I am about to embark on a critique of as many of Freud's most important and famous essays, ideas, theories, 'anti-theories', and their derrivatives as I can get to.
Now, I am in a bit of a quandry here. I need to do some explaining before I start this ambitious enterprise.
Firstly, I am not a psychoanalyst. I have never seen a psychoanalyst, and never stepped a foot inside a psychoanalytic training session.
Why? Probably money, period. Psychoanalysis has set itself up as an 'aristocratic psychology' -- a 'psychology for the rich' -- and/or that is the stereotype that it has created for itself. To me, this is unfortunate. This in itself restricts Psychoanalysis' potential growth -- theoretically, therapeutically, culturally, and class-wise.
Furthermore, what Freud started, and what The Psychoanalytic Establishment continues to support and maintain -- is a psychology of 'exclusionism'.
This is highly ironic and paradoxical because in my 35 years or so of studying psychology that runs through Humanistic Psychology (Rogers, Maslow, May, Fromm...), Cognitive Therapy (Maltz, Ellis, Beck, Frank, Kelly, Korzybski, Hayakawa, Branden, Rand, Meichenbaum...), Gestalt Therapy (Perls, Hefferline, Goodman, et al...), Adlerian Psychology (Adler, Dreikeurs, Mosak...) Transactional Analysis (Berne), and Psychoanalysis (Freud, Klein, Fairbairn, Guntrip, Kohut, Masson...), if there is one thing I have learned, it is probably this: that most if not all varieties of human neurosis, psychosis, and psychopathology usually start with the individual's perception -- real and/or imagined -- of some form of 'social/family/school/cultural/racist/sexist/ exclusionism'.
Human neurosis can generally be summed up in the sentence: 'I am not wanted here, not invited, not liked, not accepted, not appreciated, not acknowleged, not relevant...
Transactional Analysis summed up the overarching idea above under two polar headings: 1. You're okay, I'm not okay'; 2. I'm okay, you're not okay'; or the two condensed together: 3. You're not okay, I'm not okay.
This applies to Freud himself just as much as it applies to anyone and everyone else...
Freud once said that you had/have to be a psychoanalyst in order to properly understand what comes out of 'the depths of the unconscious' and particularly the 'dynamics of repression'. I say, Well, repression is still a very controversial concept and subject matter that sometimes (often) defies what most would call 'good rational-empiricism'. It can easily become a 'circular concept' with no apparent foundational basis except in the eyes and ears of the theorist who 'believes in the existence of repression'.
A psychoanalyist says, 'You are repressed.' You reply, 'I am not repressed.' And the psychoanalyst then uses your 'resistance' as further evidence that 'you are repressed'.
How do you ever 'prove' the existence of a 'repression' except for the psychoanalyst's 'interpretation' as such, and how do you distinguish it from a much more common and more easily validated concept/phenomenon of 'suppression' or even 'dissociation'?
All of the concepts of 'suppression', 'subconscious', and 'dissociation' have much more 'tangible rational empiricism' attached to them than Freud's concept of 'repression' -- or even 'unconscious'.
I use the term 'unconscious' but often hesitatingly, and generally speaking, I am much more comfortable with the concept of 'subconscious'. I don't think I will ever use the concept of 'repression'. I believe in 'the psychology of defense' but, generally speaking, I do not support the 'psychology of repression'.
Does this take me out of the 'domain of Psychoanalysis'? The Psychoanalytic Establishment would obviously say 'yes' immediately, further supported by the fact that I have no formal training in Psychoanalysis. But The Psychoanalytic Establishment and Institute is partly like 'Hotel California' -- once you get in, you become 'locked into their particular paradigm' which includes Freud's own 'transference neurosis relative to his father'.
When Freud was alive, you had to be like Melanie Klein -- female and perceived as non-threatening -- in order to 'break through the wall of Freud's paradigm' -- and no man has 'broken through the neurotic paradigm of Freud's father-transference neurosis in Classical Psychoanalysis' unless he has either left Psychoanalysis completely (Adler, Jung, Reich, Rank, Ferenczi, Horney, Sullivan, Erickson, Fromm, Perls, Masson...and many more...) or followed 'Melanie Klein's skirt' into the paradigm of Object Relations and Self-Psychology. And most of Object Relations and all of Self-Psychology developed after Freud had died. But for a few years, it seems possible that there was perhaps a 'running positive dialectic' between Freud and Melanie Klein where Freud may have actually been partly influenced by Klein's work in a way that Pierre Janet never could. You see, 'Object Relations' -- a 'sub-school' of Psychoanalysis -- founded mainly by Melanie Klein, was an extension of Pierre Janet's ideas of 'the splitting of the ego', 'the alter-ego', and 'the dissociated personality' where 'ego' and 'alter-ego' are 'dissociated', 'alientated', 'disconnected' from each other. It is from Janet's ideas -- that Freud fought long and hard against (too bad Janet wasn't a woman) -- that the book and movie 'Dr Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde' were born from.
With all due respect to Freud, the idea of 'the splitting of the ego' which Freud finally acknowledged and accepted towards the end of his career -- and stated that the idea seemed both strangely old and new at the same time (I wonder why) -- and the associated ideas of 'alter-ego' and 'dissociation between opposing ego-states' -- all of these ideas were much more 'theoretically and therapeutically useful' (at least in this author's strong editorial opinion) than Freud's 'hanging on concept' of 'repression'.
Perhaps even 'the Id' should be viewed as having an 'ego-state' extension that I would/do call 'The Dionysian-Narcissistic (selfish, egotistic, sensual, sexual) Ego' ('DNE' for short). The DNE can in turn be 'split' into 'The DNS' and 'The DNU' -- i.e., 'The Dionysian-Narcissistic Underdog or Underego', and 'The Dionysian-Narcissistic Topdog or Superego'. Thus, you can have 'vertical splits' and 'horizontal splits' in the personality: 'superego' vs. 'underego' being an example of a 'vertical power split', and 'Approval-Seeking Underego' vs. 'Dionsysian-Narcissistic Underego' being an example of a 'horizontal power split'.
In my frame of thinking following this line of thinking, I differentiate between 'six auxilliary ego-states' and 'one Central (Mediating, Executive) Ego.
...........................................................................................................
The Gap-DGB Integrative (Psychoanalytic) Model of The Psyche
The six auxilliary ego-states are:
1. The Nurturing-Supportive Superego (NSS);
2. The Dionysian-Narcissistic Superego (DNS);
3. The Righteous-Rejecting Superego (RRS);
4. The Approval-Seeking Underego (ASU);
5. The Dionysian-Narcissistic Underego (DNU);
6. The Righteous-Rejecting (Rebellious) Underego (RRU).
and the main decision-making ego-state is...
7. The Central (Mediating-Executive) Ego (CE)
Working downwards into the subconscious/unconscious, we have
8. The Dream Catcher/Weaver (DCW);
9. The Shadow-Id (Secret Interests) (SI)
10. The Personal Transference-Lifestyle Template (PTLT);
11. The Mythological-Symbolic Archetype Template (MSAT)
12. The Genetic Self Potential Template (GSPT);
13. The Multi-Bi-Polar Apeiron Template (MBPAT)
................................................................................................
The difference between 'repression' and 'suppression' is extremely important because it is easy to conflate, condense, and confuse the two together.
I 'suppress' what I am afraid to ask or tell you -- the concept of 'suppression' is easily validated by self-experience. But 'suppression' implies that I know very well what I want to ask or tell you. In the case of a 'suppressed memory' as opposed to a 'repressed memory', I remember the 'memory' all too clearly -- I am just embarrassed and/or otherwise reluctant to share it with you. A 'repressed memory' implies that I don't remember the memory at all -- which raises doubts about its very existence or is it a 'conceptual construction' created by Freud to explain a phenomena that he couldn't otherwise explain (such as hysteria, or anxiety neurosis, or obsessional neurosis...)?
For much of Freud's career, Freud viewed 'repression' as 'the defense' associated with ALL human neurosis, until he finally realized -- or admitted -- that were many other 'psychological defenses' at man's disposal such as: introjection, identification, projection, displacement, denial, transference, dissociation, retroflection (which is used a lot in Gestalt Therapy) and one that Adler added which is much more important to the etiology of neurosis, and more pervasive than Freud's concept of repression -- and that is the concept of 'compensation'. But even more important and pervasive to the etiology of all neurosis is the concept of 'transference'.
I see 'transference' as the over or under-riding 'defense mechanism' in all neuroses, and every other defense mechanism is a subset of transference.
I distinguish between: 'identification transferences', 'introjective transferences', 'projective transferences', 'compensatory transferences', 'positive transferences', 'negative transferences', 'oral transferences', 'anal transferences', 'genital transferences', 'distancing transferences', 'anal-schizoid transferences', 'anal-rejecting transferences', 'oral-nurturing transferences', 'narcissistic transferences', 'anti-narcissistic transferences', 'altruistic transferences', 'impulse-desire-fantasy transferences', 'impulse-restraint transferences' 'anxiety transferences', 'rebellious transferences', 'violent transferences'... and on and on we could go...
The concept of 'transference' is totally Psychoanalysis as are the concepts of 'narcissism', 'defense', 'projection', 'introjection', 'identification', and most of the other concepts listed above. So how can you call my work anything but 'psychoanalytic' other than perhaps the 'extensions' and 'disagreements' that I have with The Psychoanalytic Establishment...And oh yes, my 'lack of formal training' -- or shall we call that 'brain-washing'?
So call me an 'underground psychoanalytic theorist' if you will -- operating outside the walls of The Psychoanalytic Establishment, and even operating outside of 'The Academic Establishment'. I admire Spinoza's philosophical approach: Don't lock me into any kind of 'Establishment' that is going to try to 'muzzle my thinking' -- or at least the 'public demonstration of my thinking' .
As soon as you become affiliated with any kind of 'organization' or 'institution' or 'political party' or 'religious denomination' or 'corporation' or 'school of thought', you become subject -- and often a 'slave' -- to the organization's agenda and particular brand of 'group think'.
At times 'group think' can be 'enlivening' and 'multi-dialectically challenging and evolutionary'. But this is probably by far the exception rather than the rule. Much more often, 'group think' becomes synonomous with 'no think' or thinking inside a 'stagnant paradigm', or worse a 'dangerous or even evil paradigm'.
The worst cases of 'group think' that come quickly to mind are 'Nazi Germany', 'McCarthyism', 'Witch Hunting', 'The Reign of Terror', any form of 'racial cleansing', 'stereotyping', 'discrimination', 'reverse-discrimination', 'religious extremism', 'political extremism', 'righteous trash-talking', any form of 'supremacy thinking that is socially divisive and exclusionist, let alone violent', 'narcissistic collusions that are non-democratic and exclusionist', 'political and corporate conflict of interests', 'lobbyist special-interest groups that do not have to face up to their 'bi-polar, anti-special interest group' in an open, democratic forum. (All lobbyist groups should have to operate through public, open, democratic forums.)
Back to 'Psychoanalysis'...
In the case of a 'conscious' memory, a 'conscious memory' can also be called a 'subconscious memory' if it is 'psychodynamically alive' in our subconscious (or even in our unconscious) and yet, if someone asks us to recall this particular memory, we can usually recall it within a few minutes, given the right 'prompter' and/or 'association'.
So 'defining' Psychoanalysis can be -- indeed, usually is -- a very subjective, narcissistic-righteous matter.
Freud had a very 'anal-retentive' habit of defining it 'extremely tightly' according to his own parameters (which paradoxically sometimes changed 180 degrees like his still controversial switchover from 'The Traumacy-Seduction Theory' to 'The Childhood Sexuality-Fantasy-Oedipal Theory'). If Freud had said 'the world was flat', I am sure that would have been included in 'The Freudian Bible of Classical Psychoanalysis'.
Freud did a brutal job of reconciling his pre-1897 Traumacy-Seduction Theory with his post 1897 evolving Childhood Sexuality-Fantasy-Symbolic-Oedipal Theory. He just 'dumped' the first as if it never existed -- that it came from nowhere -- and then developed an 'opposite thesis'. I guess he could do that fairly easily because in 1897 he had no following -- just three volumes of work in The Standard 24 volume Edition to support his work during this time period, and Joseph Breuer 'one too many evenings and a thousand miles left behind'...
But that is why you have me here: to integrate what Freud did not know how to properly integrate. Dialectically integrate. That is why you have me 'trumpeting' the metaphorical structure of Hegel's Hotel as a larger and more useful 'multi-dialectic-humanistic-existential, philosophical and psychological paradigm' -- than 'Freud's Classical Hotel'.
If I am coming down hard on Freud here -- like thousands before me -- it is not because I do not respect Freud. Because I do. Indeed, I believe that he was one of the creatively most brilliant thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries. But this still doesn't mean that he wasn't commonly -- wrong. And stuck inside a cultural Victorian paradigm, not to mention the theoretical paradigms of his own making.
In Victorian society, masturbation was commonly -- and/or at least publicly -- viewed as 'self-abuse'. So for Freud, stuck inside this Victorian paradigm, ending such 'neuroses' as 'neurasthenia' (chronic depleted energy) would logically involve 'stopping self abuse' -- i.e., stopping masturbation. (Maybe the opposite prescription might have been more appropriate.) In Victorian culture, 'castration anxiety' sounds like it was a very real -- and scary -- phenomenon, especially for a small boy growing up. 'If you keep wanking your thing there, little Siggy, daddy's going to cut it off!'
Personally, I think I partly understand Freud better than he understood himself -- and a thousand psychoanalysts after him have purported to understand him, such as the one and only Ernest Jones -- because such 'biographers' of Freud were all 'psychoanalyzing' Freud according to Freud's own theoretical parameters and assumptions. 'Towing the company' line if you will. 'Upholding the corporate image'. 'Giving Freud -- and all psychoanalysts -- what he and they wanted to hear.'
How can you possibly get any kind of significantly different understanding of Freud unless you have someone who is willing and/or able to see some of the 'deficiencies', 'liabilities', and 'limitations' of these same parameters and assumptions that Freud -- and all Classical Psychoanalysts -- have been locked inside for over 100 years?
I like 'Hegel's Hotel' better than 'Freud's Hotel' because Hegel's Hotel incorporates a better assortment of assumptions, parameters, paradigms, and 'glasses' than those that Freud was using at the time he was theorizing, and that essentially all, or most, Classical Psychoanalysts -- like 'good corporate employees' -- have been using since.
This is not to say that Classical Psychoanalysis has not evolved since Freud died -- it's just that some of the most important assumptions that Freud was using -- and that Classical Psychoanalysis continues to use with little to no modifications and/or updated extensions since Freud died -- are also some of his most flawed assumptions. Like 'Childhood Sexuality Theory' and 'Fantasy Theory' and 'Oedipal Theory'-- without their bipolar 'alter-ego' theory: 'Traumacy-Seduction-Assault Theory'.
The two theories are still clamoring to be integrated. And without trying to be arrogant, I am probably the only theorist with enough of the right type of 'outside knowledge' and (read Adlerian Theory, Gestalt Theory, Transactional Analysis Theory...) -- and internal focus and creativity -- to properly do it.
If this makes me an 'egotist' and/or a 'narcissist', I can live with that. So was Freud. So was Masson. So are most professional athletes. You have to be an 'egotist' to get to the top -- of whatever 'mountain' you are trying to climb.
Like Ayn Rand would write, that simply means that /I/you/we believe in the strength and power of my/your/our skills and abilities....the skills and abilities that can make us all 'Supermen' and/or 'Superwomen' to the upper threshold of how high these skills and abilities can take us, just as long as we work hard enough, persevere enough, and meet the challenge of any and all obstacles in order to to get to where we want to go...our 'end visualization', our 'end fantasy', whatever that might be...
Not too many 'classical psychoanalysts' had'have the courage to 'think outside the classical box' -- at least publicly -- and if they did/do, then they were/are no longer likely considered to be 'Classical Psychoanalysts'. In Spinozian style, they were/are 'ex-communicated'. They were/are -- 'excluded'. Just look at Masson's rebellion against Freud in the 1980s. Masson stood up for what he believed was right -- and for that -- he is no longer a 'Psychoanalyst', let alone 'The Project Director of The Freud Archives'.
But alas things can change. Resentments can smooth over. 'Dissociations' can 'melt away', given the right circumstances, over time -- and 'bridges' and 'integrations' can start to take their place.
This is Hegel's World. This is Hegel's Hotel. 'Thesis'. 'Anti-thesis'. And finally -- 'synthesis'...'integration'...'either/or', 'right or wrong' melting away into a more harmonious, dialectic union...Perhaps with an 'agreement to disagree'. Or perhaps with a 'compromise towards the middle'. But most importantly, with more 'tolerance' and 'acceptance' for the right of any individual to 'disagree' with 'group think'. And not to be condemned for this...ex-communicated...excluded...
And Freud was The Great Excluder...
I told you he got this 'transference-characteristic' from his dad...
How come Freud couldn't see this clearly? Or could he? How come most Classical Psychoanalysts 'minimized' the 'negative transference' relationship between Freud and his dad? Or couldn't see it -- and worse, what the negative repercussions on Classical Psychoanalysis were.
Why? Because most Psychoanalysts -- read in particular Ernest Jones (his biography of Freud) -- did what Freud did. And Freud 'minimized' his dad. Sigmund 'excluded' his dad like his dad excluded -- and minimized -- little Siggy.
Most academics agree that the case of 'Anna O' is the first 'case' of Psychoanalyis. I agree -- in part.
But the 'template' case -- the case on which all of Psychoanalysis rests -- is little Sigmund's first, early childhood -- conscious -- memory.
And Freud -- and thousands of psychoanalysts -- continue to 'walk right around this first conscious memory of little Sigmund', like 'lemmings that follow their leader over a cliff'. I am partly sorry if I am coming across as being overly harsh here, or 'unfair to some more rebellious, individual thinking, psychoanalysts' but in the end we are all responsible and accountable for our own personal and collective 'transference neuroses' -- and doing something about them -- otherwise, why call 'Psychoanalysis' a 'first-rate form of psychotherapy'?
Psychoanalysts have to start thinking about 'conscious early memories' not as 'screen memories' that both hide and allude to other more important 'repressed memories and/or fantasies' but rather as important 'transference memories' in and by themselves. And for that, Psychoanalysts can thank Adler indirectly -- through me. Because what I am doing here is essentially turning 'Adlerian lifestyle and conscious early memory theory' back into an 'updated' form of 'Classical Transference Theory'. Which is so psychodynamically different than 'standard Freudian Classical Transference Theory' that many would ask, how can it possibly be called 'Classical' -- in which case I propose the alternative names of 'Quantum-Integrative Transference Theory' and 'Quantum-Integrative Psychoanalysis'.
'Screen Memories' (1899) is the worst paper that Freud ever wrote -- and Jones loved it....lap, lap, lap... while as Masson argued and I am paraphrasing, Freud was starting to 'conflate' and 'confuse' 'symbolic dream and fantasy material' with 'cold, hard, remembered reality'.
I am sure that Jones had his character strengths -- he did, I believe, support the growth and career of Fritz Perls when Freud wanted nothing to do with Perls because of the latter's 'rebellious' paper on 'Oral (as opposed to 'Anal') Resistances...
Freud excluded and excommunicated all significant 'male rebellers' just like his father 'excluded and excommunicated' little Sigmund...
Freud was a great rebel himself -- but once he achieved power -- he squashed all masculine rebellion in his ranks... This was a major part of his 'topdog/underdog transference bi-polarity and neurosis'... His 'excluding topdog' was his 'introjected dad'; and his 'rebellious underdog' was little Sigmund 'proving to his dad -- and to the world -- that he would find out all his dad's -- and his mom's -- private, most hidden sexual secrets -- with or without the help of his dad...and by transference extension -- with or without the help of his clients/patients, and the world at large.
Oh, yes. The memory. The conscious memory that has been so overlooked by so many psychoanalysts claiming to 'know all the hidden secrets of the mind'...And yet you all let Dr. Freud pull one over on you....as he pulled one over on himself...
Step out of Dr. Freud's 'false paradigm', gentlemen -- and gentlewomen.
Even Freud could -- and still continues to -- lead you down false corridors.
Even Freud could make serious 'false connections'.
Why would an 'archaeologist dig deep' if what he or she is looking for -- some 'supposedly hidden treasure' -- is sitting on the ground right in front of his or her eyes -- and nose?
Why would a psychoanalyst 'dig deep' into a client's unconscious if the answer to 'the riddle of the Sphynx' of the client's personality is lying right in front of the psychoanalyst's ears in an 'ignored', 'minimized', 'excluded' conscious early memory...
Note once again that I am partly Adlerian trained....and I would not have arrived at my own 'transference answer' to the riddle of the Sphynx of Freud's character if I had not been Adlerian trained. I superimposed 'Adlerian Lifestyle and Conscious Early Memory Theory' onto Classical Psychoanalysis.
Indeed, what I am doing here is superimposing the theoretical and therapeutic templates of all of Adlerian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Object Relations, Transactional Analysis, and Pre-Classical Freudian Theory -- right back where they belong on top of the template of Classical Psychoanalysis.
Because I am not -- at least in this venue -- an 'exclusionist'. Rather, I am an 'inclusionist'. I am a 'massive integrationist'. There is no one else in the world who is capable of doing what I am doing here for two reasons: 1. no one has exactly the same 'knowledge template' that I am carrying in my brain; and 2. just as importantly, no one is carrying exactly the same 'transference template' that I am carrying in my brain that demands that I push this story, that I push 'Hegel's Hotel', through to its definitive conclusion...
Regarding my own personal transference template (or 'complex' or 'neurosis'), perhaps the strongest reason that I can see Freud's 'transference neurosis' more clearly than most, is because it is all too similar to my own. Psychoanalysis was built unconsiously upon Freud's anger against his father and his father's 'authoritarianism', more specifically, his father's 'exclusionism' -- and like many sons -- I can identify with this type of anger.
The issue of 'authoritarianism' vs. 'democracy' is the underlying fuel behind many a son's -- or daughter's -- overt and/or covert rebellion against one or both of his or her parents, and by extension, a 'transference rebellion' against 'all associated adult transference surrogates'.
Freud copied (introjected, identified with) his dad's 'rejecting topdog/object/superego' around the issue of 'exclusionism'.
And in similar fashion, Classical Psychoanalysis copied (introjected, identified with) Sigmund Freud's 'rejecting topdog/object/superego around this same issue of 'exclusionism'. That makes Classical Psychoanalysis a product of Sigmund Freud's own 'exclusionism-abandonment transference neurosis'.
For those of you who are not familiar with little Sigmund's first conscious memory, he 'busted in on his parents in their bedroom while they were doing the nasty'....and little Sigmund's father screamed at him to get out...
A pretty understandable reaction by Sigmund's father...but that didn't help little Sigmund any...
Because he spent the rest of his life -- via his transference complex -- vicariously trying to understand perfectly what exactly had transpired in his parents' bedroom...and he was certainly no stranger to 'patient resistance to telling the truth'... Indeed, from a transference perspective, he entiredly expected it...
This is why this particular memory of little Sigmund is perhaps best declared...
The 'first true case of Psychoanalysis'...
-- dgb, Jan. 30th-31st, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain
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