Recent reformulations of Freud's development and abandonment of his seduction theory: historical/scientific clarification or a continued assault on truth?

It is well known that, as part of Freud's early work with "hysteria," he reported making discoveries of sexual abuse that he interpreted first as genuine but subsequently as fantasy. Several writers now argue that Freud never made such discoveries; rather that he lied about them, only inferred abuse from his patients' symptoms, or suggested false memories to his clients. The present authors evaluate Freud's original work and these recent claims and conclude that (a) they are not new and are similar to the original reaction that Freud received; (b) the assertion that Freud did not make discoveries of abuse is unwarranted; and (c) these recent writers frequently have supported their positions by misrepresenting what Freud actually wrote, ignoring evidence that contradicted their position, failing to consider obvious and more plausible explanations for Freud's behavior, and going beyond the available data and stating with certainty what cannot be determined.     

A reappraisal of the Emma episode and the specimen dream

Schur's (1966, 1972) speculations that the "specimen dream" exculpates Fliess rather than Freud and that Freud was unaware of this are challenged. Schur's assertion that Freud was not aware of "current conflict" when writing The Interpretation of Dreams is countered with the previously unpublished "Completion of the Analysis" of the dream of "Running up the Stairs," which illustrates Freud's withholding of "current conflict" from his published associations. The view is advanced that Freud's and Fliess's treatment of Emma Eckstein might have been an important element in Freud's self-analysis because it was a repetition of his childhood conflicts. The identities of Emma Eckstein (operated on by Fliess) and Anna Hammerschlag Lichtheim, together with the previously unnoticed, published exchange between Abraham and Freud, are used to add further insight into Freud's interpretation of the dream. In addition, new material concerning Freud's father's terminal illness, beginning in July, 1985, casts further light on the specimen dream as well as others. It is argued that concerns about Martha Freud's sixth pregnancy and wishes for improved contraception were important determinants of the dream and part of the undisclosed associations. It is also argued that rivalrous elements of the associations are elaborated in the later non vixit dream.     

Inventing Freud

Written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Freud's birth, this paper construes Nina Coltart's statement that "if Freud did not exist it would be necessary to invent him," with its implicit comparison of Freud to God, to refer to (a) the things that Freud taught that are incontrovertibly true; (b) the unavoidable subjectivity in all judgments of Freud; and (c) the resemblances between psychoanalysis and religion. This last comparison is likewise seen to have both positive and negative aspects. Freud's ideas have inspired many people, yet he unscientifically arrogated sovereign authority over psychoanalysis. Freud's admirers are reminded of his extreme difficulty in admitting he was wrong and changing his mind when he should have known better, while his detractors are encouraged to consider the evidence supporting many of Freud's core tenets and to recognize that his discovery of psychoanalysis is indeed one of the supreme achievements in human history.     

Father and Son: Freud Revisits his Oedipus Complex in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Moses and Monotheism</Emphasis>

In this paper, I propose to understand Freud on his own terms and within his social, intellectual and psychological context. It is my hope that such an understanding will contribute in turn to our understanding of some of the sources of the creative process. Were it not for his fame, Freud's views on religion, history and art, would at best be but a footnote to these subjects. My contention is that Freud's writings on these subjects can contribute more to our understanding of Freud, the person, than they do to some of the subjects he is writing about. Toward this end I will focus on two of Freud's works, written more than 30 years apart, his early Moses of Michelangelo and his late-life work Moses and Monotheism, which reflect the considerable changes in Freud's thinking.     

Freud's ego ideals: a study of admired modern historical and political personages

It is appropriate to conclude this study with a statement that characterizes Freud and his search for particular models, and this is: "A genius chooses his family from among heroes." His historical heroes were Cromwell, Napoleon, Masséna, Garibaldi, Bismarck, Adler, Lasalle, Lasker, and Wilson. Of course, toward many of these figures, Freud was also ambivalent. Yet these leaders have certain common denominators. In various degrees, they may be characterized as progressive, secular, and anti-Catholic. Moreover, they all had spectacular careers, stood up against great odds, and in many instances had serious conflicts with their fathers or men in authority. These leaders had a special significance for Freud, and their selection is representative not only of his own personal dynamics, but also of his historical milieu. His ego ideals demonstrate that Freud was ambitious and had partisan political feelings and concerns. In some cases the choice of the ego ideals stemmed from his ambivalent feelings toward his father and his particular resolution of the oedipal situation. Also very significant is the fact of Freud's Jewish heritage and the anti-Semitism he experienced as a citizen of the Hapsburg Empire. Moreover, Freud was always sensitive about the power and the influence of the Catholic church. Still another reason for his selection of widely scattered figures with whom to identify is the broadening influence of his classical education. In addition, being gifted linguistically, he was able to transcend a parochial environment. In general then, Freud's ego ideals reveal that he was informed politically and historically and that he regarded these men as promoting policies that were liberating.     

Some sources for a slip in a translation by Freud

Among Freud's papers, we find instances in which Freud describes the "psychopathology of everyday life" as he found it in himself and in others. "A Religious Experience" (Freud, 1928) contains examples of both kinds. In addition, this paper contains a slip of which Freud appears to have been unaware. Freud's paper interprets a religious conversion described in a letter written to him in English. In the translation of this letter into German, Freud inserted material that was not present in the original. He mentions another slip he made in speaking about the letter. These slips and some associated details in the paper indicate persisting unconscious conflict. The content of these slips and details points to an association with Freud's childhood anxiety dream reported in The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900). Freud's associations and discussion of that dream lead to the Philippson Bible of his childhood, which provides additional connections to the paper of 1928.     

The psychoanalytic discourse. The Freudian subject of analysis

Discussing "rationalizing" interpretations of Freud's work and suggesting as an example Jürgen Habermas' reception of Freud the authors mark non-rationalized forms of speaking and silence as specifically Freudian discoveries. Objecting to Freud's recourse to Plato's allegory of the yet undivided "globe man" they draw upon Nietzsche's critique of the "true world" (beyond phenomena).     

Jewish Origins of Freud's Interpretations of Dreams

For many years, it was assumed that Sigmund Freud was never exposed to Jewish religious education and had no knowledge of the Hebrew language, the Bible or Jewish history. Freud himself considered this a neglected part of his education which he regretted. But the research of people such as Rainey reveals that Freud actually attended Jewish religious schools which offered intense religious education that included Hebrew language, the Bible and the Talmud, and Freud himself was an honor student in these subjects. The implications of this for our understanding of Freud's theory of dreams are explored.     

Freud and the Hammerschlag family: a formative relationship

From his obituary of Samuel Hammerschlag, we know of Freud's great veneration for his teacher of Jewish religion. However, not only Hammerschlag himself but his whole family had a formative influence on young Freud, who was deeply impressed by their humanity. This paper describes Freud's relationships with all the family members. In particular, it shows how warmly he felt towards the only daughter, Anna Hammerschlag, who was his patient for a while and whom he chose as a godmother for his youngest daughter Anna. By virtue of the crucial role she played in Freud's 'specimen dream' of July 1895 ('Irma's injection'), she also became as it were the godmother of Freud's magnum opus, The Interpretation of Dreams. All the known extant letters from Freud to members of the Hammerschlag family are published here for the first time in English translation.     

Freud's Little Oedipus: Hans as exception to the oedipal rule

Freud's "The Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy" is regarded by Freud and by analytic readers and commentators as a prototype of his conception of the oedipus complex. A literary methodology is used to show that the interpretation of the oedipus complex at work in Freud's text in fact differs from Freud's standard view of it. While studying the paper as text, not as case report, may obscure or distort some clinical matters, it is valuable in that it makes legible a sort of theoretical unconscious in the text. In contrast to Freud's typically tragic view of the oedipus complex (in the tradition of ancient Greek tragedy), the Hans study evokes a comic vision (in the tradition of Greek New Comedy). This comic vision allows Hans a happy imaginative ending to the oedipal dilemma, challenges certain epistemic pretensions, and emphasizes the oedipus complex as a set of abiding existential questions. Given the deep link between Freud"s oedipus concept and a tragic view of human life, this departure in the Hans paper is a fascinating anomaly.     

ON THE DATING OF FREUD'S ALIQUIS SLIP

In a recent article in this journal, Philip Kuhn (1999) criticised Peter Swales's 1982 thesis that Minna Bernays, Freud's sister-in-law, aborted the child that she had conceived by Freud during their summer travels together in 1900, and proposed instead that the aliquis slip of around this time reveals a momentary fear of Freud's that his wife was once again pregnant. This author contests Kuhn's argument by demonstrating that key speculations underpinning his paper cannot be sustained, that the aliquis slip did not occur at the time he presumed, that the woman referred to in the aliquis slip could hardly have been Freud's wife and that there is no reason to suppose that Freud fabricated part of his analysis in the way that Kuhn suggests. On the basis of new empirical evidence the timing of the aliquis slip is established and the likelihood of it concerning Freud's anxiety about the possible pregnancy of his sister-in-law is reasserted.     

German philosophy, Freud, and the riddle of the woman

After Kant's critique of empiricism, subjectivist epistemologies cropped up in 19th-century German philosophy. Schopenhauer argued that the true essence of every object was an irrational and sexual will. This underlying will distorted a subject's knowledge of the world. Schopenhauer's notion of this true essence was analogous to his portrayal of women; they too were natural, irrational, and instinctual. Nietzsche postulated a will-to-power that structured and hence distorted a chaotic world. That structureless "real" world Nietzsche symbolized as the essential "truth of a woman," a truth which for Nietzsche was unknowable to the desirous male philosopher. Freud, while maintaining belief in empirical truth, developed a psychology of mis-knowledge which had much in common with Schopenhauer's epistemology. His theory of transference grew from a need to explain how female patients libidinally distorted the reality of their male analysts. Conversely, Freud's later writings on women are hampered by the author's realization of his own precarious and subjective position as man trying to know woman. These counter-transferential concerns ultimately made the woman's psychological essence an unknowable riddle for Freud.     

Freud, evolution, and the tragedy of man

It is argued that Freud was not, as Sulloway (1979) contends, a "crypto-biologist" of the mind, but rather a cultural anthropologist of the mind. Freud's genetic conception of the psychic apparatus was neither exclusively nor critically derived from biology. Rather, it was based on an anthropogenetic approach to the archaic heritage of mind inspired in part by the moral philosophy of Nietzsche. The idea of tragedy was the unifying theme of Freud's cultural interpretation of evolutionary psychology. The historical search for the primal origins of neurosis led Freud to the unavoidable conclusion that neurosis was in the beginning a prehistoric moral dilemma which, over the course of mental evolution, eventually evolved into guilt, discontent, and neurosis as modern-day phylogenetically endowed facts of life. Freud (1930) made it clear that the source of man's biological and cultural evolutionary progress--self-denial--was also responsible for the tragedy of the human condition, namely, repression, eternal psychic ambivalence, and chronic mental illness. He believed that neurosis began, as Nietzsche (1887) exclaimed, with the "reduction of the beast of prey 'man' to a tame and civilized animal..." (p. 42). For both Freud and Nietzsche, the cause of the human tragedy was not merely the fall from Nature, but the inexorable knowledge that Man's denial of his biological heritage was the very basis for being human.     

"Worthless female material": nursemaids and governesses in Freud's cases

The figure of the governess, central in Freud's own history, is present in most of his cases. Freud described his nursemaid as "the prime originator" of his neuroses. Well after Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory, female servants were consistently portrayed as seducing boys, while their relationship with girls consisted of identification and rivalry. The role of Freud's own surrogate mother in his life and writing is examined, and two cases, Lucy R. and Dora, are looked at through the lens of female caretaking. A review and integration of relevant literature is followed by an exploration of the perplexing adherence in Freud's writing to the reality of seduction by a governess, even after he had abandoned the seduction theory. It is argued that it is in the figure of the female maid that the "shadowy" early history of Freud's mothering experiences may actually be engaged, however indirectly and unconsciously. This figure, and Freud's powerful, problematic identification with her, is a thread that when pulled helps unravel struggles in Freud's early theoretical development around issues of female sexuality and analytic authority. Revisiting Lucy R. and Dora provides a new perspective on Freud's difficulty with maternal transferences, and restores to their original importance his "worthless" governesses, those first analysts.     

Little Hans and Freud's self-analysis: a biographical view of clinical theory in the making

For nearly a century, Freud's "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy" has been read mainly--if often critically--with Freud's conscious aim in mind: providing evidence for the central importance of oedipal conflict. Material recently released by the Freud Archives casts new light on Freud's treatment of Hans's mother, Olga Graf (nee H?nig)--which began at the height of his self-analysis in 1897--and of Hans himself. Read in the enriched context of new information from Eissler's interviews with Max Graf and Herbert Graf, two texts--Freud's 1897 letters to Fliess and the 1909 case history--illuminate possible personal motives for Freud's insistence on the primacy of oedipal conflict.     

Mourning beyond melancholia: Freud's psychoanalysis of loss

Freud's mourning theory has been criticized for assuming a model of subjectivity based on a strongly bounded form of individuation. This model informs "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917), in which Freud argued that mourning comes to a decisive end when the subject severs its emotional attachment to the lost one and reinvests the free libido in a new object. Yet Freud revised his mourning theory in writings concerned with the Great War and in The Ego and the Id (1923), where he redefined the identification process previously associated with melancholia as an integral component of mourning. By viewing the character of the ego as an elegiac formation, that is, as "a precipitate of abandoned object-cathexes," Freud's later work registers the endlessness of normal grieving; however, it also imports into mourning the violent characteristics of melancholia, the internal acts of moralized aggression waged in an effort to dissolve the internal trace of the other and establish an autonomous identity. Because it is not immediately clear how Freud's text offers a theory of mourning beyond melancholy violence, his account of the elegiac ego is shown here to ultimately undermine the wish for an identity unencumbered by the claims of the lost other and the past, and to suggest the affirmative and ethical aspects of mourning.     

Freud's struggle with misogyny: homosexuality and guilt in the dream of Irma's injection.

The highly condensed dream element trimethylamin is central to the dream of Irma's injection. After a brief review of the medical literature on timethylamine (TMA), it is suggested that two important meanings of this chemical and its properties lie in its disguised reference to disparaging views of women, as well as to Freud's homosexual connection to Wilhelm Fliess. Freud's misogynistic and homosexual impulses were stimulated by Fliess's recent surgical error committed while operating on Freud's patient Emma Eckstein. Evidence is presented that the collaboration between Freud and Fliess in performing an aggressive act toward a woman was for Freud an enactment of a childhood situation in which he and his nephew John had ganged up on John's sister Pauline. The later relationship between Freud, Jung, and Sabina Spielrein is seen as an additional reenactment of this childhood triangle. An examination of Freud's associations to and analysis of the Irma dream, as well as some of his later relationships with women, indicates that guilt and the wish to make reparation were also prominent themes in Freud's inner life.     

Dream dialogue and retrogression: neurolinguistic origins of Freud's "replay hypothesis."

At the phenomenological level, Sigmund Freud in the Traumdeutung presents dream speeches that are ubiquitous, and syntactically and pragmatically usually well-formed (despite occasional lexical anomalies), while at the generative level Freud maintains that these are playbacks, devoid of linguistic creativity, and as such do not violate the theoretically "primary-process," nondiscursive nature of the dreamwork. Neither anecdotal data nor recent systematic experimental evidence lend the "replay hypothesis" convincing support, however. This hypothesis may (like many other aspects of his dream theory) have its particular antecedents in the theoretical constraints of Freud's protopsychoanalytic "Project for a Scientific Psychology." In fact, the hypothesis can be reconciled with the neurological mechanisms of the "Project," though it cannot be specifically derived from them. Freud utilized the concept of functional retrogression from his still earlier, prepsychoanalytic work On Aphasia, thus effecting the best compromise he could between the constraints of his overall dream theory derived from the "Project" and his own observations on the phenomenology of dream speech.     

Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and Freud's early metapsychology.

Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and Freud's early metapsychology, particularly the Project for a Scientific Psychology, show some interesting similarities. In psychological theory, both men stressed the motivated nature of thought and a conception of a "psychological reality" that is superior to "material reality." Both saw consciousness of one's own mental activity as arising retrospectively and having a calming effect on emotions. Both emphasized a process of "judgment" or "reality testing," made possible only by the presence of a strong unity of consciousness of ego. Methodologically, both agreed that the retrospective analysis of subjective experience is the principal tool of psychology. Freud eventually agreed with Brentano that psychology proceeds best when separated from physiology. They applied similar criteria to "proofs" of the unconscious, with Brentano concluding negatively, and Freud, positvely, after considering new evidence. This article considers the similarities and concludes that they suggest some sort of influence of Brentano on Freud.