textfiles/reports/freud.rpt

          Freud's Theory Analyzed -- A Report on Research
 
Recent research on Freud finds his theory has been profoundly mis-
understood (O'Brien, 1989).  The logic of this assertion follows.  
Reading may require concentration.
 
Freud held that, through motives of defense, acts of repression 
caused censorship, omission, and distortion of one's "real" thoughts 
about an Oedipus complex.  One's "conscious" thoughts would be un-
consciously determined and distorted by what one had censored.  One's 
conscious thoughts condensed, displaced, reversed, omitted, covertly 
alluded to, and disguised, by substitution of analogous symbols, one's 
"real" thoughts about an Oedipus complex (Freud, 1900).  He applied his 
theory not only to dreams and hysterical symptoms, but to everyday 
actions including reading, writing, and speaking (Freud, 1901). 
 Freud generalized his theory so broadly that it included his own 
conscious thoughts and thus his theory. 
 
In reading Freud's theory, therefore, one has to presume Freud's 
conscious thoughts--his theory--regarding an Oedipus complex represents 
not his real thoughts directly but his defensive condensations, 
displacements, reversals, omissions, distortions, etc., of his real 
thoughts.  If one wishes to gain "insight" into his "real" thoughts 
regarding an Oedipus complex, one has to analyze and interpret the 
manifest content of his thought with these defenses in mind.  According 
to Freud, one must use his method of analysis to overcome such defenses 
and resistances--the same method he used on hysterical symptoms, 
dreams, and activities of everyday life.  The first rule of Freud's 
method was to reject the manifest content--the apparent meaning--
-of the dream, symptom, or activity as merely "a distorted substitute" 
for one's real thoughts. 
 
Because of this "complexity" of interaction of theory and defenses 
in Freud's thought, the following would seem to be true: 1) most 
people today who are familiar with Freud don't know what he really 
thought; 2) Freud's own theory contraindicates accepting its manifest 
content as his real thought; 3) there is no justification in Freud's 
thought for accepting the manifest content of his writing as his 
real thoughts. 4) There is no point in teaching Freud, quoting him, 
researching his theory, or imitating his therapy, since his words 
and actions, by his own testimony, conceal, distort, and obfuscate 
his genuine thoughts. 
 
With these observations as a starting point, my research went on 
to ask what thoughts _were_ on Freud's mind regarding an Oedipus 
complex.  Freud himself warned these were unconscionable.  I found 
this to be the case.  His theory tells us his "real" thoughts would 
concern the same "elements" of thought manifest in his associations, 
but in a different relationship to each other.  When Freud's method 
of analysis was systematically applied to the manifest content of 
his theory, an altogether new meaning emerged, quite as his theory 
predicted--a meaning awful to contemplate.  My analysis found his 
thoughts concerned memories of a scene pertaining to an infant in 
which a father perversely and polymorphously sexually abused and 
"destroyed" ("infantile sexuality" and the "death" instinct) his 
male infant son (the "homosexual object" of his theory).  Thereafter, 
unable to forget his awful memories and terrible self-reproaches, 
the father (Freud) developed hysterical symptoms, obsessional ideas, 
obscure dreams, an infantile neurosis, obsessional rituals, and 
other actions--typically involving reading, writing, speaking, and 
making mistakes--which served to repeat his memories and self-reproaches 
in disguised and distorted forms.  Analysis and interpretation of 
these products of his conscious thought and activity are thus required 
to obtain insight into the real meaning they had in his own mind. 
 
In short, my research found Freud's theory to have been true in 
his own case.  As Freud himself reported, self-reproaches would 
automatically be projected onto others, forming a (delusional) theory 
of the nature of the external world.  He himself suggested such 
theories were projections, and that reproaches against others should 
be interpreted as self-reproaches having the exact same content 
(Freud, 1905 [9901], p. 35].  
 
When his theory is analyzed as a defense, it turns out to be not 
a theory, but a defense--a defense _disguised_ as a theory.  Freud 
considered defenses to be characterized by a "dreamlike" confusion. 
 He characterized such defenses as "hallucinatory confusion" when 
they caused one's real thoughts became lost to sight (Freud, 1984). 
 
This "insight" into Freud's theory affects our understanding of 
the entire manifest content of _The standard edition of the complete 
psychological works of Sigmund Freud, Volumes 1 - 24_.  Conceptualizations 
since Freud that have been based upon his theory's manifest content 
have, according to Freud's way of thinking, been built upon a false 
foundation.  Structures erected upon his manifest thought as their 
foundation stand upon a quicksand.
 
Destruction of Freud's theory by Freud himself was neither accidental 
nor insignificant.  Rather, Freud enacted a symbol of what he could 
not say openly.  Acting out both the creation and destruction of 
a magnificent theory, senselessly destroying what he had created 
in its very first application or "earliest infancy," Freud acted 
out something analogous to what he remembered and could not forget, 
and could not say openly.  An expression in one of his letters to 
Fliess, where he seems to equate his metapsychology with his "woebegone 
child," is telling (Freud, 1985, p. 216).  And, of course, according 
to Freud, it would have been unconsciously determined by what he 
had repressed.  Man's most basic motivation, he insisted so abstractly, 
was to both create (Eros) and destroy (Thanatos).
 
The intent of this analysis is not to attack or denigrate Freud, 
or to attack his theory by attacking his personality.  It is to 
_understand_ what his theory meant _to him_.  It is to listen to 
and follow _his_ rules for interpretation of _his_ thought.  It 
is by no means recommended that the thoughts of others can be analyzed 
in this way.  It was Freud who insisted that one look backward in 
the history of the individual to just before a symptom, dream, or 
obsessional idea made its first appearance. There, he contended, 
one would always find an embarrassing sexual event that the individual 
was trying to forget.  Freud, therefore, not the present author, 
in the first instance directs attention from one's thoughts to
the case history of the individual, a kind of _a cogitationibus
ad hominem_.  The whole point of his theory is that he had
self-reproaches he could not bear to contemplate or communicate
directly.
 
Comments and responses are invited.
 
                           References
 
Freud, S. (1894).  The neuro-psychoses of defence.  _Standard Edition, 
Vol. 3_, pp. 45-61.  London: Hogarth Press, 1962.
 
_____ (1900).  The interpretation of dreams.  _Standard Edition, 
Vols. 4 - 5_. London: Hogarth Press, 1953.
 
_____ (1901).  The psychopathology of everyday life.  _Standard 
Edition, Vol. 6_.  London: Hogarth Press, 1960.
 
_____ (1905 [1901]).  Fragment of an analysis of a case of  hysteria. 
 _Standard Edition, Vol. 7_, pp. 7-122.  London: Hogarth Press, 
1953.
 
_____ (1985).  _The complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm 
Fliess, 1887-1904_ (J. M. Masson, Ed. & Trans.).  Cambridge:  Harvard 
University Press
 
O'Brien, M. T. (1989).  Freud's Oedipus complex: A reappraisal of 
its meaning, Volumes I and II.  Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms--
-Dissertation Information Service, No. 89-08560.
 
                         - End -
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