I have written in here of my tentative support for psychoanalysis, for the (disappearing) idea of therapy as conversation, against common views of psychic health that reduce persons to objects. I have also tried to emphasize that even if every single one of Freud's particular interpretive hypotheses turned out wrong, he would still be justly regarded a philosopher of the highest order, perhaps even on the scale of Hume or Rousseau. No thinker of the past 100 years has done more to deepen our idea of the mind, to make us understand just how mysterious and meaningful our inner life is.
Yet, in spite of all of this, it must also be said that sometimes, Freud could be a total dickbag.
I am not fond of the way certain sympathetic commenters gloss over the details of Freud's most disastrous patient, 'Dora'. Surely, we ought to face Freud as he was, not as we would like him to be. Dora was an 18 year-old Viennese girl who was sent to Freud by her father. She had been experiencing hysterical symptoms--which at the time were quite real, no less real than multiple personality disorder in the 1980s--symptoms which turned out to revolve around a terrible family situation.
Her father was having an illicit affair with one Frau K., and part of the arrangement between the father and Herr K. was that the father would allow Herr K. to associate freely with Dora. This he did from a very early age, showing a prurient interest in her in her early adolescence. Now, this would be traumatic for any young person, though it is not entirely uncommon and would not really explain the intensity of Dora's hysterical symptoms.
What happened next? Well, gosh, Herr K. actually contrived to be alone with Dora when she was 14, forced a kiss on her, causing her to withdraw violently. Later on in her adolescence, she slapped Herr K. again when they were alone, no doubt fearing the same treatment. When called upon to explain this outburst, she tried to tell her family about the kiss, but she was roundly disbelieved and scolded for concocting stories about a family friend. Worse, she was even accused of projecting her sexual desire for Herr K. onto the poor man, punishing him for not making love to her by inventing the kiss.
Now, to his minor credit, Freud believed Dora's story, but had other interpretations of her hysteria. Instead of judging that the poor girl was in a sick situation with an emotionally abusive family and a borderline rapist following her around, Freud interpreted her violent reaction towards being kissed by Herr K. this way:
This was surely just the situation to call up a distinct feeling of sexual excitement in a girl of fourteen who had never before been approached. But Dora had at that moment a violent feeling of disgust, tore herself free from the man, and hurried past him to the staircase and from there to the street door.And then, somehow, it gets worse.
I should without question consider a person hysterical in whom an occasion for sexual excitement elicited feelings that were preponderantly or exclusively unpleasurable... The elucidation of the mechanism of this reversal of affect is one of the most important and at the same time one of the most difficult problems in the psychology of the neuroses.Freud tells us that a "genital sensation" should obviously have been felt by Dora in this situation, assuring us that Herr K. is quite a hunk, or, in Freud's terms, "still quite young and of prepossessing appearance". Jesus, Freud.
So much has been written of this case that it is pointless to recite it all. However, it is worth noting that Dora was constantly hostile and mistrustful towards Freud, a fact he could never quite understand. He invented a psychoanalytic term called "transferrence", one which remains at the center of the discipline today and which refers, in this case, to Dora's transfer of Herr K. into Freud's position, to her unconsciously seeing Freud as Herr K and thus mistrusting him.
All her life, Dora had been confronted with older male figures who pretended to take an interest in her well-being but who eventually used her as a prop for their own gratification. When Dora is once again confronted by an older male figure who claims to take an interest in her well-being, to say that she "transfers" anything at all on to Freud is to give an unnecessarily clinical and derogatory name to something we would normally call inductive reasoning. The assumption that the future will be like the past, given relevantly similar factors, is a hallmark of rationality, and Dora passes this test with flying colours. She percieves, not entirely incorrectly, that Freud is just another dickbag using her for his own gratification.
After a few difficult weeks, Dora abruptly broke off the treatment, and, as a matter of fact, confronted her family again with renewed force. Her family broke down and admitted being unfair, the situation improved, and Dora's "symptoms" vanished.
Today, I see it reported in the news that over 1 in 10 Americans are on antidepressants, and that women make up two thirds of this group. I do not care to know what kinds of ridiculous stories have been cooked up by various
3 comments:
I agree about Freud. Both that his attitude in this situation was plainly wrong, and that there is a value for conversation as a means of approaching mental health. But what's all this about?
Sometimes, guys, it 'aint the women. It's us.
What about Frau K.? What about Dora's mother?
That's not to say that Herr K, Dora's father, and Freud himself weren't clearly at fault. And sure, sometimes "it ain't the women. It's us." Guys can be bastards. And women can be bitches. Or, sometimes "It ain't us. It's the women."
Maybe this is all obvious and unstated, though, and you're just calling attention to some cultural injustice you think generally exists but didn't really detail here. I just found it odd that you connected it with a pretty screwed up situation from Freud's studies. It seems a little like bringing up Andrea Yates and then suddenly giving the aside, "Women. Am I right guys?"
I do think that a feminist analysis is the right one, here. I urge you to read the case study if you're interested. The problem is that Freud is clearly insensitive to Dora's position as a woman in Viennese society. Frau K. and Dora's mother are no angels, but the salient variable in this case is clearly gender. And as much as we would like to chalk the failure up to Freud's "time", he clearly failed by his own stated standards.
The more general point I was trying to make was that there are two kinds of explanation for mental illness: indivudal and social. Both kinds of explanation are usually important for most cases, but we should not forget that in Dora's case, as it must be with many other women today, the explanation for the "symptoms" is primarily social/environmental. And I do think that men have to be particularly careful of the ways in which their behaviour towards women can be part of just such a negative environment. That's what generalizes from Dora's case (and doesn't generalize from Yates').
I'm entirely willing to grant that the culture played a role in that case, and in most cases. The problem is that I fail to see why, especially given the women who apparently approved of this situation, that the problems reduces to "men" or "men's actions".
You say Frau K and Dora's mother are no angels - alright, then to what degree are they culpable? And why is their culpability not worthy of mention? Or at least it seems to not be worthy.
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