Review: Freud and the Post-Freudians

Freud and the Post-Freudians by J.A.C. Brown

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really enjoyed this book much more than I expected. I am no Freudian or necessarily fan of his work before this. However, it did make me realize he was the first to approach the subject of personality and personality disorders scientifically. Before there was Freud, there was no analysis; no psychoanalysis. While it seems simplistic, now, Freud and his contemporary saw a homology to physiological processes. The break-through during analysis was seen like the ejection of foul material from a lanced boil. For the history, I was fascinated to learn the bevvy of “shell-shocked” WWI veterans that became raw material to try out Freudian and post-Freudian ideas on. In this rich market, I do not understand why Freud never developed a theory that did not require the impractical near-daily, multi-year bout of therapy. However, develop his theory he did, adding the ego and superego and getting away from the early focus on the infantile period, genitals, and toilet behavior. Apparently, his own reluctance to publish made it difficult for his own image to evolve.
On the infantile period, I did come to realize this must be important, like the import of the joke I heard Steven Wright tell: We all realize we’re going to die at some point, why is that moment never forgotten? In this work: “The baby hunger is a frightening situation…the very young child, with no more than a minimal appreciation of time , is unable to bear tension; he does not possess the knowledge, so consoling to older human beings, that loss, frustration, pain, and discomfort are usually but temporary and will be followed by relief.” (This in the text as if original to author J.A.C. Brown, but I see it is also in Dryden's Handbook of Individual Therapy and Man, Morals And Society: A Psycho-analytical Study by Flugel from 1945, so I don’t know who it is original to.)
Just as Freud changed over time, so do personality disorders, means the tools to treat them may need to change: “…most psychiatrists are increasingly interested in and puzzled by changing patterns of the neuroses, by the virtual disappearance of gross conversion hysteria and the corresponding increase of character disorders.
Some of all the constellation of symbolism which I long though simplistic and unbelievable is here directly assaulted: “Why, for example, should Rank and others insist that bowls and containers represent the enveloping womb when there is no other conceivable means of containing, and why should child analysts suppose a child pushing a train through a tunnel is simulating parental intercourse when … it seems obvious that … there are only two things a child could do with a train and tunnel – obligingly push the train or smash both of them.” And, even Jung gets his attacks: “…if Jung has read any modern science this is certainly not apparent in his works, which seem to take a leap from … schizophrenics or deteriorated elderly gentlemen and pass by way of the murky forests of Teutonic affairs straight into the arms of Indian and Chinese mysticism.”

I really liked the emphasis on an anthropological dimension where the lack of corresponding age-specific personality disorders in various, remote culture belie the innate psychic structure (pp. 188-9). Also, the implication to me is that we cannot understand what is innately, uniquely human without being able to separate what is sociological or cultural. That is, we may not be able to scientifically adjudge the psychic structure without using diverse cultures as a means test, a hypothesis test of what really resides in the mind of every man to be disordered. A lot of this makes me want to read Margaret Mead who is often quoted in these sections. “…creating personality boils down to the old problem: does the hen (culture) come from the egg (childhood situation) or the egg from the hen? Do people develop in a particular way because of what has happened to them in their childhood (psychoanalytic viewpoint)— or do parents behave in a particular way to their children because "society" or "culture" makes them do just those things (sociological viewpoint)? What happens if we assume the priority of the hen, i.e. of culture? This is what most anthropologists actually do. This view has been presented with certain modifications by Dr. Kardiner. The standpoint taken by this author (and many others) is that institutions confront the individual as external forces whatever their origin and as such they are responsible for molding and forming the personality of that individual. Dr. Kardiner believes that a human being in every society finds himself confronted by certain basic disciplines, a set of institutions to which he reacts in a certain way and in doing so becomes the author of another set of group phenomena. So this is really a compromise theory: half a hen lays an egg and from that egg we get the other half of the hen. But apart from this the crucial point is a very simple one. The basic disciplines (Kardiner) are what parents do to the children. Now if we can show that parental behavior is dependent on climate or in any other way on external conditions the theory might be helpful in explaining the ways of mankind. . But this is by no means the case. There are no environmental factors which make a Balinese mother behave in such a peculiarly cruel way to her children, so the sociological thesis cannot be reasonably maintained.” (Another Brown quote that shows in a 1945 work: Psychoanalysis Today)

It seemed these anthropological facts assailed orthodox Freudianism. “The Freudian assumption of the fixity of human nature began to fare badly in the 1930s when Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead produced a series of studies which demonstrated how very flexible human nature is when observed against different cultural backgrounds.”

My main belief bolstered here is that every human seeks safety, security, and self-control. Enabled, formed, or expressed methods to obtain these are disorders in often a sociological definition or context. Karen Horney seems to explore this reasoning a lot: “Horney saw the compulsive nature of neurotic drives in a quite different light… the neurotic’s overt drive for ‘love’, ‘power’, or ‘withdrawal’ is not really a drive for these things at all, but basically a search for security and freedom from anxiety. He does not want to give affection but needs to receive assurance that he will not be hurt, he does not want power… but in order to escape from anxiety produced by his feelings of inferiority. …neurotic drives are compulsive because they are motivated by anxiety.” This motion away from anxiety to security is a basic as the paramecium’s motion from darkness to light.

“From disagrees with these implications of Freudian theory, and bases his own theory on the two assumptions: (a) that the fundamental problem of psychology has nothing to do with the satisfaction or frustration of any instinct… but is rather that of the specific kind of relatedness of the individual to the world, and (b) that the relationship between man and society is constantly changing and is not, as Freud supposed, a static one.”

This all builds to an enlightening view of humanity: “Man, unlike any other creature, is aware of himself as a separate being, is able to store up the knowledge of the past in symbolic form and visualize the possibilities of the future, and by his imagination he can reach beyond the range of his senses… He is an anomaly, a ‘freak of the universe’” … now Brown begins quoting Fromm but I don’t think he always credits appropriately and clearly: “‘…part of nature, subject to her physical laws and unable to change them, yet he transcends the rest of nature. He is set apart while being a part; he is homeless, yet chained to the home he shares with all creatures. Cast into this world at an accidental place and time, he is forced out of it, again accidentally. Being aware of himself, he realizes his powerlessness and the limitations of his existence. He visualizes his own end: death. Never is he free from the dichotomy of his existence: he cannot rid himself of his mind, even if he should want to; he cannot rid himself of his body as long as he is alive—and his body makes him want to be alive.’”

I am still trying to understand am a bit awed by this conclusion: “Freud's work will make an even greater impact in the future when it is removed from the category of an expensive and prolonged method of treatment for a minute portion of the population carried out by practitioners who often have very little interest outside their own speciality and sometimes adopt a paranoid and contemptuous attitude towards the rest of the world… Psychoanalysis has so much to offer that it is absurd that it should be restricted in this way, and it is to the credit of the Americans, whether we agree with their conclusions or not, that they should have been the first to make the attempt to break down the barriers. For the explanation of the irrational is the special task of the twentieth century.” Have we done any better for our part in the 21st Century?




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