I think you got it bass-ackwards. Freud’s original seduction theory required traumatic sexual ABUSE. It didn’t occur to him until later that the infantile sexual memories he found in his hypnotised patients might be erotic fantasies. He had assumed that children were innocent of sexuality. You can still find residues of his early thinking in “Interpretation of Dreams.”

However, the trauma was still essential in his later theories. He spelled it out in “Three Case Histories.” Parents withhold love from children who exhibit sexual impulses–masturbation, gawking, goosing, etc. The greatest trauma that can happen to a child is the withholding of love. Therefore the child has to repress such forbidden wishes. That’s how it works. It’s as clear as a bell.

There is little doubt that Freud was embarrassed by having to eat crow. He had furiously defended his seduction theory against all sorts of blatant scorn from his peers. It galled him to discover that they were right and he was wrong. But HE was the one who made the breakthrough discovery. Not his contemptuous colleagues.

The main artifact of psychoanalysis that I’m interested in seeing survive is the recognition that the bulk of “mental illness” is caused by how we have been treated by others, especially our primary caregivers, and most especially during our formative years.

But, of course, behaviorist and medical models have almost completely swept that under the rug. The New Era of Mental Health: ‘Humanizing’ Dehumanization, For Fun and Profit! YAY!

:-/

Scots-Irish is sure enough Irish. Cheer up. That was one of Freud’s theories that he was forced to abandon I think.

I too am Scots-Irish. I think the reason Scots-Irish are immune is that they reject the influence of Saint Patrick

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/11/ma_565_01.html

As a theory, though, psychoanalysis has stood its ground. For instance; the above report is a good validation of Freudian theory. According to Freud, all the neuroses are sexual in origin. In fact, that was Charcot’s contention way back when. And guess what. All psychiatric medication–including Prozac–has the convenient “side effect” of removing the patient’s sex drive! Medication cures are necessarily temporary.

Anyway, whether or not psychoanalysis is a *science* is a pedantic question, to say the least. Cryptography is not a science either. It’s an art. And yet the United States military depended on it to destroy the Imperial Japanese Navy at Midway. Dead languages have been restored by it–even to the point of figuring out pronunciations of words.

When Freud wrote “Interpretation of Dreams” he insisted that the key he discovered could analyze any dream down to the tiniest detail. If all observable data can be easily fit into a paradigm, you have to figure it’s worth something.

Anyway, the way psychoanalysis works is to put forth hypotheses, then present these to one’s peers inviting them to trash them. If any evidence comes along that does not fit tidily into the hypothesis, the psychoanalyst must be ready to abandon that hypothesis with no regret.

Freud himself had to abandon a few of his own theories over the years. And since Freud’s time, a few more have bit the dust, or at least have been weakened a bit. But psychoanalysis itself will endure I think.

It’s a way to approach impossibly complicated phenomena. Compare psychoanalysis to psychology. Psychology fancies itself to be a science, but ends up restricting itself to the point of uselessness. By limiting itself to the use of experimentation and statistics, it only ends up belaboring the obvious and necessarily ignoring deeper determinants.

My favorite psychology experiment was where the scientist drops a handful of coins in a crowded elevator and observes how everybody ignores it. He then later drops money in the elevator when only one person is in there with him. That one person will invariably help pick up the money. The conclusion is that the phenomenon is due to “diffusion of responsibility.” BRILLIANT! As if everyone didn’t assume that ahead of time. Now tell us where these cockamamie dreams I have come from. And what about my weird OCD symptoms. And my damned panic attacks. Give me an experiment!

)

But SRSLY, the virus that ravaged old-school psychoanalysis is alive and well today in contemporary psychotherapy. Even conventional psychodynamic “theory” is so infinitely malleable that interpretation of absolutely ANY behavior can be easily twisted into some remarkably plausible “pathology.” Further, any resulting conclusion on the part of the professional (working solely withing the domain of psychodynamics) is inherently untestable, and thus, cannot be disproven.

(In other words, it ain’t science … I’m often reminded of an offhand remark Noam Chomsky made during a lecture: “There’s nothing in the social sciences that qualifies as a theory.” The largely academic audience erupted in laughter and applause.)

That, in combination with a number of other factors almost unique to the “mental health” professions, puts the therapist in a position of near total impunity.

And. That. Is. Dangerous.

I do think I see what you mean, Larry; that it is better that your shrink understand that your head is working, even if he has wrong ideas about what’s going on in there, than that he think there’s nothing going on in there at all.

About four years ago, Amanda Baggs joined Asperger’s Circle, which I also belong to, for a few months. It turns out that she had undergone Freudian psychoanalysis when she was younger. Afterwards, she hated her therapist and hated Freud. The problem was that according to Freud, the transference involved in therapy will often be negative. And that is just as therapeutic as positive transference.

Unfortunately, if the therapy was at all effective there is no way Amanda will admit it!

What’s truly ironic, though, is that her psychoanalyst recognized her rich inner life and tried to address it. That’s a far cry from the goofball psychologist who couldn’t imagine her being able to set up her computer without the help of her caretaker!

I was just thinking…

If we all took a leaf out of Kristina’s book, we children of the universe,(I like that description too Kassiane) it sure as hell would make the world a better place I reckon.

Her gracious consideration towards others and their feelings whilst still firmly stating her point of view, is certainly something to aspire to.

The maze analogy was about autism not me. Since you cannot bring yourself to say anything bad about autism, you cannot even conceive of the maze.

My message was one of hope, that you and your child can emerge from the maze, and all it takes is love. If My wife and I can do it, anyone can.

You know as I think back on it as ineffective as my daughter’s ABA therapists were, they played an instrumental part in leading her through the maze.