfaction and bliss' (which can be viewed as a form of 'unconscious self-therapy' (self esteem recovery and/or ego enhancement) but this was getting a little too close to Adler, for Freud to likely feel comfortable with, so instead the idea could be argued that 'narcissism' was attached to 'the pleasure principle' and Freud's underlying 'sexual foundation' of human motivation).

Without Freud's explicit acknowledgement of this idea, the idea of 'narcissism' can be viewed as a 'bridge' between Freudian theory and Adlerian theory as the concept of narcissism can be used to encompass: self-interest, selfishness, the pleasure principle, sexuality, and self-esteem or ego enhancement.

This is where Classical Freudian theory comes closest to Adlerian theory although some significant similarities can also be drawn up between Freud's 'transference theory' (or my mutation of it) and Adler's 'lifestyle theory'.


Now, Freud didn't have any 'personality constructs' that he used in his early 1893-96 work although 'transference' showed up in his 1895 work (Studies in Hysteria).

So I am going to 'import' or 'introject' Freud's famous personality constructs added to his work in 1923 (The Ego and The Id) -- and these would be his famous -- 'ego', 'id', and 'superego' concepts...into Freud's early 1893-1895 work....with some significant modifications based on our new 'dialectical integration of Freud's early trauma theory and his later fantasy theory.

Now, I fully realize that I am going to raise some Spockian eyebrows here -- even possibly make orthodox psychoanalytic theorists and thinkers -- 'wince in pain' as I 'dialectically integrate' or 'conflate' a part of the ego and the id into one concept. But for those, who are open-minded and flexible enough in their thinking, bear with me as I work through my line of thinking and aim to package a 'paradigm' of unorthodox, complicated multi-integrative psychoanalytic theory into something that does indeed come together in an understandable, coherent, fashion.

Creativity comes from organizing chaos that has all the 'raw materials' we need to build something 'partly old, partly new', and ideally offers more meaningful, functional value than what we had before we 'took Humpty Dumpty fell apart -- and then we put him back together again -- as a 'new and improved Humpty Dumpty.

We respect tradition and yet we deconstruct and reconstruct tradition at the same time, because of the 'mental traps' and 'dysfunctionalities' that this tradition may continue to carry with it, often generation after generation, without critique, modification, mutation, evolution...that might take us to a better place.

I like 'old Victorian houses' but I like 'renovated, old-new' Victorian houses even better.

That is what I do. Metaphorically speaking, I 'freshly renovate old, out-dated Freudian Victorian houses, and integrate them in design with 'other Psychoanalytic houses', and my own unique designs, to create a different, larger type of 'Psychoanalytic and Neo-Psychoanalytic Mansion'.

I use Hegel's famous dialectic logic and paradigm -- 1. thesis; 2. anti-thesis; 3. synthesis/synergy -- to get firstly and most abstractly to 'Hegel's Hotel'; and within this, what might be called 'Freud's Hotel' -- but in a highly renovated, mutated, modified fashion; and ultimately, what I hope is coming from all of this work is either: 1. 'The DGB Interactive-Integrative Wellness and Education (I-I-WE) Society, Journal, and Institute; and/or 'The DGB Business Ethics-Philosophy-English/(Language Communication)-and-Psychology... (BE-PEP...) Society and Institute'. Shortened version: The DGB Philosophy-Psychology Society, Journal, and Institute.

That is the 'ideal vision', and this essay is one small part of that vision.

Please sustain judgment as long as you can, and be open-minded as you experience my deconstruction, reconstruction, modification, and mutation of 46 years of Freudian theory (1893-1939), starting below, with Freud's 'id theory'.

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

B/ Re-Defining and Re-Working Freud's Concept of The Id To 'Better Fit' With Freud's Early 1893-1896 'Pre-Psychoanalysis

We are entering a partly old, partly new language here...prepare to modify the old Freudian concepts, theories, and meaning into a 'Freudian-post-and-neo-Freudian-DGB stew'.

DGB Mutation #1: Freud's 'id' becomes my 'id-ego' or 'idian-ego'. Thus, the id becomes a part of 'the ego-as-a-whole' -- not something radically apart from the ego and the superego -- with the capability -- just like Freud's ego and superego -- of being either 'conscious', 'pre-conscious', or 'un/subconscious'.

The 'id' in this DGB mutation, is no longer a 'container' or a 'reservoir' 'housing' the 'life' and 'death' instincts. We reserve instead the term 'superego-id-ego-vault' ('siev') to reflect this idea of 'containment' and 'defense against, and restraining of, id impulses, id energy, and id complexes', some of which manage to 'escape' or 'be released' from their 'siev-like vault' anyway (due to things like stress overload, drugs, alcohol, a lessening of superego and ego defenses)...

Thus, the 'id-ego' is that impulsive, creative and destructive, element or 'ego-state' or 'ego-compartment' of the ego-as-a-whole that deals specifically with the most impulsive, primal, uncivil, driving forces in the personality. (Thus, in contrast to Freudian classical psychoanalysis, the id-ego is an essential part of our self -- or our 'ego-as-a-whole' as opposed to an 'alien force' completely detached from the ego-as-a-whole. Again, the id-ego (including id desires and impulses, id affects, id thoughts, id drives, id complexes...can be either unconscious, pre-conscious, and/or conscious -- just like the Freudian superego and the Freudian ('reductionistic') ego'.

The id-ego is to be viewed as 'the primal and primary ego-state' -- the ego-state of the newly born infant, and developing toddler -- until 'parental socialization' starts to 'kick in' and create within the evolving child a 'secondary ego-state' and 'secondary ego-process' that involves 'restraint', 'inhibition', 'creative conflict-resolving and problem-solving, 'compromising', 'reality-testing'... as opposed to 'raw, unadulterated, unfiltered, primal, primary narcissistic and pleasure-seeking' thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and actions....

Thus, in this first DGB mutation, we now have the 'primal, primary, narcissistic-pleasure-seeking id-ego' replacing the anachronistic, objectified 'it' or 'id' as a Freud-perceived 'biologically determined, alien-to-the-ego-totally-unconscious force' within the personality.

No longer is the id a lifeless 'container' or a 'reservoir' containing the 'life' and 'death' instincts. Now, our 'id-ego' is an 'organic, thinking, feeling, desiring, demanding' part of our ego -- our 'narcissistic-pleasure-seeking primal, primary, uncivilized, impulsive, driving, desiring ego-state' within the boundaries of 'our ego-as-a-whole'.

Within the realm of our new concept of the superego-id-ego vault or siev, we can differentiate between two polar 'sievs' -- usually conflated together into one siev: 1. our 'traumatized' superego-id-ego vault' containing our 'unbearable or unacceptable traumatized id ego and id-ego energy'; and 2. our 'unbearable or unacceptable compensating-fantasizing id-ego and id energy'.

Both types of energy -- or 'traumatized' id-ego energy and our 'fantasizing/phantasizing' (phantasizing referring to 'negative fantasy or phantasy energy') id-ego energy -- conflate together into complexes to form the type of 'love-hate' ambivalence (and our 'life' and 'destructive death' impulses) that we so commonly -- indeed, probably always -- find in any 'psychoanalytic analysis'. We can say that the human personality is inherently -- and particularly after traumacy and socialization -- 'polymorphously bipolar'.

This is where I will leave you to ponder what I have written -- feel free to judge this essay now the way you wish to (not that I pretend to have any control over when you choose to judge what you are reading) -- until we start to develop other, related, and inter-connected ideas.

-- dgb, March 16th, 2014

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Creations...

-- Are Still in Process...

Essay 2: Towards a New Multi-Dialectic, Multi-Integrative -- Quantum -- Philosophy-Psychology and Psychoanalysis-Neo-Psychoanalysis...

2014-03-08T05:53:00.002-08:00

March 8th, 2014

Essay 2: The Project as a Whole -- At Least Within The Field of Philosophy-Psychology-Psychoanalysis-Neo-Psychoanalysis

My goal, my vision, my sought after multi-integration -- at least within the field of clinical psychology, personality theory, psychological health and pathology, and psychotherapy -- is ambitious: to integrate my own 40 years of academic study in this realm of investigation, including the underlying foundations of philosophy, in such a manner that it all will come together into a 'coherent, multi-integrative-dialectic (quantum) whole'.

There are two names that I will give to this project, one: Hegel's Hotel: DGB (Multi-Dialectic-Multi-Integrative -- or Quantum) Philosophy-Psychology';

The second is a subset of the first above, and that is: 'DGB (Multi-Dialectic-Multi-Integrative -- or Quantum) Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis'.

Together, they make up the name of this project -- 'The DGB Quantum Philosophy-Psychology and (Multi-Dialectic-Multi-Interactive-Multi-Integrative)Psychoanalytic-Neo-Psychoanalytic Project'.

The 'Hegel's Hotel' part of this name makes up the assumptive-philosophical paradigm that drives this whole idealistic, evolutionary-multi-dialectic-mutative-integrative process -- a 'triadic' process that can best be simplified by the following 'classic' Hegelian formula which Hegel never actually stated in the fashion that he is generally given credit for, and yet it was both the implicit and partly explicit driving force behind one of the greatest philosophical masterpieces in Western history (G.W. Hegel, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit', 1807).

Hegel's dialectical-interactive-integrative formula is usually cited as: 1. thesis; 2. anti-thesis; 3. synthesis -- with more modern writers such as Stephen Covey in his best-selling book, 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People', 1989,1990, devoting most of his book to the idea of 'Thinking Win-Win' (Habit 4); 'Seeking First to Be Understood, Then to Understand' (Habit 5); and  'Creatively Synergizing' (Habit 6) -- all three of which can be viewed as modern day applications of Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit'. Well, not quite. Not even Hegel was what I would call a 'dialectically-interactive-egalitarian-think-win-win-seek-first-to-understand-then-to- be-understood-creatively-synergize-your-differences' type of thinker. Neither was Freud. Neither was Anna Freud. Neither was Kurt Eissler. Neither was Masson. Because if they were, they would have worked out their conflicted difference in more creative-synergetic harmony.

For argument sake, there are two types of choices or decisions that a person can make:

1. An 'either/or' choice;

2. A 'think-win-win-seek-first-to-understand-then-to-be-understood-creatively-synergize-your-differences' choice (or set of choices) with a mutually motivated, co-operative partner.

Well, so many times we have in life a competitive as opposed to a co-operative partner, and an authoritarian, unilateral thinker as opposed to a dialectically-egalitarian-interactive-integrative thinker. The first type of thinker -- even if he or she 'wins' and/or 'dominates' but at the expense of the other person or group 'losing' and/or 'being dominated, suppressed, oppressed, repressed' is going to be dealing with covert, underlying resistance, rebellion, civil anarchy leaving the so-called 'win' tainted, tarnished, toxic, which the authoritarian, unilateral type of thinker having to deal with all this 'nuclear fallout' after the 'blow by' the less powerful resistor or resistant group.

Our second oldest known Western philosopher -- Anaximander -- talked and wrote about this type of 'conflict resolution' and created the original idea of 'The Shadow', 'Chaos', or 'The Apeiron' (the latter being Anaxamander's choice of terms) and the idea of 'Cosmic Justice' -- 'what goes around, comes around' with the Suppressed-Oppressed-Repressed-Enraged' Inferior Power, regaining strength, energy, and power in 'The Shadows of The Apeiron' until, one day, this Suppressed Power 'forces' its way up into the light of day again -- Centre Stage of a New Psycho-Drama -- in which the old power conflict will be played out again to a new and/or similar old conflict-resolution.

This philosophical view of Anaxamander's foreshadowed by about 2400 to 2500 years, and more, the evolutionary and revolutionary work of Hegel, Marx, Breuer, Charcot, Janet, Freud, Jung, Foucault, Derrida, Perls...  'Evolutionary Deconstructionism' taught the reverse of the theory of gravity (what goes up, must come down -- like a man jumping); in contrast, first Anaximander, then the rest mentioned above taught the reverse (what goes down, must come up -- like a volcano exploding, or a dam breaking, or a Boston Tea Party...or a War of Independence or a Civil War)...

The human personality is often an internal civil war between a frightening, irresistible force, and a resisting, defending, compensating wall. And so began the work of Freud -- and the birth of Psychoanalysis.

This 'psychological truism' is as true today as it was when Freud first started writing about this phenomenon in 1893 and 1894. I call it the 'central core' of Psychoanalysis -- all types of Psychoanalysis, but particularly 'Pre-Classical' (1893-1896) and 'Classical' (1897-1939).

Between Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud we have the 'Dialectic-Triadic-Evolutionary-Romantic-Post-Modern-Threesome' of modern day philosophy-psychology and psychoanalysis-neo-psychoanalysis. Nietzsche rejected his Hegelian roots (The Birth of Tragedy or BT) but BT was one of Nietzsche's finest legacies -- the first bridge between Hegel and Freud. Each of us has a 'Dionysian Id' (our 'erupting volcano'), an 'Apollonian Ego and/or Superego' (our resisting, defending wall), and our 'symptoms' or 'compromise-formations' between them. The way this psycho-drama plays itself out inside of us can lead us to a 'sterile world and path of over-anal-retentive-defensiveness and compensation'; or conversely, an oral-genital obsessive-compulsive-addictive world or path of lack of impulse control and related self-destruction; or, if we don't play out either of these 'Polar Births of Tragedy', we might actually find a more 'homeostatically and dialectically balanced, reasonably harmonious, middle ground between them.
That is the 'binding force' behind my whole philosophical-psychological work here as summed up by the name and the metaphysical metaphor which labels it: Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology: Project for a Greater, Multi-Dialectic, Multi-Interactive-Multi-Integrative -- Quantum -- Humanistic-Existential Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis.

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B/ Guiding Metaphysical Integrative Concepts and Theories

The first realm of study -- particularly the 'philosophical' implications and applications of what I intend to create here -- extend primarily outwards from the starting point of the human personality into all of the 'cultural extensions' of the human personality including: business, economics, politics, art...; whereas the second realm of study focuses mainly on the study of man's 'mind-brain', using a combination of 'interpreted and generalized, metaphysical psycho-structures and psycho-dynamics or psycho-processes' as 'guiding fictions' but, at the same time, as 'useful cognitive-language tools' that are being used because of their 'close structural, associative, and dynamic similarity' to 'what actually seems to be going on' in the human mind-brain -- based on 'yours truly here's' life experiences, perceptions, interpretations, generalizations, and judgments, and the above mentioned 40 years of both therapeutic experience and clinical study...

Using my own integrative 'realistic guiding fictions' of both metaphysical concepts and psycho-dynamic theories, as tools then -- hopefully, I will bring into play here with as much simplicity, clarity, and coherence as I can muster together on these pages, a 'psycho-dynamically old-new brand of evolutionary and integrative neo-psychoanalysis and philosophy-psychology that will advance the cause of clinical psychology, personality theory, neurosis and psychopathology, psychotherapy, and wellness psychology'.

'Integrative' becomes the key word here because I intend to draw my knowledge, insights, and integrative theoretical creations from 'any' and 'all' schools of philosophy and psychology that have made a significant impact on my mind-brain during my 42 year (1972-2014) 'voyage'.

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C/ The Integration of 'Psyche' and 'Soma'

One of my goals of integration involves the integration of the human 'psyche' with the human 'soma' (that is, human psychology with human physiology, chemistry, bio-chemistry, hormonal interplay, neurology and neuro-psychology, etc.).

Not that I have any special expertise or knowledge in biology but what I have noticed over the years is that man's 'psychological defense system' functions very much like his 'biological defence system' (our 'immune system'), so I will be extrapolating on this comparison over the course of these essays.

Freud himself, in 1895, tried to bring biology, genetics, evolutionary theory, and physiology into the 'same room' as psychology -- integrating everything together in one essay -- but never completed the project, never completely figure out, as has anyone else, how a 'neuron firing' becomes a 'thought' and/or visa versa.

Regardless, this unfinished 1895 essay, 'Project for A Scientific Psychology', became the foundation for much of what Freud wrote over the next 44 years until the end of his life.

I would like to add some ideas to what Freud worked hard on but never finished 119 years ago.

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D/  Six Foundational 'Sub-Schools' of Psychoanalysis

These are the six major 'sub-schools' of Psychoanalysis that I will be working with and drawing from in the essays that follow:

1. Freudian 'Pre-(Classical) Psychoanalysis' (1893-1896);

2. 'Classical' Freudian Psychoanalysis (1897-1939);

3. Object Relations (Starting with Kleinian Object Relations, the 1920s, 30s, until Klein's death, but still seemingly going strong today...include also, the work of: Fairbairn, Winnicott, Erickson, Guntrip, and many other Object Relations theorists...);

4. Self Psychology (launched by Heinz Kohut in the 1950s, and onwards....introduced the important concept of 'narcissistic transferences'...and as an extension of Object Relations brought into play the idea of 'Self-Object Relations'...)

5. Bionian Psychoanalysis (Bion launched his own unique brand of 'Object Relations' in the 1950s...with some intriguing concepts and theories to consider...)

6. Lacanian Psychoanalysis started off as a provocative and controversial sub-school of psychoanalysis -- 'unaccepted' by the international body -- but has now been accepted into 'the fold', and is being taught as a recognized sub-school of psychoanalysis.

Beyond psychoanalysis, there are many different 'post' and 'neo' schools of psychoanalysis that we will also be looking at including schools created by Adler, Jung, Horney, Fromm, Perls, Berne, Janov...

Digging back before Psychoanalysis we have many schools of philosophy (although they usually weren't, and aren't, referred to as 'schools' of philosophy) that have either directly or indirectly influenced psychoanalysis  or simply pre-dated psychoanalysis with similar ideas...starting in ancient Greece and China and evolving forward: Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Darwin, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Goethe, and the contemporary philosophers of psychoanalysis such as Foucault and Derrida...

This is a huge project....but the project has been evolving online for over six years now.....so now it's just a matter of presenting a more coherent, organized, value-laden, package....

Let's see if I can put everything together in a meaningful manner for you and me both...

-- dgb, March 9th, updated April 1st, 2014,

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging-Synergies...

-- Are Now In Process...

Essay 1: Project for a Greater, Multi-Integrative, Humanistic-Existential, Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis

2014-02-11T05:33:00.002-08:00

Updated, April 3rd-4th, 2014....

We live in a competitive, 'either/or' world of choices -- which includes philosophical choices, psychological choices, business choices, financial choices, political choices, ethical choices, narcissistic choices, life-changing choices, simple choices, and the like....

We also live in a world of co-operative choices -- and probably even more common than this -- 'partly competitive-partly co-operative' choices where we aim to negotiate differences favorable towards what we want (or maybe we choose not to attempt to negotiate towards 'middle ground', if we are 'dug in by our heels' in terms of getting totally what we want) -- and what we want includes what we want both 'intra-psychically' and 'inter-personally' -- I.e., within ourselves first, and then within our encounters and/or relationships with other people second.

At this point, many factors can come into play such as: power, control, leverage...or the lack therof, narcissism, hedonism, less often altruism unless we really care about the other person and/or maintaining a long-term relationship with the person...

We can make a distinction between 'narcissistic negotiating' (where we are looking to get the best deal possible for ourselves) vs. 'egalitarian negotiating' where we are looking for a 'fair' or 'equal' deal where both ourselves and our fellow negotiator go home happy, and/or where our 'co-operator and/or competitor' in the negotiation deal want to continue to make further negotiated deals with us because they were happy with the results of the first deal.

In this latter regard, we can talk about 'mutual value-driven deals' -- deals that are negotiated towards a common ground of mutual engagement, interaction, co-operation as well as some greater or lesser level of competition, aimed at some degree of integration or synthesis where both parties involved in the 'conflict-negotiation' aim to reach some kind of 'mutually-driven, value-driven, two-way, compromise-formation' that ideally benefits both parties, maybe not to the utmost degree or to a 'perfect compromise', but certainly such that the two parties want to come back to the 'negotiating table' again in the future with each other in order to negotiate other 'mutual value-driven' deals.

When this fails to happen, we can either end up in a 'total impasse' in which both parties go their separate ways without getting what they want, or perhaps a negotiated deal is arrived at, but because one party has more leverage than the other, or is simply a better negotiator than the other, the result is that one party feels that he or she did not get the 'sufficient value' that they were looking for at the negotiating table, such that this person or group of person either vows not to return to 'do business' with this other party, and/or if there is an ongoing relationship between these two parties, such as in an employer/employee relationship, there may be negative spin-offs from the deal such that the party that did not feel he or she got 'sufficient value' from the deal, and thus feels like he or she is being exploited, will take out his or her animosity in some form of chronic and/or acute 'passive-aggression' (lateness, sickness, drop in spirit/morale, sabotage, less than stellar performance, eventually leaving from, or being fired by the company....)

Thus, negotiating compromises that have sufficient value for both parties in the arrived at compromise-formation such that both parties want to continue to develop their relationship with each other, is a vital life-skill for any person or group of persons in terms of meeting our personal, inter-personal, professional, business, financial, philosophical, psychological, political and/or any other type of perceived want or need that brings two or more parties to the negotiating table in the first place.

Negotiating is a hugely important individual life-skill and this does not necessarily mean narcissistically and/or manipulatively negotiating deals to the point where we get a 'total short-term win' to the point of losing a potential long-term negotiating partner. In this regard, a distinction can be made between 'short-term narcissistic negotiation victories' to the point of losing potential long-term friends, lovers, family members, business customers....vs. 'long-term, mutually value-laden, dialectically stabilizing, harmonizing, win-win, negotiation victories' where both parties go home happy to the point of wanting to return to the bargaining table with this particular negotiating partner...

A few of the top obstacles to this latter type of win-win negotiation style and victory are: individual and/or group narcissism, greed, hedonism, pride (just think of the 7 deadly 'sins' listed in the bible, any type of highly contentious speculation and/or interpretation, moral-ethical righteousness...grounded or ungrounded...

And it is here that we enter the highly contentious, highly righteous, highly interpretive, 'Seduction Theory Controversy' that blew Jeffrey Masson and The Psychoanalytic Establishment apart in the early 1980s, and goes back to a very early point in psychoanalytic history (1893-1899) where Freud suddenly 'reversed his theoretical tracks' -- 180 degrees -- and said that all his hard work over the first 3 to 4 years of his professional, psychoanalytic or pre-psychoanalytic life -- was basically a 'mistake'... He had gotten his client interpretations and generalizations about 'hysteria' and 'obsession' and 'neurosis', and his clients' early childhood memories, almost all wrong, or at least 180 degrees 'wrong'.

Now, to be sure, many of Freud's earliest ideas were carried forward into his later work, but there remained the highly provocative and controversial issue -- regarding that sometimes 'very gray' area of human existence -- specifically concerning the hugely important issue of 'knowledge' and 'epistemology' and 'what was knowledge' and what was 'pseudo-or-false knowledge', what was 'real' and what was 'distortion', what was 'real' and what was 'fiction', what was 'real' and what was 'fantasy', and to what extent, in personal experiences and memories or non-memories of experiences, did the two 'polar entities' -- 'reality' and 'fantasy', 'truth' and 'fiction', 'the objective' and 'the subjective' -- 'conflate' and/or 'collude' with each other in what a psychoanalyst or any other therapist, for that matter, was 'hearing' from his client in the therapy room...was he or she hearing 'reality' or 'fantasy', 'truth' or 'fiction', or somewhere in between? And to what extent, in between? And how much might this vary from client to client? Or could 'solid, righteous, iron-clad generalizations' be put into place?  At bottom line, was the issue of 'childhood sexual abuse' -- an uncomfortable subject to talk about, hugely so back in Victorian Vienna, and to be quite frank, not that much better today... Not only the actual phenomenon is a huge 'human taboo', and today, punishable by long potential jail sentences, but even talking about the subject is not something that most of us would 'like' to do if we don't have to....And 'cover ups' or 'attempted cover-ups' are likely to be almost everywhere that the 'real phenomenon exists' -- just think of Penn State University. And now think of Vienna, Austria, 1896.

It is here that Jeffrey Masson's explosive protest against The Psychoanalytic Establishment and what he called 'Freud's Suppression of His Infamous Seduction Theory' (meaning Freud's real or alleged 'cover-up' of real or imagined childhood sexual abuse in Vienna families) that created the 'clinical evidence' for his professionally read 'Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory' before the Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society on the evening of April 21st, 1896 -- it is here that 'The Unstoppable Force' (Jeffrey Masson) collided with 'The Inpenetratable Wall' (The Psychoanalytic Establishment), with most notably, Freud's daughter, Anna Freud, at the top of the International Psychoanalytic hierarchy.

The highly respected Freud-loyalist, Kurt Eissler, a close friend of Masson's before this controversy broke out into the public eye, was in the second position of the hierarchy, and Jeffrey Masson had just been promoted to the third highest position in the hierarchy as 'The Projects Director of The Freud Archives' -- which is how he was granted full access to Freud's most private, and non-public, letters, particularly to Wilhelm Fliess, which involved intimate details surrounding Freud's 'abandonment' of his pre-1897 'reality-trauma-seduction' network of inter-connected theories at the expense of his newly evolving, post-1896, 'instinctual drive, fantasy, wish, 'screen memories', childhood sexuality, The Psycho-Sexual Stages of Development, Oedipus Complex...' network of inter-connected theories...

The 1980s 'moral conflict and resulting impasse' between Masson and The Psychoanalytic Establishment, surrounding Freud's 'motivation' in the 1896-1899 time period' -- i.e., Masson accusing Freud of 'losing moral courage' --  still exists today, some 30 plus years after this highly contentious and provocative issue was first made public in a series of newspaper interviews, and Janet Malcolm's highly entertaining but editorially controversial book (In The Freud Archives, 1983, 1985) on this subject matter.

I, haphazardly, on one of my many visits to a downtown Toronto bookstore, picked up two of Masson's books, not knowing who the author was (but seemingly rebellious against an 'anal-retentive psychoanalytic orthodoxy' -- my first interpretation and judgment of the polar conflict between the two competing factions, which made the unknown author appealing to me, consequently, my purchase of his two books that I was looking at: 'Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst (1990, 1991); and 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory' (1984, 1985, 1992).

For me, Jeffrey Masson's exodus out of psychoanalysis was ironically my ticket into psychoanalysis, at least in terms of igniting my passion for studying psychoanalysis, and examining it, editorializing on it, renovating and integrating it -- particularly relative to the controversial years of between 1895 and 1899 -- and from the outside looking in as opposed to the inside looking out.

While Masson was deconstructing -- or at least trying to -- Classical Psychoanalysis throughout the early 1980s and early 1990s, I was learning, or at least partly learning, Gestalt Therapy at The Gestalt Institute in Toronto (off and on, from 1979 to 1991), and Adlerian Psychology at The Adlerian Institute of Ontario for two years (1980-81).

Everyone has at least a partly unique and idiosyncratic view of the world -- formed mainly from our early childhood experiences and how we react to them, generalize about them, are motivated by them; but also partly based on our later levels and types of experiences, educational training, and again, how we react to these experiences and this training, generalize about them, and are motivated by them, as we continue to evolve and move along our adult path.

By this point in time, speaking from the vantage point of a psychoanalytic and/or neo-psychoanalytic point of view, and also from someone educationally trained to understand 'transferences' but as much as from the outside looking into psychoanalysis as from the inside looking out from psychoanalysis -- i.e., with educational training in Language (General Semantics) and Cognitive Therapy, Humanistic-Existentialism, Adlerian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, and some elements of Jungian Psychology -- we can say two things: one, that by adulthood and particularly after the main bulk of a person's educational training, the person -- meaning any person -- including Freud -- including you, the reader -- and including myself -- are already well along our 'transference path of destiny' which is very resistant to change, for better or for worse; and two, for a psychological theorist -- albeit constructionist and/or deconstructionist -- like Freud, like Adler, like Jung, like Perls, like Masson, and like a relative unknown such as myself, these 'transference idiosyncrasies' are going to show up in the individual theorist's work under what I call, using a 'conflation' or 'confluence' of two psychoanalytic terms -- 'transference sublimation'.

Our transference sublimation is what gives our 'professional career, or work, or non-work path in life' its individual uniqueness or 'profile', and its distinctiveness or set of 'signature transference distinctions' from all others who walk on this planet. First, we had fingerprint signatures; then we had DNA signatures; and now, not totally new, but certainly still in its earlier stages of evolutionary development, we have our 'transference signatures' -- indeed, an 'internal template of unique transference signature distinctions' that make up our 'transference profile' -- laid out originally in Freud's classic essay, 'The Dynamics of Transference' (1912), and similar, but different (because of a difference in underlying philosophical and psychological assumptions), to what Adler conceptualized as our 'lifestyle' and to what Brian Bird, in the 1970s, called 'the universal phenomenon of transference'.

Now, hopefully, if everything goes as expected, I will be using my own broad, integrative knowledge stemming from a combination of my imagination and my willingness to 'transgress any and all conceptual and theoretical boundaries' (one might say a part of my own transference signature), I will be able in a portion of the essays to follow to convey this knowledge of 'how to better understand an individual person's -- or read, 'client's' -- unique 'set of transference distinctions and overall transference profile'...

For anyone who has watch the television program 'Criminal Minds', this is the type of analysis that the 'criminal profilers' do on the show, but within the specialized arena of 'catching serial -- read 'transference -- criminals'; whereas, I come from a different experiential and educational background, am looking to expand this type of knowledge -- as 'customized' by yours truly -- to apply to a variety of different 'specialized and/or more general arenas and settings' -- for hopefully 'the right ethical reasons' because there is an issue of 'ethics' here that needs to be seriously contemplated and discussed/debated relative to issues of 'personal privacy' and the like -- we all know, that it is bad enough that our privacy is being invaded each and every day as we sit on our computer or cell phone and type away...

We are going to assume, for the time being and probably for the duration of this set of essays, that this type of 'transference profiling' is meant for the therapeutic relationship between therapist and client -- anything else, will need to be discussed and debated at a future time...

And this is only one area of psychoanalysis and/or neo-psychoanalysis that still can be significantly developed...

This is all part of my 40 plus educational development -- combined with my unique transference profile -- that has led me to this point in my personal evolutionary path, right here and now.

My coincidentally and/or non-coincidentally bumping into Masson's psychoanalytic work in the early to mid 1990s ('Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst', 1992; and 'The Assault on Truth': Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory') -- two highly controversial -- to the point of 'scandalous' -- books based on Masson's editorial opinions of being involved with Psychoanalysis at the highest level in the early 1980s, and more specifically, having read Freud's most intimate and personal, 'out of the public's eye', correspondence (mainly personal letters from Freud to Fliess in the period of time that Psychoanalysis' was first being developed during the 1990s) -- well, this new 'historical knowledge and/or editorialized back into history knowledge' coming into my mind-brain, partly changed the 'trajectory' of my 'transference profile and motivation', as I suddenly became obsessed with the history and evolution of the early part of psychoanalysis that Masson was writing and protesting against --i.e., Freud's alleged partial or full abandonment of his early (pre-1897) 'Pre-Psychoanalytic, trauma and seduction (childhood sexual abuse) theories' in favor of his newly evolving (1895? 1896?, and definitely,1897, onwards...) 'Classical' -- 'drive, fantasy, childhood sexuality, Oedipus and Dream theories...'

And here we are today...

By the time I had started delving more seriously into the history and evolution of psychoanalysis in the mid 1990s, I had already partly dipped into Jungian Psychology which, along with Gestalt Therapy, led me into the dialectic philosophy of Hegel -- one of the main bridges between Western/Eastern philosophy and Western psychology -- and from the dialectic logic and process of Hegelian philosophy (stated most simply as a triadic process: 1. thesis; 2. anti-thesis; and 3. synthesis which today has become popularized as 'synergy' and 'the synergetic win-win process'), I had a 'method', a 'process' by which to think both 'inside the box and outside the box at the same time' which can also be viewed as an extension of the Gestalt 'hot seat and empty chair method' into the philosophy and psychology of ideas, concepts, theories, paradigms -- and their dialectic integration.

Thus, I arrived at the metaphor that I have been using for about eight years now to label my type of philosophical and psychological thinking -- 'Hegel's Hotel'.

Actually my choice of name and title for my philosophical and psychological work goes back to that same period in the early to mid 1990s, but my writing online started, if I remember correctly, back in 2006.

When I did my online interview with Jeffrey Masson back in 2010 (google... Hegel's Hotel, The Jeffrey Masson Interview), this was the one main area of divergence in our respective paradigms of thinking: Dr. Masson was arguing for basically a return to Freud's pre-1897 'reality-trauma-seduction theory'; whereas I was arguing for a synthesis of Freud's respective Reality or RTS theory and his post-1895 evolving 'Impulsive Drive-Fantasy-Oedipus-Childhood Sexuality' Set of Theories. It is this 'evolving synthesis' between the pre-1897 Freud and the post-1896 Freud that will be the main subject of the essays that follow.

Chief among my new 'synthesis' and the resulting 'renovations' to what I will call 'Greater Classical Psychoanalysis (1893-1939) or 'GCP' will be my re-working of Freud's 'id theory' and what I will call the 'vicissitudes of the id' which include such new concepts as: 1. 'the id-ego'; 2. 'the id vault'; 3. 'id-ego compromise formations'; 4. 'allusions to id fantasies'; 5. 'the idian topdog' as distinguishable from 'the idian underdog'....

In fact, if you are a Freudian loyalist or scholar, or simply 'sufficiently educated student of Freud', do you really think that you can make any distinction between what I am calling here 'The Idian-Ego' and what could also be called 'The Narcissistic Ego'....Freud, himself, in around 1914, 1915, made the distinction between what he called 'The Pleasure Ego' and 'The Reality Ego' -- a foreshadowing of his later (1923) distinction between 'The Ego' and 'The Id'.

It is time 'we' -- I will loosely call myself a 'student of Freud' -- get back to the German idea, as defined in Freud's earliest work, that 'ego' means 'self' and, as such, 'the id' -- being a significant part of 'the self' -- is also a significant part of the ego -- and/or an 'ego-state', or an 'ego-compartment' -- defined, at least partly, like the id currently is, as a 'primal, uncivilized, narcissistic ego-state' within the confines of 'the wholistic ego' or 'Self' (here I am integrating Greater Classical Psychoanalysis with Object Relations and Self Psychology, as well).

I will leave things at that for today....I am trying to keep my essays shorter and simpler for blog-reading...but this should give you an idea of where I am going with my project here...

I will also be inter-mixing brief editorial essays on Freud's work from start to finish, essay by essay, as organized in James Strachey's Standard Edition of Freud's Complete Works. I may not get to all of them but I will certainly get to the essays that have made the most significant impact on me.

As mentioned above, Freud called his 1895 aborted project which still turned out to foreshadow most of his later work, 'Project for a Scientific Psychology'.

I will call my project here: 'Project for a Greater, Multi-Integrative, Humanistic-Existential Psychoanalysis and Neo-Psychoanalysis'.

Let's get going!

-- dgb, March 31st, April 4th, 2014,

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Essays...

-- Are Now in Process...

2013-09-07T05:07:00.001-07:00

2013-09-06T12:19:00.002-07:00

Early Freudian Theory (1893-1896)...and Then Theoretical Overhaul...(Freud As His Own Most Extreme Revisionist...)

Editorially speaking, I believe that the most important ideas that Freud ever wrote -- indeed, the essence and foundation of psychoanalysis -- can be found in his first two essays: 1. The Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena (1893); and 2. The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence (1894) which progressively dealt with these three factors related to mental health: 1. reality-based, psychical trauma; 2. unbearable ideas that we perceive as threatening our ego-pride; and 3. a vast array of almost endlessly possible, imaginative 'defenses' that are aimed at avoiding that which we don't want to think about and/or deal with.

These three factors, together, constitute the essence of what Freud labelled as 'defensive hysteria' in 1894 which was the first step to an evolving, more generalized theory of the 'psycho-neuroses'.

Breuer, Charcot, Janet all played a part in influencing Freud's formula but it was Freud's idea of 'defense' that really created a 'new understanding' -- a psychological as opposed to physiological, genetic and/or 'degenerative' understanding -- for both 'hysteria' and eventually for 'all psycho-neuroses' (which did not include what Freud called 'the actual neuroses' -- i.e., 'anxiety neurosis' and 'neurasthenia' -- which Freud believed were more connected to 'here-and-now, immediacy' events as opposed to early childhood psychological events. Today, I would surmise that most psychotherapists would view most client symptoms (and 'causes') as involving both past and present psychological issues that inter-connect with each other.

Freud's first understanding of 'neurosis' was a simple, brilliant understanding of neurosis, which only became complicated and convoluted by the hugely imaginative abilities of clients to 'go to great ends to hide, distort, avoid, suppress, repress, project...whatever their particular 'unbearable idea' was -- stemming out of psychical trauma.

This formula is still just as relevant and meaningful today as it was back in 1894: people hiding 'psychical trauma' and 'unbearable ideas' from both themselves and/or others.

There are three parts in the equation above: again, 1. the psychical trauma; 2. the unbearable idea; and 3. the particular line(s) of defense against this unbearable idea.

The 'psychical trauma' usually starts the whole cycle but not necessarily.

Firstly, there is a definitional problem because psychical trauma' is 'in the mind of the beholder' -- different people react to the same or similar trauma in different ways, and what one person might consider to be a 'major' trauma, someone else might consider to be a 'minor' one. Perhaps Freud was right in this regard in saying that 'psychical reality' trumps 'material reality' (and the two are quite likely to be intimately interconnected and feed on each other).

There is one further problem that the concept of 'psychical trauma' raises and that is this: who determines the 'reality' of the 'psychical reality' -- Freud or the client; the analyst/therapist with his or her 'interpretive-reconstruction' of a material and psychical event; or the client him or herself as she remembers the historical event and his or her reaction to it -- both then and now.

That can create a big ethical problem in the therapeutic relationship.

Finally, there is the factor of 'childhood narcissistic fixation' (including both 'aim' and 'object') that can be partly equated with Freud's 'fantasy theory' and 'pleasure principle' but from my perspective, not totally to the extent that Freud goes 'head over heals into childhood sexual fantasy'. More distinction will need to be worked out in this area.

Many of Freud's case examples up to 1896 reflected an erotic fantasy and narcissistic fixation component being the 'unbearable idea' factor behind their particular hysterical symptom(s), although usually the way he cited these cases, the fantasy was usually an 'adolescent' or 'adult' fantasy; not a childhood one. That is probably to be more expected in the Victorian era with women's fantasies -- or some women's fantasies -- being hampered by the stringent moral codes of the time. The point here is that the 'unacceptable idea' can be either a 'traumatic experience' and/or an 'unaccepted fantasy' -- we might even say, that with some, there might be a psychical traumatic factor in the imagined fantasy which could be quite outside the person's normal range of thinking...

How to reconcile -- or not reconcile -- 'psychical trauma' with 'erotic fantasy' in the proper understanding of the human psyche; this theoretical problem Freud would think long and hard about between 1896 and 1897 before moving forward (or backward) to the 'fantasy' side of the equation to the detriment of the basically abandoned previous triadic 'reality-trauma-seduction' theories. After 1896, the new 'triadic' psychoanalytic theories were his 'fantasy-Oedipus-impulsive drive (id)' theories which more or less completely 'boxed out' his previous triadic theories, particularly the seduction theory.

What stayed the same from his older theories which could now be applied to the new ones were his 1. unbearable or irreconcilable idea theory (which was now fantasy as opposed to trauma based; and 2. his evolving and enlarging theory of 'defence mechanisms' of which he started with 'repression' and, with other important psychoanalysts help, moved on to a whole network of them...I may be adding a few of my own here... introjection, identification, projection, transference, denial, reaction-formation, sublimation, rationalization, intellectualization, approval-seeking/disapproval-avoiding, distancing, dreams, jokes, sarcasm, allusion to immediacy or to transference complexes, displacement, dissociation, psychosis, 'hysterical conversion symptoms' or 'hysterical attacks', obsessive-compulsion-addiction (anal, oral, genital), character disorders (bi-polar disorder or manic-depression, borderline personality, narcissistic personality...)

Editorially speaking, Freud was right in coming to the conclusion that there were some problems with the 'all inclusiveness' of Freud's overly reductionistic trauma and (even more so his) seduction theory which is not to say that they were wrong -- just over-generalized, and/or incapable of explaining everything that Freud wanted to explain in psychoanalysis...

What Freud was wrong in concluding was: first that ALL psychical neuroses are caused by early childhood trauma (1893-1895), and more specifically, early childhood sexual trauma (1895-1896); before reversing his field -- meaning all three of his preceding theories -- by declaring from about 1897 onwards to the end of his career that ALL psychical neuroses are caused by early childhood sexual fantasy, and that first three theories listed above were largely 'mistaken'.

If we can make one negative generalization about Freud, it is perhaps this: that Freud had a habit of moving from one extreme theoretical conclusion to another, over-generalizing in the process, resulting in critics calling his theories 'pan-sexual' and 'reductionistic' -- which they generally were, and still are -- on both sides of the 1896-97 fence, river, chasm, abyss...

No 'either/or' decision needed to be made by Freud in 1896 or anytime afterwards. Freud created an unnecessary conflict for himself -- and for psychoanalysis -- that has driven a wedge and indeed, created an abyss in the middle of orthodox, classical psychoanalysis that is still present today, 117 years later (1896 to 2013).

Editorially interpreting, there has been a rather large 'exodus' from Classical Psychoanalysis to Object Relations and other 'sub-schools' of psychoanalysis that do not suffer from the same 'Freudian flaws' that no one within the Psychoanalytic Establishment seems to want to touch and modify in order to reduce its most glaring patriarchal, sexist, Victorian biases -- and the aforementioned 'over-generalized, over-polarized, either/or theories' -- to keep a modified, modernized version of 'Classical' Psychoanalysis 'alive and vibrant, and relevant'.

As Janet Malcolm pointed out in 'In The Freud Archives (1983,84), this puts the Object Relationist theorists on the same basic page as the modern day 'Trauma-Seduction' theorists, most notably Dr. Jeffrey Masson, who both share the common denominator of paying more attention to 'reality and trauma theory' and reducing if not dismissing altogether the theoretical, diagnostic and therapeutic relevance of the Oedipus Complex theory (like Fairbairn et. al ...Winnicott, Guntrip...did)...and many others today as well...

Thus, a dichotomy of contradictions (of the 1896-97 variety) some would say has put a rather significant theoretical and therapeutic 'chasm' or 'abyss' between Classical Psychoanalysis and Object Relations, although, it would seem, that on the whole, psychoanalysis is trying to minimize the significance of this seeming contradiction in respective theories.

'Tolerance', 'diplomacy', 'polite internal disagreement' -- and/or ideally, a 'theoretical bridge' to connect this contradiction in theories -- seems to be the way that this 'abyss' issue has been mainly handled internally lately (to my very limited sample of 'witnessing the cross-dialogue' at the one professional psychoanalytic seminar that I have attended).

Anna Freud was the person who really needed to make -- and should have made -- the necessary adjustments and modifications to her father's outdated, discriminatory theories but she, unfortunately, either could not see the need for this, or simply did not want to try to modify her father's work to make it more 'female friendly' and less one-sidedly extreme in terms of its 'pansexualism' and 'pan-fantasy bias'.

Of course, Anna Freud was born into essentially the same Victorian context and culture as her father lived through, so perhaps we should not be surprised by no 'post-Classical, modern day' adjustments in her time (up to 1982), nor Eissler's time, same reason (up to 1999), nor, by the looks of things, perhaps by anyone at anytime (2013 and still counting...).

Other 'psychoanalytic scholars' have tried to argue that there were no victims of early childhood sexual abuse in Freud's early case studies. If you are prone to believe that one, then just read the two excerpts below that I have included from one of Freud's most passionate and compassionate essays -- 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' (1896) in which Freud 'blew the whistle' on childhood sexual abuse and the 'acute and chronic leftover psychic trauma' to these victims, both female and male -- as well as blowing the whistle on the offending and offensive childhood sexual victimizers who were, more often than not, members of the victims' own family (and perhaps walked among the men of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society who all put up a huge protest against this theory...

Perhaps the fine, upper class, patriarchal men of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society....doth protest too much, methinks...

Freud most certainly did not lack 'moral courage' in the spring of 1896 when he read the paper above to above mentioned Society on the evening of April 21st.

However, did he 'lose this moral courage' shortly after this meeting because of what happened in the meeting? And/or because of Freud's continued sense of guilt and/or fear of professional punishment for the Emma Ekstein ordeal?

That was the million dollar motivational question that Masson threw out at the scholarly world and the general public back in the early 1980s.

Only Masson did not spare any 'moral hammers' in going after Freud's theorized 'loss of moral courage' which Masson turned into a declarative statement -- and then went public with his accusation.

The Psychoanalytic Establishment right up to the top of the hierarchy -- did not want to hear Masson's righteousness towards Freud -- particularly as it came out in Blumenthal's second interview with Masson in the New York Times in the summer of 1981....

It didn't take long afterwards -- October of 1981 -- for Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and the 13 member board to vote to end Masson's contract after one year as The Projects Director of The Freud Archives.

Stated Eissler, 'Would you make director of the Archives someone who writes plain nonsense? He must foresee that he cannot get an honorary place here.'

In September of 1981, Anna Freud wrote Masson a anguished but calm, contained, professional letter stemming from the aftermath of Masson's August 1981 second part public interview and a letter of self-justification written from Masson to Anna Freud just before her return letter:

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

Dear Jeff Masson,

Your letter came today, and I answer quickly, since I may have to go to hospital in a few days, and that may mean an interruption. I am sorry, though, that my answer will be disappointing to you.

I have to tell you that I was also put off very much by the second article in the New York Times, only my reaction to it was different from Dr. Eissler's. I felt almost certain that the writer of the article had misunderstood you and that the interpretation concerning the seduction theory was his and not yours. I just could not imagine that it could be yours.

Of course, I have not read the lecture you gave in New Haven, but to me it seems out of the question that there is valid proof for the abandonment of the seduction theory for reasons of external rejection, nor can there be any valid sign that in spite of this abandonment it was kept up secretly. In fact, there is abundant proof to the contrary, not only in all the later case histories, but in the whole of the analytic theory altogether. Keeping up the seduction theory would mean to abandon the Oedipus complex, and with it the whole importance of fantasy life, conscious or unconscious fantasy. In fact, I think there would have been no psychoanalysis afterwards.

I know the Fliess letters so well, but I just cannot imagine what in them led you to this conclusion to which you have come.

I look forward to hearing more from you.

Your sincerely,

Anna Freud

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

My own editorial comments...

I can tell you which letters led Masson to the conclusion he came to (that is, his 'Freud lost moral courage' argument -- the April 26th, and May 4th, 1896 letters partly quoted above.

But more than this, Anna Freud was completely, flat, outright wrong in believing that there could have been no fantasy theory without Freud abandoning the seduction theory.

There are obviously different types of fantasies, all 'compensatory' in some fashion in terms of 'looking for the greener grass on the other side of the fence' . But within this general parameter, fantasy is only limited by the limits of the human imagination which is practically limitless. Reality and fantasy can be viewed as polar dialectical twins that co-influence the content and evolution (or 'de-evolution') of each other.

Within the realm of the 'darker' fantasies childhood trauma scenes often play into the content and 'signature characteristics' of adult fantasy scenes, the one often being the intended 'inverse' in some way of the other. Unfortunately, this almost universal human defense mechanism -- 'identification' or more specifically 'identification with the aggressor/victimizer/rejector/abandoner/betrayer...' -- can turn a childhood 'trauma victim' into an 'adult victimizer' in any of a thousand or more different ways, some more ominous than others.

I really do not believe that there are any childhood exceptions (although to be sure I remember what I wrote earlier about the tendency to 'over-generalize' generalizations).

Now, to be sure, sometimes these forms of 'destructive and self-destructive identification patterns and complexes' can be modified and worn away over time (with more positive types of living and loving experiences combined with the learning to go along with it).

Conversely, there are other types of good, loving identifications as well, assuming we received and perceived loving behavior as children from our primary caretakers or 'attachment figures' who are usually our parents.

These polar types of transference-identifications -- both the positive ones and negative ones -- make up the 'signature' aspects of our personality and act like a double-sided ferris wheel ride -- gain, the childhood (and evolving) reality playing into the production of a person's evolving fantasy life. Again, psychoanalysis -- and Freud in particular -- never needed to make an 'either/or' choice that mutually excluded the existence of the other. Freud, and psychoanalysis in general has not thought 'dialectically' enough in this regard, and evolved both theoretically and therapeutically in a fashion where 'reality' and 'fantasy', seduction theory and Oedipus theory, need to be viewed as 'co-influencers' of each other, not 'right' and 'wrong' answers in Freud's head or any one else's.

This points the way to an integration between Pre-Psychoanalysis and Classical Psychoanalysis which should have been made many, many years ago....

Why it wasn't -- or hasn't been -- is beyond me.

Sigmund Freud, all the greatest psychoanalysts, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Brian Bird, Jeffrey Masson, perhaps Ronald Fairbairn was the closest with his concepts of '(attracting)-exciting' and 'rejecting/(ed) objects' was closest -- but all in all, I have listed off some extremely intelligent, famous names -- and none of them could see this 'dialectic connection' between 'trauma' and ' fantasy' .

So I offer psychoanalysis this following gift.... a 'dialectic gift' and 'double inversion theory' of 'reality' and 'fantasy'....Very simple in its simplest version....simple stupid, in fact...

What reality lacked or lacks, fantasy visualizes...and chases...

In 1905 (Three Essays on Sexuality), Freud wrote: 'The (adult) neurosis is the inverse of the (childhood) perversion.'

In 2013, I write: 'The (adult) fantasy/perversion is the inverse of the (childhood) real trauma-(transference) neurosis.

There lies the potential for integrative synthesis between Pre-Psychoanalysis, Classical Psychoanalysis -- and Object Relations and Self Psychology.

Perhaps the potential for a 'compromise olive branch'...

Between, in my view, a morally very courageous man -- Dr. Jeffrey Masson...

And the Psychoanalytic Establishment...as hard as seems to be working to 're-integrate' trauma theory back into its main school of thought -- it still needs to better 'synthesize' what happened in the 1980s into a more 'positive, female friendly' brand of psychoanalysis in the 21st century..

Am I optimistic about the possibility of a 'peace treaty' here ...

Between Psychoanalysis and Dr. Jeffrey Masson?

Am I reaching for an imaginary rainbow here...

A happy ending to The Birth of Tragedy...

Apollo and Dionysus dancing together on the hilltop...

Is it too late?

Are we in 'The Twilight of The (Fading) Idols'?

(Ironically, Twilight of The Idols was written in 1888 in the week of August 26th to September 23rd) 'Synchronicity' perhaps?

The twilight of Freud's -- and Freudian Psychoanalysis' -- fading integrity?

Is it too late to rescue both? Or at least the latter?

The twilight of 'non-closure' on this issue of a 'toxic Oedipus Complex' theory that discriminates particularly against female Classical Psychoanalytic clients?

With no hope for any 'creative, integrative solutions and/or conflict-resolutions?

What Freud called a 'compromise-formation'?

My hours of work on this subject matter has pretty well run its course...

This is perhaps my signature paper on the Seduction-Oedipus Controversy...

My time spent on this massive ethical issue...

Will more or less come to a close in a few minutes here...

I have virtually emptied my soul into this issue since I first read 'Final Analysis' (Masson, 1992), In The Freud Archives (Janet Malcolm, 1983, 84)), and The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory (Masson, 1984,85, 92)...

Defending a man who I believe was -- and still is -- more right than wrong..

A complicated issue to be sure...

But psychoanalysis is returning to Freud's earliest trauma theory...

And has to have some means of understanding, diagnosing, and treating incestuous, childhood sexual abuse....

Rather than continuing to worship at the alter of the Oedipus Complex theory...

The Oedipus Complex still has significant value as a form of 'attachment-detachment' theory between children and parents.

But not as a means of suppressing the existence of childhood sexual abuse.

Theories are generalizations, not facts.

Freud treated his Oedipus Complex theory as a fact that basically 'dismissed' the possibility of father-daughter sexual assault, and as a leader of any school of psychology and psychotherapy -- let alone one of the most prominent -- this was totally unacceptable and unethical. His lasting teachings in this regard to thousands of other psychoanalysts who were basically told to 'swallow' or 'introject' this teaching if they wanted to be 'psychoanalysts' (although some, and perhaps a building majority, have come to reject, or at least minimize, this teaching) have essentially turned psychoanalysis into a 'pathological system' of Freud's most biased, one-sided, sexist, patriarchal theories -- worst of which is the Oedipus Complex theory at has been taught for over a hundred years. Freud: Oedipus Complex theory means no father-daughter incest but rather 'incestuous daughter fantasies towards her father'.

How can a psychoanalyst know if there was no adult-child seduction/sexual assault that took place in childhood if The Oedipus Complex theory assumes that there was no such assault to begin with? That's logically putting the cart before the horse.

More than that, it is probably the most unethical passage that Freud ever committed to paper -- or at least to The 24 volumes of The Standard Edition of The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud.

There are a couple of letters written to Fliess in the spring of 1896, quoted above, that rival this passage above.

Theories can be useful but not as personal and professional 'defence mechanisms'.

On an ethical level, Masson was more right than wrong but no one in The Psychoanalytic Establishment wanted to stand up for him, not in the 1980s, not today, not publicly, and privately, who knows?

As a result, Psychoanalysis still has a major 'branding' problem -- with other schools of psychology, with the general public -- and particularly with women who do not view Psychoanalysis as being 'female friendly'.

But worse than this, underneath their branding problem, they still have an 'ethics', 'integrity' and 'content substance' problem...

It may be mainly a 'Freudian, Classical' Psychoanalysis problem, of which more and more psychoanalysts are seemingly 'abandoning ship'....but still...

All psychoanalysts are often still being tarred with the same 'brand' brush...

Toxic unethical issues in Classical Psychoanalysis involving The Oedipus Complex theory 'covering up' the mainly 'abandoned seduction (childhood sexual abuse) theory' and the possibility/probability of 'misdiagnosing' real childhood sexual abuse....affects all of Psychoanalysis...particularly amongst those who do not understand that Object Relations was created, at least partly, to eliminate or downplay the significance of The Oedipus Complex Theory...

'Corporate branding' needs to be 'simple, stupid' that the public can identify with something that is 'good', not 'bad'.

Anna Freud should have 'cut bait' and 'fixed' the Oedipus problem...

But I am not even sure that she could see the 'big picture' other than protecting her dad's image and ideas....

Masson's bringing the 'dirty laundry' of psychoanalysis into the public limelight could have, should have, created the opportunity for Anna Freud to better see the need to make psychoanalysis more 'female and consumer friendly' -- in essence, to 're-brand' an archaically outdated theory -- actually it should never have been defined the way it was defined in the first place....so it was a 'pathological' theory even in The Victorian era, perhaps to 'appease' a network of psychiatrists and neurologists who would have ruined his career if he hadn't found some way of 'abandoning' the seduction theory....But 'this is motivational speculation' -- the same motivational speculation that ended Masson's psychoanalytic career.

And no one can go back into history and get inside Freud's head...

So this remains historical and motivational speculation based primarily on the meeting of April 21st, 1896, and secondly, on Freud's seeming need to alleviate both himself and Fliess from the ongoing guilt of having really messed up and disfigured Emma Ekstein's nasal passage....Does anyone today really buy into Freud's theory that she was a 'hysterical bleeder'. It is extremely unfortunate that Freud's 'fantasy theory' seemed to have been 'creatively born' in the middle of 'professional duress' and 'guilt'...but...it certainly would seem to me that Freud's first 'diagnosis' and 'usage' of his newly born 'fantasy theory' was labelling Emma Ekstein as a 'hysterical bleeder' in the spring of 1896....

Human, all too human...

But what was the ultimate cost?

A toxically tinged Oedipus and Fantasy Theory...

That would/will some day ultimately spell the end of Classical Psychoanalysis...

Perhaps The Psychoanalytic Establishment is going about this the right way...

The slow death of Freudian Classical Psychoanalysis...

While the other 'sub-brands' of Psychoanalysis...

Particularly Object Relations...

Become more and more dominant...

And take over...

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

You were right from your side,
I was right from mine,
We're just one too many mornings,
And a thousand miles behind.

-- Bob Dylan (One Too Many Mornings)

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

You choose...

But before you do...

Read these two excerpts below from The Aetiology of Hysteria, and I think you will certainly see where Masson was coming from....the clinical material reported by Freud in 1896 -- before he 'abandoned' the seduction theory -- was just too shockingly, tragically, and concretely reported to be construed as anything other than a patient's real, personal nightmare -- the idea of it being any patient's 'childhood fantasy' is, in my opinion, ethically disgusting...

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

'In some cases, no doubt, we are concerned with experiences which must be regarded as severe traumas -- an attempted rape, perhaps, which reveals to the immature girl at a blow all the brutality of sexual desire, or involuntary witnessing of sexual acts between parents, which at one and the same time uncovers unsuspected ugliness and wounds childish and moral sensibilities alike, and so on. (my editorial comment: it is hugely revealing that Freud lumps the second example in with the second because the second example is an abstraction and an allusion to Freud's first conscious early memory which in Ernest Jones' biography is treated as being 'trivial'. In contrast, as Freud hints at here, I view this allusion to Freud's first memory as the most important 'transference memory' in Freud's long life.)

And later on in the same 1896 paper, this next section is even more shocking...but morally compassionate and courageous...

'For the idea of these infantile sexual scenes is very repellent to the feelings of a sexually normal individual; they include all the the abuses known to debauched and impotent persons, among whom the buccal cavity and the rectum are misused for sexual purposes. For physicians, astonishment at this soon gives way to complete understanding. People who have no hesitation in satisfying their sexual desires upon children cannot be expected to jib at finer shades in the methods of obtaining that satisfaction; and the sexual impotence which is inherent in children inevitably forces them into the same substitutive actions as those to which adults descend if they become impotent. All the singular conditions under which the ill-matched pair conduct their love-relations -- on the one hand the adult, who cannot escape his share in the mutual dependence necessarily entailed by a sexual relationship, and who is yet armed with complete authority and the right to punish, and can exchange the one role for the other to the uninhibited satisfaction of his moods, and on the other hand the child, who in his helplessness is at the mercy of this arbitrary will, who is prematurely aroused to every kind of sensibility and exposed to every sort of disappointment, and whose performance of the sexual activities assigned to him often interrupted by his imperfect control of his natural needs -- all these grotesque and yet tragic incongruities reveal themselves as stamped upon the later development of the individual and of his neurosis, in countless permanent effects which deserve to be traced in the greatest detail. Where the relation is between two children postulates a previous seduction of one of them by an adult. The psychical consequences of these child-relations are quite extraordinarily far-fetching; the two individuals remain linked by an invisible bond throughout the whole of their lives.' (S.E. V. 3, p. 214-215).

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

Ah, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears.

-- Bob Dylan (The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll)

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

-- dgb, Sept 6th, 2013,

= David Gordon Bain