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.     

Freud's "bad conscience": The case of Nietzsche's Genealogy

This article develops the argument that Friedrich Nietzsche influenced several aspects of Freud's later writings by illustrating, in particular, the impact of Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals on Freud's Civilization and its Discontents. The theoretical and conceptual schemes represented in Freud's Discontents are found to bear a remarkable similarity to Nietzsche's Genealogy on a number of highly specific points. It is suggested that "DAS ES," "Uber-ich," and "bad conscience," concepts central to Freud's moral theory of mind, are at least partly derived from Nietzsche. Moreover, Freud's phylogenetic theory of guilt is based upon premises found in Nietzsche, as are specific details relating to ideas on human prehistory and the ancestral family. Based on this evidence, a re-examination of the moral and social dimensions of Freud's "structural" model may be in order.     

Another look at dreaming: disentangling Freud's primary and secondary process theories

The Interpretation of Dreams contains Freud's first and most complete articulation of the primary and secondary mental processes that serve as a framework for the workings of mind, conscious and unconscious. While it is generally believed that Freud proposed a single theory of dreaming, based on the primary process, a number of ambiguities, inconsistencies, and contradictions reflect an incomplete differentiation of the parts played by the two mental processes in dreaming. It is proposed that two radically different hypotheses about dreaming are embedded in Freud's work. The one implicit in classical dream interpretation is based on the assumption that dreams, like waking language, are representational, and are made up of symbols connected to latent unconscious thoughts. Whereas the symbols that constitute waking language are largely verbal and only partly unconscious, those that constitute dreams are presumably more thoroughly disguised and represented as arcane hallucinated hieroglyphs. From this perspective, both the language of the dream and that of waking life are secondary process manifestations. Interpretation of the dream using the secondary process model involves the assumption of a linear two-way "road" connecting manifest and latent aspects, which in one direction involves the work of dream construction and in the other permits the associative process of decoding and interpretation. Freud's more revolutionary hypothesis, whose implications he did not fully elaborate, is that dreams are the expression of a primary mental process that differs qualitatively from waking thought and hence are incomprehensible through a secondary process model. This seems more adequately to account for what is now known about dreaming, and is more consistent with the way dream interpretation is ordinarily conducted in clinical practice. Recognition that dreams are qualitatively distinctive expressions of mind may help to restore dreaming to its privileged position as a unique source of mental status information.     

Resetting the rules of the game: Language preferences and social relations of work between Russian immigrants and veteran professionals in an Israeli organization

Workplace is the main site of the cross-cultural encounter between majority and minority groups in multicultural societies, yet there is paucity of research on workplace language practices and their influence on the social relations of work. The current qualitative study focused on the patterns of language use and their links to social identities, inter-group attitudes and work relations between recent immigrants and veteran employees in a white-collar organization in Central Israel. On-site observations and interviews with the workers—Israeli-born, veteran Soviet immigrants of the 1970s, and recent arrivals—were conducted in Hebrew and in Russian. The findings indicate that language use indeed serves as the key marker of social identity and signifier of work status and group boundaries. The common use of Russian by recent immigrants is a trigger of conflict and mutual antagonism, as Hebrew-speakers perceive it as a sign of their separatism and anti-Israeli outlook.     

Reading Freud's "the Dynamics of Transference" one hundred years later

Freud's technical papers, "The Dynamics of Transference" in particular, established most of the basis for a century of clinical psychoanalytic work. A contemporary reading of that paper illustrates both the power of the original presentation and how far we have come. Close readings are given of crucial passages, including retranslations where Strachey's English arguably distorts Freud's language or intent. More broadly, Freud's conclusions are examined to reveal correspondences with current thinking or its foreshadowing. Although Freud drove toward unifying conclusions, he at the same time described a disparate array of clinical phenomena. The paper's central points are situated historically, both in Freud's evolution and in the subsequent evolution toward the pluralistic clinical theory of today. Freud encountered many of the challenges we face, noting them in ways both clinically useful and fruitful for other theorists. The use of the paper's central tenets is traced historically, showing how ideas that provide a radical, liberating, and facilitating guide for analysts can over time devolve into hackneyed rules. Finally, it is noted how transference phenomena are increasingly being discussed as a specific type of dyadic human experience. The task in the coming century is to develop theory and vocabulary for comprehending these phenomena and integrating them with Freud's intrapsychic concepts.     

Freud's "Project": a theory for Studies on Hysteria

The controversy about the place of Sigmund Freud's unfinished draft of 1895, "Project for a Scientific Psychology," in the history of his thought, is addressed. It is argued that the "Project" may be understood as a suppressed response to the theory of hysteria presented by Josef Breuer in his and Freud's joint work, Studies on Hysteria. It is suggested that the "Project" may be read, in part, as a substitute for Breuer's theory. The timing and circumstances of the "Project's" composition are discussed. Its substantive and formal congruence with Studies on Hysteria is brought out. Freud's comments on scientific hypotheses are discussed, and it is shown that they constitute an implicit criticism of Breuer's theory.     

"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.     

German unification influenced by an unfinished psychosocial history]

The critical form of social psychology presented here is concerned with the modalities and results of German reunification. It proceeds from Freud's insistence on the functional autonomy of psychic dispositions and unconscious forms of identification vis-à-vis the political and economic spheres. With reference to earlier historical experience of the Germans as an "economic nation" the authors suspect that German reunification with the avowed "economistic" priority of establishing the same life conditions in East and West is once again suppressing those problems that are bound up with the post-fascist syndrome handed down from one generation to the next. With a view to casting light on the reunification process and the collective psychic potentials it has released, the authors supplement Freud's mass-psychology approach with Julia Kristeva's outline of a social psychology that hinges on the relationship between cosmopolitanism and the national idea.     

Sigmund Freud and the diagram-maker school of aphasiology.

Published 100 years ago, Freud's monograph on aphasia, Zur Auffassung der Aphasien, is an incisive analysis of the so-called diagram-makers, those aphasiologists who would reduce brain and language to simple schemes of circumscribed cortical centers linked by unidirectional subcortical pathways. Chief architects of the diagram-maker school were Wernicke and Lichtheim, and their formulations of conduction aphasia and the transcortical aphasias were particular targets of Freud's trenchant criticism. Freud argued against functional differentiation within left hemisphere perisylvian language regions, and he suggested that traditional aphasic syndromes were artifacts of lesions that included cortical language regions and deeper white matter pathways not directly involved with language. He provided an innovative classification of aphasia based on types of associations presumed to be affected. Freud, however, failed to adduce new clinical or pathological observations; he was perhaps unnecessarily harsh in challenging authorities in the field of aphasia; and his theory had to compete with a straightforward and already entrenched anatomical view of language representation. Despite Freud's lucid argumentation, his carefully crafted monograph was never widely noted.     

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.     

Transference, taboo and truth

The author re-examines the development of the concept of transference in Freud's work. He gives special attention to Totem and Taboo published in 1912-13. He notes that Freud's totally unsupported hypotheses within this model become illuminating and intelligible if "totem" is translated as "psychoanalyst" and "taboo" as "transference (neurosis)".     

Slow magic: psychoanalysis and "the disenchantment of the world"

Freud's work can be situated in terms of the debate between Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment thought. The attempts of both sides to claim Freud for their position have merit, but they miss the crucial point: namely, that the tension between its Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment tendencies is what gives Freud's thinking much of its vitality and depth. The task that faces the interpreter is therefore to elucidate that tension and assess the alignment of forces between the two strands in his thought. An examination of the concept of magic in Freud's theory provides an opportunity to pursue this interpretive task. Although the Enlightenment position he often seems to embrace advocates the complete elimination of magic, many "magical" elements remain in his theory and clinical practice. Nor should this situation be deplored, for the ambition to completely exorcise "enchantment" from human experience is one of the misguided excesses of the Enlightenment. The question of an appropriate fate for magic in psychoanalysis is discussed in relation to the vicissitudes of the transference. Finally, the science versus hermenueutics debate is examined in the light of these considerations in an attempt to specify the unique nature of the psychoanalytic experience.     

Rhetoric and the Unconscious

This paper develops the ideas of rhetorical psychology by applying them to some basic Freudian concepts. In so doing, the paper considers whether there might be a Dialogic Unconscious. So far rhetorical psychology has tended to concentrate upon conscious thought rather than on the unconscious. It has suggested that thinking is modelled on argument and dialogue, and that rhetoric provides the means of opening up matters for thought and discussion. However, rhetoric may also provide the means for closing down topics and, thereby, provide the means of repression. It will be suggested that language is not merely expressive but it is also repressive. Moreover, the repressive aspects of language are built into the very practices of dialogue. In learning language, we learn the codes for socially appropriate ways of speaking. These must be acquired as habits, so that we learn to repress routinely the desire to transgress the codes of appropriate speech. Thus, the routine use of language provides the resources for repression. If language is repressive, then this applies equally to the language of psycho-analysis itself. Freud's famous case histories, such as that of Dora, can be re-examined, in order to see what Freud's own theory of repression was itself repressing.     

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.     

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.     

Corrective Emotional Experience Remembered

The paper examines on the one hand the influence of the Berlin Institute in the 1920s on Franz Alexander's training and on his later work, as it was a workshop aiming to test the possibilities of a large utilization of psychoanalytic therapy in an institutional framework. On the other hand, the spirit of experimentation of Sándor Ferenczi and the endeavor to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of psychoanalysis by the use of countertransference and emotional exchange also became important for Alexander. A glimpse of recent researches on Freud's timetable gives background information with possible comparisons between Freud's technique and that of Alexander.     

On antithetic and metathetic words in the analytic situation

Freud's view of primal words emphasized their origins in the vocal acquisition of language and their similarity to primary process behavior in young children. Our English vernacular is rich in word play of reversals and antitheses, some words being truly ancient, others originating in the subversions of slang and in the child's penchant for mirror imaging and other primary process play. In the regression of analytic work the uttered word can combine with dream imagery and behavioral enactment to convey the antitheses abounding in the oral, anal, and early phallic concerns of the individuating child acquiring language.     

Fact and fantasy in the seduction theory: a historical review

This article surveys Freud's various versions of the seduction theory, from 1896 to 1933. It is concluded that the seduction theory had never been based on the patients' direct statements and conscious recall of seduction by the father in early childhood--unlike what Freud was to state much later (1933). This early seduction was mostly reconstructed by Freud from the patient's verbal material and behavior in treatment (including memories of sexual experiences from later childhood) which he interpreted as disguised and incomplete "reproductions" and reenactments of the original seduction trauma. Further, the external trauma was never meant to account by itself for the later neurotic symptoms. The "delayed action" of its unconscious memory, producing the repression of an event from the time of puberty, was a necessary part of the process. Thus internal psychic transformations and conflicts, anticipating Freud's later emphasis on fantasy and psychic reality, were already an intrinsic part of the seduction etiology of 1896. It is also noted that the father played no central role in the original theory as presented in 1896; it is only in the letters to Fliess that the father emerged as the prime seducer. The implications of this clarification of the seduction theory for the understanding of the changes and continuity in the development of Freud's theories are highlighted; their relevance to ongoing issues in psychoanalysis about the role of external trauma, fantasy, and reconstruction are briefly examined.     

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.     

Technique and countertransference in Freud's analysis of the Rat Man

Freud's records of his treatment of the Rat Man constitute a unique document in the history of psychoanalysis. Through the years different analysts have used these records to support different theories about analytic technique. Certain non-interpretive interventions of Freud's have especially aroused their interest, and many reasons have been put forward to "explain" Freud's behavior. One reason never yet advanced and documented is that a countertransference tension may have been involved in one of these instances. This is surprising, since countertransference is a necessary part of every analysis. Evidence is presented that Freud's behavior may indeed have been under the sway of countertransference. Some recently discovered details concerning his early life are discussed as constituting a plausible background for ths countertransference enactment.