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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.
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