Freud's Father A Sexual Monster and An Ideology of Abuse?

[brekin]

And now we learn how Jones helped create the Perverted Purple Lantern Corps:
(btw, if the heaviness of this RI topic, or others, is getting heavy for people I really, really, recommend The Green Lantern Animated Series (It's on Netflix). It is surprisingly deep in an RI sense, but very hopeful and aesthetically lush. Definitely written for all ages.)

One for All and All for Freud
By Stuart Schneiderman;
Published: November 17, 1991
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/17/books ... freud.html

THE SECRET RING Freud's Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis. By Phyllis Grosskurth. Illustrated. 245 pp. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. $22.95.

WHATEVER its success as theory or therapy, Freudian psychoanalysis has exercised its greatest influence as a cultural movement. Its existence as a profession is inseparable from its place in the surrounding culture; analysts have always had to adhere to a set of beliefs and, at times, to the group that promotes those beliefs. Indeed, the need to maintain group solidarity has too often eclipsed concerns about the coherence of psychoanalysis as theory and the effectiveness of psychoanalysis as therapy.
In "The Secret Ring" Phyllis Grosskurth focuses on the early politics of psychoanalysis. She proposes to tell the story of the "Secret Committee" of seven men, including himself, that Freud organized in 1912 "to maintain the faith and to search out deviance" from his principles. Freud charged Ernest Jones, Karl Abraham, Otto Rank, Sandor Ferenczi, Hanns Sachs and Max Eitingon with preserving his discovery and propagating it around the world. To seal their compact he gave each an ancient ring, thus closing the circle.

Many scholars have observed that the ideological conformity of the first psychoanalysts suggests that the new profession was a secular religion, complete with believers, heretics, traitors and high priests who gathered around one man, the "self-created icon." Ms. Grosskurth alludes to the religious nature of psychoanalysis when she says that "Freud described himself as a man of sorrows" with a cross to bear, and when she discusses his attempt to recruit disciples who would keep the faith, no matter how much they disliked one another.

The story of the creation of a cultural movement would have been engaging and compelling. Regrettably, Ms. Grosskurth -- the author of numerous biographies, including "Havelock Ellis" and "Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work" -- slides past the larger political and social questions to offer an account of the minutiae of the interpersonal relationships among the members of the Secret Committee. Thus a potentially edifying story quickly gets lost in tiresome details. Her attempt to psychoanalyze the founders of psychoanalysis demeans their cultural achievements by making them appear to be based in petty quarrels, childish bickering and sibling rivalry. For instance, Ms. Grosskurth writes that "there seems little doubt that Ferenczi's fervent espousal of lay analysis was in part an attempt to convince Freud that he was his alter ego." In the end, we can't see the forest for the twigs.

THE book allows us to watch a group of self-identified "sons" compete among themselves for the love of a distant, manipulative and highly demanding father figure. For instance, Ms. Grosskurth reports that Jones "was filled with envy toward both Rank and Ferenczi because they were so close to Freud." We see the sons both as a band of brothers who think they are founding a new culture and as a bunch of whiny, preachy, irresponsible children. They vacillate between self-aggrandizement and self-deprecation, always invoking Freudian interpretations to gain insight into their problems, all to little avail. At times the Secret Committee resembles a poorly led psychotherapy group. The more insight they gain, the less they like one another.
When Ms. Grosskurth occasionally joins them in pinning psychoanalytic labels on their behavior, she becomes part of the group. She declares them variously to be manifesting "projective identification," "intense idealization," "self-pity," "post-partum depression" and the usual rounds of envy, anger and guilt. And she does not hesitate to insult them occasionally. She writes, for instance, that Jones's "fantasy of penetrating the inner circle . . . was an illusion, because he would forever be an unattractive little man with his ferret face pressed imploringly against the glass."

Ms. Grosskurth concludes that Freud's committee finally fell apart, in 1927, because it had successfully implanted psychoanalysis around the world. But her narrative does not support this argument. Instead, her book seems to suggest that the group was formed to share in and to cover up the shame of Freud, who had exposed his private matters excessively, particularly through his recitation of his own dreams. Once the shock of Freud's disclosures had worn off and the intimate details began to look trite, the group could only subsist on new embarrassing disclosures about Freud and about themselves. And finally they exposed themselves to one another so much -- they even analyzed one another and allowed Freud to analyze their mistresses -- that it became intolerable for them to stay together. Something similar can be said for a book. Readers may crave a certain amount of scandalous detail, but after a point they will feel more put upon than engaged.

Ms. Grosskurth's interpretation of Freud's personality is flat and reductionistic. At the end of the book she offers an explanation of his troubled "relationships with others, particularly with the members of the Committee." She would have it that Freud suffered in his friendships because he had not received enough "tenderness" from his "stern" mother. Thus "his ability to empathize was frozen," she writes, and he could not understand "gentle love and concern." But the same could be said about many people who did not found a cultural movement. Her explanation reduces an influential figure to banalities.
The author's approach to Freud is defined by object relations theory. One of the more popular offshoots of psychoanalysis, this theory views human behavior as a network of interpersonal relationships patterned on the relationship between mother and infant. Just as Freud tried to turn his life into a demonstration of his theory, so it seems that Ms. Grosskurth is trying to turn Freud's life into a demonstration of her favorite theory. Indeed, in promoting the connection between mother and infant as the core of all human relationships she reflects her wish to establish yet another secular religion, this one based not on the wrathful father and his sons but on the Madonna and child.

From Kirkus Reviews
Aided by previously undisclosed correspondence, Grosskurth (Havelock Ellis, 1980, etc.; Humanities and Psychoanalytic Thought/Univ. of Toronto) takes the story of the brilliant, wildly neurotic men who contrived to safeguard Freudian thought and turns it into an intriguing psychological saga-cum-tragicomedy of manners. The Secret Committee, conceived in 1912 as a united front against the apostasy of Carl Jung and sealed by Freud's bestowal of antique intaglios, became, notes Grosskurth, ``a metaphor for the psychoanalytic movement itself...a cult of personality'' with Freud acting as both ``guru'' and distant, demanding father. Avidly submitting one another (and assorted romantic interests) to frequently scathing and self-justifying formal and informal analyses, Austrians Otto Rank and Hans Sachs, Hungarian Sandor Ferenczi, German Karl Abraham, and Welshman Ernest Jones, joined later by Russian-born German Max Eitingon, functioned as ``surrogate sons'' within a strikingly dysfunctional family--marked by sabotage, manipulation, and ``aggressively infantile'' jostling. Treating her story as a study of group pathology, Grosskurth uses pointed quotes to show how all of her subjects, especially Freud, used jargon as a cover for real feeling. Sadder still was the adored Freud's puzzling lack of support (he refused to be ``burdened'' by the ideas of others) and human empathy (e.g., failing to comprehend the sensitive Ferenczi's sorrow at his mother's death). Inevitably, as Freud predicted in Totem and Taboo, the anointed sons went their own ways, with, ironically, Freud's biological child, Anna, emerging as his staunchest defender. More emotionally involving, though less theoretically acute, than Janet Sayers's study of the overlapping generation of women psychoanalysts (Mothers of Psychoanalysis--reviewed next issue), the work suffers from a curious reticence. Grosskurth avoids some potentially interesting paths (e.g., Freud's gelid relationship with his own sons) and develops her conclusions so carefully that they become anticlimactic. Nevertheless, a worthy stab at piercing the web of ``mythology, gossip, and rumor'' surrounding the early Freudians. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-Ring-P ... 0201090376

From an Amazon customer review:

I really find it interesting that it wasn't Freud's idea to form the "Committee." It was Ernest Jones' suggestion that "a secret committee be formed as a Praetorian guard around Freud" and the "unstated" aim was to monitor Carl Jung and to maintain a watching brief in which they would report to Freud but the main task was to "preserve the purity of psychoanalytic theory." This has occurred in late 1912 when there were "disagreements" between Jung and Freud. Of course, Freud was very enthusiastic about it and was intrigued by the "secret" aspect of this committee. Freud used his own theory as a "loyalty oath" of this committee and any "rejection of any part of the theory meant personal rejection of him" and "anyone whose ideas differed from his own, Freud described as an 'enemy.'" (51, 53).

http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-Ring-P ... 0201090376

Inevitably, as Freud predicted in Totem and Taboo, the anointed sons went their own ways

[guruilla]

The author's approach to Freud is defined by object relations theory. One of the more popular offshoots of psychoanalysis, this theory views human behavior as a network of interpersonal relationships patterned on the relationship between mother and infant. Just as Freud tried to turn his life into a demonstration of his theory, so it seems that Ms. Grosskurth is trying to turn Freud's life into a demonstration of her favorite theory. Indeed, in promoting the connection between mother and infant as the core of all human relationships she reflects her wish to establish yet another secular religion, this one based not on the wrathful father and his sons but on the Madonna and child.

This stood out for me. I suspect it's what everyone does, to a greater or lesser degree, and which we can't help but do because, well, it's the human condition. The "guardian" or false self that is created by (systematized) dissociation & trauma keeps the psyche from becoming fully embodied - prevents individuation from happening - by hook or by crook; one of the most formidable tools for splitting the psyche is the intellect (sword), and the intellect thrives on nothing so much as theories!

But this too is a theory... Bah. -- It proves its own truth at the same time it undermines it.

Reading the last part of Crime & Punishment, one of the most recurring lines/ideas is that "psychology is a double-edged sword." -- Might be a good title for this thread...?

For me, one lesson of all this is to reduce my dependence on theory to the utmost degree possible. That doesn't mean doing away with all theories, but forever testing any theories I have adopted, every step of the way, thoroughly checking their sources (as this thread is doing), and being prepared for non-theoretical action at all times -- and for a theory-free existence at the end of the (theoretical!) "individuation" process!

The alternative (one of them, but I think the subject of this thread) is when theory dictates practice to the extent that a co-dependent relationship develops with the theory, and practice becomes not a way to test out a theory (now "The-Theory-to-End-All-Theories," also known as "The Truth") but to prove, propagate, and protect it.

The root of this pathology may be as simple as this: the desire to use awareness (inc. knowledge) as a means to be safe. In other words, when our awareness increases, we automatically want to apply it in some way to change, improve, or resolve our conditions; forming theories, systems, philosophies, religions, etc, etc, becomes one primary way to do so.

In my view, FWIW, awareness itself is not only enough, but it becomes less than enough the moment we try to make it into something more (by turning it into theory and then practice). It's as if by trying to use awareness, we are unconsciously debasing it - seeing it as just a means to an end, rather than an end in itself.

This is not necessarily where I intended for this post to go, but it's where it ended up, for good or ill. I guess that where's the tag "guruillla" came from: "active tactics against all gurus"!

I am curious (Orange) about the Green Lantern cartoon, but I don't have much tolerance for animation, for whatever reason.

Lastly, there was this:

I suppose after a lifetime's aligning myself with the "extraordinary" creative man, and even while I now see that as a delusion, I can't shift my allegiance to "society" or consider what benefits it as per se desirable. I have a really hard time thinking of the concept of society as a positive.

Yes, that is the objective of the abuse.

Boy, won’t that be something when folk learn to recognize extraordinary folk without them having been ‘raised’ up by our decrepit normative modeling of reality.

Oh dear, what if we find out that there are many more extraordinary folk out there than what we been told.

so·ci·e·ty [suh-sahy-i-tee]
noun, plural so·ci·e·ties.
1.
an organized group of persons associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes.
2.
a body of individuals living as members of a community; community.
3.
the body of human beings generally, associated or viewed as members of a community: the evolution of human society.
4.
a highly structured system of human organization for large-scale community living that normally furnishes protection, continuity, security, and a national identity for its members: American society.
5.
such a system characterized by its dominant economic class or form: middle-class society; industrial society.

I note that the first defintion relates more or less directly to theories. In other words, a thusly-defined society is unified "in theory" rather than in fact. The last definitions (no's 4 & 5) seem to describe the end result of this trap: a collective (& negative) identity. (2 & 3 sound OK.)

Hence you have my (non-too-unusual) association of "society" with (negative or false) "identity," and my unavoidable allegiance with the challengers, questioners, destroyers of said (collective/negative) identity; and of course the association of both artists and criminals (and psychopaths) with the theory of individuation.

Yet a collective identity is made up of individual bodies and psyches who are no more defined by that collective delusion (and no less imprisoned) than I am. So where exactly is the enemy?

"Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control. [In order not to be controlled by it.] It begins with your family but soon it comes round to your soul . . ." (Leonard Cohen "Sisters of Mercy")

[brekin]

gurilla wrote:

For me, one lesson of all this is to reduce my dependence on theory to the utmost degree possible. That doesn't mean doing away with all theories, but forever testing any theories I have adopted, every step of the way, thoroughly checking their sources (as this thread is doing), and being prepared for non-theoretical action at all times -- and for a theory-free existence at the end of the (theoretical!) "individuation" process!
The alternative (one of them, but I think the subject of this thread) is when theory dictates practice to the extent that a co-dependent relationship develops with the theory, and practice becomes not a way to test out a theory (now "The-Theory-to-End-All-Theories," also known as "The Truth") but to prove, propagate, and protect it.
The root of this pathology may be as simple as this: the desire to use awareness (inc. knowledge) as a means to be safe. In other words, when our awareness increases, we automatically want to apply it in some way to change, improve, or resolve our conditions; forming theories, systems, philosophies, religions, etc, etc, becomes one primary way to do so.

I think Jones sexual abuse trial is a master key of how theories are applied unevenly and to enrich some, while hurting others. A cursory review of the evidence of the actual event I think one can objectively say puts Jones definitely in a bad light. All Jones had as a defense though was theory. The theory that mentally defective/neurotic children are more prone to sexual fantasy. And it is just a professional hazard then that doctors will be routinely accused by such people of such fantasies and their claims can be dismissed out of hand, semen stained tablecloth be damned. In many ways, it really doesn't matter whether such theory is valid after awhile because a criminal class can make their theory reality.

An individual can enslave another with the rationale that they are a superior being and the other is not. This is a tendency that has existed since the beginning of time. Tribes to slave holding nations create theories that justify their enslavement of others and with the force of society behind them make their theories (valid or not) reality. It is just a story really. Another competing myth. Jones, Freud and society at the time basically said, "It was all a dream."
Doesn't sound very scientific when it is put that way, but in may ways it probably isn't. Freud and others made their theory an article of faith because they had to protect their worldview, which is basically ones sanity. Freud and Jones, possibly one a sexual abuse victim, and both most likely sexual abusers had to create myths that were self serving and serving for their profession, class, gender and psychological make up. The thing I'm trying to wrap my head around is that Psycho-Analysis seems in many ways designed to hide and distort the truth of peoples motives. The early theorist especially seem to be master cryptographers and fantasists themselves of how they themselves deal with their own and others sexual truths. I think this reflects their specific need to hide/modify/distort what they experienced. As this writer, quoting D.H. Lawrence, says regarding Psycho-Analysis and uncovering the unconsciousness:

“The Freudian unconscious is the cellar in which the mind keeps its own bastard spawn. The true unconscious is the well-head, the fountain of real motivity.”[18]

Lawrence believes that despite the claims of psychoanalysts that they are freeing people of repression, the Freudians are actually deeply antagonistic to the primal man who dwells beneath the ego and its “complexes.” As he puts it in a posthumously-published essay,

The psychoanalysts show the greatest fear of all, of the innermost primeval place in man, where God is, if he is anywhere. The old Jewish horror of the true Adam, the mysterious ‘natural man,’ rises to a shriek in psychoanalysis. . . . So great is the Freudian hatred of the oldest, old Adam, from whom God is not yet separated off, that the psychoanalyst sees this Adam as nothing but a monster of perversity, a bunch of engendering adders, horribly clotted.[19]

http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/08 ... conscious/
[*btw on looking at the above website closer it seems to lean definitely towards some strange white nationalist rhetoric. The Lawrence stuff I quoted is still revelant I believe, but I obviously don't advocate anything else on the website, Sandri Devi, etc]

Believing that the unconscious was a basement of horrors they mystified reality. I think this may because they wanted to blame the things they possibly committed with their super ego on bestial id urges they felt guilt or shame about. (Jones possibly could have been highly socio-pathic, and with little guilt or remorse. He was defiant at his arrest and seemed very chipper and upbeat according to accounts of him at his trial. Freud while very distant, cold and unemphatic seemed tormented by a shameful secret.) If you generalize out your shameful past as universal then the truth is not something that sets you free. It is something that you have to keep under lock and key. You become a jailer to the truth. Their repressions of what they did may have made them neurotic and did make this then true for their unconsciousness: "Freudian unconscious is the cellar in which the mind keeps its own bastard spawn".

And as above, so below. Since Freud's very own father was most likely a sexual monster it isn't too far to believe that Freud's concept then of the super-ego, god head, original man "Adam" was also "nothing but a monster of perversity". Freud believed that some repression was necessary for civilization to continue. But then that implies the inverse is actually true to. Some uninhibited acting out must also take place for civilization to continue. The question Herr Doctor then is how much or little? How much savagery do you allow and turn a blind eye to that takes place in doctor's examining room? If you believe the cellar is full of bastard spawn and they must be repressed, you also have to recognize that you'll have to occasionally open the doors and throw in a sacrificial victim or they will revolt and bring down the entire prison. The jailer then becomes the master pervert of ceremonies saying in effect, we will have depravity, but it will be ritualized and controlled. You can even spin it, where as master of ceremonies you are seeking to treat or acknowledge the problem by obliquely addressing it, all the while hiding the real cause.

Long before Marty and Rust, in True Detective, made mystifying, truncating and ornamenting wide spread sexual abuse by the power structure popular, Freud and Jones did.
I think Freud and Jones probably rationalized their subterfuge because they themselves believed that their "keeping people from the door of the cellar" would spare them from having to look their "own bastard spawn" in the face.
Themselves, bad men, served a purpose by keeping the open lie of civilization lying side by side with the savagery of wide spread sexual abuse from public consciousness. Keeping the other "bad men" from the door of consciousness and accountability.

Martin: You wonder ever if you're a bad man?
Rust: No I don't wonder Marty. The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.

(Jones): You wonder ever if you're a bad man?
(Freud): No I don't wonder Ernest. The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.

[guruilla]

The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.

As the guardian keeps the "bastard-spawn" from the ID from overthrowing the kingdom of the ego...

Reminds me of what Freud said to Jung about "the rising tide of occultism".... Hence how Jung came to represent the demon-Other that had to be pushed & kept outside the gates of the Psycho-Analytic Empire....

Yet Jung had failings all his own... Anyone know his position of seduction theory and sexual abuse?

[Twyla LaSarc]

Great topic, some good reading here! Thanks.

[brekin]

The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.

As the guardian keeps the "bastard-spawn" from the ID from overthrowing the kingdom of the ego...

Reminds me of what Freud said to Jung about "the rising tide of occultism".... Hence how Jung came to represent the demon-Other that had to be pushed & kept outside the gates of the Psycho-Analytic Empire....

Yet Jung had failings all his own... Anyone know his position of seduction theory and sexual abuse?

I've always appreciated Jung's stance of let's rap with the shadow instead of let's not talk about "something nasty in the woodshed". I was aware of Jung's self confessed intellectual man crush for Freud and his idolization of him as a father figure but I had no idea about this. Makes me wonder if Jung's pivot away from religion towards science might have been because of his abuser being of the church.

http://acestoohigh.com/2013/02/20/traje ... ual-abuse/

Freud, Jung and the loveless trajectory of sexual abuse
February 20, 2013 By Laura K Kerr, PhD in ACE Study, Child abuse, Child trauma 4 Comments
Freud, Jung and the loveless trajectory of sexual abuse

Long before their falling-out, Carl Jung wrote in an intimate letter to Sigmund Freud, “… as a boy I was the victim of a sexual assault by a man I once worshipped” (cited in John Kerr’s A Most Dangerous Method). Jung also wrote of his infatuation with Freud: “… my veneration for you has something of the character of a ‘religious’ crush.” Jung’s feelings no doubt intensified the pain of losing his friend and mentor — a loss often described as a catalyst for Jung’s mental breakdown and experiments in active imagination, which led to the creation of The Red Book.

No doubt Jung’s feelings for Freud complicated their relationship. The crush may have reminded Jung of the dynamics he once had with the man who assaulted him. Perhaps Jung had an unacknowledged compulsion to overcome a sense of oppression activated by the assault. We’ll never know. Yet the loss of Freud as mentor and friend forced Jung to face how he navigated a deep split within himself in ways that denied part of who he was.

By the time Jung wrote The Red Book, he could declare, “the brightness of love seems to come from the fact that love is visible light and action.” Something profound happened between his mental breakdown and his magnum opus akin to what today some therapists might call “a healing journey.” How else could Jung speak so ebulliently of love? At least on some level (and likely a very deep one), The Red Book shows how one very brilliant man overcame psychic splintering and profound aloneness — and both often haunt survivors of sexual abuse.

Unfortunately, not everyone is as resilient as Jung. Far too many succumb to feeling part of themselves died with the abuse, as well as their hope to ever know safe, “true” love.
Jung was fortunate, although perhaps not unusual, in his transformation of trauma into creative works. (He suffered jung several psychological “wounds” in childhood — what today are increasingly called adverse childhood experiences.) Although it is presumed Jung did not suffer incest, this form of sexual abuse in particular has been described as precursor to genius. In a letter discussing philosophers, Schopenhauer wrote to Goethe the following about the influence of incest:

“He must be like Sophocles’ Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry, even when he divines that appalling horror awaits him in answer. But most of us carry in our hearts the Jocasta, who begs Oedipus for God’s sake not to enquire further; and we give way to her and that is the reason why philosophy stands where it does.”

And Nietzsche wrote in The Birth of Tragedy:

“Wherever soothsaying and magical powers have broken … the magic circle of nature, extreme unnaturalness — in this case, incest — is the necessary antecedent, for how should man force nature to yield up her secrets but by successfully resisting her, that is to say, by unnatural acts?”

The Red Book shows Jung’s capacity to turn inward the eye of the soothsayer, not only in search of wisdom, but also the healing power of love. He struggles with distinctions between good and evil, divisions between self and society, as well as unacknowledged aspects of Self. Although the language and images are uniquely Jung’s, they nevertheless speak to the sense of being Other — to oneself as well as humanity — also common of those who have been sexually assaulted.

In her semi-autobiographical novella, Mathilda (1819), Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly (also the author of Frankenstein) portrayed the impact of being the object of incestuous attraction this way:

“My father had forever deserted me, leaving me only memories which set an eternal barrier between me and my fellow creatures … [His] unlawful and detestable passion has poured its poison into my ears, and changed all my blood, so that it was no longer the kindly stream that supports life but a cold fountain of bitterness corrupted in its very source. It must be the excess of madness that could make me imagine that I could ever be aught but one alone; struck off from humanity; bearing no affinity to man or woman; a wretch on whom Nature had set her ban.”

Sexual abuse causes a sense of alienation that pervades all relationships, starting with the relationship with oneself and extending to the most abstract affiliations. Feelings of guilt, shame, and inferiority are common. But so is righteous anger, the desire to protect the vulnerable, and even a rugged sense of humor. This mixture of seeming highs and lows occurs not because of a lost want to love or to be loved, but rather because of a lost capacity to trust love. And so the vacillating. Like planets in erratic orbits that can’t establish the safest distance from the sun. Well-grounded observers may gratefully consume the creative energy released by the process, although only the creator can say if the suffering was worth the trajectory.

© 2013 Laura K Kerr, PhD. All rights reserved.

[guruilla]

And Nietzsche wrote in The Birth of Tragedy:

“Wherever soothsaying and magical powers have broken … the magic circle of nature, extreme unnaturalness — in this case, incest — is the necessary antecedent, for how should man force nature to yield up her secrets but by successfully resisting her, that is to say, by unnatural acts?”

That could be the mission statement of the Illumineers. Easy to see Fabians, et al., applying this principal (Theory!) to their own kids and getting to offload their own trauma under the rationale of engineering genius children.

For me, the notion that early trauma, usually sexual, fuels creative genius, is highly questionable, & not only because in probably 99,999 cases out of 100,000, it simply destroys a person's psychic and physical health. But even in the rare cases when it seems to redeem the trauma, doesn't it also throw into question the real nature, and value, of creative genius? (I know you're not endorsing Nietzsche's idea, just addressing the question generally.)

Can we separate the genesis from the genus? If creativity is developed as a defense against trauma, won't it always be used in a similar fashion, however unconsciously? As in the case of Freud's Oedipal Opus: a defense not only against but of sexual abuse of children?

Thinking of Bryan Singer again and the whole Hollywood Child-Catching Glamor Magic Monster Factory. (& Woody Allen played Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, his breakthrough film...)

[brekin]

And Nietzsche wrote in The Birth of Tragedy:

“Wherever soothsaying and magical powers have broken … the magic circle of nature, extreme unnaturalness — in this case, incest — is the necessary antecedent, for how should man force nature to yield up her secrets but by successfully resisting her, that is to say, by unnatural acts?”

That could be the mission statement of the Illumineers. Easy to see Fabians, et al., applying this principal (Theory!) to their own kids and getting to offload their own trauma under the rationale of engineering genius children.

For me, the notion that early trauma, usually sexual, fuels creative genius, is highly questionable, & not only because in probably 99,999 cases out of 100,000, it simply destroys a person's psychic and physical health. But even in the rare cases when it seems to redeem the trauma, doesn't it also throw into question the real nature, and value, of creative genius? (I know you're not endorsing Nietzsche's idea, just addressing the question generally.)

Can we separate the genesis from the genus? If creativity is developed as a defense against trauma, won't it always be used in a similar fashion, however unconsciously? As in the case of Freud's Oedipal Opus: a defense not only against but of sexual abuse of children?

Thinking of Bryan Singer again and the whole Hollywood Child-Catching Glamor Magic Monster Factory. (& Woody Allen played Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, his breakthrough film...)

Yeah I agree that the premise trauma fuels creative genius is questionable. (The quote above is from the article not me.) Someone in the comments said it is not the trauma, but the healing journey, that is where the genius part can come in. Since many don't have the means or opportunity to even begin such a journey, then much psychic energy can be spent on just trying to manage the effects of trauma, let alone the source.

As we can see in the case with Freud and many in his close circle the unwillingness to recognize trauma (mostly in others, but probably in themselves as well) limited them in integrating or adjusting psycho-analysis to the more original and creative theories that those who broke from brought forth. You can even read psycho-analysis and many of its offshoots as aborted attempts at ones own healing journey. Fleiss started to break with Freud, for among other reasons, because he thought Freud was projecting his experience onto others he was treating.

The diversity of Freudian exiles and their approaches, which weren't always complementary, also points to the possibility that for each their theories were valid for their specific circumstances. I think a true psycho-analysis, while requiring a challenging outside eye, is probably very idiosyncratic. Instead of the great hubris of Freudian orthodoxy universals it is probably more along the lines of Blake and his:

I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's;
I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create.

With the huge caveat that your system has to be open to outside review if you are claiming cures. One thinks of Norman Mailer and his own attempted self-analysis. When you stab your wife I think then you've definitely failed. Most self analysis can become just supreme justification- I think we've seen this trend with Freud and co. as well as Mailer. I was thinking about Norman Mailer while reading bits of Elliot Rodger's, the Santa Barbara shooter, "manifesto" and how much it was Norman Mailerish: the huge sense of self regard, and the very Freudian: how your own experience flows out to others as universals for them to conform to, as well as the Mailerisms:"All women should be kept in cages", "All violence is sexual", etc.

One of the most interesting things for me about Elliot Rodgers, is the fact that he was in therapy for most of his life. His narcissistic minute rendering of his life and tantrums before his rampage seem very much like aborted attempts at his own healing journey. I imagine his therapy was a far cry from strict Freudian and probably had more of So Cal humanistic-self esteem bent, but I wonder if the two streams we've been talking about Freudian Psycho-Analysises mythifications and Bernay's consumer advert psychology haven't melded into the therapeutic/consumer culture that Elliot Rodger's swam in. (I'm big on personal responsibility and free will and so think Rodger's could have resisted the culture and instead have found validation and dirty love on the streets of Santa Cruz by joining the cohorts of other affluent kids who resist their parents supposed values.) But I do wonder if the dark water of denying victimhood with Freud and the narcissistic bent with modern consumer culture and therapy isn't going to producing more and more fame monsters like Elliot Rodgers.

Could Therapy Culture Help Explain Elliot Rodger's Rampage?
One of the terrifying achievements of the modern cult of therapy has been to churn out a generation of people completely focused on the self and in constant need of validation from others.
http://reason.com/archives/2014/05/27/c ... lain-ellio

Brendan O'Neill | May 27, 2014

The most striking revelation about Elliot Rodger, the alleged Santa Barbara shooter, is that he had been in therapy for most of his life.


A family friend said Rodger had been seeing a therapist since the age of eight. Apparently he had visited a therapist "virtually every day" during his high school years. By the time of the massacre and suicide at the University of Santa Barbara over the weekend, when he was 22, Rodger reportedly had "multiple therapists."

Today it has been revealed that so central were his therapists to his daily existence that he emailed his hateful 141-page manifesto to them (and to his parents) 15 minutes before going on his stabbing and shooting spree.
I think Rodger's reported reliance on therapists from childhood through to adulthood deserves more analysis than it has so far received, because it potentially speaks to a dark side—a very dark side—of the modern therapy culture. There has been a mad dash to blame Rodger's actions on the misogynistic websites that he was known to visit, with some claiming these sites warped his mind and made him murderous. There has been far less focus on the therapy culture which by all accounts, and according to his family and friends, was a far more longstanding part of his life than his Internet habits.

Yes, he might have spent some late nights lurking on "men's rights" websites, but if the reports coming from those who knew him are to be believed, he spent 14 years visiting therapists.
To my mind, if we are going to say that any kind of "culture" was responsible for Rodger's rampage—and that is always a dangerous thing to do, since it lessens Rodger's own moral responsibility for what he did—then we might want to examine the impact of mainstream therapy culture rather than obsessing over the fringe misogyny culture he might have dabbled with.

We know a handful of things about Rodger. One is that he visited therapists. Another is that he was full of self-regard, was incredibly self-obsessed, and was utterly outraged when people, especially women, didn't treat him with the love and respect he felt he deserved.

It is possible that these two things are connected, maybe even intimately connected. For one of the main, and most terrifying, achievements of the modern cult of therapy has been to churn out a generation of people completely focused on the self and in constant need of validation from others; a generation that thinks nothing of spending hours examining and talking about their inner lives and who regard their own self-esteem as sacrosanct, something which it is unacceptable for anyone ever to dent or disrespect.

Could Rodger's fury at the world for failing to flatter his self-image as a good, civilized guy be a product of the therapy industry, of the therapy world's cultivation of a new tyrannical form of narcissism where individuals demand constant genuflection at the altar of their self-esteem?

Many thinkers have attacked the therapy industry's creation of a new and ravenous narcissism which demands constant flatter-feeding. In his classic 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism, the great Christopher Lasch said "the contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious." He said therapy culture, the post-'60s obsession with self-reflection, had created a new "narcissistic personality"; it had given rise to individuals who "depend on others to validate [their] self-esteem" and who "cannot live without an admiring audience." The therapeutic individual views the world as a mirror, constantly expecting to see his own image in it, said Lasch, where the earlier, more robust individual saw the world as an "empty wilderness to be shaped by his own design".

In her powerful essay "The Overpraised American," Christine Rosen said the "overarching goal" of most therapeutic tomes is to teach people "how to love oneself." She quotes one self-help book which advises people to "Have a love affair with yourself!" Rosen writes: "Today's commercialised therapy purveyors all begin with the same premise: Think first of yourself."

The end result is a new generation invited to focus more on their navels, on their apparently fantastically interesting inner selves, rather than on the world around them; a generation encouraged to see any kind of challenge to their self-esteem, whether it's a tough exam, a presumed slight or a difficult, controversial idea, as an intolerable assault on their inner god. As the late American philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain said, the era of therapy has created a "quivering sentimental self that gets uncomfortable very quickly, because this self has to feel good about itself all the time."

We see this everywhere today. We see it in university students who want to ban everything that they think harms their self-esteem, because they've been educated to see any attack on what they think and how they feel as utterly unacceptable. We see it in the growing cult of self-revelation and the search for validation on social networks like Twitter, where individuals' frenetic tweeting and their desperate desire for that all-important retweet speaks to the reorganization of society around the need for recognition, the need for an "admiring audience" to make the self feel puffed up. And we potentially see it, in its most extreme form, in Elliot Rodger, the son of therapy, who appears to be the ultimate "quivering sentimental self" made "uncomfortable very quickly" when he didn't feel good about himself.

It is striking how therapeutic is the language used by Rodger in his videos and his murder manifesto. He talks about how people's attitudes towards him "really decreased my self-esteem." He clearly sees such assaults on his self-esteem as unacceptable, saying "if they won't accept me… then they are my enemies." In short, fail to offer recognition to this damaged creature and you will pay the price. And then he makes the key cry of our therapeutic era: "It's not fair. Life is not fair."

(2nd page at site)

[Plutonia]

This is a great thread Brekin. Thanks.

I just popped in to point out a couple of things about Elliot Rodger:

It's been reported in the media that he was Aspergerian, though there does seem to be some question about the veracity of that: http://paulacdurbinwestbyautisticblog.b ... urder.html

What many people wont know is that there is a movement among some autism families, particularly affluent Californian families, to reject the diagnosis of autism in favour of HSP, or, "Highly Sensitive Person". I don't know if the Rodgers family were into that, but maybe they were. - there is now a stigma around having an autism diagnosis, thanks to the hysterical campaigning of the anti-vaxxers, some wrong-headed autism advocates and the fear-mongering TV media.

If it's true that his parents suspected autism, then the orthodox medical response is "early intervention" via the only medically approved treatment for autistic kids - intensive ABA therapy - that's Applied Behavior Analysis, which is pure Skinnereria conditioning adapted for human children by one Ivar Lovaas, who developed ABA originally, in order to treat effeminate little boys. The aim of ABA is to train autistics to behave in ways indistinguishable from neurotypicals, and that,s it. If the Rodgers kid had years of ABA, well fuck. Yeah. Horrible.

Excellent background on ABA and Lovaas here, by the formidable Michelle Dawson: http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_aba.html

So going out into the space that opens up - if the Rodgers kid was under pressure to appear typical, to "pass", as it were, then not dating or getting laid would have been a really, really big problem. In fact, the pressure must have been increasing as he passed the age of twenty and was continuing to fail at neurotypical courtship behaviors.

BTW, I haven't seen this addressed anywhere yet, but there are going to be thousands of autistics coming of age soon who were subjected to years of ABA treatment and I don't suppose that they are going to be either happy or grateful.

And lastly, apparently Rodgers "manifesto" is an account of revenge fantasy?Well aren't half (more?) the films that come out of Hollywood dramatizations of revenge fantasy? It's a ubiquitous narrative. Besides the Romantic Love Story, and the Buddy Film, is there a any other?

That's all. Carry on.

[brekin]

^Hear you Plutonia. It definitely seems like Rodgers may have been misdiagnosed or not at all. I read somewhere he was asked to take meds but refused. Judging from the way Rodgers handled the sheriffs that came to his door he definitely knew how to play the social ques game of pretending and passing. Especially, since he thought the entire gig was up with their arrival and a quick search would confirm everything he had been posting online. It shows even under high anxiety he could perform to standards that were expected. Reading some of his posts it is incredible how seething and full of fury he is over what seem to be non-existent slights that don't even concern him. Even when a family member is around, I wonder if they or even his therapists understood what was squirming behind the firewall of his outward appearance.

****

Freud. This tidbit has me agog. I had heard of one or several of Freud's patients committing suicide. But I never knew that one was the wife of his, from most appearances his first longtime best friend/soul mate/obsessive crush. Eduard Silberstein, was a young rich Romanian that Freud befriended in his early teens. Reading The Secret Ring, pgs 25-29, one definitely gets the sense that Freud is a dominating, jealous lover of sorts with Eduard. They have a secret language, invent a paracosm together based on Cervantes, write long romantic soulful letters, spend as much time together as possible, etc It could just have been an intense but innocent teen friendship/relationship, but I can't see Freud doing anything half-hardheartedly and if the speculation is true that Fliess and Freud were lovers, I would imagine Freud had experimented with such a relationship when he was younger and with someone who he was spending so much physical and psyhic time with. Eduard who he saw completely in self confessed romantic light really was a huge romantic figure for Freud. And remember Freud was always uncomfortable around women (strange when he had so many sisters and such a doting mother) and had what I would call an unusually neurotic romantic life:

At the age of 22, Freud grew a beard to look more presentable, but it didn’t make him better with women. He was a virgin till the age of 30 and was very afraid to stay alone with women, which always made people laugh.

http://english.pravda.ru/health/02-10-2 ... d_freud-0/

What is strange is that Freud, the "virgin" (are we to believe he didn't have any sexual relations with men when he was so shy of women?) who was uncomfortable around women, ended up specializing in treating hysterical women who he discussed sexual matters in depth with. In fact, Psycho-Analysises form is built around his complexes:

Freud was unable to work with them sticking to the existing rules because he was afraid to look people in the eye. Looking for a way out, he came up with a strategy to lay people on a couch while he was sitting at the headboard. He didn’t ask questions and just listened very attentively.

http://english.pravda.ru/health/02-10-2 ... d_freud-0/

Ok, move forward in time. Eduard is married to what Freud considers "a stupid rich girl" who is suffering from depression. Freud is married to Martha and is practicing psycho-analysis. Guess what happens? Shades of Freud's father and the disappearing wife.

Although the letters between Freud and Silberstein ended abruptly in 1881 (Freud ascribed their drifting apart as due to his engagement to Martha), the story of the relationship between the two men did not end there. Silberstein's wife Pauline, suffered from severe depression. There must have been an exchange of letters (which have since disappeared) when Silberstein wrote to arrange for Pauline to go to Vienna to be treated by Freud, who was then specializing in hysterical patients. How long she was in treatment we have no way of knowing. What we do know is that on May 14, 1891, she fell to her death in Freud's apartment building at 8 Maria Theresienstrasse. We do not know whether it was before or after Freud had seen her, and the account in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt for May 15, 1891, did not mention any names. According to the newspaper report, she threw herself down the stairwell from the third floor, but we do not know which floor Freud practiced.
In any event, Freud must have believed that the incident would be seen by Silberstein as a failure on Freud's part, although Silberstein did not seem to bear him ill will or hold him responsible for his wife's death.
The Secret Ring, page 29

I don't know, this just seems incredibly suspect. Freud treats his former best friend's (who I would hazard to say was his love, if not lover), wife and she kills herself by throwing herself down a flight of stairs at Freud's work office??? Wouldn't jumping from a bridge, stepping in front of a horse carriage, or train, or even taking poison seem more likely? It seems, to me, very possible Freud had a direct hand in her death directly or indirectly. I don't know if Freud threw her down the stairs or just whispered in her ear a la Hannibal Lector, but it seems that he resented her on romantic and financial levels. Never one for empathy I think he'd be the last person that should have treated someone who was severely depressed and he had many reasons to personally resent, if not want gone. Even more bizarre is Silberstein's not holding Freud responsible at all. The letter record for both of them is very cloudy, but it is on record via a reply by Freud, that he actually wished Freud a happy birthday via letter 18 years later!

[guruilla]

There’s a lot spinning around at this thread. A few thoughts:

Mailer. I read a few of the key texts. A Prisoner of Sex. Advertisements for Myself. The Gary Gilmore one, Executioner’s Song. The American Dream, about a guy who kills his wife, a kind of Ayn Randian vision. Mailer is seen as a giant. A self-aware egomaniac. A man of action (he made films, bad ones). He had delusions of grandeur which he quite openly admitted to, thereby cunningly suggesting they weren’t delusions at all. Mailer, like a lot of “giants” (writers especially) used awareness, including self-awareness, as a means to prop up his delusions, to propagate a lack of awareness.

Therapy can be used in the same way (anything can).

I think one of the major misconceptions about psychotherapy, maybe the main one, is that it can be separated from case specifics: the analyst and analysand, practitioner and client, transmitter and receiver. Also, the idea of transference is very poorly understood, but I think it’s 100% essential to therapy working. And no one really understand transference. It’s a mystery.

Why did Freud make sure his patients couldn’t see him (sitting behind them)? Very fishy.

Simple terms: therapy is only as good as the therapist, and only as effective as the patient is open to it. Can a person become a good therapist by learning the art/science (religion) of therapy? He or she can only be effective to the degree they have successfully undergone their own healing journey (whether or not it’s ever completed). This is all basic stuff, I am just stating the obvious, but maybe it needs stating.

It’s the theme of the thread, really: how good can Freudian analysis be if Freud was a fuckup? The answer: not very.

I read bits of Rodgers’ manifesto. Just a few excerpts. It read like poor fiction, not even good fiction, sub-Mailer. Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver seems more real, more substantial, than Rogers did to me in those excerpts. But in both cases—in every case?—it’s the quest for identity that leads to violence.

Mistaking self-examination—which leads to self-unraveling—with self-immersion and self-obsession. Psychology is a double-edged sword.

Self-awareness can eventually lead to the exposure of the self we’re becoming aware of as being wholly the result of social conditioning, a ghost and a ghoul, a phantom and a fraud. But what happens as we get closer to that existential crisis? The same awareness revealing the lie of identity can be redirected towards reinforcing the identity that’s starting to crumble and dissolve. That can be experienced as an epiphany probably. When Raskolnikov killed, he was asserting his identity the only way he could, driven by inner demons: the terror and despair of his powerlessness. Shunned. Ignored. Non-existent. (Like Travis.) A nobody among a legion of nobodies, God’s lonely man, etc. The same with Rodgers.

There’s that John Lennon song, “God,” in which he lists all the things he no longer believes in, ending with “Beatles.” But then he sings, “I just believe in me (Yoko & me).” He stops at the point his identity is about to come unraveled. The last step would be for him not to believe in the “me” that no longer believes in Beatles.

Mark Chapman shot Lennon because he thought he was a phony and he (after Holden Caulfield, a fiction) hated phonies. My guess is Chapman wanted to be as “real” a phony as Lennon, a “somebody-phony” instead of a nobody-phony. Killing a somebody means you are no longer a nobody. Exposing the frauds “out there” is a way to prop up and make real the fraud “in here.”

Actually, being a “nobody-phony” is probably a step closer to the truth of identity (the end of the dream) than being a somebody-phony.

[guruilla]

Just received this in an email from a reader, seems relevant:

Melvin Morse (*1953) is the author of several books on the near-death experience, in which he offers conclusions based on interviewing children who came close to dying.

His 1991 book Closer to the Light was a bestseller.

In 2014 he was convicted of "waterboarding" his girlfriend's 11 year old daughter and sentenced to three years in prison.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvin_L._Morse

The assaults on the child were the more horrifying because Morse is the author of Closer to the Light, the primary study of NDEs in children. Within days of Morse’s arrest, commenters on his generally acclaimed books had hit the Amazon reviews, warning readers away. Closer to the Light, which until then had 33 five-star reviews and a smattering of lower ratings, erupted with one-star comments, now numbering 18.

Should the only book specifically about children’s near-death experiences—a book which, despite known flaws, has been enormously helpful to parents and once-child experiencers—be boycotted because of the criminal behavior of its deeply disturbed author? It is, of course, not a new question. Almost simultaneously with the Morse conviction, similar questions were being asked in other places, about other abuse.

Over at the Religion Dispatches site, Stephanie Krehbiel was posting “The Woody Allen Problem: How Do We Read Pacifist Theologian (and Sexual Abuser) John Howard Yoder?” She quotes Mark Oppenheimer of the New York Times: “Can a bad person be a good theologian?”

http://www.dancingpastthedark.com/melvi ... de-vision/

The Woody Allen Problem: How Do We Read Pacifist Theologian (and Sexual Abuser) John Howard Yoder?

Yoder died in 1997 without any formal charges ever having been filed against him.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archi ... ward_yoder

John Howard Yoder (December 29, 1927 – December 30, 1997) was an American theologian and ethicist best known for his defense of Christian pacifism.

Allegations that Yoder had sexually abused, harassed, and assaulted women circulated for decades and became known in wider Christian circles, but were never publicly acknowledged until 1992.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard_Yoder

[brekin]

I don't have the book handy, (The Secret Ring) but something interesting related to denial of victimhood keeps cropping up as a pattern of Freud.
When he had Fleiss operate on a client's nasal bones to relieve hysterical symptoms (this was based on Fleiss's theories of sexuality and the nose. Fliess had operated similarly on Freud to relieve him of his "symptoms") the patient had severe complications and continued to bleed profusely. Finally Freud had another doctor operate on the patient only to find a large wad of gauze Fleiss had accidentally left in the nasal cavity. The patient was disfigured for life, had a large indentation where the gauze had been, but intriguingly went on to become a psycho-analyst.

What is of interest is that at one point Freud, not wanting to believe Fleiss could have botched the operation, blames the patient saying she is a "hysterical bleeder" and she is causing the bleeding herself as a form of displacement! Freud continually did this with patients, colleagues and himself. When Abraham was diagnosed with Cancer (or another serious ailment) Freud was blaming the symptoms on a complex of his before he had the diagnosis. Freud really resembles Mary Baker Eddy of Christian Science fame at times in how much he attributes psychic causes for physical ailments. I'm a big believer of somatic roots, but unfortunately many times it seems like Freud is just saying "you are causing your physical symptoms". This obviously is at root with his disavowal of the seduction theory and it is intriguing to see how much of a through-line it is in his work.

Ironically, I remember in Reich speaks of Freud he talks of how Freud got his jaw cancer from "biting down" or back an impulse for years:

Dr. Reich
...Now, if my theory is correct, if my view of cancer is correct, you just give up, you resign--and then, you shrink. It is quite understandable why he developed his epulis. He smoked very much, very much. I always had the feeling he smoked--not nervousness, not nervousness--but because he wanted to say something which never came over his lips. Do you get the point?

Dr. Eissler
Yes.

Dr. Reich
As if he had "to bit something down." Now, I don't know whether you are on my line. Bite--a biting-down impulse, swallow something down, never to express it. He was always polite, "bitingly" polite, sometimes. Do you know what I mean?

Dr. Eissler
Yes.

Dr. Reich
"Bitingly." Somehow coldly, but not cruely. And it was here he developed that cancer. If you bit with a muscle for years and years, the tissue begins to deteriorate, and then cancer develops. ...

Reich Speaks of Freud, pages 20-21

I'm a big fan of Reich, but surely wouldn't smoking at least twenty cigars a day for decades contribute more to jaw cancer then the biting down, psychically or physically? Anyhow, interesting how incredibly intelligent men can disregard seemingly obvious physical causes, sexual abuse and cigar smoking, and find other psychic or physical causes to take their place.

[brekin]

I didn't set out to demonize Freud, but fuck man, who didn't he screw over? If you were friends with him you were lucky if the only thing he did to you was rip off your work and have you excommunicated.

Freud and Cocaine/ Freud and Otto Gross/ Psychoanalysis and Addiction

Desiring early fame and material success, Freud looked for a key in medicine and thought he had found it in
cocaine. Freud championed the drug in glowing terms; he called it, Stanley Edgar Hyman writes, his "magic carpet" and “thrust it on all and sundry, including his sisters, friends, patients, colleagues--everyone” (1954:17). He contributed to the death of a dear friend, believing that cocaine would wean Ernst Fleischl von Marxow from his addiction to morphine: Fleischl died of drug poisoning with Freud nursing him (1). Attacked for his behavior, he reacted by censoring this episode from his professional history although it entered surreptitiously through the famous meditation on dreams.

http://english.umn.edu/contact/roth/freud.pdf

[brekin]

Recap of the possible story thus far:

1. It is very likely that Freud's father molested Freud, and/or at least one brother and his sisters.
2. It is likely Freud's father had a hand in the mysterious disappearance of his second wife.
3. It is very likely Freud himself molested a sister and possibly a niece.
4. It is possible Freud had a incestuous relationship with his mother.
5. It is very likely Freud had a homosexual relationship with his longtime friend in youth Eduard Silberstein.
6. It is very likely Freud had a hand in the "suicide" of his friend's, Eduard Silberstein, wife at his office, for which Eduard did not hold Freud responsible for.
7. It is very likely Freud didn't have sexual relations with women (outside his family if molestation/incest true) until he was 30.
8. It is fairly certain Freud over indulged in cocaine and pushed it on friends, families and clients.
9. It is fairly certain Freud had a hand in the cocaine poisoning death of his friend Ernst Fleischl von Marxow.
10. It is very likely Freud had a homosexual relationship with Fliess.
11. It is possible Fleiss molested his own son.
12. It is fairly certain Freud shielded psycho-analysts, repeatedly, who had a history of sexual impropriety with clients and other vulnerable people.
13. It is fairly certain Freud disavowed his original seduction theory and continually obstructed those who championed it even in the light of personal experience and overwhelming evidence.

To me, it seems possible that Freud coming from a familial and cultural milieu of sexual abuse was presented with the remarkable choice of being a cultural whistle blower regarding the actual incestuous or sexually authoritarian origins of many neuroses and mental illness symptoms or creating a super-narrative psychic alibi that shielded these origins and threw them back on the victims. My sense is, out of guilt and shame from his own past, he chose to identify with the perpetrators and much of psycho-analysis can be seen as a defense against this self and cultural acknowledgement.

While Freud and co. made other significant discoveries and codifications of psychological phenomenon, I think this flaw is near fatal. Certainly, the medical establishment and other cultural institutions were denying the existence of the "seduction theory" in practice well before Freud put a name to it, but Freud made its evil twin contra-theory a social currency and dogma which still influences to this day. While Freud is disparaged and downplayed currently, I do think there is a fundamental avoidance of what he originally proposed and a ducking of the subject all together. That is, modern society and civilization is built on a conspiracy of sexuality against the vulnerable who tend to display symptoms from their victimization. Since you can't treat a malady one refuses to acknowledge, modern society continues to produce and promote maladjusted individuals who victimize the vulnerable. While I do think there has been strides in sexual abuse awareness, the society wide power relationships that permit the victimization continue.