me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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7/29/17
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Some of you may be familiar with some of the criticisms of the left, coming from within the left, that are referencing Freud in a big way. There's the recent article, "The Blathering Superego at the End of History," by Emmett Rensin in the LA TIMES, where he says the left, without knowing it, has found themselves hiding within a super-ego role that doesn't so much direct as resist everyone else's impulses... he makes the left look alice-in-wonderland crazy, like energizer bunnies on endless smackdown mode. And there's the book published this year by Jessa Crispin, whom you couldn't tell by the title of her book, "Why I'm not a feminist," but who actually is a feminist, and one respected enough within feminist circles that her book was lauded by NewYork Magazine and Jezebel. She accused the left of needing "shit containers"... people who could be denied empathy and into which can placed everything about themselves they felt an urgent need to disown, and the one and only container used -- voila!: white men. She made the left look like everything right-wingers accuse them of. "Quite right," she argues, "we are very much taking a dump on you."
Where you don't find criticism like this, in my judgment, is in the only article I've seen in forever on DeMause's "growth panic," where a conclusion was made that we've reached the stage we're we can no longer use the like of poison containers to remove guilt... because it's past that now, past time for small measures, as we're all so obviously bad we're all with Trump on a highway to hell. What you find in, specifically, Kenneth Alan Adams and Audrey Crosby's article, "The 2016 Election, Authoritarian Childrearing, and our Suicidal Trajectory," is a lament about THEM... about the white working class and their inability to any longer keep up, owing to the misfortune of their "authoritarian" childrearing, where growth was a bad, bad thing. Liberals, the professional class, the educated elite... however we want to call them, don't look ridiculous, as they do in the two accounts of them just listed, but exempt... pillars of earnest responsibility in a time of madness. Or at least that's my call.
So I wrote a response, about how if we're representing ourselves this way, it's probably a good sign that we too are suffering from growth panic, and I wanted to link you to it.
It is here.
Please note, I really recommend reading Adams and Crosby's article first, to learn from them, and of course to judge how fair I am being... to see if I'm just talking sh*t (I probably do do a couple sketchy things -- like I just did there... for higher purpose, of course).
Cheers and respect,
Patrick McEvoy-Halston
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RE: reflections on Charlottesville?
17 posts by 7 authors
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bdagostino2687
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8/19/17
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Dear all,
I am wondering how people on this list are making sense of the Charlottesville rally a week ago and its aftermath. I have been thinking about how Trump’s morally and politically confused response to the violence is mainstreaming the radical right, on the one hand, and hastening the demise of his presidency on the other. What are others thinking, and how can psychohistory help us understand what is going on?
Brian
www.bdagostino.com
917-628-8253
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arniedr
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8/19/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] RE: reflections on Charlottesville?
I remember the German American Bund when I was going up
http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2017/08/16/fritz-kuhns-celebrity-apprentice-donald-trump-is-not-hitler-hes-more-like-the-leader-of-the-german-american-bund/
Arnold Richards
arnoldrichards.net
internationalpsychoanalysis.net
ipbooks.net
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bdagostino2687
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8/19/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] RE: reflections on Charlottesville?
Arnie, what decade(s) are you referring to, and where were you living then? On psychological fascism research, I find it interesting that Adorno et al's The Authoritarian Personality, one of the most important works of American social science, was done in the wake of the Third Reich and presciently provided tools for understanding McCarthyism, which was beginning just when it was published, in 1950.
Brian
P.S. I didn't get a copy of my previous posts in my inbox and until Arnie responded, wondered if my post had appeared on the list. Is anyone else not getting copies of your own posts?
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Hans Bakker
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8/19/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] RE: reflections on Charlottesville?
Dear colleagues,
The events of the last few days are indeed remarkable.
It has given me a bit more confidence in the resilience of Amercan (U.S.) institutions. With Bannon out some of the facts behind his views are becoming even clearer.
Is it possible that Donald really does not quite get it? Even Arnold Schwarzenegger got it, which was sort of ironic but also understandable, given his Austrian background. schwarzenegger.com
(Hitler was Austrian, of course.)
Cheers, from Montreal,
Hans
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Brian D'Agostino <bdagostino2687@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2017 7:34:02 AM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] RE: reflections on Charlottesville?
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arniedr
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8/19/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] RE: reflections on Charlottesville?
I was living in Brooklyn
The German American Bund were in Yorkville It was just before WW 11 started I was seven years old My family was very worried
Anti semitism was a big concern for me growing up
Arnold Richards
arnoldrichards.net
internationalpsychoanalysis.net
ipbooks.net
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From: Brian D'Agostino <bdagostino2687@gmail.com>
To: cliospsyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>
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Joel Markowitz
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8/19/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] RE: reflections on Charlottesville?
I have always had a more positive attitude about the collective American mind than have most of my peers.
People visiting the South would wonder why there were Confederate flags and statues to generals who killed hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers; who fought for slavery; who hated the American government ...
Had they asked me, I would have said that i hadn’t researched this. but that I’d intuitively attribute some wisdom to not taking a stronger stand against our racist communities— at that time. But that the truth will out some day.
At 90, I’m possibly the oldest of Clio members; and I’ve had a lot of experience with evidences of collective minds being wiser than the wisest of their individuals.
I admire Hilary Clinton and voted for her. But had she been elected, I would not expect much change in the status quo.
I don’t think that Trump is as being as racist or as deeply committed to White Supremacy as his rhetoric and behavior have suggested that he is. Machismo is the simplest approach to a viable self-image, and I’d guess that Trump had been
driven into his extreme Right-wing position— in part by his need to compensate for his insecurities— augmented as they’ve been by cascading media attacks on his personality; his dishonesties; his blatant immorality; his blunders and inexperience; etc.
Viewing film-clips of the Charlottesville rally, we should get beyond our anger and realize the BENEFITS of those permanent, unstaged scenes Disenfranchised young men, with bulging muscles, extensive tattoos, carrying Confederate and Nazi flags and shouting racist
and anti-semitic slogans are evidencing the most-fundamental definitive reasons— for the survival of the symbols of the Confederacy and the Civil War. Even our history books have diluted those reasons, suggesting that other factors than to preserve
slavery were just — or almost — as fundamental.
NO ONE has written negatively about Robert E. Lee— or disputed his insistence that he rejected the Union offer of generalship of Federal armies because he had to be loyal to Virginia.
No way to prove it, but I would guess that he fought the Union to preserve his life style as a privileged Southern aristocrat. He said that he was unhappy about slavery. He fought very hard to preserve it— an at great cost— especially, ironically — to the South.
When WE have insisted that the overriding motivation of that terrible war — was to preserve slavery and White Supremacy in the South, that has been called our liberal bias. But when THEY demonstrate— unequivocally— the importance of those regressive
needs in so many of Trump’s supporters, we need not necessarily speak or write of it (though we should) . We could play those film-clips.
I didn’t believe that, in my lifetime, the Confederate flag and those statues would be attacked by our collective mind. Trump made that happen.
—————————————————————————————
Progress in history has depended to a great extent to bad events happening — followed by good events that (very often) more than overcompensate for the bad events, I’m NOT AT ALL suggesting that Trump is like Hitler or the US is like Germany—
as some have done. But Hitler was more responsible for the destruction of what had been by far the MOST-formiidable war machine than was any other individual. No wonder so many German generals and officers committed suicide. Without Hitler’s
directives, WWII would have lasted far longer and have cost far more deaths and ruin. Trump is bringing to light much of what a more-sensitive politician would have hidden. Nor has anyone else stimulated even NEARLY as much— or as impressive— writings
against our regressive collective tendencies.
Joel
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Joel Markowitz
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8/19/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] RE: reflections on Charlottesville?
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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8/19/17
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What's mainstreaming the radical right would occur outside of any particular thing Trump might do. He could be locked away, all his advisors sent to Pluto, and the "radio" could play nothing but Rachel Maddow, and it wouldn't matter, because what's unfolding now was determined by the particular childhoods of each American. This is the DeMause's interpretation of the events, that what we're seeing here is a reckoning of just how loved or unloved Americans were, just how much they were rejected by (sorry) their mothers when they began to individuate in their adolescence and how much this individuation was instead encouraged. What the left needs to do is try and manage an honest assessment of the likely nature of the childhoods of all Americans, even of peoples they assume will always be firmly left. Black Americans in the South still for example almost universally spank their children (with belts, I believe) and that tells us, if we can admit to ourselves, that they have a very precarious appreciation for further unfolding of liberal freedoms as well. Don't assume they won't themselves turn nativist, eager to cling to the formidable mother country, and eager to distance themselves from... well, spoiled children like us. Don't even assume that they won't in the end come to Trump. It's possible. It's boring our being perennially surprised by events. Our assumption each week, that THIS TIME Trump is on his way out. We're going to lose a lot of friends as society moves further and further beyond what our childhoods allowed for us. We have to become sinless, good children again, by attacking those who represent our ostensible worst selves, who individuated even in face of our mother's disavowal and disapproval. Of course not you and me, but some even of our personal friends--yes.
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arniedr
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8/19/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] RE: reflections on Charlottesville?
Slavery
http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2017/08/16/slavery-cause-and-catalyst-of-the-civil-war-on-the-u-s-department-of-the-interior-national-park-service/
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bdagostino2687
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8/19/17
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RE: [cliospsyche] Re: reflections on Charlottesville?
Molly, I will read your review with great interest and comment after I have done so. Arnie, I also want to read the article you posted.
Patrick, I agree with nearly everything you say but with one very big caveat. Causality in history is necessarily a dialectic between psychogenic factors such as you describe and other factors, which you and deMause completely omit. Psychohistorical reductionism is just as one-sided as economic, geopolitical, or any other kind of reductionism. While there may be an internal logic in the evolution of child rearing from more neglectful and abusive modes to more nurturing and humane modes, there are also internal logics to the development of science, technology, capitalism and geopolitics that are independent of childrearing.
As for geopolitics, for example, Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powersdescribed the succession of hegemonic powers that dominated European and world history in the last 500 years—first Spain, then France, then Britain, and then the United States. The pattern was that each of these hegemonic powers gained increasing control of resources through imperial expansion, then lost their hegemony to the next great power because once an empire reaches the natural limits of its expansion, the costs of maintaining it begin to exceed the economic advantages that empire confers. If this pattern continues, China will replace the US as the world’s hegemon in the coming decades, but there is reason to think that this whole pattern is breaking down because of globalization. There are very good geopolitical and geoeconomic explanations for great power dynamics, which Kennedy lays out brilliantly, and the rise of modern capitalism is an integral part of this story. So is slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.
One factor that cannot explain this geopolitical pattern is child rearing, which has evolved in all of the world’s cultures according to its own internal logic. Imperial hegemony requires a combination of violence and ruthlessness, on the one hand, and social and cultural progress on the other. It does not make sense to say that imperial societies are in general more or less advanced than non-imperial societies, so it is hard to see how advances in child rearing could account for the sequential rise and fall of Spain, France, Britain, the US and possibly now China. This is a geopolitical process that has specific geopolitical and geoeconomic causes and cannot be reduced to the evolution of child rearing.
Another example of large scale historical change is the way automation is transforming economy and society under capitalism. This is an exponentially accelerating phenomenon. In The Singularity is Near, futurist Ray Kurzweil estimates that by around 2050, computers and artificial intelligence will have outstripped the unaided brainpower of individual humans. We will be getting millions of emails per day and will need super-intelligent personal computers to participate in and keep up with the pace of communication. Automation, artificial intelligence, and cyber-communication are transforming human culture in ways that interact with but cannot be reduced to child rearing practices.
The one historical process that may have fundamental causes in the evolution of childrearing is the progressive evolution of democracy and human rights, on the one hand, and the corresponding reduction in the role of political violence. On the last-mentioned trend, see, for example War and Ideas and other writings of political scientist John Mueller. Since these trends are critical to the creation of a humane and sustainable future, a fact underscored by Charlottesville, the reform of child rearing should obviously be an important and urgent priority.
Brian
www.bdagostino.com
917-628-8253
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2017 5:27 PM
To: Clio’s Psyche
Subject: [cliospsyche] Re: reflections on Charlottesville?
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Barney
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8/19/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: reflections on Charlottesville?
Dear Brian and Cliofolk,
This is personal because my daughter Kate and her husband Eric own a store in Charlottesville (feastvirginia.com) a few blocks from where the confrontations and the car murder occurred.
During the Saturday morning confrontations they chose to stay open while all the other stores closed during the conflicts “because people needed a sanctuary place to feel safe.” They hired an armed guard and refused entry to anyone carrying a weapon.
Kate reports that there were few, if any, Nazis or KKKers from anywhere within three counties of the town. The Nazis marched out from under Donald Trump’s skirts; they were armed with openly brandished shotguns, semi-automatic machine guns, big pistols, shields, swastikas, and threatening signs (“Kill All Jews” for one), and mean, filthy mouths. It was the second assault on C’ville by the Nazis in a month, the first a much smaller pack, who were literally outnumbered by anti-Nazi protesters 20 to one and slithered away.
Neither Kate nor I think that anyone in C’ville, not the police, or the judicial system, or the president of the university bears any blame for the disgust and deadliness that happened. It was a coincidental collision of events that were destined to happen, for better or worse, just as the forthcoming eclipse.
In this case, the irresistible forces that nurtured the Nazis in Germany were fed by Trump to Americans hungry for vengeance, violence, and vigilante-ism.
When they confronted one another, local police were ordered to zealously protect the “ready-to-fight” Nazis from the stick-armed anti-Nazi protesters . Tempers among the anti-Nazis were increasingly hot, angry, and horrified. Most had never seen the vicious faces of Nazism before, and it shook them to their cores.
Here is verbatim how my 11-year-old grandson Oscar describes Saturday in Charlottesville:
“My dad woke me up and said it was going to be a hard day. We went to feast! I knew there would be rallies and marches, but in the store it was normal, until the cheese monger turned on the TV and we watched people with guns and poles and wooden bats and Confederate flags and swastika flags and ugly signs and they were fighting in the streets a few blocks away.
"Feast! stayed open when the other restaurants closer to the park closed, and a lot of people came in and felt safer in feast! and they were glad we stayed open.
"Then, when the staff was eating lunch, we heard about the car that ran into a crowd of people, and everybody knew it was time to close.
"The mall was empty, the streets were empty, everybody went home. I cried before I fell asleep.”
I asked Oscar, “What lesson have you learned from what’s happened?”
“That when people are being mean to me, I can think about how much meaner people can be to each other, and then it’s not so bad.”
#
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david
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8/19/17
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RE: [cliospsyche] RE: reflections on Charlottesville?
Thank you for this Joel.
David
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Joel Markowitz
Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2017 3:43 PM
To: Clios Psyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] RE: reflections on Charlottesville?
I have always had a more positive attitude about the collective American mind than have most of my peers.
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arniedr
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8/20/17
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Holt Rapaport Correspondence
New from ipbooks.net
http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2016/07/10/holt-rapaport-powerpoint-by-arnold-richards/
http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2017/08/16/coming-soon-from-ipbooks-the-holt-rapaport-correspondence/
Arnold Richards
arnoldrichards.net
internationalpsychoanalysis.net
ipbooks.net
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Joel Markowitz
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8/20/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] RE: reflections on Charlottesville?
You are very welcome, David.
Joel
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arniedr
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8/20/17
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more on anti semitism
http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Poll-1-in-3-British-Jews-have-considered-emigrating-due-to-antisemitism-502920
True in France and other countries in Europe as well
Arnold Richards
arnoldrichards.net
internationalpsychoanalysis.net
ipbooks.net
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From: Brian D'Agostino <bdagostino2687@gmail.com>
To: cliospsyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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8/20/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: reflections on Charlottesville?
One senses that there is a lot leveraging your confidence right now, and that if I am right, and that the nature of our mothers' ability to tolerate our individuation from them dictates the entirety of the social world around us, whether it evolves or regresses, whether it accepts growth, or punishes itself ruthlessly for it and willing self-destructs, it's not a safe time to start advocating for it. Best to see where you are a few years from now, see if your formulation of the world into geopolitical and geoeconomic processes, where there are internal logics to science, technology, capitalism, where automation, artificial intelligence and cyber-communication take the lead, where Paul Kennedy and Ray Kurzweil don't sound like traditional boy-men talking stuff imagined as repellant to women (geopolitics... did that scare them out of the room? no, how about cybernetics--that ought to have done it!)... that women probably can't understand, but speak great wisdom, had something to do with your functioning sanely in the world of today, but maybe not as much, the one tomorrow. And if you short-circuit, and one senses a random tumbling of (let me tell you...) which factor cannot be privileged over that, if there will be room for people within psychohistory to sense vulnerabilities where they might push through into the full light of consideration that the nature of earliest years' experience with our mother (and father, but mostly mother) is actually all; everything is built out of that. There is no safe world out there operating independently of their influence on us that we can escape to like autistic boys attempt with their motor cars and cellphone tech. The words you use, are repellent of, are insulated from, the feminine. It sounds entirely like traditional mansplaining, designed to reassure your hold on the world... to shut down rather than open up, after someone hoped to soften the tempo of speech and make comfortable for other voices to let in. Your sense of people sounds fundamentally hard. You get to geopolitics, you don't really deal with something distant, separate from ourselves, but distant from human beings as emotional and sensitive--these are the serious men, drawing-room men... geopolitics as conjuring that, really, not something apart from us with its own internal logic. I don't think you're trying really hard to imagine how child rearing, how how emotionally evolved our mothers were and how they loved or abandoned us, has to do with sequential rise and fall of empires. Growth panic, described by Lloyd, but also James F. Masterson, is, according to them, true for almost every human alive, and so if we are willing to extrapolate to societies, would seem to make it so that we would expect societies to both rise and then, out of perhaps, growth panic, to cripple themselves. It certainly can make sense that imperial cultures are more advanced than non-imperial, when you do nuance... any look at Lloyd's charts of social evolution delineates each one of them (possible societies) as rancid in comparison to what the most emotionally evolved would have for us all today. Early patriarchy, that great disaster, was actually evolved from early matriarchy, which was worse. Imperialistic empires, which are at best complicated and rather more just rancid, today, was evolved over what came before. Each of these did splitting. Each of these projected "badness" into others. But the extent... differed. Lessened. Borderline as better than schizoid... oedipal narcissists as better than pre-oedipal ones. And historically these changes were huge, not to be crushed by pointing out that, hey, none of these were benign so can't meaningfully be distinguished, so let's talk independent of human. One of the reasons I still do cheer on anti-Freudian Frederick Crews over Eli Zaretsky is that I sense sometimes a difference in background which would stop Crews from orienting around materialism, from wanting to privilege it and make it ultimately the master that mostly formulates history. I think he can swim around more in the kind of stuff I think Zaretsky is in need of retreating from, perhaps revenging himself on, and so explore and find more. Stop serving to shut down by privileging hegemonic, masculinist language and conceptions of reality, before we've had a chance to begin. It won't do to still have you feeling comfortable, with that primary, when our world is becoming one where our nations are becoming our mothers again, and where we're ready to kill projections of our bad selves so we can we can feel sinless again. America is our loving mommy; other countries, are bad mommies, full of constituents of bad children. THIS over geo-politics, THIS over globalization, will make it so that we understand why our political opponents keep growing and growing, and why they are so hard to stop. They win, or sacrifice in fight, their mommies will once again maybe consider loving them, after having judged them irredeemably rotten. Cybernetics.... is what we conjure, out of defence of our possibly coming to subscribe to this lure too. The anti-thesis of the mommy, hopefully -- pray God! -- belonging to a wholly alien realm, and super-powered to boot.
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bdagostino2687
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8/21/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: reflections on Charlottesville?
Patrick,
Kennedy's theory explains the historical data of geopolitics and deMause's doesn't, for reasons I already gave and will not repeat here. Same with Kurzweil and trends regarding AI. This is how science has to work, so if you agree with deMause that psychohistory is a science you need to engage my argument on its own terms. Instead, you resort to what are essentially ad hominem arguments, which I cannot respect. We will just have to agree to disagree.
--Brian
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Crews and more Crews
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arniedr
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9/7/17
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http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2017/09/06/cutting-em-down-to-size-a-new-dismantling-of-freud-shows-the-value-of-a-critics-well-honed-hatchet/
Arnold Richards
arnoldrichards.net
internationalpsychoanalysis.net
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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9/7/17
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It strikes me that the advantage Crews has is that one imagines that if contemporary psychoanalysts did find that there was truth to, say, penis envy, or his explorations of perversions, that their own brains wouldn't allow them to accept it, whereas Crews does give one -- or me at least -- the sense that if he somehow came to find himself in agreement with 1950s psychoanalysis, if he did a full turn-around, he could keep faith with it, even as part of his brain would surely be chastising him as a bigot, and even as the world would disown him. There's integrity to him... that's what one senses (and perhaps mostly why Zaretsky says there's been no effective rebuttal of him as of yet?). The trouble is that it is likely that this older sort of psychoanalytic truth, the part that gets disowned as everyone makes clear how "post" it they are, is beginning to come back into view... the rightwing are uncovering it, bringing back, for instance, Socarides, and his take on homosexuality, transsexuality, etc., spared the genuine love and concern. If there was actually truth in '50s psychoanalysis, and it's truth that a regressing American population that mostly wants justification to begin a war on homosexuality seizes upon to discredit contemporary social scientists / "regressive liberals" as those wilfully ignorant of truth, the most effective rebuttal of Crews is going to emerge some time in the future, and from out of our worst.
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Trevor Pederson
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9/7/17
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I'm not sure if I see any "truth" emerging in the future of our current political organization. Authority is being discredited down to the root and it will have to be replaced for truth to emerge for the public.
I'd be curious to see how many clinicians on clio's psyche would vouch for penis envy.
Trevor
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Ken Fuchsman
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9/7/17
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The first Freud biography appeared in 1923, Since then there has never been three full-length biographies of Freud published in English within 12 months, until now.. Frenh historian and psychoanalyst, Elisabeth Roudinesco's Freud biography was published last November, New York philosopher and psychoanalyst, Joel Whitebook published an intellectual biography of Freud in January and last month Crews 666 page text appeared. It is also the case that Crews reviewed Roudinesco's Freud biography. This gives us a chance to compare these works and seek to attempt to come to terms with the issues Freud's life raises. .
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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9/7/17
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They're of a political faction that has less access to truth, but their brains will allow them to orient on it when it means... well, essentially, the furthering of evil. It's becoming increasingly common for even members of the left to suggest that maybe all social science done since a liberal, caring culture came into being, has been activist first, truth, second. It hasn't mattered before (whether it was true or not) because society, even as it had split into the rich and the poor, hadn't yet begun a downward spiral of total regression, where people who had it them to vote for and believe in Obama have completely lost themselves to Trump madness. Now it matters -- an increasing majority sees liberalism as the fundamental evil -- and unless what we may have been doing was tactical only, active self-censorship (so something that can in a pinch be rerouted), not repression -- which it wasn't -- we may have pinned ourselves. Breitbart certainly thinks we have... that we're an evolutionary extension that became so over-evolved in favouring circumstances, it was left helpless when circumstances changed.
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Joel Markowitz
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9/7/17
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We can’t blame Freud or early Freudians for having made some mistakes. They were pioneers and were naive as pioneers were naive.
But experiences in my long professional life evidences— I strongly believe— the fundamental validity of Freud’s BASIC theories.
Why does Crews and others attack Freud the man so vehemently? However “bad” he was or wasn’t, it’s his THEORIES that are valuable to us.
An answer is that his theories bring toward consciousness fantasies and impulses that the Christian Era had repressed and suppressed for two millennia.
Why does a homophobic man attack a homosexual? Because the PRESENCE of a homosexual awakens impulses that the man has continuously attacked in himself.
The gay man’s PRESENCE brings those feelings toward consciousness. He attacks the gay man to get rid of him— while, simultaneously— proving to himself that he hates— not loves— those impulses and fantasies.
Freud-bashers protest too much their hatred and ongoing preoccupation with THE THEORIES that Freud brought into the 20th Century. Freud-bashers still depend on keeping those feelings and fantasies repressed.
As modern religions insisted they do.
They will spend much of their lives attacking Freud and his theories and DEFENDING AGAINST them — as some of us spend much of our lives USING them— toward understanding ourselves, others, and the human condition.
In my experience, those theories have been empowering.
—————————————————————————————————
The early Freudians made an understandable mistake. They minimized how powerful— and how virtually INDELIBLE— was the programming by our Formative Year’s experience. The idea of a “talking cure” was naive. Some improvements took place;
but cures didn’t.
Some current psychotherapists acknowledge — we err when we UNDERESTIMATE— the power and survival-capability of that early conditioning. We call it "The First Mindset.” And we help our patients create a “Second Mindset.” It will coexist
with the First— and grow stronger with therapy for the rest of the patient’s life.
Instead of “sniping” at a SYMPTOM, we launch— and maintain— a "total war” against — not only the symptom, but against the entire MATRIX of the symptom. Against, i.e., the entire mindset.
Against — therefore— many of the Christian Era’s determinants.
For two millennia, the Christian Era’s attack on our most-primitive fantasies and impulses were of great human value COLLECTIVELY.
GUILT made us repress (especially the sexual) FANTASIES and suppress our forbidden IMPULSES.
The extraordinary progress of the past 2 millennia was fueled largely by the sublimation of those energies. 15,000 years of paganism had EXPENDED those energies. The Christian Era evolved us out of paganism by suppressing “pagan” fantasies and impulses.
NEXCESSARY progress. The brilliant pagan philosophers saw history as hardly more than "the rise and fall of states.” They had no reason to believe otherwise. Or that humankind (like other higher mammals) would EVER evolve beyond that condition.
The Christian Era ended the deadly repetition of 15 millennia of pagan thinking and behavior. But in addition to ONGOING progress, those repressed fantasies and impulses gave rise to unprecedented neurosis.
Neurotic symptoms are disguises of fantasies and impulses that we dare not make conscious in their true form.
——————————————————————————————
Very recently, collective minds seemed to have decided to evolve beyond that long period of ( latent-oedipal ) development toward greater maturity. Little more than a century ago, Freud began the unearthing and increasing the ACCEPTANCE of those basic human
fantasies and impulses.
His theories worked toward human self-acceptance. They've begun to undo the injunctions against knowing and accepting human nature.
Therapists use free-association; dream analysis; the "working through” of the ego defenses that have kept our deeper thoughts and feelings repressed; and the illumination of the traumas and other mistakes of our early years … among other goals.
We respect the Christian Era. It has done its necessary work in ending paganism and in bringing about the inevitability of a future maturity.
Christian Era advocates fear and hate devices that bring toward their consciousness this “forbidden knowledge.” This conflict between the struggle of their fading mindset and the struggle of a more-mature mindset will go on for some time.
I trust collective wisdom more than do many people. Currently— our collective minds say that it’s too early to remove those Christian Ear devices from most people.
Collective minds often are wiser than we are; and It probably won’t be soon that we discard the remnants of that development.
Meanwhile: The Great Transition we’re living in — the "Age of Anxiety” as Auden labeled it— is the most stressful in human existence. We’ve lost the Afterlife and much of our faith in gods. We feel more and more alone …
Consider current politics for some indication of how young our civilizations still are and how primitive ...
Joel
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bdagostino2687
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9/7/17
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Crews is also known for his attacks on “recovered-memory therapy” and he serves on the advisory board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, an advocacy group for parents (mostly fathers) accused of abusing their children. I find this a very thorny issue. On the one hand, research has shown that memory is largely malleable and that therapy patients are vulnerable to confabulating memories if prompted to do so. An extreme example of this was the Satanic Ritual Abuse moral panic of the 1980s. On the other hand, physical and sexual abuse of children is a very serious problem and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation is on the wrong side of this problem inasmuch as it attacks therapists and therapies that involve the working through of traumatic memories.
I haven’t read any of Crews’ work, but understand that much of his critique of Freud focuses on the Seduction Theory, which he sees as a precursor of recovered memory therapy. I find this ironic considering that Freud repudiated the Seduction Theory in favor of the notion that repression of drives, rather than trauma from abuse or neglect, was the primary cause of psychological disorders. So why does Crews focus on the Seduction Theory? Could it be that his real concern is to debunk “recovered memory therapy” and so he focuses on that aspect of Freud’s legacy, even though Freud himself took psychoanalysis in the opposite direction?
Brian
www.bdagostino.com
917-628-8253
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arniedr
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9/7/17
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well said
http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2008/07/30/psychoanalysis-after-freud-a-response-to-frederick-crews-and-other-critics-by-glen-o-gabbard-sheldon-m-goodman-and-arnold-d-richards/
Arnold Richards
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Howard S
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9/7/17
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Other recipients: Howard-Stein@ouhsc.edu
Dear Arnie,
Good evening from Oklahoma. Could you provide the full citation of your article/chapter on "Psychoanalysis After Freud"? Thanks.
Warm regards,
Howard (Stein)
Author of Light and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult
Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0
The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com
Howard F. Stein, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Department of Family and Preventive Medicine
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Oklahoma City, OK USA;
howard-stein@ouhsc.edu
Phone: 405-787-6074
Poet Laureate, High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology
Home address: 1408 Oakhill Lane, Oklahoma City OK 73127 USA
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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9/8/17
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Zaretsky argues that during the '30s, psychoanalysis regressed... and eventually was taken over by the British school where, like what was happening in Britain and Germany and ostensibly all other nations, the mother-son relationship became paramount -- nations as mothers, adults as good sons. (Crews refers to exactly this to ostensibly demonstrate that psychoanalysis doesn't learn anything new upon the uncovering of greater truths; it just adapts so it suits the times.) If we're doing another '30s -- and the emerging left, which de-emphasizes feminism and identity politics while emphasizing us as a collective, does look like old left '30s school, doesn't it? -- it might be a sort of Kleinism that keeps psychoanalysis afloat. Crews has killed Freud as the naughty, misbehaving father, but this is all part of a narrative that'll have everything drift over to the resurgent mother again, perhaps. He may have over-leveraged himself in making himself a Van Helsing who puts stakes through all vampires, for one, it seems vainglorious, which is not in step with our demure times, and two, we may be in mood to recover some of these vampires as "heritage" components of, in a sense, making our nation great again -- the primal, mystical mother. The collective laughter at the forgotten memory movement may have played to a time when people wanted to keep their own childhoods out of mind, and think of themselves only as adult professionals, participating in an adult, cosmopolitan world. If we're in mind to bring them back, albeit in a very selective and essentially self-duplicitous manner, then even his reputation in helping ridicule the relevance in emphasizing its importance in our lives, could make him seem traitorous.
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arniedr
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9/8/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Crews and more Crews
What do you think odfhis contention that Freud wanted to demolish Christianity
Arnold Richards
arnoldrichards.net
internationalpsychoanalysis.net
ipbooks.net
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Ken Fuchsman
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9/8/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Crews and more Crews
While Nietzsche identified himself as an anti-Christian, Freud did not. He thought all religion was an illusion, but he restricted himself to writing and not organized activism concerning religion. Given that there was substantial anti-semitism in predominantly Catholic Austria, Freud refrained from directly attacking Catholicism out of fear of the retribution against Jews. Any claim that Freud wanted to destroy Christianity would need substantial documentation to be credible.
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Crews and more Crews
If I remember correctly, the way Crews effectively squashes consideration of Freud's initial belief that childhood abuse was widespread and the root of mental disorders, was mostly in how his reaction resembled a gentleman's... he was appalled at what Freud was saying about all the mothers and fathers out there. (This was Freud as almost, well, a snake, spitting lies). Myself, I knew this was one of the things that seemed very unconsidered of Crews, and which simply didn't coincide with what I had learned over and over again: that no society that can be as comparatively foul to our own as the 19th-century was wasn't built out of more abuse, less love, in people's childhoods. It was also one of the few things which disappointed me about Crews, about his possible reach, for he should have demanded of himself awareness of how his arguments might be suited to a contemporary audience which would insist scholars react similarly (and thus make testing of some things absolutely untenable... make particular conclusions that could come out of testing, absolutely untenable)... even if for everybody but him it was but mawkish alarm, and thus would unfairly seem eminently reasonable to him, and also readily due for their own easy ride.
I'm reading this exchange now: http://www.richardwebster.net/freudandthejudaeochristiantradition.html
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Trevor Pederson
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9/8/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Crews and more Crews
The idea of Freud being an anti-christian is ridiculous. The charge could be leveled against W. Reich as the father of the sexual revolution, but this would only be anti-christian in one sense, and still be a weak interpretation of Reich. (Reich actually
wrote on Jesus and Christianity a couple times and saw important, and healthy messages in part of it).
Freud distanced himself from Reich and was much more conservative.
Moreover, Freud explicitly links the profession and content of psychoanalysis to what priests worked with:
“I don't know whether you have guessed the hidden link between 'Lay Analysis' and Illusion'. In the former I want to protect analysis from physicians, and in the latter from priests. I want to entrust it to a profession that doesn't yet exist, a profession of secular ministers of souls, who don't have to be physicians and must not be priests."
S. Freud (1928) in his letter to O. Pfister
This demonological case history leads to really valuable findings which can be brought to light without much interpretation—much as a vein of pure metal may sometimes be struck which must elsewhere be laboriously smelted from the ore. (1923). A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis.
Freud looks down at Christianity as partaking in the same illusion that all religion does, but he also saw "pure metal" in it.
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grlord@execpc.com
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9/8/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Crews and more Crews
>Could you send me a more specific reference to where Zaretsky says that. Thanks.
Guy Lord
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Trevor Pederson
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9/9/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Crews and more Crews
Klein mentions the father a great deal in her texts. I think she gives an important corrective to Freud's emphasis on the father, which always has the gloss of a cultural reading.
I also think some of her formulations capture the radical spirit of Freud's views on agency very well.
I'm sure one can point to lesser writers in the 20s and see "regressive" elements in their articles.
Every generation or two a new facile reading of a great thinker will become fashionable for those who lack good judgment.
Trevor
This is Klein in the Psychoanalysis of Children:
The small child's super-ego and object are not identical; but it is continually endeavouring to make them interchangeable, partly so as to lessen its fear of its super-ego, partly so as to be better able to comply with the requirements of its real objects, which do not coincide with the unrealistic commands of its introjected objects. Thus we see that on top of the conflict between the super-ego and the id and the opposition between the various requirements made by the super-ego itself, composed as it is of quite different imagos that have been formed in the course of development, the ego of the small child is burdened with this difference between the standards of its super-ego and the standards of its real objects, with the result that it is constantly wavering between its introjected objects and its real ones—between its world of phantasy and its world of reality. 249-50
The tendency the individual has to secure from the external world a tranquillization of his fears of imaginary dangers from within and from without is, I think, an important factor in the repetition-compulsion (cf. Chapter VII.). The more neurotic he is, the more this tendency will be coloured by his need for punishment. The conditions to which the securing of such a tranquillization from external sources is attached will be increasingly unfavourable in proportion as the anxiety connected with his early danger-situations is powerful and his optimistic trend of feeling weak. In extreme cases only very severe punishments, or rather unhappy experiences which he feels as punishments, are able to fill the place of the imaginary punishments which he dreads. P. 277
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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9/9/17
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: Crews and more Crews
.
Guy Lord.
"Political Freud." Around page 130.
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Psychoanalysis After Freud: Disentangling the historical Freud from psychoanalysis
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bdagostino2687
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9/9/17
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Dear Arnie and all,
I just read “Psychoanalysis After Freud,” the excellent article in Psychoanalytic Bookscoauthored by Arnie that replies to Crews’ and Adolph Grunbaum’s critiques of Freud and psychoanalysis. http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2008/07/30/psychoanalysis-after-freud-a-response-to-frederick-crews-and-other-critics-by-glen-o-gabbard-sheldon-m-goodman-and-arnold-d-richards/
It appears this article was written in the mid 1990’s; like Howard, I would like to have the full citation. It would also be great if someone from this list wrote a review of Crew’s latest book (Freud: The Making of an Illusion). “Psychoanalysis After Freud” lays out arguments that are probably very relevant to Freud: The Making of an Illusion and I would love to see someone build upon, update, and extend the critique by Arnie and his coauthors. If someone is interested in this project, I encourage you to contact Journal of Psychohistory Book Review Editor Bo Wang at bowang@nju.edu.cn or Clio’s Psyche Editor Paul Elovitz at cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com A critique of Crew’s latest book might also take the form of a review essay. Trevor is no doubt correct when he says, “Every generation or two a new facile reading of a great thinker will become fashionable for those who lack good judgment.” However, and I’m sure Trevor will agree, merely saying this is not a substitute for actual debate.
I am a beginner in Freud and psychoanalytic studies and don’t expect to go very deeply into this vast field because it is not at the forefront of my current intellectual interests. In this respect, I am probably typical of what political scientists would call the “attentive public” for Freud and psychoanalytic studies—people who lack the expertise to make specialized contributions to the literature but are interested enough to read at least some of it. That said, I do have some professional training in the historiography of ideas via my graduate courses in political theory, which included the methodology of the history of political ideas. Through the lens of my professional training, and based on “Psychoanalysis After Freud,” it appears to me that Crews and Grunbaum conflate what Freud taught and wrote with “psychoanalysis” as it exists today. These are obviously related but also distinct objects of inquiry, and it is a common mistake for both critics and defenders of this or that “great thinker” to conflate his or her ideas with current realities, a mistake committed very frequently even in academia.
Political theorist Quentin Skinner has given one of the clearest expositions of this problem that I know of. In order to make valid claims about what any historical figure wrote or taught, we need to (1) read their works in the historical context of their own time and place; and, (2) reconstruct their intentions within that original historical context. It appears to me that Arnie and his co-authors do this with Freud; based on what they say about Crews and Grunbaum, it appears the latter two do not. Although Arnie et al refer in passing to Frank Sulloway (Freud: Biologist of the Mind, 1983) and Jeffrey Masson (The Assault on Truth, 1984), they do not develop their critique with reference to these two authors. I wonder if Arnie or anyone else can point me to a good critical book review or review essay on Sulloway and/or Masson.
Although I have not read either Sulloway’s or Masson’s books in their entirety, from what I know of their work, neither seems guilty of the same conflating of the historical
Freud with contemporary psychoanalysis that Arnie et al attribute to Crews and Grunbaum. Masson arguably could be criticized for neglecting psychobiographical factors in reconstructing Freud’s intentions in revising his Seduction Theory (see, for example, Dorothy Bloch’s 1989 article in Psychohistory Review, which is attached). But Sulloway and Masson (unlike Crews and Grunbaum) both appear to distinguish Freud in his original historical context from the subsequent development of psychoanalysis. Would love to hear what Arnie and others think about all this.
Brian
www.bdagostino.com
917-628-8253
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Stein, Howard F. (HSC)
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2017 10:56 PM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Cc: Stein, Howard F. (HSC)
Subject: RE: [cliospsyche] Crews and more Crews
Dear Arnie,
Good evening from Oklahoma. Could you provide the full citation of your article/chapter on "Psychoanalysis After Freud"? Thanks.
Warm regards,
Howard (Stein)
Author of Light and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult
Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0
The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com
Howard F. Stein, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Department of Family and Preventive Medicine
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Oklahoma City, OK USA;
howard-stein@ouhsc.edu
Phone: 405-787-6074
Poet Laureate, High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology
Home address: 1408 Oakhill Lane, Oklahoma City OK 73127 USA
From: arniedr via Clio’s Psyche [cliospsyche@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2017 8:53 PM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] Crews and more Crews
well said
http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2008/07/30/psychoanalysis-after-freud-a-response-to-frederick-crews-and-other-critics-by-glen-o-gabbard-sheldon-m-goodman-and-arnold-d-richards/
Arnold Richards
arnoldrichards.net
internationalpsychoanalysis.net
ipbooks.net
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Re: [cliospsyche] Psychoanalysis After Freud: Disentangling the historical Freud from psychoanalysis
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arniedr
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9/10/17
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I don't think Oedipal theory has to do with suppression of sexual drives It has to do with the ambivalence conflicts of childhood and the centrality that parents play in the scenerio Conflict is central and the way the child develops unconscious fantasies in which are satisfied and guilt diminished
Let’s start with Pierre Janet, whose published lectures beginning in 1889 outlined the role of early childhood trauma, especially sexual abuse, in the etiology of hysteria. Janet pioneered the concepts of the unconscious and of dissociation, and connected the dots between early childhood abuse, dissociation, and the symptoms of “hysterics.” Freud acknowledged his debt to Janet in his “Studies in Hysteria,” coauthored with Joseph Breuer in 1895. It is not possible to understand the significance of Freud’s Seduction Theory without understanding this historical context. Only when read in the context of Janet’s earlier work do we see what was original and what was not original in Freud’s Seduction Theory. What was original to Freud was the notion that sexual trauma could be the cause of a wider range of psychological disorders than hysteria. In other words, he went beyond the clinical data to a general theory of psychopathology. When Freud revised his Seduction Theory beginning in 1897, he backtracked on this general theory—which attributed psychopathology to early trauma—and replaced it with a very different kind of general theory (Oedipal Theory), which attributes psychopathology to the repression of sexual drives. In The Assault on Truth (1984), psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson reconstructed the historical context of this reversal, which was the beginning of Freudian psychoanalysis as it came to be known in the early 20th century.
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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9/13/17
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Liberals are having to actually make their case again. It's not something they're used to having to do, and they're bad it. Enemies are noticing:
https://theoutline.com/post/2230/democrats-are-losing-the-propaganda-war
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/12/opinions/how-bannon-turned-the-tables-on-liberals-bauerlein/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/12/hillary-clintons-book-what-happened-clear-message
I'm a Hillary supporter, by the way.
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Economics
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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9/13/17
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I've seen attempts lately to lend support to the idea of the importance of childrearing but also to, in my judgment, isolate its influence away from "the outside world"... almost a Victorian conception of things. The moment someone brings up economics one has a sense that the rambling world of emotions one readily ascribes to childrearing meets a macro of common sense motivations... making a living, making a profit, and suddenly it seems as if counter-balancing factors to childrearing aren't really counter-balancing but more whale-inhale-krill annihilating. You mention economics, not to delineate complexity, but to intentionally isolate the like of maternal engulfment experienced in childhood as anything "the Economist" should rightly ever have to deal with... and this maintained, even by psychohistorians.
I hope for a time when this collectively-agreed-upon premise has to make a case for itself again, and for deMause's conception of what economics is -- more the large stage where fantasy needs predominate than a sober reality where childhood problems have to be put off until Sunday -- to seem easily as reasonable. This is deMause making the case that childhood, or, as he will come to believe, early childhood experiences with one's mother, determine absolutely, economics. Historical Group Fantasies, Foundations of Psychohistory:
The psychogenic theory of historical group-fantasies exactly reverses the direction of the casual arrow assumed in other theories of history with respect to the relationship between private love and hate and social institutions. Rather than private emotions “reflecting” the economic or social “base” of the period, the psychogenic theory states they determine the economic and social forms of each age. For instance, social commentators from Friedrich Engels to Steven Marcus have said that the ownership of women by husbands was a reflection of the economic ownership of goods, and that sexual attitudes toward women which use capitalistic terms such as “saving” and “spending” were derived from the economic sphere. This seems to me to state the case precisely backward. What actually happens is that families teach growing children attitudes toward their bodies which make them fear their own sexuality so much that they construct a sexual code which teaches them to ”save up” their desires (and secondarily their goods) until marriage. Later, as adults, they project these sexual attitudes onto the economic sphere and construct a group-fantasy of erotic materialism to help them master their individual sexual anxieties. Notions of “saving” and “spending” of a man’s sperm can be found in the history of sexuality all the way back to Aristotle, and are thus hardly new to capitalism. What is modern is the group-fantasy that money is infused with sexual fantasy, and that schemes for the redistribution of money are used to relieve castration anxieties. In the real world, it is only in the sexual sphere where great numbers of people actually fight off a desire to “spend,” real capitalists in fact rarely “save” to build up their capital as the capitalistic group-fantasy imagines them doing. Thus the casual arrow in fact runs from the psychosexual to the economic sphere, not the reverse.
. . .
It should be emphasized at this point that I in no way mean to imply that human history is “nothing but” projections of individual anxieties, or that history is determined solely by historical group-fantasies. Like all groups, historical groups have real work to do, aside from fantasy work, and this real work is determined very much by the material reality as well as the psychological reality of the moment. When a group has a plague or a volcanic eruption or a Mongol horde sweeping down upon it, these material events certainly effect the history of the group, and the sciences of epidemiology, vulcanology and demography will be consulted to provide the explanations for the causes of these events. What psychohistory can provide as an independent science of historical motivation through the theory of historical group-fantasies is the explanation of what level of response to different situations is possible by groups made up of different psychosexual levels, with different personalities, and different strengths, anxieties and solutions available to them. Whether psychological or material reality is “more important” at any one time in history depends on whether the eruption of Vesuvius or of the group’s own group-fantasies is more imminent.
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Re: [cliospsyche] Psychoanalysis After Freud: Disentangling the historical Freud from psychoanalysis
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arniedr
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Brian
Thank very much for your perceptive take on our paper It was published in the Psychoanalytic Review of books which is defunct and not on PEP.
I would cite Fleck in support of the idea that the historical social and political context need to be considered in appraising any new contribution Crews focuses mostly on the personal and personality of Freud to the exclusion of almost everything else Sulloway overstates the case for Freud as biologist in my opinion
Arnold Richards
arnoldrichards.net
internationalpsychoanalysis.net
ipbooks.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Brian D'Agostino <bdagostino2687@gmail.com>
To: cliospsyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat, Sep 9, 2017 4:06 pm
Subject: [cliospsyche] Psychoanalysis After Freud: Disentangling the historical Freud from psychoanalysis
Dear Arnie and all,
I just read “Psychoanalysis After Freud,” the excellent article in Psychoanalytic Bookscoauthored by Arnie that replies to Crews’ and Adolph Grunbaum’s critiques of Freud and psychoanalysis. http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2008/07/30/psychoanalysis-after-freud-a-response-to-frederick-crews-and-other-critics-by-glen-o-gabbard-sheldon-m-goodman-and-arnold-d-richards/
It appears this article was written in the mid 1990’s; like Howard, I would like to have the full citation. It would also be great if someone from this list wrote a review of Crew’s latest book (Freud: The Making of an Illusion). “Psychoanalysis After Freud” lays out arguments that are probably very relevant to Freud: The Making of an Illusion and I would love to see someone build upon, update, and extend the critique by Arnie and his coauthors. If someone is interested in this project, I encourage you to contact Journal of Psychohistory Book Review Editor Bo Wang at bowang@nju.edu.cn or Clio’s Psyche Editor Paul Elovitz at cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com A critique of Crew’s latest book might also take the form of a review essay. Trevor is no doubt correct when he says, “Every generation or two a new facile reading of a great thinker will become fashionable for those who lack good judgment.” However, and I’m sure Trevor will agree, merely saying this is not a substitute for actual debate.
I am a beginner in Freud and psychoanalytic studies and don’t expect to go very deeply into this vast field because it is not at the forefront of my current intellectual interests. In this respect, I am probably typical of what political scientists would call the “attentive public” for Freud and psychoanalytic studies—people who lack the expertise to make specialized contributions to the literature but are interested enough to read at least some of it. That said, I do have some professional training in the historiography of ideas via my graduate courses in political theory, which included the methodology of the history of political ideas. Through the lens of my professional training, and based on “Psychoanalysis After Freud,” it appears to me that Crews and Grunbaum conflate what Freud taught and wrote with “psychoanalysis” as it exists today. These are obviously related but also distinct objects of inquiry, and it is a common mistake for both critics and defenders of this or that “great thinker” to conflate his or her ideas with current realities, a mistake committed very frequently even in academia.
Political theorist Quentin Skinner has given one of the clearest expositions of this problem that I know of. In order to make valid claims about what any historical figure wrote or taught, we need to (1) read their works in the historical context of their own time and place; and, (2) reconstruct their intentions within that original historical context. It appears to me that Arnie and his co-authors do this with Freud; based on what they say about Crews and Grunbaum, it appears the latter two do not. Although Arnie et al refer in passing to Frank Sulloway (Freud: Biologist of the Mind, 1983) and Jeffrey Masson (The Assault on Truth, 1984), they do not develop their critique with reference to these two authors. I wonder if Arnie or anyone else can point me to a good critical book review or review essay on Sulloway and/or Masson.
Although I have not read either Sulloway’s or Masson’s books in their entirety, from what I know of their work, neither seems guilty of the same conflating of the historical
Freud with contemporary psychoanalysis that Arnie et al attribute to Crews and Grunbaum. Masson arguably could be criticized for neglecting psychobiographical factors in reconstructing Freud’s intentions in revising his Seduction Theory (see, for example, Dorothy Bloch’s 1989 article in Psychohistory Review, which is attached). But Sulloway and Masson (unlike Crews and Grunbaum) both appear to distinguish Freud in his original historical context from the subsequent development of psychoanalysis. Would love to hear what Arnie and others think about all this.
Brian
http://www.bdagostino.com/www.bdagostino.com
917-628-8253
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Stein, Howard F. (HSC)
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2017 10:56 PM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Cc: Stein, Howard F. (HSC)
Subject: RE: [cliospsyche] Crews and more Crews
Dear Arnie,
Good evening from Oklahoma. Could you provide the full citation of your article/chapter on "Psychoanalysis After Freud"? Thanks.
Warm regards,
Howard (Stein)
Author of Light and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult
Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0
The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com
Howard F. Stein, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Department of Family and Preventive Medicine
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Oklahoma City, OK USA;
howard-stein@ouhsc.edu
Phone: 405-787-6074
Poet Laureate, High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology
Home address: 1408 Oakhill Lane, Oklahoma City OK 73127 USA
From: arniedr via Clio’s Psyche [cliospsyche@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2017 8:53 PM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] Crews and more Crews
well said
http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2008/07/30/psychoanalysis-after-freud-a-response-to-frederick-crews-and-other-critics-by-glen-o-gabbard-sheldon-m-goodman-and-arnold-d-richards/
Arnold Richards
arnoldrichards.net
internationalpsychoanalysis.net
ipbooks.net
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Click here to Reply
bdagostino2687
|
9/9/17
|
Thanks, Arnie. It’s good that we have a link to your Psychoanalytic Review of Books article. If you happen to know the volume, number and year, please tell us so we can properly cite it in academic publications. –Brian
From: arniedr via Clio’s Psyche [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Saturday, September 09, 2017 8:22 PM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] Psychoanalysis After Freud: Disentangling the historical Freud from psychoanalysis
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
arniedr
|
9/9/17
|
Other recipients: jreppen@reppengroup.com
Joe Reppen can provide it
Arnold Richards
arnoldrichards.net
internationalpsychoanalysis.net
ipbooks.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Brian D'Agostino <bdagostino2687@gmail.com>
To: cliospsyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
Trevor Pederson
|
9/10/17
|
Hi Brian
you write:
These are obviously related but also distinct objects of inquiry, and it is a common mistake for both critics and defenders of this or that “great thinker” to conflate his or her ideas with current realities, a mistake committed very frequently even in academia.
Political theorist Quentin Skinner has given one of the clearest expositions of this problem that I know of. In order to make valid claims about what any historical figure wrote or taught, we need to (1) read their works in the historical context of their own time and place; and, (2) reconstruct their intentions within that original historical context.
Sure Freud might import a concept from another discipline or make use of ideas that have been around in his field, but how does this help us to understand him?
How does saying that Freud's concept of the Oedipus Complex may be related to Darwin's horde, or part of a phylogenetic "biological" view of the mind, for example, help us to understand what Freud meant by the saying a patient has an Oedipus Complex?
It's nice window dressing to understand this, but, internally, there are a lot of things that have to be understood in regards to the Oedipus complex. In “Female sexuality” Freud (1931a) designates the oedipus complex “to include all the child’s relations to both parents” or triangular relationships in general (p. 226). What is the difference between the male and female Oedipus complex, how many different relations are there to them, are all triangles the Oedipus complex or are some primal scenes or different relations?
Moreover, it is clear that Freud uses the Oedipus complex to refer to parental-substitutes and not the actual parents. Freud (1919a) also refers to this outcome of the oedipus complex in other places: “the father persists in the shape of a teacher or some other person in authority… a substitute taken from the class of fathers” (Freud, 1924b, p. 196, 190; 1910, p. 133). How do we understand this class of fathers and do they all register for the individual in the same way?
In different works he points to the father being expressed in many ways. For example, in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, he writes:
"In this instance the dreaded animal was a wolf; it, too, had the significance of a father-substitute"
"As a child he had been sexually excited by a fantastic children's story which had been read aloud to him about an Arab chief who pursued a ‘ginger-bread man’ so as to eat him up. He identified himself with this edible person, and the Arab chief was easily recognizable as a father-substitute. This phantasy formed the earliest substratum of his auto-erotic phantasies"
"The idea of being devoured by the father is typical age-old childhood material. It has familiar parallels in mythology (e.g. the myth of Kronos) and in the animal kingdom. Yet in spite of this confirmation the idea is so strange to us that we can hardly credit its existence in a child. Nor do we know whether it really means what it seems to say, and we cannot understand how it can have become the subject of a phobia. Analytic observation supplies the requisite information. It shows that the idea of being devoured by the father gives expression, in a form that has undergone regressive degradation, to a passive, tender impulse to be loved by him in a genital-erotic sense."
"Here, then, is our unexpected finding: in both patients the motive force of the repression was fear of castration. The ideas contained in their anxiety—being bitten by a horse and being devoured by a wolf—were substitutes by distortion for the idea of being castrated by their father."
How does relating Freud's idea to other ideas at the time help us to understand how the father becomes a father-substitute, part of the class of fathers, how one identifies a father-substitute, how castration anxiety is expressed in different ways, how Oedipal material becomes linked to earlier stages, etc.?
Freud was putting together a whole theory of personality and a model of mind. This can be investigated in its own right, and whatever other ideas that might have had an influence on him won't explain the internal logic to this model of mind.
Trevor
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