Freud on a Precipice: How Freud's Fate Pushed Psychoanalysis Over the Edge

211 Pages·2009·0.68 MB·English

by  Robert Langs

PSYCHOLOGY (cid:129) PSYCHOANALYSIS L
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“The latest thought-provoking book from the pen of Robert Langs, prolific and provocative psychoanalytic
Freud
author and thinker, shows us not only how Freud pushed psychoanalysis over the edge but how, during a
serious crisis in his life, Freud stood at the edge of a precipice from which he could have easily jumped
to his death. Langs gives us a brilliant analysis of how Freud’s life shaped his revolutionary theories about
trauma, seduction, and the Oedipus complex.”
—ZVI LOTHANE, author of In Defense of Schreber: Soul Murder and Psychiatry

on a
Freud on a Precipice is a psychoanalytic detective story that takes the reader back to the generally unap-
preciated, yet single most important turning point in the history of psychoanalysis: Freud’s decision fol-
lowing the death of his father to abandon his first, reality-centered theory of the mind in favor of a theory F
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focused on inner fantasies and needs. Robert Langs views this change of heart as a regressive paradigm
e Precipice
shift driven by unconsciously influential archetypes that were, in turn, linked to a series of traumas early u
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in Freud’s life. Langs’s detective work brings new insights into such matters as the psychological arche-

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types that affect the creation and modification of paradigms, physical and mental; a new, utilitarian view
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of the design of the emotion-processing mind; recognition of the complex unconscious impact of reality

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and death-related traumas on the human psyche and emotionally charged choices; the vast superiority of

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Freud’s first paradigm over his second theory of the mind; and the unconscious reasons, despite its many
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flaws, that Freud’s second paradigm remains in favor to this very day. Freud saved his own life by shifting e
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course, but at the same time he created a theory that must be held partly accountable for the compro- i How Freud’s Fate Pushed
p
mised forms of dynamic therapy and the broad psychological harm that have followed in its wake. Using
i
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an updated version of Freud’s first paradigm, Langs shows us a better way to live and work.
e Psychoanalysis over the Edge
ROBERT LANGS
is the author of forty-seven books written on the basis of his innovative approach
to the human mind and to psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and the human condition.
For orders and information please contact the publisher
JASON ARONSON
An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Robert Langs
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 90000
Lanham, Maryland 20706
9 780765 706003 ARONSON
1-800-462-6420 (cid:129) www.rowmanlittlefield.com
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Freud on a Precipice

Freud on a Precipice
How Freud’s Fate Pushed
Psychoanalysis over the Edge
Robert Langs
JASON ARONSON
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
Published by Jason Aronson
An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com
Estover Road
Plymouth PL6 7PY
United Kingdom
Copyright © 2010 by Jason Aronson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Langs, Robert, 1928–
Freud on a precipice : how Freud’s fate pushed psychoanalysis over the edge/Robert Langs.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7657-0600-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-7657-0721-5 (electronic)
1. Freud, Sigmund, 1856–1939. 2. Psychoanalysis—History. 3. Freud, Sigmund,
1856–1939—Psychology. I. Title.
BF109.F74.L365 2009
150.19’52092—dc22
2009027421
Printed in the United States of America
(cid:1) ™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Contents
Introduction vii
Chapter One Is Freud to be Trusted? 1
Chapter Two Paradigms and Archetypes 9
Chapter Three A Tale of Two Paradigms 31
Chapter Four The Descendants of Freud’s Two Paradigms 43
Chapter Five Freud in Conflict 75
Chapter Six Psychoanalytic Detective Work 87
Chapter Seven Freud’s Early Traumas 115
Chapter Eight The Ultimate Trauma 143
A Personal Note 179
References 185
Index 191
About the Author 197
v

Introduction
Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has
been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involun-
tary and unconscious memoir.
—Frederick Nietzsche (2003, p. 37)
On July 7, 1898, Sigmund Freud forwarded several newly written chapters
of his masterpiece, The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900), to his friend,
colleague, correspondent, and critic, Wilhelm Fliess. In the letter accom-
panying this material, Freud wrote the following: “It was all written by the
unconscious, on the well known principle of Itzig, the Sunday horseman.
‘Itzig, where are you going?’ ‘Don’t ask me, ask the horse!’ At the beginning
of a paragraph I never knew where I should end up” (Freud, 1954, letter 92,
July, 7, 1898 p. 258).
All writing is unconsciously motivated, but here Freud alludes to a unique
kind of automatic writing in which the part of the mind I call the deep uncon-
scious wisdom system takes over (Langs, 2004, 2006) and the conscious mind
can do little more than step aside and not get in its way. Much to my surprise,
many sections of this book were written in this manner.
This odd phenomenon took over as soon as I sat down to write the first
chapter of the book, which is chapter two in the present version. Quite arbi-
trarily, I decided to forgo the outline I had made and began with an unplanned
exploration of archetypes and paradigms. I had only the vaguest reason for
making this decision in that I sensed that these two concepts, which deal with
universal configurations and world views, would be among the backbones of
the book. As I began to write, one idea spontaneously followed another; the
chapter took on a life of its own. The key points I ended up making had never
vii
viii Introduction
crossed my mind before. I was stunned by what was happening and found
it enormously rewarding to watch my mind dance that way. After years of
conscious struggle and frustration, it seemed that my wise deep unconscious
mind had decided to reward my efforts to forge what I mistakenly thought
was a new paradigm of psychoanalysis (Freud had been there almost a cen-
tury before me) with a fertile patch of creativity I did not know I possessed.
And it continued to gift me this way throughout the writing of the book.
I share this with you because your staying with a book like this, which
has been crafted by tapping into deep unconscious wisdom, depends on your
being able to by-pass your natural, in-built conscious resistances against
receiving this kind of alien but essential knowledge and taking it in deep
unconsciously as well. Freud said as much in another context:
Just as the patient must relate everything that his self-observation can detect,
and keep back all the logical and affective objections that seek to induce him
to make a selection from among them, so the doctor must put himself in a
position to make use of everything he is told for the purposes of interpretation
and of recognizing the concealed unconscious material without substituting a
censorship of his own for the selection that the patient has forgone. To put it in
a formula: he must turn his own unconscious like a receptive organ towards the
transmitting unconscious of the patient. He must adjust himself to the patient
as a telephone receiver is adjusted to the transmitting microphone. . . . So the
doctor’s unconscious is able, from the derivatives of the unconscious which are
communicated to him, to reconstruct that unconscious, which has determined
the patient’s free associations. (Freud, 1912b, pp. 115–116)
I am, then, asking you to play analyst to my patient. And I do this because
one of the unexpected insights I came upon in drafting this book is that the
conscious mind—i.e., the conscious system—is universally opposed to and
all but unable to grasp and accept the ideas offered in this book. By virtue of
the evolved design of the emotion-processing mind, such openness flies in
the face of its fundamentally defensive, denial-dominated operations (Langs,
1996, 2004, 2006). In a few words, your conscious mind doesn’t want you to
read this book. But your deep unconscious mind does!
You can see why I ask that you open your deep unconscious system to the
ideas I shall be offering. And given that the unconscious part of the human
mind is far wiser than the conscious mind, if I may say so, there are great
rewards awaiting you if you find a way to do it. But therein lies the rub: How
is it to be done? Asking you to decode your dreams or to notice their tone
after reading portions of this book seems impractical. But beyond that, all I
can do is hope that you’ll find a way for your unconscious mind to tune into
my unconscious mind, which will mean that you’ll read on instead of putting
this book aside in deference to your conscious, obliterative needs.
Introduction ix
In envisioning the structure and goals of this book, my initial idea was to
develop some ideas that I had presented in a recent book, Beyond Yahweh and
Jesus: Bringing Death’s Wisdom to Faith, Spirituality, and Psychoanalysis
(Langs, 2008). I had argued there that one reason that religion has failed in
its promise to bring peace to the world is that it needed a grounding in human
psychology of a kind that only psychoanalysis could have given it. I held
Freud personally accountable for not coming to the aid of religion and decided
to take a cursory look at his personal history for the unconscious reasons
he failed to do so. I was able to identify some seldom discussed, but likely
secreted early life traumas that seemed relevant to the choices he made and
let it stand at that.
But the subject of Freud’s early life would not go away. I searched the
literature for more on the topic and found indications that his early-life trau-
mas had affected not only his attitude towards religion, but the very manner
in which he gave form to psychoanalysis. I learned that the exact dates in
1897 during which he decided on the fundamental propositions of his new
psychology were well documented and that there was considerable mate-
rial that had a bearing on the direction he took his emerging psychoanalytic
thinking.
Frankly, I had not appreciated how momentous this turning point in the
history of the human mind actually was. In shifting from a reality-centered
theory of emotional life—his so-called seduction theory—to a fantasy-
centered theory with the Oedipal constellation as its centerpiece, Freud
marked a change in direction that has shaped the thinking of psychoanalysts
and humankind about emotional life and the emotion-processing mind to this
very day. With that realization in mind, I decided to retell the story of Freud’s
creation of psychoanalysis in my own way. It was only during the writing that
I came to see that I was basing my efforts on Freud’s first theory or paradigm
of psychoanalysis and not, as was the case with other writers and present-day
psychoanalysts, on his second line of thought. This meant that I was mapping
new territory—a realm that Freud had more or less abandoned—and I was
eager to see what the terrain looked like.
Three basic goals emerged in the course of writing this book:
First, I needed to show that Freud’s shift from reality to fantasy constituted
a basic change in the philosophy and psychology of the human mind—that it
was in fact a major paradigm shift. For several reasons, this was no easy task.
There are overlaps between his two theories and each has tended to borrow
from the other; in addition, Freud and his followers never entirely gave up his
seduction hypothesis (Good, 2006). It was shadowy situation, but my deep
unconscious mind was equal to the challenge and it showed me a surprising
way to make my point. In a manner that is typical of the emotion-processing