Freud's Father A Sexual Monster and An Ideology of Abuse?

[brekin]

I keep telling my students that I’m not interested in a Freudian reading of Shakespeare but a kind of Shakespearean reading of Freud. In some sense Freud has to be a prose version of Shakespeare, the Freudian map of the mind being in fact Shakespearean. There’s a lot of resentment on Freud’s part because I think he recognizes this. What we think of as Freudian psychology is really a Shakespearean invention and, for the most part, Freud is merely codifying it. This shouldn’t be too surprising. Freud himself says “the poets were there before me,” and the poet in particular is necessarily Shakespeare. But you know, I think it runs deeper than that. Western psychology is much more a Shakespearean invention than a Biblical invention, let alone, obviously, a Homeric, or Sophoclean, or even Platonic, never mind a Cartesian or Jungian invention.

This is such a rich idea, seems resoundingly "right," somehow, & could/should be a thread (or book) in its own right (and of course raises the old "Shakespeare-as-psyop?" question).

Somewhat related, re-re-re-rereading Crime & Punishment now (my idea of light reading), and on the back it has a quote from Nietzsche, calling Dostoyevsky "the only psychologist I have anything to learn from."

I think it is also in Bloom's Invention of the Human where he talks about Freud's unacknowledged debt to Nietzsche. If I remember correctly, Freud claimed he never read Nietzsche because he didn't want to be unduly influenced with what possible parallel lines he was working on! Bloom (or someone) proves that Freud was heavy into Nietzsche in his student days. Alfred Adler pretty much teased out the Will to Power strains in Psycho-Analysis, amplified them and created his Individual Psychology. Jung was always more generous with Nietzsche's influence and I wish I had more time to read his two volume seminar on Zarathustra.

In a related vein, Dostoyevsky was a sexual deviant according to Somerset Maugham who said in his, I believe, Ten Novels and their Author's, was obsessed/haunted by an incident where he sexually abused a very young girl in a bathhouse. (Maugham incidentally was no stranger to perversions summering on Capri and known to partake in the young local boys that were procured for the large foreign homosexual community that frequented the place. Krupps, the war supplier was so voracious in this respect that he uncommonly was forced to leave the island. See The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham.)

Dostoyevsky's work is peppered with this:

Another vivid scene in Crime and Punishment contains Svidrigailov's final dreams, dreams that refer to his rape of a girl, her death, and the mixed wishes to care for and sexuallly abuse another, a very young girl. The theme of the abuse of young children, and specifically the sexual abuse of young girls, had a strong grip on Dostoevsky's imagination--it is at the center of the suppressed chapter of The Possessed (Stavrogin's confession) and appears in The Eternal Husband, and other places. Dostoevsky was drawn to it with fascination and horror, it represented the ultimate crime and source of guilt. I suggest this was because it symbolized the most powerful source of rage and guilt in his own life: the wish to attack his own mother and the children who were rivals for her love.
...
On a more speculative note, one wonders if, as a child, Dostoevsky did not act/play out his feelings of desire and rage with one or more of his young sisters. In the closed-in world of the hospital, Vavara, one year younger, might have been a likely partner for games that expressed both his need for physical-sexual contact and his anger. The evidence for this comes from several sources, mainly in the novels.
Dostoevsky: The Author as Psychoanalyst pgs 79-80

I'm sure Dostoyevsky then was a psychologist who could teach Nietzsche (and Freud) something. Nietzsche himself, I believe in Jones Libido Dominandi, talked of wishing to be a sexual of terrorists of sorts and spreading his syphilis forcefully on whoever he wanted in the streets. Nietzsche, Freud and Dostoyevsky all had major sister complexes which probably no doubt exacerbated their misogynistic tendencies.

[guruilla]

In a related vein, Dostoyevsky was a sexual deviant according to Somerset Maugham who said in his, I believe, Ten Novels and their Author's, was obsessed/haunted by an incident where he sexually abused a very young girl in a bathhouse. (Maugham incidentally was no stranger to perversions summering on Capri and known to partake in the young local boys that were procured for the large foreign homosexual community that frequented the place. Krupps, the war supplier was so voracious in this respect that he uncommonly was forced to leave the island. See The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham.)

Dostoyevsky's work is peppered with this:

Another vivid scene in Crime and Punishment contains Svidrigailov's final dreams, dreams that refer to his rape of a girl, her death, and the mixed wishes to care for and sexuallly abuse another, a very young girl. The theme of the abuse of young children, and specifically the sexual abuse of young girls, had a strong grip on Dostoevsky's imagination--it is at the center of the suppressed chapter of The Possessed (Stavrogin's confession) and appears in The Eternal Husband, and other places. Dostoevsky was drawn to it with fascination and horror, it represented the ultimate crime and source of guilt. I suggest this was because it symbolized the most powerful source of rage and guilt in his own life: the wish to attack his own mother and the children who were rivals for her love.
...
On a more speculative note, one wonders if, as a child, Dostoevsky did not act/play out his feelings of desire and rage with one or more of his young sisters. In the closed-in world of the hospital, Vavara, one year younger, might have been a likely partner for games that expressed both his need for physical-sexual contact and his anger. The evidence for this comes from several sources, mainly in the novels.
Dostoevsky: The Author as Psychoanalyst pgs 79-80

I'm sure Dostoyevsky then was a psychologist who could teach Nietzsche (and Freud) something. Nietzsche himself, I believe in Jones Libido Dominandi, talked of wishing to be a sexual of terrorists of sorts and spreading his syphilis forcefully on whoever he wanted in the streets. Nietzsche, Freud and Dostoyevsky all had major sister complexes which probably no doubt exacerbated their misogynistic tendencies.

I did find myself wondering about Dos yesterday — simply because it begins to seem as if every major figure in world history has some sort of association with the Monster Factory of PIE-Eaters — not literally, necessarily, but in terms of an affinity with or predisposition towards such “deviance.” I put the latter in quotes because, at the point when a behavior or “complex” starts to be seen as endemic, the question arises, deviance from what? What do we measure it against?

For example, the mention of “sister complex” is quite jarring for me because I have begun to suspect, or realize, that I have one of them myself. It’s been evident only through dreams and via one “minor” incident (recalled) in my childhood, but with all the inner work/examination I’ve been doing in the past few years, and especially months (some of it right here at RI), it’s getting harder and harder to avoid it. I won’t go all the way into confession mode because this isn’t the place for it, but I will say that, barring any forgotten childhood memories, all of my sexual deviance has been in the realm of fantasy and suppressed desires. However, if someone were to read everything I’ve ever written a hundred or two hundred years from now (including unpublished stuff), they might well conclude that I too was “a sexual deviant”— wrongly as it happens, unless I am to be judged for my fantasy life, too.

So I think there’s a danger, always, in painting a picture of the past, or present, with too wide a brush. This seems to have been hinted at by Wombat over at the Occult Yorkshire thread, in the comparison between G.B. Shaw (a eugenicist who proscribed disposing of unproductive citizens) and Jonathan Swift, a satirist (also active in politics) who wrote about cannibalism. Where is the line to be drawn? Who CAN be trusted when it comes to past or present influences?

I was asking myself this question last night about Dos — why do I keep returning to this novel? Is it because it has some true therapeutic value for me, or is it because Dos was a deviant and it appeals to the deviant in me, and I want to keep alive a part of me, like fingering a wound so that it never quite heals? The answer, I think, is somewhere between the two — whether or not Dostoyevsky ever acted on his obsessions and dark desires, he was, I think undoubtedly, the victim of someone else doing so to him in his own childhood, and either way (either by acting out or by writing about them, or both), he was certainly trying to bring about some sort of psychic healing.

In a way this makes his work that much more valuable, and I think it’s true of Freud too (I think Dostoyevsky was far more self-aware than Freud was, but that may be my bias). The only way to learn of these psychic wounds (besides self-examination, which is all-but unthinkable without some sort of example to follow) is by hearing the testimonies of the wounded; it’s probably inevitable that those who are most able to communicate their inner experience, who have the eloquence, insight, and intellect to turn them into coherent narratives, are going to be most effective in this regard — but at a price. The price may be two-fold: on the one hand, through intellectual understanding they can create a distance from their experience; they get to sublimate/refine a pathology rather than expunge it (and to expunge it would probably entail a full “possession” by it, a reliving of the original source of it, which is potentially annihilating). By turning trauma, dissociation, and deviance into classic literature, revolutionary philosophy, or the basis for a system of psychology, these men may be submitting to the spell of pathology under the delusion of transforming/transcending it. This would then extend to others — the authors would be experiencing a degree of catharsis/healing by off-loading their demon-complexes onto others, infecting them with their “genius” and spreading the meme or soul-virus further afield. (In simple terms, they would be making the world more compatible with, and forgiving towards, their own pathology.)

A spiritual teacher (Dave Oshana) once told me that I was a rare case of someone who proved Freudian theory, that my life was like a textbook example of Freud’s theories. Recently, I’ve wondered if he’s right. As with Dostoyevsky, I seem to have a strong affinity (i.e., similar psychic make up combined with formative experiences) to Freud. Maybe, if Freud essentially extended his own neurosis/self-examination/ healing journey into/onto the collective psyche, via psychology, that made it an irresistible model for me — if the shoe fits. But this may not be true for everyone, or even the majority, and for those who still try to apply Freudian ideas (or Nietzschean or Dostoyevskian ones), because they think they’re sourced in some sort of universal genius of truth, trouble will invariably ensure. Which is not to say it didn’t for me, but I have no regrets about my chosen “role models” — if only because they were the best I could find. Now I’m moving towards a letting go of all role models and, in the end, I think this is the only thing that works — learning to trust our own judgment and not needing to look for guidance, inspiration, examples, or even knowledge, outside of oneself.

Not meaning to turn this into a polemic, and this isn’t exactly, “on topic,” but then again, it is, at least insofar as the best shot we have at parsing out good from bad influences, harmful from helpful aspects of Freud or whoever’s work, is by looking at it, fair and square, through our own lived experience. Doing what Freud did and turning our own lives into a model for healing (only without trying to save the world while we’re at it!)

The “monster factory” is the world we were born into and churned out of. Deciding that my former heroes were monsters and therefore to be reviled isn’t the answer, IMO: it’s more about recognizing that they became my heroes because they were monsters: so what does that say about me?

[brekin]

In a related vein, Dostoyevsky was a sexual deviant according to Somerset Maugham who said in his, I believe, Ten Novels and their Author's, was obsessed/haunted by an incident where he sexually abused a very young girl in a bathhouse. (Maugham incidentally was no stranger to perversions summering on Capri and known to partake in the young local boys that were procured for the large foreign homosexual community that frequented the place. Krupps, the war supplier was so voracious in this respect that he uncommonly was forced to leave the island. See The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham.)

Dostoyevsky's work is peppered with this:

Another vivid scene in Crime and Punishment contains Svidrigailov's final dreams, dreams that refer to his rape of a girl, her death, and the mixed wishes to care for and sexuallly abuse another, a very young girl. The theme of the abuse of young children, and specifically the sexual abuse of young girls, had a strong grip on Dostoevsky's imagination--it is at the center of the suppressed chapter of The Possessed (Stavrogin's confession) and appears in The Eternal Husband, and other places. Dostoevsky was drawn to it with fascination and horror, it represented the ultimate crime and source of guilt. I suggest this was because it symbolized the most powerful source of rage and guilt in his own life: the wish to attack his own mother and the children who were rivals for her love.
...
On a more speculative note, one wonders if, as a child, Dostoevsky did not act/play out his feelings of desire and rage with one or more of his young sisters. In the closed-in world of the hospital, Vavara, one year younger, might have been a likely partner for games that expressed both his need for physical-sexual contact and his anger. The evidence for this comes from several sources, mainly in the novels.
Dostoevsky: The Author as Psychoanalyst pgs 79-80

I'm sure Dostoyevsky then was a psychologist who could teach Nietzsche (and Freud) something. Nietzsche himself, I believe in Jones Libido Dominandi, talked of wishing to be a sexual of terrorists of sorts and spreading his syphilis forcefully on whoever he wanted in the streets. Nietzsche, Freud and Dostoyevsky all had major sister complexes which probably no doubt exacerbated their misogynistic tendencies.

I did find myself wondering about Dos yesterday — simply because it begins to seem as if every major figure in world history has some sort of association with the Monster Factory of PIE-Eaters — not literally, necessarily, but in terms of an affinity with or predisposition towards such “deviance.” I put the latter in quotes because, at the point when a behavior or “complex” starts to be seen as endemic, the question arises, deviance from what? What do we measure it against?

For example, the mention of “sister complex” is quite jarring for me because I have begun to suspect, or realize, that I have one of them myself. It’s been evident only through dreams and via one “minor” incident (recalled) in my childhood, but with all the inner work/examination I’ve been doing in the past few years, and especially months (some of it right here at RI), it’s getting harder and harder to avoid it. I won’t go all the way into confession mode because this isn’t the place for it, but I will say that, barring any forgotten childhood memories, all of my sexual deviance has been in the realm of fantasy and suppressed desires. However, if someone were to read everything I’ve ever written a hundred or two hundred years from now (including unpublished stuff), they might well conclude that I too was “a sexual deviant”— wrongly as it happens, unless I am to be judged for my fantasy life, too.

So I think there’s a danger, always, in painting a picture of the past, or present, with too wide a brush. This seems to have been hinted at by Wombat over at the Occult Yorkshire thread, in the comparison between G.B. Shaw (a eugenicist who proscribed disposing of unproductive citizens) and Jonathan Swift, a satirist (also active in politics) who wrote about cannibalism. Where is the line to be drawn? Who CAN be trusted when it comes to past or present influences?

I was asking myself this question last night about Dos — why do I keep returning to this novel? Is it because it has some true therapeutic value for me, or is it because Dos was a deviant and it appeals to the deviant in me, and I want to keep alive a part of me, like fingering a wound so that it never quite heals? The answer, I think, is somewhere between the two — whether or not Dostoyevsky ever acted on his obsessions and dark desires, he was, I think undoubtedly, the victim of someone else doing so to him in his own childhood, and either way (either by acting out or by writing about them, or both), he was certainly trying to bring about some sort of psychic healing.

In a way this makes his work that much more valuable, and I think it’s true of Freud too (I think Dostoyevsky was far more self-aware than Freud was, but that may be my bias). The only way to learn of these psychic wounds (besides self-examination, which is all-but unthinkable without some sort of example to follow) is by hearing the testimonies of the wounded; it’s probably inevitable that those who are most able to communicate their inner experience, who have the eloquence, insight, and intellect to turn them into coherent narratives, are going to be most effective in this regard — but at a price. The price may be two-fold: on the one hand, through intellectual understanding they can create a distance from their experience; they get to sublimate/refine a pathology rather than expunge it (and to expunge it would probably entail a full “possession” by it, a reliving of the original source of it, which is potentially annihilating). By turning trauma, dissociation, and deviance into classic literature, revolutionary philosophy, or the basis for a system of psychology, these men may be submitting to the spell of pathology under the delusion of transforming/transcending it. This would then extend to others — the authors would be experiencing a degree of catharsis/healing by off-loading their demon-complexes onto others, infecting them with their “genius” and spreading the meme or soul-virus further afield. (In simple terms, they would be making the world more compatible with, and forgiving towards, their own pathology.)

A spiritual teacher (Dave Oshana) once told me that I was a rare case of someone who proved Freudian theory, that my life was like a textbook example of Freud’s theories. Recently, I’ve wondered if he’s right. As with Dostoyevsky, I seem to have a strong affinity (i.e., similar psychic make up combined with formative experiences) to Freud. Maybe, if Freud essentially extended his own neurosis/self-examination/ healing journey into/onto the collective psyche, via psychology, that made it an irresistible model for me — if the shoe fits. But this may not be true for everyone, or even the majority, and for those who still try to apply Freudian ideas (or Nietzschean or Dostoyevskian ones), because they think they’re sourced in some sort of universal genius of truth, trouble will invariably ensure. Which is not to say it didn’t for me, but I have no regrets about my chosen “role models” — if only because they were the best I could find. Now I’m moving towards a letting go of all role models and, in the end, I think this is the only thing that works — learning to trust our own judgment and not needing to look for guidance, inspiration, examples, or even knowledge, outside of oneself.

Not meaning to turn this into a polemic, and this isn’t exactly, “on topic,” but then again, it is, at least insofar as the best shot we have at parsing out good from bad influences, harmful from helpful aspects of Freud or whoever’s work, is by looking at it, fair and square, through our own lived experience. Doing what Freud did and turning our own lives into a model for healing (only without trying to save the world while we’re at it!)

The “monster factory” is the world we were born into and churned out of. Deciding that my former heroes were monsters and therefore to be reviled isn’t the answer, IMO: it’s more about recognizing that they became my heroes because they were monsters: so what does that say about me?

Thanks for your honest words. I think for me the wheel turns on whether the theories or work of art is based on the actual exploitation or victimization of someone. Coincidentally, I was reading Colin Wilson's Sexual Misfits last night (he also talks about Dostoevsky's biographers believing he committed an act of sexual abuse against a small girl that obsessed/haunted for the rest of his life.) and he makes a good case of how some truly deviant people choose substitute outlets for their deviance (artistic works, non-human or non-animate objects for their deviance, etc) instead of acting on others with their impulses. Swinburne would be an example of someone who for the most part didn't carry out his dark fantasies on others, while Marquis De Sade less so, and Arthur Koestler (someone who I greatly admired intellectually before I found out was a rapist) not at all. Of course, I can still read Koestler and profit from it, but I can't pretend I don't weigh his proclamations against the fact that he doesn't respect the most basic rule of civilization. I think real heroes fight monsters, and kill or tame them, even, especially, the ones inside them.

I do agree with you that there may be a catharsis/healing trap that the creators can fall into and in which are then perpetuated onto readers. Interestingly, Dostoevsky's The Possessed deals with this in a sense, utopian/revolutionary thought being a form a form of demonic possession that grips and infects others with promises of fulfillment. I think the antidote is again, whether such endeavors are just a screen to victimize others or to assuage the guilt over previous victimization.

Of course, it isn't always that neat. Even if Freud was not abused and an abuser I think a good case could be made that he has done generations of those who have suffered from sexual abuse and incest, to put it mildly, a gross injustice. His works directly pertain to questions of abuse and victim's rights and so even if he personally is blameless in his personal life, his works skew the culture in a certain direction. Even more extreme and fantastical, if say somehow Shakespeare was actually Jack the Ripper with the powers of time travel then that would be a difficult pill to swallow. But even then, all of this elevates works of art over actual humans and their sufferings. There is a interesting exchange (of course ironically in a Woody Allen film) where two people are arguing whether it is more just to run into a burning museum and save a person standing in front of the Mona Lisa, or the Mona Lisa. All Art is actually a condensation and reflection of real human life, so while I believe Dostoevsky and Freud were brilliant geniuses- if they were abusers of the innocent then I think the book needs to be thrown at them. I think if true then they deserved to be reviled. You don't have to burn down Penn State to get rid of a Sandusky.

Why empathize with them, when the silent victims of theirs were fodder for their great works for which they were never compensated? I'm not calling for censorship or suppression of their works, but they do need a reevaluation. Anything less is just the high brow equivalent of forgiving the star high school quarterback of his occasional rapes because he's taken the town to state a few times. A rather more pedestrian example is the new X-men film. I would very much like to go see it because it is just the right dose of mindless escapism I could use right now. As I read more about the case against the director though I don't think I can patronize such a living person knowing I'm funding such misdeeds.

[brekin]

Related to what we've been talking about with Dostoevsky and Freud:

The Possessed (The Demons)
Censored chapter

The government censor, at the time Dostoevsky submitted his book, suppressed the chapter "At Tikhon's", which concerns Stavrogin's confession of having molested a 12 year old girl, causing the girl to commit suicide. The chapter gives insight into the reason that Stavrogin later hangs himself, as his guilt for this transgression and others, including the murder of his wife and brother in law, ultimately catch up with him. Stavrogin is depicted as the embodiment of nihilism, being apathetic, lacking empathy, devoid of emotion, but his ultimate suicide makes clear that in the end he had a conscience and was overwhelmed by his guilt. The chapter is generally included in modern editions of the novel and also published separately, translated from Russian to English by S. S. Koteliansky and Virginia Woolf and edited by Sigmund Freud.[5][6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demons_%28 ... ite_note-5

[guruilla]

I think for me the wheel turns on whether the theories or work of art is based on the actual exploitation or victimization of someone.

When I wrote Paper Tiger (not to say it was a work of art) it was “based on the actual exploitation or victimization of someone”—myself. I don’t mean to be splitting hairs, but I think this is more than just a question of semantics. For me at least, the question isn’t what a work of art is based on, so much as what the intent behind it is. If, to use the current example, Dostoyevsky committed a crime (what he himself considered the one unforgiveable sin—the corruption of an innocent), and then spent the rest of his life trying to expiate his guilt by writing about it (indirectly), that’s very different from basing works of art on the exploitation of others, as I think you mean it, or on using writing to justify himself or create a cover for continued exploitation.

Of course, I can still read Koestler and profit from it, but I can't pretend I don't weigh his proclamations against the fact that he doesn't respect the most basic rule of civilization. I think real heroes fight monsters, and kill or tame them, even, especially, the ones inside them.

Yes, and they don’t need to create art/found religions, etc. to do so—in fact I’d say the chances are much lower for success if one is compromised by the desire to receive acceptance and respect (forgiveness, validation) from “the world” than if one simply works away quietly at transmuting the lead of trauma into the gold of self-acceptance. I agree that having some idea of what an artist is “made of”—what they get up to in their private lives—is important, even essential, to know how to receive, or even if to receive, the stuff they put into the world. The trouble is that, most of the time, we never really know, and all we have are the works. So the best measure may be simply examining carefully how those works have affected us, and continue to do so, as our awareness increases.

To cite the OP example (Freud’s abusive father and how that and other incidents informed and distorted his work): presumably the goal is to use an increased knowledge of Freud’s biography to separate the valid from the invalid in his writings? Not simply to decide that Freud is “damaged goods” and redact him from history.

I think the antidote is again, whether such endeavors are just a screen to victimize others or to assuage the guilt over previous victimization.

These seem like two very different questions to me. What if all art comes out of a desire to “assuage guilt”? Is there a clear line between trying to justify or whitewash one’s “sins” and trying to place them in a deeper context in order to better understand them?

In the case of Dostoyevsky, the question (as far as I can see, and assuming there’s truth in the allegations) seems to be—should he have confessed and faced justice, rather than keep his crime secret and try and do penance in his own way, through writing (there can be little doubt that he suffered immensely, whether from guilt or not)? I’m not sure I can answer that. Is there any greater or harsher judge than one’s own conscience, at least if it’s sufficiently attuned? We aren’t talking about Jimmy Savile here after all, and the accused listed (Freud, Dos, Nietzsche) aren’t exactly slackers when it comes to self-examination. So, he who is without sin, and all that. The real injustice may be better laid at the feet of society (ourselves) for canonizing these characters and being complicit with their all-too-human weaknesses, and our desire to turn monstrous distortions into “the stuff of heroes.”

Even if Freud was not abused and an abuser I think a good case could be made that he has done generations of those who have suffered from sexual abuse and incest, to put it mildly, a gross injustice. His works directly pertain to questions of abuse and victim's rights and so even if he personally is blameless in his personal life, his works skew the culture in a certain direction.

Yeah, it does seem unavoidable that “Siggy” bent to both internal and external pressure to “bury the bodies” and scapegoated the very people he was supposed to be helping, as a way to keep his own wounds from being exposed. If he had taken the more honorable path, he would have had to be prepared not only to come unraveled himself (as Jung apparently did), but to abandon the cause of psychology. And we might never have heard of him— ironic, innit?

Even more extreme and fantastical, if say somehow Shakespeare was actually Jack the Ripper with the powers of time travel then that would be a difficult pill to swallow. But even then, all of this elevates works of art over actual humans and their sufferings. There is a interesting exchange (of course ironically in a Woody Allen film) where two people are arguing whether it is more just to run into a burning museum and save a person standing in front of the Mona Lisa, or the Mona Lisa. All Art is actually a condensation and reflection of real human life, so while I believe Dostoevsky and Freud were brilliant geniuses- if they were abusers of the innocent then I think the book needs to be thrown at them. I think if true then they deserved to be reviled. You don't have to burn down Penn State to get rid of a Sandusky.

But how exactly would the book be thrown at them? Freud’s reputation certainly isn’t what it once was, but ironically that has little to do with any sort of justice being done. As I suggested before, if Dostoevsky committed such an act, that doesn’t necessarily make his work less valid or worthwhile, and it may even make it more so (certainly more “interesting”). If he continued to commit similar acts in adulthood, while writing his masterpieces, that would obviously be different; it would make a mockery of his seeming compassion, empathy, and all the rest, and I’d really be stumped if that turned out to be the case.

For me, allowing that possibility (or the Jack-the-Ripper-as-Shakespeare one), what surfaces like a monstrous cloud before me has little to do with how worthy these men are to be cultural heroes, but how much my own powers of discernment would have to be questioned and examined, and how much more careful I do need to be about the kind of stuff I take into my psyche and call “art” (i.e., psychic “medicine”).

Funnily enough, I just wrote a book about this subject. I practically had to turn myself inside out to do it, and it led me down the rabbit hole of the Occult Yorkshire thread, which I am still descending, one reluctant step at a time.

Why empathize with them, when the silent victims of theirs were fodder for their great works for which they were never compensated? I'm not calling for censorship or suppression of their works, but they do need a reevaluation.

Everything does, IMO. Sans excepcion.

Anything less is just the high brow equivalent of forgiving the star high school quarterback of his occasional rapes because he's taken the town to state a few times.

Not exactly, because these individuals are dead, so they can’t be brought to “justice.” (I have to put it in quotes, because I don’t believe a corrupt society can administer anything like justice, at best only vengeance.) But I understand what you mean, our culture worships “remarkable men” and women and is prepared to give them an extra wide berth for their transgressions, when actually they ought to be held to an even higher standard than ordinary folk, precisely because we have raised them up to the level of icons, leaders, and role models.

Unfortunately, a culture that raises certain individuals up also degrades others, and sometimes the very same ones it elevates; there doesn’t seem to be any sense of a third way—that of simply letting ourselves see what’s there without making a value judgment (good? bad?) about it. Of course “Art,” capital A, can only exist within a climate of socially-sanctioned value judgments. But Art, capital A, might be little more than a great big dissociation strategy (psyop), and I have started to think that, in a certain sense, we might all be better off without it.

A rather more pedestrian example is the new X-men film. I would very much like to go see it because it is just the right dose of mindless escapism I could use right now. As I read more about the case against the director though I don't think I can patronize such a living person knowing I'm funding such misdeeds.

I hear you, and I feel the same way, though I think it has less to do with not wanting to fund misdeeds than not wanting to contaminate my psyche with seemingly “harmless” entertainment behind which festers a hidden “backstory” of sexual exploitation, corruption, and cruelty. But that’s Hollywood. If I was really able to stand on that principal (and I wish I was, frankly), I wouldn’t watch anything ever again.

As it is, I try to keep to homeopathic doses. (Addicted to Mad Men & Game of Thrones. )

[brekin]

I hear you gurilla. I think we pretty much agree more or less on the main points. My main grievance is use of source material of exploitation for abuse for personal gain or even selfish cathartic reasons. I'm a big believer in art therapy and think people can find some solace, possibly redemption, through channeling their dark stuff into creative outlets. This is good for the individual and society. But we shouldn't neglect those who were the victims of the original crime. And further, using such actual source material for private gain, to feed your fame monster or rationalize or assuage your guilt, though, is a different matter. (By "your" btw I mean everyone.) Freud and Dostoyevsky were notoriously hungry for fame, adulation from the masses they often times looked down upon, and were completely balls to the walls obsessed with money. Those guys were no Emily Dickinson's. (Nietzsche however was.)

Their works have benefited society in some ways and continue to do so in various ways, but they weren't created solely (or probably at all) for pure artistic or scientific reasons. Dostoevsky was a gambling addict and wrote as many letters begging money from everyone he knew as he did his publishers to procure advances to get ahead of his debtors. And if Freud was alive today he would make Dr. Phil look like a shrinking violet. He had in his office a cartoon of two lions on the African savannah with the caption "Slow day, no Negroes." and referred to his clients as such Negroes that he got for his profit. Freud's prose is in many ways novelistic because he desired the status and mystique of the great literary writers and philosophers instead of the anonymous plodding scientific man. He also cultivated and pursued wealthy clients purely for his benefit and was incensed with other competing psychoanalyst rivals who broke away and captured rich nobles and industrialists he had his sights on. To be crass: these guys were in the game for the dough, ho's and limo's.

This is not to say the either are unusual. Most creative people are as selfish as they are immature in some realms. But since their reputation and wealth was possibly built in part, or possibly a large part, on the backs of those people they victimized, who were never compensated. And you can say those victimized were re-victimized because their abusers profited from their crimes or collusion of them. Whether status wise or monetarily. Freud's psychoanalysis is hugely autobiographical and he often used his own history as disguised case histories as did most other psychoanalysts. Further, Freud profited from denying the actual facts that he was originally led to from the numerous victims of incest who he treated. It is kind of like the chief police inspector of Vienna at that time denying the facts of numerous victims of sexual abuse who came to him. (Incidentally, a television show is in the works with Freud as a secret detective on the side in Vienna.)

I think a good litmus test would be Nabakov's Lolita. Moral flaws aside, technically and aesthetically it is a well crafted novel. We can possibly forgive it's pov because in some ways it explores a taboo subject and creates a reference point in the culture. However, if Nabokov mined his own real events of the exploitation of a minor to produce the book then that is a different matter.* Isn't it? Similar to Son of Sam laws where we don't allow criminals to profit from book deals or other promotional proceeds of their crimes, some "criminals" have only been implicated in criminal acts after they have died. That is not to say such works may not be, great, in some senses. If you were a serial killer with a eye for design you could probably make a pretty amazing throne out of skulls of your victims, and the act of making the throne could help you process and work through your crimes. But for the culture to celebrate you and your work that is a completely different matter. It is basically saying that some people, usually the innocent, can be sacrificed on the altar of art for our greater edification.



*As far as most accounts go Nabokov didn't. Although in one of the documentaries about Hunter S. Thompson, in the extras, he talks about an incident where he saw Nabokov in the lobby of a ski lodge with a adolescent girl. Thompson's manner suggests it was, to say the least suggestive and odd.

[guruilla]

In lieu of a fuller response for now: this discussion reminded me of this book, which I haven't read, nor do I plan to:

THE GATES OF JANUS: Serial Killing and its Analysis, by the 'Moors Murderer,' Ian Brady
Introduction by Colin Wilson

According to one reviewer: "Brady's argument [is] that serial killers refuse to be grey blobs on the canvas of life, and that their 'will to power' is comparable to wild streaks of colour, a celebration of life through art..."

I found that phrase a bit chilling, because my brother, who corresponded with Myra Hindley in his 20s, later described himself as "a futile burst of colour in a colourless, futile world"....

From what I read, the book is Brady's Ayn Randian glorification of serial killing. It comes from Feral House, who seem to have gone all the way over to the dark side of sub-Nietzschean psychopath-chic.

Funnily enough, in Crime & Punishment, before Raskolnikov commits the murder, he writes an essay that provides a rationale for exceptional individuals to commit acts that, if committed by lesser mortals, would be crimes; to these few extraordinary types, they are simply a necessary part of advancing the race as a whole. I think it's a common, maybe almost universal, attitude, whether or not nakedly expressed, of "creative" (i.e., unusual, and socially subversive) individuals -- that ordinary social laws don't apply to them. Artists and criminals do seem to belong to overlapping "castes".... Not really leading to a point now, just thinking out loud before I "veg out" with some more C & P! (This discussion certainly adds nuance to my latest reading.)

I suppose after a lifetime's aligning myself with the "extraordinary" creative man, and even while I now see that as a delusion, I can't shift my allegiance to "society" or consider what benefits it as per se desirable. I have a really hard time thinking of the concept of society as a positive.

[brekin]

In lieu of a fuller response for now: this discussion reminded me of this book, which I haven't read, nor do I plan to:

THE GATES OF JANUS: Serial Killing and its Analysis, by the 'Moors Murderer,' Ian Brady
Introduction by Colin Wilson

According to one reviewer: "Brady's argument [is] that serial killers refuse to be grey blobs on the canvas of life, and that their 'will to power' is comparable to wild streaks of colour, a celebration of life through art..."
I found that phrase a bit chilling, because my brother, who corresponded with Myra Hindley in his 20s, later described himself as "a futile burst of colour in a colourless, futile world"....

From what I read, the book is Brady's Ayn Randian glorification of serial killing. It comes from Feral House, who seem to have gone all the way over to the dark side of sub-Nietzschean psychopath-chic.
Funnily enough, in Crime & Punishment, before Raskolnikov commits the murder, he writes an essay that provides a rationale for exceptional individuals to commit acts that, if committed by lesser mortals, would be crimes; to these few extraordinary types, they are simply a necessary part of advancing the race as a whole. I think it's a common, maybe almost universal, attitude, whether or not nakedly expressed, of "creative" (i.e., unusual, and socially subversive) individuals -- that ordinary social laws don't apply to them. Artists and criminals do seem to belong to overlapping "castes".... Not really leading to a point now, just thinking out loud before I "veg out" with some more C & P! (This discussion certainly adds nuance to my latest reading.)

I suppose after a lifetime's aligning myself with the "extraordinary" creative man, and even while I now see that as a delusion, I can't shift my allegiance to "society" or consider what benefits it as per se desirable. I have a really hard time thinking of the concept of society as a positive.

Interestingly, Colin Wilson in his own A Criminal History of Mankind posits that major crimes by individuals (and possibly nations I think) roughly reflect Maslows hierarchy of needs. Early on it was simply for survival that most individual and mass crimes were committed but as time went on and basic human needs were met many major crimes were committed out of twisted attempt at a form actualization. The obvious example is the terrorist from a well educated, affluent and seemingly well brought up background who because of a inferiority complex is obsessed with correcting some slight or injustice out of proportion to the grievance. Or more generally the evil that suburban kids routinely do. Wilson talks about how Maslow developed his theory trying to reconcile Freud and Adler, and ended up with Adler believing that a lot behavior is based on attempts at dominance.

Circling back to Freud, Dos & co, one could argue that creating a narrative that others believe to be true and adopt as reality is one of the greatest, if not greatest, forms of dominance. "Exceptional" individuals tend to believe, because they generally have more than a little touch of a messiah complex, that their destroying and destruction of cultural norms are creative and liberating. The overlap of the artist and criminal as you noted. Another weird Dostoevsky parallel:

Historical origins
Demons is a combination of two separate novels that Dostoyevsky was working on. One was a commentary on the real-life murder in 1869 by the socialist revolutionary group ("People's Vengeance") of one of its own members (Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov). The character Pyotr Verkhovensky is based upon the leader of this revolutionary group, Sergey Nechayev, who was found guilty of this murder. Sergey Nechayev was a close confidant of Mikhail Bakunin, who had direct influence over both Nechayev and the "People's Vengeance".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Possessed_%28novel%29

Mikhail Bakunin

After long wrangles with his father, Bakunin went to Berlin in 1840. His stated plan at the time was still to become a university professor (a “priest of truth,” as he and his friends imagined it), but he soon encountered and joined students of the "Young Hegelians" and the socialist movement in Berlin. In his 1842 essay The Reaction in Germany, he argued in favor of the revolutionary role of negation, summed up in the phrase "the passion for destruction is a creative passion."[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin

I would say that like Rasholkniv, Freud wasn't essentially arguing for anarchy or freedom for all individuals, but just specific ones. Repression for most to keep civilization running, but "liberties" allowed for others by jettisoning the seduction theory. This is less revolutionary reform and more criminal entitlement. I am reminded how Dostoyevsky's father was murdered by his own serfs because he brutalized them so much. Dos himself was known to treat servants despicably.

Freud and Dos, are in many ways revolutionaries against the established orders of their times, criminals of exceptional abilities, who ended up being turned and working for the establishment. Just a wild-ass-guess but this re-embrace of the dominant ideology could be related to seeking relief from the guilt of their possible sexual crime(s). Dostoyevsky originally a revolutionary, after his imprisonment became a fervent nationalist with theocratic leanings. Freud, a sexual revolutionary, ended up covering up the sexual abuse of the ruling patriarchy against their own families and the servant class.
I could see Freud, especially, possibly having the great desire to recast the narrative of sexual mores of his time and dominate the terms of discussion. This would be expected. But I could see this desire to be based on a neurotic need to expunge himself, and his father, and possibly the patriarchy at the time, of the guilt they carried from institutional abuse. To do so, though, Freud would have to destroy the truth in a creative fashion. His mythologizing and ornate abstractions of sexual abuse symptoms as projections and chains of unending symbols can be read as one such creative destruction.

[guruilla]

one could argue that creating a narrative that others believe to be true and adopt as reality is one of the greatest, if not greatest, forms of dominance.

This ^^^ is such a powerful truth and it seems like everything I've written and explored over the past few years circles back to it -- my attempt to shake the dominance of that imposed narrative. I guess it's also RI's mission statement of sorts: "What we don't know can't hurt them."

Too beat for a fuller response, after another week of massive-house-renovating (speaking of creative-destruction!), but I just wanted to express my appreciation for this comment. & it all comes back to families -- the mundane imposition of false narratives that we are all born into.

Sexual monsters and abusive ideologies!

[brekin]

one could argue that creating a narrative that others believe to be true and adopt as reality is one of the greatest, if not greatest, forms of dominance.

This ^^^ is such a powerful truth and it seems like everything I've written and explored over the past few years circles back to it -- my attempt to shake the dominance of that imposed narrative. I guess it's also RI's mission statement of sorts: "What we don't know can't hurt them."

Too beat for a fuller response, after another week of massive-house-renovating (speaking of creative-destruction!), but I just wanted to express my appreciation for this comment. & it all comes back to families -- the mundane imposition of false narratives that we are all born into.

Sexual monsters and abusive ideologies!

Indeed. I often wonder if the seed for innate conspiracy is borne from sexual false narratives, both repressive and abusive. On the one hand even in most modern, "healthy" homes you have the denial, or silent omission, of one of the most basic healthy, life giving forces of life. And then on the other hand you can have the deeper conspiracy of a household where "silent" abuse is taking place. In both instances energy is going into building a false narrative.

[brekin]

Regarding dominant cultural narrative scripts - I think the case of Ernest Jones, the English Freudian who was Freud's official biographer and the person probably most responsible for facilitating Freud's popularity among the English speaking is the case history exemplar that illustrates how Freud's disavowal of the seduction theory actually was retrograde and a holding to conservative patriarchy.

Specifically, I had assumed that Freud's thesis that much of children's suggestion of sexual abuse was fantasizing was a novel proposition when he brought it forth. But in the proto-Freudian Ernest Jones's very own criminal case against him in 1906, dealing with sexual abuse against youth he was examining for speech tests, we see that it actually was old hat. In March 1906, two years before Jones met Freud, Jones a doctor at the time, was accused by four pupils ages 12 and up, out of 28 he had been individually examining at a school for retarded children, of "acting and speaking in a grossly indecent manner". Basically it seems from four eye witness testimonials, and from the evidence of a table cloth that was submitted as evidence to all appearances that had semen on it, he had made sexual requests, and most likely fondled, abused at least the four who reported what happened to the head mistress.

Jones was arrested, spent the night in jail and their was an inquest and it went to trial. Now the thing to remember is that in 1906 psycho-analysis was still in its nascent state, especially in England. The Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1900 but not translated into English until 1913.
Jones was familiar with Freud at the time of this incident, and had started learning German the previous year to better understand Freud better but one couldn't say that Pyscho-Analysis was the lingua franca it later became between the institutions of family, school, medicine and law. But look at the following reactions to the event, and how "Freudian" one could say the reactions were to the charges. (All text in quotes is from Brenda Maddox's Freud's Wizard pages 41-48.)

Originally the head mistress dismissed the allegations of the first two girls, and boy, who complained and only when a fourth said something did she contact a medical officer. Remember this is all within a matter of hours on the same day. The medical officer came, but not before he brought his good friend Jones (the alleged assailant) with him to conduct the interviews of the children.

After being debriefed by a few of the girls one of the mothers said

"What Jones had done was 'shameful, disgraceful and disgusting'. Jones, never at a loss for words, replied, "My good woman, if I did that, I would deserve to be horsewhipped and put in an asylum.' At that point the LCC's Dr. Kerr intervened and told the irate mother to be reasonable: "I'm afraid the girls have made this up between themselves.' He told her to go home and rest easy: "I feel sure this has never occurred.' Mrs. Freemen shot back, "If you try to quieten me, you cannot quieten my husband."

When Jones was being arrested he said to the police'

"Is it in connection with the Edward Street affair?" he asked. Told that it was, Jones protested, "It only rests on the statement of those two girls." (They told him about the table cloth at that point.)

"All the prejudices of the male Edwardian world were brought to bear in his defense. ...when Dr. Kerr explained why, in his initial investigation at the school, he had formed the impression that the girls had made the story up between themselves. In his experience, defective children were often precocious and talked of sexual matters."
...

"The Magistrate: Are you sure they are both mentally defective?
Witness: Quite sure.
Mr. Bodkin: [For the defence]: Their family history proves that.

"According to the Daily Post, the defence counsel the continued:
Rodkin: Romancing, with illustrative detail is not unknown, even in courts of justice. (Laughter)
Mr Baggally: Particularly by women. (More laughter)"


"That settled it. The case was literally laughed out of court. The magistrate knew that no jury would convict on the evidence of mentally unreliable children. After acquitting Jones and proclaiming his complete vindication, Baggally, according to Jones autobiography, 'took the unusual step of sending me a friendly and sympathetic letter."

Far from being a pariah due to this incident Jones professional colleagues, bodies and journals all rallied around him with his acquittal. There were society dinner invitations, subscriptions for his legal expenses, favorable articles in the Lancet and British Medical Journal and newspapers.

I see some key things here:

1. There was a tradition and cultural norm of dismissing children's allegations of sexual abuse by parental and authority figures.
2. This was doubly so when the children were considered "mentally defective".
3. These allegations were dismissed as fantasy making pre-Freudian by the medical, education and law establishments.
4. Jones was acquitted because his victims were deemed to be mentally defective due to their family history.

Enter Freud:

5.Freud went on to frame and dismiss most children's later allegations or symptoms of sexual abuse as adults as fantasy and them as "mentally defective".
6.He deemed them, and everyone really, mentally defective (repressed neurotics suffering from Oedipus and Electra Complexes, etc) "due to our family histories".
7.And since he mythologized out all of our family histories into one universal family history for mankind; we are all now in the same boat as the four students who came forward with allegations against Jones. We are all mentally unreliable children now. And remember: No jury is going to convict on the evidence of mentally unreliable children.

Intentionally, or not, Jones trial is an example of a disavowal of the seduction theory in action in the very year (1906) when Freud was struggling with keeping it or not. This could just be complete coincidence. But it is alarming that Freud's later most long standing confidant and booster to the world is someone who personally and vividly illustrated the mechanism and effects of denying the seduction theory. I think of all the people Freud casted out: Gross, Jung, Adler, Reich, Rank, Ferenczi, Reik, etc, and it is Jones he clung to until the end.

In 1896 Freud published his so-called seduction theory which proposed that the preconditions for hysterical symptoms are sexual excitations in infancy, and he claimed to have uncovered repressed memories of incidents of sexual abuse for all his current patients.[6] However by 1898 he had privately acknowledged to his friend and colleague Wilhelm Fliess that he no longer believed in his theory, though he did not state this publicly until 1906.[7] Though in 1896 he had reported that his patients "had no feeling of remembering the [infantile sexual] scenes," and assured him "emphatically of their unbelief,"[8] in later accounts he claimed that they had told him that they had been sexually abused in infancy. This became the received historical account until challenged by several Freud scholars in the latter part of the 20th century who argued that he had imposed his preconceived notions on his patients.[9][10][11] However, building on his claims that the patients reported infantile sexual abuse experiences, Freud subsequently contended that his clinical findings in the mid-1890s provided evidence of the occurrence of unconscious fantasies, supposedly to cover up memories of infantile masturbation.[12] Only much later did he claim the same findings as evidence for Oedipal desires.[13]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalysis

[Sounder]

This exchange and thread with guruilla and brekin has been fantastic. From my side of things ‘extraordinary’ folk suck because they are ‘raised’ up only if they support social conditioning lies in especially convincing ways. What benefits society is the only measure of usefulness and while ‘extraordinary’ folk talk a lot about society, anyone that looks can see that mostly they ‘support’ themselves and their class, at the expense of society.

Do folk think that Fabian types intend to divest themselves of their own vast property holdings as part of their dreams for an engineered society? No, instead means are created to raise cost of living for regular folk while rich folk skate away with the money they laughingly extort from the ‘rubes’.

guruilla wrote...

Funnily enough, in Crime & Punishment, before Raskolnikov commits the murder, he writes an essay that provides a rationale for exceptional individuals to commit acts that, if committed by lesser mortals, would be crimes; to these few extraordinary types, they are simply a necessary part of advancing the race as a whole. I think it's a common, maybe almost universal, attitude, whether or not nakedly expressed, of "creative" (i.e., unusual, and socially subversive) individuals -- that ordinary social laws don't apply to them. Artists and criminals do seem to belong to overlapping "castes".... Not really leading to a point now, just thinking out loud before I "veg out" with some more C & P! (This discussion certainly adds nuance to my latest reading.)

I suppose after a lifetime's aligning myself with the "extraordinary" creative man, and even while I now see that as a delusion, I can't shift my allegiance to "society" or consider what benefits it as per se desirable. I have a really hard time thinking of the concept of society as a positive.

Yes, that is the objective of the abuse.

Boy, won’t that be something when folk learn to recognize extraordinary folk without them having been ‘raised’ up by our decrepit normative modeling of reality.

Oh dear, what if we find out that there are many more extraordinary folk out there than what we been told.

[Sounder]

The following might be better placed in the Jimmy Carter thread, but is included here to try to illustrate to inquiring minds some of the mechanics behind maintaining ‘the big lie’. Central to the big lie is to maintain object oriented expressions of consciousness. Scientific materialism has been a great aid in this regard. Another option would be to promote relationship expressions of consciousness, but unfortunately for some, this might spark actual use of imagination to resolve conflict. From the power POV, all things must remain as objects to put in their place.

Samuel P. Hunting man does not think the ‘natives’ are ‘capable’ of ‘democracy’, gee what a surprise. Methinks Coca-Cola has a bit of a different ‘vision’ about what harmony means compared to the singers in their ad-verts from the seventies.

(Western man kills every representation of indigenousness it can find, and then co-opts its core value of interdependence into a marketing plow (sic) for, yes you guessed it, transnational corporations.)

Bernays must be so proud of his step children.


http://modernhistoryproject.org/mhp?Art ... ning&C=9.1

When James Earl Carter took the oath of office, he said that the "United States will help erect ... a world order." This self-proclaimed "outsider" filled many of his administrative posts with establishment insiders from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Brookings Institution, and the Coca-Cola Company [whose headquarters are in Atlanta, Georgia]. Extracted from Coke were George Ball, Clark Clifford, Samuel P. Huntington, Marshall Shulman, Richard Gardner, Henry Owen, Robert Roosa, and J. Paul Austin. Because of the extent to which he used the company when he was governor, he called the Coca-Cola company his "own State Department."

The Trilateral Commission had accomplished its goal of controlling the Presidency, and it heralded that fact by making Jimmy Carter Time magazine's Man of the Year in January, 1977. The Editor-in Chief for Time was Hedley Donovan, a Rhodes Scholar and a member of the Commission.

• Commission members must resign when they accept positions in the Executive branch, but they remain loyal, and usually rejoin the group when their service is complete. About 40% of the American Trilateral members joined the Carter Administration. In all, 291 members of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations joined the Administration

[Elihu]

The following might be better placed in the Jimmy Carter thread, but is included here to try to illustrate to inquiring minds some of the mechanics behind maintaining ‘the big lie’. Central to the big lie is to maintain object oriented expressions of consciousness. Scientific materialism has been a great aid in this regard. Another option would be to promote relationship expressions of consciousness, but unfortunately for some, this might spark actual use of imagination to resolve conflict. From the power POV, all things must remain as objects to put in their place.

Samuel P. Hunting man does not think the ‘natives’ are ‘capable’ of ‘democracy’, gee what a surprise. Methinks Coca-Cola has a bit of a different ‘vision’ about what harmony means compared to the singers in their ad-verts from the seventies.

(Western man kills every representation of indigenousness it can find, and then co-opts its core value of interdependence into a marketing plow (sic) for, yes you guessed it, transnational corporations.)

Bernays must be so proud of his step children.


http://modernhistoryproject.org/mhp?Art ... ning&C=9.1

When James Earl Carter took the oath of office, he said that the "United States will help erect ... a world order." This self-proclaimed "outsider" filled many of his administrative posts with establishment insiders from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Brookings Institution, and the Coca-Cola Company [whose headquarters are in Atlanta, Georgia]. Extracted from Coke were George Ball, Clark Clifford, Samuel P. Huntington, Marshall Shulman, Richard Gardner, Henry Owen, Robert Roosa, and J. Paul Austin. Because of the extent to which he used the company when he was governor, he called the Coca-Cola company his "own State Department."

The Trilateral Commission had accomplished its goal of controlling the Presidency, and it heralded that fact by making Jimmy Carter Time magazine's Man of the Year in January, 1977. The Editor-in Chief for Time was Hedley Donovan, a Rhodes Scholar and a member of the Commission.

• Commission members must resign when they accept positions in the Executive branch, but they remain loyal, and usually rejoin the group when their service is complete. About 40% of the American Trilateral members joined the Carter Administration. In all, 291 members of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations joined the Administration

but capitalism right?

[brekin]

brekin wrote:

Far from being a pariah due to this incident Jones professional colleagues, bodies and journals all rallied around him with his acquittal. There were society dinner invitations, subscriptions for his legal expenses, favorable articles in the Lancet and British Medical Journal and newspapers.

I see some key things here:

1. There was a tradition and cultural norm of dismissing children's allegations of sexual abuse by parental and authority figures.
2. This was doubly so when the children were considered "mentally defective".
3. These allegations were dismissed as fantasy making pre-Freudian by the medical, education and law establishments.
4. Jones was acquitted because his victims were deemed to be mentally defective due to their family history.

Enter Freud:

5.Freud went on to frame and dismiss most children's later allegations or symptoms of sexual abuse as adults as fantasy and them as "mentally defective".
6.He deemed them, and everyone really, mentally defective (repressed neurotics suffering from Oedipus and Electra Complexes, etc) "due to our family histories".
7.And since he mythologized out all of our family histories into one universal family history for mankind; we are all now in the same boat as the four students who came forward with allegations against Jones. We are all mentally unreliable children now. And remember: No jury is going to convict on the evidence of mentally unreliable children.

Intentionally, or not, Jones trial is an example of a disavowal of the seduction theory in action in the very year (1906) when Freud was struggling with keeping it or not. This could just be complete coincidence. But it is alarming that Freud's later most long standing confidant and booster to the world is someone who personally and vividly illustrated the mechanism and effects of denying the seduction theory. I think of all the people Freud casted out: Gross, Jung, Adler, Reich, Rank, Ferenczi, Reik, etc, and it is Jones he clung to until the end.

It is interesting how many professional colleagues and orgs rallied to Jones cause. During this time he had fallen from grace and was dismissed from a full time hospital position because he left the premises unaccounted for three times. He had a hard time finding work after that and had to pick up side jobs here and there as a medical school tutor, anesthesiologist, consultant and take in private patients. He was a bit of a wunderkind regarding mastering the medical material and his work ethic, but was very condescending and had some obvious moral failings (m.i.a. as hospital doctors to visit his gf at the time.) So his championing was more of a common professional cause.

This response below was typical:

The British Medical Journal reported the case 'happily concluded' and dismissed it as 'nothing more than a case of of imagination of a kind of common in neurotics'.
pg. 45 in Freud's Wizard.

It is fascinating to see how these four youth (from 12 years old into the teens it seemed) are characterized as "mentally defective", retarded really, and then also neurotics with over active imaginations who colluded together to fabricate such a lewd and complicated tale all in a matter of hours while each was examined separately. No explanation about the semen stained table cloth either. Did they imagine that into existence as well?

Also of interest is the change in the use of the term neurotic:

History
The term neurosis was coined by the Scottish doctor William Cullen in 1769 to refer to "disorders of sense and motion" caused by a "general affection of the nervous system". For him, it described various nervous disorders and symptoms that could not be explained physiologically. It derives from the Greek word νεῦρον (neuron, "nerve") with the suffix -ωσις -osis (diseased or abnormal condition). The term was however most influentially defined by Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud over a century later. It has continued to be used in contemporary theoretical writing in psychology and philosophy.[2]

The American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has eliminated the category of "neurosis", reflecting a decision by the editors to provide descriptions of behavior as opposed to hidden psychological mechanisms as diagnostic criteria,[3] and, according to The American Heritage Medical Dictionary, it is "no longer used in psychiatric diagnosis".[4] These changes to the DSM have been controversial.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurosis

It is not news that the medical establishment frequently victimized people (women especially) with impunity just by labeling them as insane or hysterical, but it is interesting to see how strong "the establishment" was against any recognition of a seduction theory, even when the evidence was plain. I liken this more to political and cultural corruption where whole classes of people, and anyone who goes against the status quo, could be labeled neurotic, and simply dismissed. Instead of Freud being a revolutionary, with his seduction theory, he became a anti-revolutionary for the establishment and safeguarded their dominance and control of the truth regarding institutional abuse. Instead of a Trotsky or even Lenin for sexual liberation, he really was Stalin. His frequent purges of those who ran counter to the seduction theory, or other life affirming theories, also attest to this.