Fairbairn 1 Background – J M Masson on Freud
[ Alternative TITLE ]
Psychology and Sustainability: 1. Matters of Truth, Freud, Fairbairn, Psychoanalysis, and Healing concerning Abuse and Psychic Disturbances.
This article series is an expansion of my paper “A Perspective on Sustainability in Relation with Evolutionary and Clinical Psychology” presented at the 15th Humanistic Psychology Conference on March 25th-27th, 2022, with added explanations.
About Ronald Fairbairn:
William Ronald Dodds Fairbairn (born: 1889-08-11—died: 1964-12-31) was a Scottish psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and a key figure in the development of the Object Relations Theory of psychoanalysis. (Wikipedia)
To explain Fairbairn, first, there should be some explanation of Freud’s psychoanalytic findings.
Up until Fairbairn’s time, psychoanalysis was limited to the wealthy population who knew such a thing ever existed.
All the data about psychoanalysis was according to this.
This seemed to have caused problems in the accuracy of psychoanalysis. The patient of these parents were wealthy and powerful parents who had considerable social influence in the political, economic, and educational spheres of society.
Therefore, whenever the result of the analysis was pointing to the direction that the cause of the problem was the parents’ fault, it was somehow distorted into the interpretation that children were the cause of their problem.
This was the biggest problem of Freudian psychology.
Initially, when Freud did psychoanalysis first, he realized that most of the patients with hysteria/neurosis had a history of sexual harassment/abuse from their fathers.
However, when Freud initially presented this finding in medical society, he was ridiculed. The response was that ‘Are we to believe that these respectable wealthy and powerful members of society were child molesters?’ Not only that, some of the patients he analyzed were children of that very same medical society. So that meant that some of those people who were sitting on the panel who were listening and reviewing Freud’s findings were child molesters.
I don’t think society wanted to accept the truth of reality. Also, some of those abusers were in powerful and well-respected positions in society and well-protected by society without much questioning. Not only that, in the male-dominated Victorian society where everything about sex was for the satisfaction of males and females was viewed as weak and illogical, this reaction was a matter-of-fact consequence from the such background. Especially because most of Freud’s patients were female and most of the perpetrators who these patients accused were male and fathers with powerful and influential positions in politics, economy, and education.
Nonetheless, Freud was initially insisting on the truth of what he had found for some years. The Vienna Psychiatric Society’s response was that of ridicule and willful ignorance. Freud described it as “an icy reception from the jackasses”1 at the time. Freud called his initial theory “Seduction Theory” as hysteria and other neurosis were caused by seduction from the fathers.
However, most likely because of the threat of his career being destroyed, he changed his initial position and created the theory that neurosis is caused by their own internal sexual aggression of patients, which manifested as ‘complexes.’
To say it as ‘psychological complexes’ is correct. However, the cause of them was not, by Freud ‘modified’ analytical theory.
The record of this was from the Archive of Sigmund Freud. Anna Freud, who was Sigmund Freud’s daughter and also a psychoanalyst, was in charge of this archive and granted access of this archive to Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, who was also a trained Freudian psychoanalyst. Masson later became the Project Director of the Freud Archives with full access to Freud’s unpublished work and correspondents.
Masson concluded that Freud may have abandoned his seduction theory because Freud could not advance his theory of psychoanalysis and also was unable to keep his position in a psychiatric association with that theory.
In 1981, Masson himself was dismissed from his position as project director of the Freud Archives, and his membership to the society was revoked in psychoanalytic professional societies due to his controversial conclusions on this matter.
When Masson first presented this finding, his reception was similar, if not worse, to the reception Freud initially received.
When Masson first learned Freudian psychoanalysis, he said that he can still remember the day that he and his teacher were talking about child sexual abuse. One of the senior analysts who was teaching the course said “You realize of course that’s only a female fantasy. There is no such thing, or it’s so rare that you will never see it. You will never see a case of incest. It’s all in the head of the woman.”
He said “I beg your pardon? That sounds absolutely absurd and ridiculous.” So he did not endear himself to the teacher-analyst complaining about this. In Wikipedia;
“In 1970, Masson began studying to become a psychoanalyst at the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute, completing a full clinical training course in 1978. His training analyst was Irvine Schiffer, a well-known Toronto analyst and author of books on the unconscious aspects of charisma and time. In 1990 Masson published an autobiographical book in which he accused Schiffer of cursing, being constantly late for sessions, and intimidating Masson when the latter complained about this issue. [4] Schiffer denied it and debated Masson on the Canadian television programme Fifth Estate.”
Masson recalls that basically, he told Masson to shut up and wait till Masson had more experience and read more Freud than Masson would understand. Interestingly, this kind of patronizing is common in Confucian culture as well.
“When Freud first presented his paper in 1896 Etiology of Hysteria about the link between sexual abuse and neurosis, no female was present there. Freud had 18 patient samples in that paper, 12 women and 6 men. They have all been traumatized in childhood, almost exclusively by sexual abuse. And his audience gasped – men. His colleagues mocked him. They made fun of him, saying that Freud was only interested in sexual perversion. They said, he makes it like a fairytale, it is a simple not true gentleman, etc.” (Masson)
In Sigmund Freud’s letter that was not published by Anna Freud, Mr. Freud said in it:
“They can all go to hell. I am going to publish this. I believe I am right.”
Mr. Freud insisted on the Theory of Seduction (=commentary on rape) for some years. He believed this very strongly for a few years as well. However, gradually he came to renounce that.
Masson said to Ms. Freud that he was sorry, he just doesn’t believe this story (that all these 18 people were lying to Dr. Sigmund Freud). It doesn’t seem plausible with all due respect. He said, “May I see the letters that you kept back from the Freud-Fliess edition that she published in 1950?” The unpublished portion had 165 letters (Anna claimed that it was nobody’s business. She said they were not of any scientific interest. They were personal, and they would never see the light of the day). At first, Anna Freud said no. But later she accepted to open up the entire archive.
The words got out that Masson was publishing his edition of the entire Freud-Fliess correspondents. That’s when all hell broke loose. They (the analysts) with ones in New York City were calling Anna Freud and were very upset. Masson gave a paper about it and they were furious. They blamed Masson for being paranoid, saying, “You believe these women, these hysterical women?”
Masson recalls that some of the patients were protesting to their therapists such as, “Wait a minute doc, I told you I was abused, but you told me it was all fantasy. Now here is what I have been telling you as the truth. What do you make of that?”
They fired Masson from the Project Director position at Sigmund Freud Archive.
Masson was a speaker at a psychoanalysts’ meeting in Holland where he presented his finding. The audience was enraged. Finally, (because there were a lot of women in the room) he said, are there any women in this room who have been abused? They were absolutely furious that he would ask such a question. The moderator intervened. He said, “That question is illegitimate. Do not answer that. This man is a madman.” This was in 1981.
As Mr. Masson said, we have progressed a huge amount, but it still is not easy to say about this kind of subject.
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References:
Breuer, J., & Freud, S. (1955). Studies on Hysteria. (J. Strachey, Trans.). Basic Books. (Original work published 1895).
Masson, J. M. (2012). Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing. Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing.
Masson, J. M. [Gentle Finds] (2021 May 19). Animals Teach Us: Life, Love and Values, with Jeffrey Masson. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJz8H4abONk
Masson, J. M. (1984). The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory. Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads.
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Moussaieff_Masson
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Ronald Fairbairn. Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fairbairn