Freud a psychopath? Certainly!

[Gawan]

Anyway, I just wanted to chime in that your initial reaction is understandable - and - as always, the devil is in the details, so we'll see.

Thank you anart, for chiming in, and as you wrote: the devil is in the details and there is left and right... ;)

 

[Gertrudes]

But there are many more good books on the subject in English. For example:

Induced delusions: The psychopathy of Freudism

and

The Psychoanalytic Movement: The Cunning of Unreason

Thanks Ailén, I was also very curious about Onfrey's book but would have to wait for a possible translation. I will save these 2 books on my wish list.

Anyway, I just wanted to chime in that your initial reaction is understandable - and - as always, the devil is in the details, so we'll see.

Thank you anart, for chiming in, and as you wrote: the devil is in the details and there is left and right... ;)

Fwiw I also thought that your reaction was understandable Legolas. Giving EGVG's mother who is a Freud's fan a book that portrays him as a psychopath, and even more so since she is a psychoanalyst herself, the gift, I thought, should perhaps be first carefully studied.

The link Mrs Tigersoap posted could also be a good start, particularly since there isn't yet an English translation for Onfrey's book.

 

[Cathryn]

Cubbex

With fears and more, and he talks about incest being (or that's what I understood) something normal on people.

I think you understand correctly here cubbex, and as the opening post title 'Freud a Psychopath' we can't know for sure but there are signs. A few years ago I met an analyst who was in that 'circle of people' but in the Jungian camp. She had no doubts at all that Freud had some deep complexes surrounding 'sex' which he projected onto almost every client. She also said that when Jung and Freud would talk and reveal their dreams to each other, Jung knew that Freud would not reveal his incest complex, instead there were huge bangs in the fabric of the bookcases in the room, an indication of the incredible energy required to keep those complexes in the shadow and discharge them energetically.

The lady who told me this was trained by Marie Louise Von France in Zurich, knew Jung, and I have no reason to doubt her, that it was not only the jewish/nazi association through which Jung and Freud disagreed, but the above complex.

I have no time whatsoever for Freudian theory except to study the effects of projecting the sexual shadow. If it walks like a duck.......

I am sure there are aspects to him which we shall never find out so he could very well be psychopathic.

fwiw

Cathryn

 

[cubbex]

So the free choice of EGVGs mother is still there, if she reads the book or not. Good to know.

Anyway, I just wanted to chime in that your initial reaction is understandable - and - as always, the devil is in the details, so we'll see.

Mmm interesting. Like Laura says (and more maybe), it's about probabilities.

I am sure there are aspects to him which we shall never find out so he could very well be psychopathic.

I have known lot of people that I may think they are psychopaths, but I do not have the courage to really say and accept they are, because it is difficult to have some evidence, because they may be some, how do you name them? pathological person (am I correct?) but not a psychopath. So, the main thing maybe is to know about those people, and from their fruits you will recognize them, what they did, what they think, and keep an eye on them.

edit: post reply

 

[RyanX]

I read Wilhelm Reich’s Listen Little Man. The ranting appears to be that of a man full of rage and contempt for normal men who do not recognize the greatness of Wilhelm Reich. I read this book with morbid fascination, as the raging of a madman. I see no compassion or empathy for mankind, only self pity and fury. I suggest readers examine Listen Little Man for the taste of pathology. You might look for self-assured arrogance and disdain for normal men and women.

I haven't read Listen Little Man other than a few excerpts, so I can speak to the any strain of pathology in that work by Reich.

I have read Reich's biography by Myron Sharaf titled Fury on Earth and it does not paint a pretty picture of the life of Wilhelm Reich. I was really put off by the way he treated women and collegues, but especially women. Although I don't have the book anymore, one can get a taste for Reich's lifestyle just from his wikipedia entry, of which Sharaf goes into much uglier detail in his book:

_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich

[quote author=Wikipedia]It was in Vienna that he met Annie Pink, a medical student who came to him for analysis, and who later became an analyst herself. They married on March 17, 1922, when she was 20 and Reich one week short of 25, with Otto Fenichel as a witness.[20] The marriage produced two daughters, Eva in 1924 and Lore in 1928...

Reich had several affairs during his marriage, including one with his wife's friend, Lia Lasky, in 1927. He and his wife finally separated in 1933 after he began a serious relationship in May 1932 with Elsa Lindenburg, a choreographer and dance therapist, trained in Laban movement analysis, and a pupil of Elsa Gindler.
[/quote]

[quote author=Wikipedia]Sharaf writes that, at a personal level, 1934–1937 was the happiest period of Reich's life. His relationship with Elsa Lindenberg was good and he considered marrying her. When she became pregnant in 1935, they were initially overjoyed, buying clothes and furniture for the child, but doubts developed for Reich, who felt the future was too unsettled. Sharaf writes that, to Elsa's great distress, Reich insisted on an abortion, at that time illegal. They went to Berlin, where Edith Jacobson, a psychoanalyst, helped to arrange it.[33]

In 1937, Reich began an affair with a female patient, an actress who was the ex-wife of a colleague. She had entered therapy with the explicit intention of seducing him, which he told her was impossible, but she succeeded. The analysis stopped because of the relationship, then the relationship ended and the analysis began again. She eventually threatened to go to the press, but was persuaded that it would harm her at least as much as him. When a colleague asked him why he had behaved this way, he replied, "A man must do foolish things sometimes."[34] He also had an affair with Gerd Bergersen, a 25-year-old Norwegian textile designer.[35]

During the same period, as the newspaper campaign against him gained pace, he suddenly developed intense jealousy toward Elsa, demanding that she share his work with him, and not have a separate life of any kind. He even physically assaulted a composer she was working with on some choreography. Elsa briefly considered calling the police but decided Reich couldn't afford another scandal. His behavior took its toll on their relationship, and when Reich asked her to accompany him to the U.S., she said no, writing later that it was the hardest "no" she had ever had to say.[36][/quote]

I believe there was even a story that Sharaf relates in the book where Reich drove one of his students or colleagues (I can't remember which) to suicide and seemed to show no remorse over it. I don't have the book anymore, so I can't recall the exact details, but the story did seem to stick out in my memory. Despite the fact that Sharaf praises Reich's scientific work in the biography, he really paints the man as a misogynistic narcissist or worse, imo.

FWIW.

 

[Iron]

Interesting RyanX. I will try to get my hands and read this book.
Surely the excerpts you pasted cast doubt upon the persona of Reich. The question that lies on my mind now is if his scientific work has merit.

EDIT: Thinking about it, I wonder if we are not hijacking the thread? I am most interested in uncovering the truth about Wilhelm Reich, but I wonder if we are not crossing a line.

 

[go2]

I am sitting here reading Fury on Earth by Myron Sharaf. Wilhelm Reich had a tragic childhood. He was beaten by his father. His mother had an affair with Reich's tutor and twelve year old Reich told his father about the infidelity. The violent father began beating Wilhelm Reich's mother and she committed suicide soon after and the father died a few years later. Reich's life cannot be understood without this crucial knowledge.

I appreciate the polarities of our network's various perspectives on the work of Wilhelm Reich. It led me to search for more facts on which to base my understanding. I now see Reich's crusade against male authority rooted in his violent childhood. It appears he never resolved his inner narcissistic armoring. Mr. Gurdjieff repeatedly illustrates in Tales, the impossibility of one projecting his own subjective experience and limited understanding of the world, to change that world. One cannot, nor should one attempt to change what one does not understand. First, physician, do no harm. It seems Wilhelm Reich did enormous damage to the traditional family structure of Western Culture in his naive, angry attempt to destroy the family structures of his troubled youth.

I first became aware of Wilhelm Reich by reading his book The Sexual Revolution during the Vietnam Era. His work was required reading in certain circles of want-to-be revolutionary young people. It is only after living through the decades long collapse of traditional family and child rearing structures in the USA that I began to make the connection with Reich's work as a strategy of communist and psychoanalytic movements to undermine and advance revolution by destroying the sexual and family traditions of Western Culture. Reich's work was used to condemn monogamy and delayed sexual activity. I participated in the "free love" and "open marriage" experiments common in the baby boomer generation. Most of the marriages failed and 50% of USA children are children of divorce. The number of children born to single parent homes is approaching 25% in the USA. Reich's ideas sound good to the young sensualist, but the impact on children, family, and life in the USA is a deep tragedy.

This being said, Wilhelm Reich refused to name or inform on his communist associates in the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s. He was not a coward. He knew at some level that he was becoming a martyr for his subversive views and activities. His life is an epic story with his contribution to bio energetics a positive and lasting accomplishment. The rest is destruction and tragedy.

I am interested in the details of the relationship of the young, deeply wounded Reich with his pathological teacher, Sigmund Freud. The wounded are vulnerable to manipulation by psychopaths. This may be the angle of ponerization or the origin of the pathology that characterize Reich's life and work. I will update as I read further in Fury on Earth. Myron Sharaf studied and worked with Reich for a decade. He is careful to make his subjectivity known to the reader so one can keep this subjectivity in mind when reading the book. It is a well written and thorough biography. Thanks everyone.

Interesting RyanX. I will try to get my hands and read this book.
Surely the excerpts you pasted cast doubt upon the persona of Reich. The question that lies on my mind now is if his scientific work has merit.

EDIT: Thinking about it, I wonder if we are not hijacking the thread? I am most interested in uncovering the truth about Wilhelm Reich, but I wonder if we are not crossing a line.

Iron, I think the mods will let us know if we wander too far off the trail. Wilhelm Reich's life and work offer clues into Freud's methods and agendas. This is a fascinating new perspective on Freud, ponerization, pathology, and history. I feel a bit like Sherlock Holmes searching for clues to great crimes. :)

 

[Laura]

I think that the mainstream reaction to Reich indicates that he was onto something important, but I also think that he was a literalist and was unable to really grok the true nature of what he was observing.

 

[Z...]

I always thought its amusing that Freud is only one letter removed from fraud.

Here is the extract from the book Reich and Gurdjieff: Sex and the Evolution of Consciousness by Brahinsky which in my opinion nicely summarizes the problem with Freud.

Because he could not discover what defense mechanisms are in concrete sense, Freud for example, as we shall see, continued to alter his concept of psychological health throughout his career, and this has continued in the field of psychology ever since. Psychological health remains poorly understood concept and a matter of debate among psychologists and psychiatrists because it is not grounded in a concrete understanding . Similar problems prevail in various esoteric traditions where different teachers and gurus claim to have reached higher consciousness, yet the would be student has no way to determine the validity of the claims. From Gurdjijeff's point of view this is not a good situation. Psychological health and disease, for him, is a matter of fact not opinion and the Fourth Way is supposed to be a way of knowledge not belief.

Somewhere in this book there is also account about the treatment Reich suffered from Freud and his psychopathic tendencies but I have to rush to work now. I will try to find it later.

 

[Iron]

I think that the mainstream reaction to Reich indicates that he was onto something important, but I also think that he was a literalist and was unable to really grok the true nature of what he was observing.

This is so far what I think. Like I said, I do not agree with all his points, however for someone to be so persecuted, he surely was stepping on some toes.

I am sitting here reading Fury on Earth by Myron Sharaf. Wilhelm Reich had a tragic childhood. He was beaten by his father. His mother had an affair with Reich's tutor and twelve year old Reich told his father about the infidelity. The violent father began beating Wilhelm Reich's mother and she committed suicide soon after and the father died a few years later. Reich's life cannot be understood without this crucial knowledge.

I appreciate the polarities of our network's various perspectives on the work of Wilhelm Reich. It led me to search for more facts on which to base my understanding. I now see Reich's crusade against male authority rooted in his violent childhood. It appears he never resolved his inner narcissistic armoring. Mr. Gurdjieff repeatedly illustrates in Tales, the impossibility of one projecting his own subjective experience and limited understanding of the world, to change that world. One cannot, nor should one attempt to change what one does not understand. First, physician, do no harm. It seems Wilhelm Reich did enormous damage to the traditional family structure of Western Culture in his naive, angry attempt to destroy the family structures of his troubled youth.

I first became aware of Wilhelm Reich by reading his book The Sexual Revolution during the Vietnam Era. His work was required reading in certain circles of want-to-be revolutionary young people. It is only after living through the decades long collapse of traditional family and child rearing structures in the USA that I began to make the connection with Reich's work as a strategy of communist and psychoanalytic movements to undermine and advance revolution by destroying the sexual and family traditions of Western Culture. Reich's work was used to condemn monogamy and delayed sexual activity. I participated in the "free love" and "open marriage" experiments common in the baby boomer generation. Most of the marriages failed and 50% of USA children are children of divorce. The number of children born to single parent homes is approaching 25% in the USA. Reich's ideas sound good to the young sensualist, but the impact on children, family, and life in the USA is a deep tragedy.

This being said, Wilhelm Reich refused to name or inform on his communist associates in the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s. He was not a coward. He knew at some level that he was becoming a martyr for his subversive views and activities. His life is an epic story with his contribution to bio energetics a positive and lasting accomplishment. The rest is destruction and tragedy.

I am interested in the details of the relationship of the young, deeply wounded Reich with his pathological teacher, Sigmund Freud. The wounded are vulnerable to manipulation by psychopaths. This may be the angle of ponerization or the origin of the pathology that characterize Reich's life and work. I will update as I read further in Fury on Earth. Myron Sharaf studied and worked with Reich for a decade. He is careful to make his subjectivity known to the reader so one can keep this subjectivity in mind when reading the book. It is a well written and thorough biography. Thanks everyone.

Interesting RyanX. I will try to get my hands and read this book.
Surely the excerpts you pasted cast doubt upon the persona of Reich. The question that lies on my mind now is if his scientific work has merit.

EDIT: Thinking about it, I wonder if we are not hijacking the thread? I am most interested in uncovering the truth about Wilhelm Reich, but I wonder if we are not crossing a line.

Iron, I think the mods will let us know if we wander too far off the trail. Wilhelm Reich's life and work offer clues into Freud's methods and agendas. This is a fascinating new perspective on Freud, ponerization, pathology, and history. I feel a bit like Sherlock Holmes searching for clues to great crimes. :)

I can see now on what your earlier post was based. You make sense. I really want this book now :)
I want to comment further on what you wrote go2, but Im short on time right now. Thank you nevertheless for bringing these excerpts to attention!

 

[scifiscriptwriter]

Thanks everyone for this.
Freud never made me 'feel' right. I read a bit on him about 30 years ago while living in Geneva, Switz. About the same time I was reading Eric Fromm's Art of Loving, and Joseph Chilton Pearce's, Magical Child, both of which I read several times with a year or two between each reading - found them both better balances than anything Freud had to say.

 

[cubbex]

I've read his essays about infantile sexuality, and I observed something. Freud created the psychoanalysis as a theory about personality, indeed, sometimes what he tells is interesting and true, but the way he expresses himself about a child is just as if he's talking about an object. You can read his essays and compare how he describes the way a child is forming his personality and the way Desmond Morris do the same at the first pages on "Intimate Behavior". Clearly, Desmond describes it with more empathy, it is warmer than Freud. Desmond explains that for example the sucking of a child is to bond with the mother and on posterior the pacifier and toys are used to remember the warm of a mother, like the touch with her skin and when she carries the baby, and this is related obviously to the pleasure the baby feels and comfort he has with it, as family love. Freud by the other hand explains it being cold, trying to say that a baby suck his mother's breast to feel an erotic pleasure, and then for example, when he talks about the stimulation of the anus he says that this is how a baby has now auto-erotic ways to please himself. And this is how supposedly, the personality is forming, and maybe it is but not on a normal human, maybe Freud lived his childhood in that way, we can't certainly know if his experiments with certain children can serve as prove that he was correct, a child is easily suggestible, the first child that he used I think to prove his Oedipus theory was mislead by the ways Freud and the child's father were experimenting Freud's theory, but really, can't prove if that's true.

Now, I don't understand why psychologist overvalue this theory, it is just cold, the theory says that the personality is made absolutely and only related to sexuality, how a child works his way with his/her sexual drive from 0 to 12-14. Even Desmond that tries to explain the importance of touch in humans as if we were animals, he reads more human than Freud, indeed the personality is not just made by how sexuality is taught, but how a child develops in this world in any direction, and how the ties with the child's family are formed. How love is taught, expressed or rejected in childhood is more important that the child's sexuality.

 

[EGVG]

Now, I don't understand why psychologist overvalue this theory, it is just cold, the theory says that the personality is made absolutely and only related to sexuality, how a child works his way with his/her sexual drive from 0 to 12-14. Even Desmond that tries to explain the importance of touch in humans as if we were animals, he reads more human than Freud, indeed the personality is not just made by how sexuality is taught, but how a child develops in this world in any direction, and how the ties with the child's family are formed. How love is taught, expressed or rejected in childhood is more important that the child's sexuality.

I think you have a very good point, Freud seems to not understand that we as humans are so much more than just bodily desires or needs. Sexuality is within the body structure and of course it has to deal with the real conscious self, that causes a lot of drama and that is just the human condition. However I think Freud has missed this and has completely wipe out the spiritual side , or the ethereal side of humanity, that I think its why his work seems cold and distant.

So I think that maybe his lack of understanding of the very simple things most of us can feel and grasp, sometimes without having the right words to expres or explain them (like LOVE), shows a Psychopathic personality, he can't feel it, so his work is emotionally numb and poor. I think that could be one of the reasons why his work is so respected in the academic world, because it is soul lees so it ends up being mechanical, like our body's.

 

[cubbex]

I think you have a very good point, Freud seems to not understand that we as humans are so much more than just bodily desires or needs. Sexuality is within the body structure and of course it has to deal with the real conscious self, that causes a lot of drama and that is just the human condition. However I think Freud has missed this and has completely wipe out the spiritual side , or the ethereal side of humanity, that I think its why his work seems cold and distant.

So I think that maybe his lack of understanding of the very simple things most of us can feel and grasp, sometimes without having the right words to expres or explain them (like LOVE), shows a Psychopathic personality, he can't feel it, so his work is emotionally numb and poor. I think that could be one of the reasons why his work is so respected in the academic world, because it is soul lees so it ends up being mechanical, like our body's.

No no Starmie. Freud got his academic awards because he contradicted behaviorism that see humanity as reaction machines so to speak, and we are indeed. Freud created the psychoanalysis as a method of study of the unconscious, supposedly a dark part of our psyche, and the psyche it's ethereal or spiritual, something you can't touch or size as you may know. So Freud was aware of the soul and all that tale, but he insisted always with sexuality.

 

[Gawan]

I think you have a very good point, Freud seems to not understand that we as humans are so much more than just bodily desires or needs. Sexuality is within the body structure and of course it has to deal with the real conscious self, that causes a lot of drama and that is just the human condition. However I think Freud has missed this and has completely wipe out the spiritual side , or the ethereal side of humanity, that I think its why his work seems cold and distant.

So I think that maybe his lack of understanding of the very simple things most of us can feel and grasp, sometimes without having the right words to expres or explain them (like LOVE), shows a Psychopathic personality, he can't feel it, so his work is emotionally numb and poor. I think that could be one of the reasons why his work is so respected in the academic world, because it is soul lees so it ends up being mechanical, like our body's.

No no Starmie. Freud got his academic awards because he contradicted behaviorism that see humanity as reaction machines so to speak, and we are indeed. Freud created the psychoanalysis as a method of study of the unconscious, supposedly a dark part of our psyche, and the psyche it's ethereal or spiritual, something you can't touch or size as you may know. So Freud was aware of the soul and all that tale, but he insisted always with sexuality.

I don't know if he really was a psychopath, but something was off with him, that's for sure. At least he is such a disturbed b&w white thinker, that is unbelievable (either you are with him or against him). His lies about his 'scientific' case-studies, where he officially claimed that he healed them and then in letters revealed, most often with Wilhelm Fließ, that he didn't. For example complained either the 'rat man' or 'wolf man' that things got worse after psychoanalysis and he never got healed, but this is just one example about the falsity of Mr. Freud, or better Mr. 'Grief'. One thing I found really funny, what Onfray wrote in the first pages of his book, that he won the 'Goethe-Prize' (a winning award for literature) and never a scientific nobel-price for his work.

Maybe it is good to see his influence in connection with Cleckleys book Caricature of love and how (sexual) disturbed people influenced society, because I did the same, Freud was praised as the man for psychology and so I read Freud many, many years back and thought it too, that he was a great man. And with that Freuds circle of psychoanalyst (the psychoanalyst-society) who met weekly or monthly in Vienna, could brought in other disturbed characters too, that they build kind of a clan or cult. But not to say that every offspring/pupil of Freud was disturbed.

And what makes me really curious is that some letters can be publicly read first in 2057, where I'm wondering what else is the Freudian society hiding?