A Short Essay on The Evolution of Pre-Classical Psychoanalysis to Classical Psychoanalysis to Object Relations

Currently being re-written....Jan. 22, 2012..


Freud's first theoretical formula for solving the mystery of 'hysteria' -- or at least 'hysterical symptoms' -- which, more generally speaking, could be transferred to his theory of 'neurosis' or ''neurotic symptoms' as a whole was pretty simple: Hysterical (neurotic) symptoms were symbolic representations of 'lost memories' that needed to be 're-found' in order to 'undo' the hysterical symptoms. In this regard, 'hysterical or obsessional behavioral repetitions' were symbolic replacements for 'normal remembering'. 

Now, Freud had a habit of over-generalizing, perhaps partly for dramatic, shock appeal. He would say something like this -- and I am not going back to look for the exact numbers -- 'In 12 cases, or 18 cases, I have always found this to be true...'

To be continued...
Specifically, Freud had to deal with the clinical phenomenon of 'the repetition compulsion'. But that may have been partly why Freud largely abandoned the traumacy theory in the first place. Freud's rendition of the traumacy theory back in 1895 might have been better labelled as his 'traumacy-repression-pleasure-unpleasure' theory because, for Freud back then, if there was no 'repression' and/or 'resistance', then there was no 'neurosis', or at least no hysteria or obsessional neurosis. Now that 'repression' or 'resistance' (I prefer the words 'dissociation' and/or 'denial') was connected to 'remembering'; not to 'repeating'. Let's clarify this distinction. 

Now, there is Freud's clarification back then. And there is my clarification -- using modified Freudian-Jungian-Adlerian-Gestalt terminology today. Let's start with Freud's clarification. 

Freud's clients were always 'repeating'; in fact, that was the nature of the 'hysterical' and/or 'obsessional' symptom -- 'obsessional repeating' -- according to Freud, instead of 'remembering'. According to Freud, if you help the client 'dig back' to the allegedly 'unconscious or 'repressed' memory, and suddenly the client remembers the memory -- then, 'poof' -- the 'hysterical or obsessional repetition compulsion' stops. The symptom magically disappears. This is what happened in the Anna O. case. According to Freud, it was what happened in all of his cases....repetitions of unconscious memories turned into memories of conscious memories equaled therapeutic success with 'the sudden disappearance of the hysterical and/or obsessional symptom(s) connected to the memory.

Yet if this was true, then why did Freud start to suddenly abandon -- or at least hugely depreciate -- his traumacy-seduction theory (and I here I lump  them into one theory rather than view them as separate but connected theories) after the spring of 1896 which just happened to be the same time that the very 'open-minded' Psychiatry and Neurology Society of Vienna was cutting of his patient referrals because they didn't like his brand new seduction (child sexual abuse) theory? 

The head of the Society called Freud's theory a 'scientific fairy tale'. That was at a Society Meeting on April 21, 1896. According to James Strachey -- the chief editor of The Standard Edition of The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud -- Freud still wrote up the paper and finished it by May 30, 1896, to be published the next day. So up to May 31st, 1896 Freud remained defiant relative to the 'truth' of his theory....But -- and this is the biggest 'but' in psychoanalytic history -- with growing consistency after the publication of this essay, Freud started to remove more and more of his support for it....presto...just like that....until it had effectively disappeared to be replaced more and more by his 'childhood sexuality' theory. 

No more childhood sexual abuse affecting hysterical and/or obsessional symptoms; now it was 'childhood erotic fantasies' -- particularly 'his new Oedipal Complex Theory' after 1897 that 'caused' hysterical and/or obsessional symptoms. Why would Freud want to 'fix a theory and therapy that apparently, according to The Aetiology of Hysteria essay of May, 1896, was not 'broke'....Or so he claimed, in the essay, a perfect track record for removing symptoms connected to past memories. 

Obviously, his theory and therapy was not as perfect as he was claiming, and/or he was being affected politically, professionally, and economically by people who had more power than him. Anyone who works in a corporate, government, or institutional  environment knows what that can do in terms of affecting our behavior. If we fear for our job or, worse, our career, that can sometimes stop us dead in our tracks in terms of what me might otherwise say or do. 

Now, it is quite possible, indeed probable, also that both Freud's theory and therapy were not perfect -- even today, no theorist or therapist can claim this arrogant assertion. Unless it's a marketing ploy...Certainly no sexual child abuse victim is going to walk away 'healthy' from a therapy session simply by 're-remembering' a very bad memory. In this regard, oftentimes hysterical patients could 'create new symptoms' just as fast, or faster, than therapists like Breuer and Freud could help get rid of the old ones.

Anna O. certainly kept Joseph Breuer very, very busy with only partial therapeutic successes....She was still in and out of institutions long after Breuer stopped working with her. What I would call 'traumacy transference neuroses' and/or 'narcissistic transference neuroses' don't generally entirely disappear -- even over a whole lifetime -- they just get better or worse depending on the context of one's life circumstances and/or one's level of therapeutic and/or other form of self and socially encouraging support (self-talk, family, spouse, close friends).  

My knowledge and experience of transference suggests that are two parts of the program of reducing its self-destructive components: 1. becoming aware of the nature and rules of the 'game' as Eric Berne alluded to in his best-seller, 'Games People Play' (although little was said about the relationship between transference and the games people play which is effectively the essence of these games); and 2. learning how to 'step out of these games' which can be the most difficult part of the program because we are basically 'hard-wired' -- or at least 'soft-wired' -- by early childhood learning and/or 'behavioral conditioning' to play them. And worst of all regarding the motivation to step out of the most destructive parts of these games is the fact that more often than not they are 'erotically wired into our psyche'....

In a modification and/or extrapolation of Fairbairn's version of Object Relations, we are often attracted in adulthood to an associative surrogate of our childhood rejecting object which then becomes our exciting object which in turn becomes our rejecting object -- and this can continue to slide down until all the excitement is gone and we are left with some combination of a rejecting and/or rejected object. End of relationship. Unless or until this destructive process is intervened, circumvented, and derailed -- a very hard thing to do....

We might end up looking for a new exciting-rejecting transference figure with new positive chemistry -- either the psychological 'alter-ego' of the spouse from the last relationship we came out of, or a similar character type to the last one, with some differences, but then 'the new but old transference game starts all over again, eventually likely with the same results. Am I being overly pessimistic and cynical? Maybe. We still get some life-long love partners out there but they are becoming a rarer and rarer breed. Most of us go through 'serial relationships' these days -- and serial relationships are, generally speaking, 'serial transference relationships' -- both good and bad, and both. 

However, the analysis above is me writing right now in 2013. It is not Freud writing in 1895-96 under the influence of either the traumacy theory or the seduction theory. Nor in 1905 under the full influence of his childhood sexuality and instinct theory. Nor in 1912 writing about 'The Dynamics of Transference'. Nor in 1915 writing about 'Narcissism'. Nor in 1920 writing about 'The Death Instinct'. Nor in 1923 writing about 'The Ego and The Id'. Nor even in 1938 writing about the 'Splitting of The Ego in The Process of Defense'. It is not even me writing in 2011 when I first wrote this essay under a different name.  



But where was Freud's new (1905) 'childhood sexuality' theory, 'Oedipal Theory', and 'Impulse-Drive' (later to be known as 'id' theory) going to take Freud and his co-workers that his his 1895-96 Traumacy-Seduction Theory didn't. It certainly took him -- and them -- and us -- to different places, some of them good extensions of what is now generally viewed as 'Pre-Psychoanalytic Theory' (i.e., anything before 1897 and the arrival of The Oedipal Complex or at least before his essay 'Screen Memories' (1899) that starts to seriously 'blur' and 'confuse' the boundary line between 'real memories' and 'fantasies'. I think most of us can tell this difference although sometimes we might 'narcissistically alter the details of a memory'...

The study of dreams ('The Interpretation of Dreams, 1899-1900) and fantasies were certainly a valuable addition to the study of psychoanalysis, as were the study of 'ego-activities, ego-functions, and ego-defenses' -- even 'ego-states' and 'ego-compartments' in 1911 ('Formulations on The Two Principles of Mental Functioning', S.E., V. 12, p. 223) when Freud made the distinction between 'the pleasure ego' and 'the reality ego' that I like better than his later (1923)'ego-id-superego' distinction....In fact, I dug into the core of Nietzsche's work in 'The Birth of Tragedy' and came out with a distinction between 'the Dionysian Ego' and 'The Apollonian Ego' which essentially amounts to the same thing as Freud's 'pleasure ego' vs. 'reality ego' (which obviously can be viewed as an extension of his 'pleasure principle' vs. 'reality principle' introduced in the same essay cited immediately above, i.e., Two Principles...). 

To the extent of my knowledge to date, one could easily argue that this distinction here between what amounts to two different 'ego-states' or 'ego-compartments' -- the reality ego vs. the pleasure ego -- makes this essay an early 'Object Relations' paper, significantly ahead of Melanie Klein if by Object Relations we define it as the inter-relationship between 'good' and 'bad', 'internal' and 'external' objects. The technical term 'object' Freud coined in 1905,  in his famous paper, 'Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality' with this line: 

'I shall at this point introduce two technical term. Let us call the person from whom sexual attraction proceeds the sexual object and the act towards which the instinct tends the sexual aim. 
(Freud, 1905, Vol. 7, p. 135)

Two paragraphs earlier, Freud had opened this essay with his use of the concepts of 'instinct' and 'libido'. 

'The fact of the existence of sexual needs in human beings and animals is expressed in biology by the assumption of a 'sexual instinct', on the analogy of the instinct of nutrition, that is  of hunger. Everyday language possesses no counterpart to the word 'hunger', but science makes use of the word 'libido' for that purpose. (Freud, 1905, S.E. Vol 7, p. 135)


One could easily argue that in the first three paragraphs of 'Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality', Freud laid down the bottom foundation of both 'instinct theory' (the focus of Classical Psychoanalysis) and what would eventually become 'Object Relations' -- a 'set of partly similar, partly different counter-theses that would 'break the boundaries' of Classical Psychoanalysis and become a legitimate 'sub-school' of Psychoanalysis in its own right. In a Hegelian sense, you could say that the term 'object' was both one of the 'birth seeds' of psychoanalysis -- and also, probably its main 'death seed' at least as the study of Object Relations 'exploded' beyond the boundaries of Classical Psychoanalysis. 

One of Freud's last papers -- 'Splitting of The Ego in The Process of Defense' (1940) -- hung metaphorically on 'The Berlin Wall' (although the Berlin Wall wouldn't be built til 1961) with Freud metaphorically standing on the Berlin Wall like Janus, The Roman God, looking both back at the past of Psychoanalysis (Classical Psychoanalysis) that he had spent his whole lifetime building, and at the future of Psychoanalysis (Object Relations and Self Psychology) which lay significantly in the direction of the work of Klein, Sullivan, Erikson, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip, et. al.  Gone would be 'the id' in Fairbairn's work -- a concept that I still partly hang onto. I will still have to further consider Fairbairn's position against the id as here quoted from Harry Guntrip's book, 'Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and the Self' (1971, 73).  

Impulses cannot be considered apart from either object object or ego-structures. Impulses are but the dynamic aspect of endopsychic structures, and cannot be said to exist in the absence of such structures. Ultimately, 'impulses' must be regarded as simply as constituting the forms of activity in which the life of ego-structure consists.

Well, Fairbairn -- as much as I like his work -- doesn't have it quite right. An empiricist would say that 'ego-structures' don't even exist and the fact that, as theorists, we can choose to use 1 ego-structure (such as 'The Self'), two ego-structures (like 'topdog' and 'underdog'), three 'ego-structures' (like 'id', 'ego', and 'superego' if they had all been viewed as different ego-structures with different ego-activities and functions) -- and so on, up to my '20 ego-structures' that I present in my model of the personality -- all of  this goes to show that 'ego-structures' are simply 'convenient conceptual fictions' to help us break down and understand the personality better -- they can't be viewed as having the same type of 'physical substance' as say, a 'brain', or a 'liver' or a 'kidney'. So let us call a spade a spade here: an 'ego-structure' is nothing more than a 'convenient, fictional concept representing an 'alleged phenomenon' or a set of similar types of 'ego-activity' that in Kant's words, is beyond our sensory world --  i.e., 'ego-structure' is a metaphysical concept to help theorists like Fairbairn teach what otherwise would be more or less impossible to teach with any type of order or clarity.

Moving back to 1911. Karl Abraham is involved in the 'evolving split between Classical Psychoanalysis and Object Relations as well. He created the concept of 'the pre-oedipal bad mother' in the same year as 'Two Principles' was written (1911), so it comes down to a question of which concept you believe was more important to the later development of Melanie Klein's and soon afterwards Ronald Fairbairn's work -- the concept of 'good' and 'bad' objects which might have been created even earlier or even the initial concept of 'object' (Freud, 1905, 'Three Essays on Sexuality), or 'the pre-oedipal bad object' or the concept distinction between 'internal' and 'external' objects, or the concept of 'ego-states' or 'ego-compartments'. All would become essential to Klein's work and the evolution of what would become known as ''Object Relations' as opposed to 'Pre-Classical' or 'Classical' Psychoanalysis. 

To be continued
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If clients were 'bringing up' and either 'reciting' or 'repeating' their supposedly 'most traumatic moments' way too easily, then that seemed to violate both his repression-resistance theory and his pleasure-unpleasure principle. Freud 'solved' this clinical problem -- or so he thought at the time -- by dropping his 'painful traumacy' theory and replacing it with his new theory at the time (1897 onwards...) -- 'pleasurble fantasy' theory. But even this did not seem to entirely work -- to solve the clinical phenomenon of the 'repetition compulsion'...

So Freud took another stab at solving the 'repetition compulsion' problem in 1920. Back was the Traumacy Theory (or at least partly). Gone was his PUP Theory (or at least partly). And replacing his PUP Theory -- was his new 'Death Instinct' (DI) Theory...

Did this work? Or not? ....

Let's start to look at some of the different variables surrounding BPP and Freud's new addition to Classical Psychoanalysis in 1920 -- 'the death instinct'...

....dgb, July 26th, 2011... 
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2. Language, Perceptual-Interpretations, and Paradigms


Interpreting somone else's essay can be a dangerous, misguided enterprise. Words, concepts, and theories can all play havoc with our minds -- both as writer-theorists, and as readers trying to interpret someone else's writing and theorizing.

Every word has both a 'range of self and social meaning' and a 'focus of self and social meaning', and it is quite easy for us as readers --  based partly on the 'range of self and social meaning' phenomenon, partly on our own unique 'interpretive understanding of a particular, word, concept, and/or theory, as we apply it to a particular reading context, and in this regard, our own range and focus of different ideas and/or experiences that we are most likely to apply to a given reading context, all else being equal -- based on all of these different factors, it becomes extremely easy in many instances to 'end up on a different page of meaning than the writer we are trying (or not trying) to properly understand' . In so doing, as readers, we may easily miss what the author really had in mind by using the same word shared by author and reader alike -- but in a totally or significantly different sense of meaning.

In reading and writing -- just as in life as a whole -- there are some readers and some writers who are more or less 'narcissistic' than others, meaning more or less willing to take the time and energy to communicate a 'shared meaning' as opposed to a 'we, as reader and writer respectively, locked in a dialectic relationship that has some significant limitations in terms of different goals and agendas, lack of visual ques, voice ques, full context ques, and the opportunity for 'checking meaning' (in the case of a written piece of work) -- may or may not have the patience and/or motivation in our 'fast moving world' to do anything other than to 'look for instant gratification and/or miracle solution pills', on our terms, meaning we don't want to work too hard (like not wanting to exercise or change our diet to lose the pounds we want to lose), at the expense of missing an opportunity to 'dialectically and democraticly connect' -- meaning both sides reaching out to understand the other person's frame of reference, while at the same time, being assertive in our own frame of reference, and when necessary, working hard to find the necessary common ground, to work out a mutally negotiated 'compromise-formation' that gets a settlement done and working, not forever locked in a 'strike', a 'lockout', an 'impasse', an 'either/or ultimatum'....that brings both parties into contact with what might be called 'the death, destructive, and/or self-destructive, instinct'.  We can't or won't look outside of our 'old paradigm', replace our 'old, near-sighted pair of glasses', step outside of our old 'repetition compulsion', our lifelong 'transference compulsion', our 'serial behavior pattern'  -- and adapt to a changing world, with new modified, and/or integrative responses, that work better than the 'out of date' old ones...

We evolve or we get left behind. Those who are best adapted to meet the challenges of a fast changing world, are those who have both a strong 'will to power or self-empowerment', and at the same time, a 'social sensitivity and a willingness and flexibility' to modify our own personal goals and agendas to meet those of whom we need to interact and 'share our world' with...

'Too weak' or 'too strong' are both likely to have their own respective 'death instincts, wishes, and/or forces' attached to them. Indeed, in the paradigm of Hegel, every word, every concept, every characteristic, every person, has its own respective 'life' and 'death' force attached to it...in different degrees, in different contexts, and at different times... In different ways, we all need to 'nurture' our 'life wishes' and find different, functional ways of 'quelling our death instincts, wishes, and/or forces' before they eventually destroy us...This perhaps, is the best message to be taken from Freud's 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' although this is perhaps a more 'existential message' than the more 'mechanistic, deterministic message' that Freud was delivering in 1920.  

 The dangers of language and the dangers of life are basically one and the same: 'not 'zigging when life zags'.

In terms of language, we must not get caught in the 'one word, one meaning fallacy'. As long as language is 'flexible' in both its range of 'narcissistic' (self), and its various range of 'social' meanings, it always will breed 'referent misinterpretation and/or confusion'.

We need to better understand how 'words' are following 'the fitting game'. Language, for the most part, was -- and is -- meant to 'symbolically represent' our internal and external world -- and the types of similar and different types of 'dynamic processes' that go on in both these worlds.

In this regard, language was created -- and is being 're-created' each and every day -- to twist and turn, zig and zag, as life twists and turns. zigs and zags, in a 'cat and mouse game' -- the 'language-life fitting game'.

No problem as long as life doesn't 'zig' as language 'zags'.....Too much of this and you have the 'deconstruction and eventual death of a concept or theory'... The constancy principle, the pleasure principle, the inertia principle, the equillibrium principle, the entropy principle, the reality principle...they all, at one point or another, have 'zigged' while life 'zagged'....They have all been 'constructed' by this or that ambitious, creative theorist; they all in turn have also been 'deconstructed' when the concept/theory missed too many 'zags' in the road of life....and left the reader conceptually flying off the cliff of 'language-life structural and/or dynamic dis-similarity'...

Every concept, every theory can be viewed as having both a life and a death instinct....

Hegel's 'death instinct' meets Freud's 'death instinct'....

In the paraphrased words of Hegel, every concept, every theory, every characteristic, carries within it, the seeds of its own self-destruction....it carries its own private 'Thanatos (death) energy' which paradoxically destroys the concept or takes it out of fashion as soon as it loses its 'predictability of life' function... 

-- dgb, July 28th, 2011

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To be continued...