Discovery Of The Unconscious
the history and evolution of dynamic psychiatry
by Henri F. Ellenberger 1970
Freud, according to Ellenberger, was heir to the Protestant Seelsorge or “Cure of Souls”, a practice that arose after Protestant reformers abolished the ritual of confession.
Psychotherapy term became fashionable in 1890 then in demand.
Full text: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4438407M/The_discovery_of_the_unconscious
Healers
-
must have faith in own ability or invoke higher power
-
patient must have faith – more effective as public reputation increases
-
Disease, healing method and healer must be acknowledged by social group
Shamans had training, schools, strict rules, and used secret agents
Sacred spot, structured environment, presence of sympathetic witnesses
Disease considered possession by evil spirit – often somnambulic – no awareness
possession could be lucid (self-induced) Catholics called this form “obsession”
Exorcism first form of psychotherapy
Could be lengthy process (years)
Confession
disease punishment for sins including adultery and masturbation. Sin now replaced with guilt
[note 42] Maori proverb: “There is a well of dissatisfaction in the heart of man, and hence vexation and anxiety.”
[pg 26] Unfulfilled wishes caused disease
Lovesickness (and homesickness) in medical textbooks until 19thC – sufferers would fade away and eventually die
[pg 27] Zar ceremony Egyptian women – sexually possessed by once month djinns
[pg 30] Primitive healing usually ceremony, which could be main therapeutic agent
-
collective treatment – group therapy
-
psychodrama
-
religious – gods invoked, myths reenacted
-
beauty therapy songs, rites, costumes
-
transference of disease to scapegoat
-
patient expected to join community after recovery
CHAPTER 2
Pathogenic secret – Moritz Benedikt from 1864 – 1895
mostly pertaining to sexual life
1775 exorcism transformed into dynamic psychotherapy by Mesmer
CHAPTER 3
[pg 164] 1880s concern about seduction and crimes committed under hypnosis lead to dispute between Nancy (possible) and Salpetriere (not possible) schools – lead to disputes in courts by expert witnesses. Bernheim also understood it was possible to suggest false memories.
[pg 172] Bernheim on suggestibility:
“It is incredible with what acumen certain hypnotized subjects detect, as it were, the idea which they ought to carry into execution. One word, one gesture, one intonation puts them on the track.”
CHAPTER 4
[pg 184] 1771 French explorer Bougainville first reported sexual freedom in Tahiti. Diderot commented that civilization creates internal conflict between “natural man” and “moral & artificial” man, so creates unhappiness. Repression of animal nature further developed by Nietzsche then Freud.
[pg 201] In 1799 Friedrich Schlegel controversially exhalated the notion of lasting love – Romantic love – as a fusion of physical passion and spiritual attraction.
[pg 204] Romantic idea of the fundamental bisexuality of humans
[pg 208 – 209] Schopenhauer:
“Man is incarnate sexual instinct, since he owes his origin to copulation and the wish of his wishes is to copulate.”
“In conflict with it, no motivation, however strong, would be sure of victory.”
“The sexual act is the unceasing thought of the unchaste and the involuntary, the ever recurring daydream of the chaste…”
[pg 213] Karl Ideler:
mental illness caused by ungratified sexual feelings. Strongest feeling is sexual love. Hysterical attacks are struggle of soul with itself.
[pg 274] Nietzsche:
“The degree and quality of a person’s sexuality finds its way into the topmost reaches of his spirit.”
also sublimation / repression / resentment when inhibited and unconscious, manifests as false morality.
[pg 292] Gardner:
Freud seems to have taken the natural inferiority of women for granted, since, in one of his early writings, he assumed that the stronger sexual repression in women is the cause of her intellectual inferiority.
Chapter 6 – Janet
development of language and memory [pg 390] religion / God / morality [pg 394 – 400]
Chapter 7 – Freud
Railway brain / spine – insurance claims. Male Hysteria presentation rejected by Society at meeting 5 Oct 1886 [pg 438]
[pg 448] when Freud gave lecture expounding theory of early seduction as a cause of hysteria, Krafft-Ebing remarked that it sounded like a scientific fairy-tale.
[pg 452] Motto from Aenid: “If Heaven I cannot bend. then Hell I will arouse” Juno summons Furies who with a band of enraged women attacked the Trojans.
[pg 487] By1896 Freud no longer spoke of psychological analysis, but called his own method psychoanalysis.
Actual Neurosis (present sex life)
= neurasthenia (caused by masturbation) or anxiety (caused by sexual frustration, particularly coitus interruptus)
Psychoneurosis (sexual history)
= hysteria (repressed sexual abuse) or obsession (if child was active participant and felt pleasure)
[pg 488] Childhood sexual experience “Source of the Nile in neuro-pathology.”
[pg501] Three Essays on Sexual Theory in 1905
-
Deviations – homosexuality (due to basic bi-sexuality)
-
Infantile sexuality – oral / anal / genital – polymorph perverse – effect of ‘primal scene’
-
Transformations in Puberty – libido fundamentally male
[pg 502] Freud pointed out the importance of this early education for the future love choice and destiny of the individual.
Zilboorg mentions ‘leagues of free love’ thriving all over Russia
[pg 506] Indian philosopher Vasubandhu – males seized by desire for mother and hate father, opposite for females (cf: Oedipus Complex)
Jacques-Antoine Dulaure – sexual symbolism in religions – universal cult of phallus
[pg 510] Testimonial Psychology – new and fashionable in 1909 – numerous examples of children false testimonies, which proved to be the response to unconscious suggestion (children having the uncanny ability to sense what adults expect them to testify)
[pg 513] Death Instinct – in 1908 rejected Adler’s idea of autonomous aggressive drive – but changed in 1915
[pg 523] hysteric’s concealed but always present aim: to seduce the therapist
[pg545] In Russia, Vassili Rozanov, the promoter of sexual transcendentalism, taught the holiness of sex… [note 522]
[pg 546] Catholic missionary Joseph Winthuis worked with Gunantuna tribe in New Guinea book: The Two-Sexed Being
double meaning words and gestures – obscene songs – bisexual god -[note 524]
[pg 550] “Freud’s most striking novelty was probably the founding of a “school” according to a pattern that had no parallel in modern times but is a revival of the old philosophical schools of Greco-Roman antiquity.”
Chapter 8 – Adler
[pg 596] Wilhelm Stekel – paper about early sexual experiences in children, with three clinical cases, attracted the attention of Freud who quoted it. [note 73]
[pg 623] Homosexual cuts himself off from the opposite sex, that is, half of mankind.
[pg 639] Karen Horney 1927 paper “Masculinity complex of Women” and approx 1930 : The Dread of Women”
Chapter 9 Jung
[pg 683 ] Jung and theologian Karl Barth share idea:
the essence of man is his complementary relationship to women and vice versa. [note 75]
[pg 688] Religious experiences, Jung added, are often accompanied by erotic emotions. Modern psychiatry was inclined to admit the existence of an interior connection between religion and the sexual instinct. [note 90]
[pg 695] Psychology of Rumours – a thirteen year old girl told schoolmates of a dream about a teacher, causing a scandal, and subsequent suspension. Witnesses had elaborated a number of scabrous (salacious) details. [note 114]
[pg 697] Evolution of Libido (psychic energy): stage 1 presexual (3-5 years), stage 2 NOT latent but germs of sexuality appear, stage 3 puberty, sexual maturity
[pg 721] I Ching / Tantric Yoga / synchronicity
Chapter 10 Dawn and Rise
[pg 756] Krafft-Ebbing Psychopathia Sexualis 1986 – influence of sexual life – basis of social feelings – sexuality is the source of the highest virtues as well as the vices.
[pg 764] Criminologist Hans Gross of Graz, Handbook of the Criminal Investigator 1891 – bad effects of and masks taken by sexual frustration
[pg772] Krafft-Ebbing response to Freud’s Studies in Hysteria – uncovering causal trauma does not cure symptoms, danger of repressed memory could emerge into consciousnesses in a fantastic and distorted fashion.
[pg 788] Weininger Sex and Character most successful psychology book of 1903 – woman continuously, man intermittently sexual – man has penis, vagina has woman – woman’s whole body is a dependency of her genitals. Sexist, anti-semetic. [note 178 and 179]
[pg 803] Freuds sexual theories fell on fertile ground. Krafft-Ebbings’s Psychopathia Sexualis in 1886 had had an extraordinary success in Vienna with the lay public, and specific interest in sexual matters had increased since then…fabulous success of Weininger’s book…
[pg 854] Group psychotherapy introduced 1932 by J. L. Moreno [note 433] dynamics of interpersonal relationships within the group situation.