Freud announced to the whole world that he had discovered a "panacea" (cure-all) for all neurotic complaints. His announcement gave birth to the unleasing of cocaine upon the American public. Purchase was totally legal. You could purchase it in drug stores, not from the pharmacist but from the outer open shelves. You could order it through the Sears catalog. It gave birth to one of the largest, most successful corporations on the planet--Coca Cola. The name came from the original main ingredient in that industry,'s product--COCA cola. In the addiction recovery world, some sources have a different view of Freud's use of coke. Freud is recognized as having become strongly addicted--strongly strung out. In a therapeutic setting, addicts are emotionally wrecked and have a difficult time making eye-contact. Freud introduced the couch--lying down--to avoid eye contact. But Freud, addicted and strung out, emotionally scrambled, is reported to employ the couch so that HE could avoid the stress of eye-contact. Freud's famous final falling out with Carl Jung is available in several books on the subject. "I hate them!" Freud said in final, climactic rage. "What is it that you hate?" asked Jung. "Feelings!". Karl Jung went on to offer professional help to the two founders of AA, when all other help solicited from countless medical and religious entities were met only with scoffs and sarcasm. Carl Jung authored the twelve steps in the program. He recognized that recovering addicts suffered mostly from emotional dysfunction (feelings). Addressing emotional dysfunction is the task of the recovering addict, explicity addressed in the steps, the work of the fourth step and follow-through steps for remedy addressment. There are well over a hundred 12 step programs using the same basic format. One is addiction to evangelical religions.
Mr. Lewis, thank you for your comments. I had a friend in school whose grandfather was offered a chance to invest in the Coca Cola company when it was just beginning [was it in Atlanta?]. He turned down the founder of the company because he disapproved of selling cocaine to the public. The grandfather subsequently became a prominent Mathematician in the Burroughs Business Machine Company in Detroit. I was unaware of the disagreement between Jung and Freud. Nor did I realize that Jung's ideas were so important to AA. As a side note, you might want to read what the philosopher, the late Herbert Fingarette said about Alcoholism and AA.
Thanx again. I only wish I had the time to go into the controversy you described. I have projects to finish. I am elderly and time is not on my side.
Evangelical religion was easy to drop over the patriarchy at large, no coming and going talking of Michelangelo in church. Cigarettes are the worst. I was hypnotized, drifted into a daydream, followed a deer to the top of a mountain like in the scene from the Deer Hunter when DeNiro takes aim but can't pull the trigger--went into a cave where an Indian shaman was sitting at a fire, writing on the wall, script disappearing as I tried to read. He said I wasn't ready. So that treatment didn't work. Then I went to a mass hypnosis dude appearing in my town's Holiday Inn for $25. I left with a mantra, "Lick the ashtray, lick the ashtray" which sounds like Eddie Murphy-speak in my head. I did quit over 10 years ago. Roger Stone looks a bit like I'd imagine Svengali to appear. A real Bela Lugosi in his cape.
He's been tying down Lady Liberty and taking ransoms for decades.
Thanks Thom, very interesting and I learned quite a bit, Another piece of interesting but useless knowledge. the origin of the word Svengali
I volunteered twice to be hypnotized, first time in HS, by a "professional" it didn't work, neither did it work the second time,. I don't think there is any science to it other than a person is open to suggestion, of allowing someone else to tell them how to behave and think.
And there we have an explanation for cults, ideologues and of course MAGAts.
There's a scale of susceptibility to hypnosis with values from 1-5. Fives are very easily hypnotized and ones are virtually impossible to hypnotize. Perhaps you are a one. Cults do use some hypnotic techniques, like group chanting, but there are so many other ways used to manipulate people's emotions. Scary.
Mr. Hartmann, you are at your best when you present historical facts, trends, and numerical/statistical figures to make important political arguments. Arguments which I almost always agree with. So I am probably biased in favor of giving you the benefit of the doubt about your writing.
But when it comes to Freud; I must part company with you. I first read a translated version of Freud's work when I was a young man, sixteen years old. Even at that young age I was able to recognize that his theories had nothing to do with science. But were instead subjective claims about the behavior of the entire human species; which he based upon a limited examination of a small number of women. This alone should have been enough to reject his claims.
But there is more reason to turn one away from Freud. The content of his ideas were themselves evidence of a seriously deranged mind. He sounds like a deluded drug abuser. Many, of whom I dealt with as a young social worker in Detroit. His claims are the most wild and fanciful Harry Potter type stories which would make great reading for a child, except they are salacious as hell. Embarrassingly so for a man of letters to publish as a serious analysis of any kind. Like so many other scholars of the era Feud borrowed heavily from the ancient Hebrew, Greek and Roman myths to create analogies, metaphors, allegories which he foolishly failed to recognize, were not a substitute for clear literal reasoning.
He claimed that we are all controlled in our behavior by forces hidden from view. These forces are located in what is called the "subconscious mind." Because we are not aware of [we are unconscious of] this realm, we are not able to understand that the forces even exist. This, claimed Freud, was true of all human beings. Yet he was able to overcome this limitation and become aware of this invisible, unconscious realm of the human mind while no other human being was capable of doing so without the help of him to show them this phenomenon located in their own minds. Even as a young man, who had still not studied logic; I instantly saw the contradiction in his claim: All humans have a subconscious, the existence of which they are incapable of knowing; yet Freud knows about this subconscious. This is a contradiction! Contradictions are not allowed in any analysis which claims to have the virtue of validity to it. In other words; all of Freud's work is based upon an absurd contradiction. From the day I came to this realization as a young man while reading Freud, I placed him in the category of myths like Jesus Christ and the trinity: an absurdity. Incidentally I subsequently studied logic under the brilliant Irving Copi at University and was pleased to learn that the most powerful and elegant way to prove a syllogism is in error is to find that it contains a contradiction. In Deductive Logic, this is called an indirect proof. I do not propose to go into a disquisition on Symbolic Logic here. So you are on your own.
Freud and many other famous physicians were students of the greatest physician in modern history: Jean Charcot in France. One of Charcot's biggest concerns was the bad, harmful treatment of citizens who displayed bizarre behavior. The tendency was for the political authorities to pass laws which made their behavior illegal. These people were prosecuted as criminals and put into prisons upon conviction. Charcot saw this as an injustice which only makes the lives of these people worse. He said we should not hand over these kinds of people to the criminal justice system. We should, instead treat them as though they had an illness and needed our help. Charcot was not saying these people had an illness. He was using a metaphor and saying they should be treated as though they had an illness of a mental kind. He did not claim they had a demonstrable lesion on their central nervous system which causes their bizarre behavior. This would be an actual illness. He was speaking metaphorically. Unfortunately Freud was not bright enough to realize the true nature of metaphor and allegories, and their proper place in literature. He mistakenly understood the words of Charcot as literal. Allegories are great mechanisms used by teachers to introduce students to entirely new concepts. Because the concept might be so new, there might be no existing terms with which to describe it. Thus, the teacher uses analogy, metaphor, allegory to help the student understand. Metaphors are also great for purely entertaining writing, especially fiction. However, one cannot argue by analogy. This is not logically permitted. It produces what is called an informal error in deductive logic.
There is another, possibly equally serious objection to Freud: he was not himself a "Freudian" at the end of his career. Before he died, Freud rejected his own writing about the subconscious. These writings were kept from the public eye for years after Freud died, principally by his daughter. Copies of these writings were kept locked in a vault at McGill University for a time. Finally a great controversy erupted when a journalist saw them and was able to get them published. What followed was scandal and law suits.
It seems that Freud had a number of women come to him in his practice and tell him that as girls they were sexually used by their fathers and this had been gnawing at them all their lives since childhood. Freud simply refused to believe that all these women could have been raped by their fathers. So he invented the fantastic theory about a so called subconscious desire to have sex with one's parent. This, Freud believed, was what these women were telling him. He even gave these subconscious desires names: Electra Complex and Oedipus Complex. Borrowed from well known ancient myths.
It is most unfortunate that so much of the disciplines of Psychology and Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry in America have been overly influenced by Freud's ideas. He was, paradoxically, far more influential in America than in Europe. I have my own explanation for why this is so. But this is not the place to go into it.
I beg you to please not misunderstand me. I am not rejecting Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Psychiatry as legitimate disciplines and professions. My first academic degree was a BA in Psychology years ago. I am resisting only Freudian emphasis in those disciplines. Counseling of many kinds are valuable services in modern society.
Actually Freud realized that the Father or other Males involved in the abuse of his clients, were the ones who paid for the sessions. Thus he shifted the blame. He actually gave a good analysis of Victorian Males and projected it onto women, and all people throughout time as part of his megalomania.
I, see all this hypnosis as helpful and hurtful to say the least since the men were in control of the women they would guess you could say, put under. A spell or anything else I found all this to be very mesmerizing for real. This is one of those stop and think moments as to how men who want to do good really are in it only to do bad. Why do they need the cocaine first place. Control, perhaps. Thank you Captain my Captain with lessons on Freud and his apparent magic spells as well. This is some deep stuff, Thom. It really is mesmerizing! Thanks for the insight to all this. I remember seeing old shows with some guy who is waving a watch in front of her and basically putting her under some type of spell. I and others laughed but hey maybe they had something. I don’t know. Thom I told you this is deep stuff.
Interesting historical article. One thing that stood out to me was that Freud committed suicide. He was treating people with thoughts such as these and he couldn’t even save himself.
Also, then as now these doctors would pray upon vulnerable women. I believe Dr. Breur impregnated that woman then sent her away.
Lastly, like William hypnosis didn’t work for me. I think you need to be more receptive than I was.
I'm not a big fan of Freud, but he did have cancer of the mouth, palate and jaw (possibly due to his cigar smoking), a hopeless disease at that time for which he'd undergone many surgeries, and not a nice way to die. He was also quite elderly, 83, when he committed suicide.
An amazing book. I have given this book a gift. I also re-read it when I am struggling. Thank you Thom!
Freud announced to the whole world that he had discovered a "panacea" (cure-all) for all neurotic complaints. His announcement gave birth to the unleasing of cocaine upon the American public. Purchase was totally legal. You could purchase it in drug stores, not from the pharmacist but from the outer open shelves. You could order it through the Sears catalog. It gave birth to one of the largest, most successful corporations on the planet--Coca Cola. The name came from the original main ingredient in that industry,'s product--COCA cola. In the addiction recovery world, some sources have a different view of Freud's use of coke. Freud is recognized as having become strongly addicted--strongly strung out. In a therapeutic setting, addicts are emotionally wrecked and have a difficult time making eye-contact. Freud introduced the couch--lying down--to avoid eye contact. But Freud, addicted and strung out, emotionally scrambled, is reported to employ the couch so that HE could avoid the stress of eye-contact. Freud's famous final falling out with Carl Jung is available in several books on the subject. "I hate them!" Freud said in final, climactic rage. "What is it that you hate?" asked Jung. "Feelings!". Karl Jung went on to offer professional help to the two founders of AA, when all other help solicited from countless medical and religious entities were met only with scoffs and sarcasm. Carl Jung authored the twelve steps in the program. He recognized that recovering addicts suffered mostly from emotional dysfunction (feelings). Addressing emotional dysfunction is the task of the recovering addict, explicity addressed in the steps, the work of the fourth step and follow-through steps for remedy addressment. There are well over a hundred 12 step programs using the same basic format. One is addiction to evangelical religions.
Mr. Lewis, thank you for your comments. I had a friend in school whose grandfather was offered a chance to invest in the Coca Cola company when it was just beginning [was it in Atlanta?]. He turned down the founder of the company because he disapproved of selling cocaine to the public. The grandfather subsequently became a prominent Mathematician in the Burroughs Business Machine Company in Detroit. I was unaware of the disagreement between Jung and Freud. Nor did I realize that Jung's ideas were so important to AA. As a side note, you might want to read what the philosopher, the late Herbert Fingarette said about Alcoholism and AA.
Thanx again. I only wish I had the time to go into the controversy you described. I have projects to finish. I am elderly and time is not on my side.
Evangelical religion was easy to drop over the patriarchy at large, no coming and going talking of Michelangelo in church. Cigarettes are the worst. I was hypnotized, drifted into a daydream, followed a deer to the top of a mountain like in the scene from the Deer Hunter when DeNiro takes aim but can't pull the trigger--went into a cave where an Indian shaman was sitting at a fire, writing on the wall, script disappearing as I tried to read. He said I wasn't ready. So that treatment didn't work. Then I went to a mass hypnosis dude appearing in my town's Holiday Inn for $25. I left with a mantra, "Lick the ashtray, lick the ashtray" which sounds like Eddie Murphy-speak in my head. I did quit over 10 years ago. Roger Stone looks a bit like I'd imagine Svengali to appear. A real Bela Lugosi in his cape.
He's been tying down Lady Liberty and taking ransoms for decades.
Enjoyed your message, including the tseliot ref. Agree about Roger stone, possibly the most vile of the bunch.
Thanks Thom, very interesting and I learned quite a bit, Another piece of interesting but useless knowledge. the origin of the word Svengali
I volunteered twice to be hypnotized, first time in HS, by a "professional" it didn't work, neither did it work the second time,. I don't think there is any science to it other than a person is open to suggestion, of allowing someone else to tell them how to behave and think.
And there we have an explanation for cults, ideologues and of course MAGAts.
There's a scale of susceptibility to hypnosis with values from 1-5. Fives are very easily hypnotized and ones are virtually impossible to hypnotize. Perhaps you are a one. Cults do use some hypnotic techniques, like group chanting, but there are so many other ways used to manipulate people's emotions. Scary.
Another extremely interesting, fascinating essay. I wish you taught a class locally that I could attend!
Mr. Hartmann, you are at your best when you present historical facts, trends, and numerical/statistical figures to make important political arguments. Arguments which I almost always agree with. So I am probably biased in favor of giving you the benefit of the doubt about your writing.
But when it comes to Freud; I must part company with you. I first read a translated version of Freud's work when I was a young man, sixteen years old. Even at that young age I was able to recognize that his theories had nothing to do with science. But were instead subjective claims about the behavior of the entire human species; which he based upon a limited examination of a small number of women. This alone should have been enough to reject his claims.
But there is more reason to turn one away from Freud. The content of his ideas were themselves evidence of a seriously deranged mind. He sounds like a deluded drug abuser. Many, of whom I dealt with as a young social worker in Detroit. His claims are the most wild and fanciful Harry Potter type stories which would make great reading for a child, except they are salacious as hell. Embarrassingly so for a man of letters to publish as a serious analysis of any kind. Like so many other scholars of the era Feud borrowed heavily from the ancient Hebrew, Greek and Roman myths to create analogies, metaphors, allegories which he foolishly failed to recognize, were not a substitute for clear literal reasoning.
He claimed that we are all controlled in our behavior by forces hidden from view. These forces are located in what is called the "subconscious mind." Because we are not aware of [we are unconscious of] this realm, we are not able to understand that the forces even exist. This, claimed Freud, was true of all human beings. Yet he was able to overcome this limitation and become aware of this invisible, unconscious realm of the human mind while no other human being was capable of doing so without the help of him to show them this phenomenon located in their own minds. Even as a young man, who had still not studied logic; I instantly saw the contradiction in his claim: All humans have a subconscious, the existence of which they are incapable of knowing; yet Freud knows about this subconscious. This is a contradiction! Contradictions are not allowed in any analysis which claims to have the virtue of validity to it. In other words; all of Freud's work is based upon an absurd contradiction. From the day I came to this realization as a young man while reading Freud, I placed him in the category of myths like Jesus Christ and the trinity: an absurdity. Incidentally I subsequently studied logic under the brilliant Irving Copi at University and was pleased to learn that the most powerful and elegant way to prove a syllogism is in error is to find that it contains a contradiction. In Deductive Logic, this is called an indirect proof. I do not propose to go into a disquisition on Symbolic Logic here. So you are on your own.
Freud and many other famous physicians were students of the greatest physician in modern history: Jean Charcot in France. One of Charcot's biggest concerns was the bad, harmful treatment of citizens who displayed bizarre behavior. The tendency was for the political authorities to pass laws which made their behavior illegal. These people were prosecuted as criminals and put into prisons upon conviction. Charcot saw this as an injustice which only makes the lives of these people worse. He said we should not hand over these kinds of people to the criminal justice system. We should, instead treat them as though they had an illness and needed our help. Charcot was not saying these people had an illness. He was using a metaphor and saying they should be treated as though they had an illness of a mental kind. He did not claim they had a demonstrable lesion on their central nervous system which causes their bizarre behavior. This would be an actual illness. He was speaking metaphorically. Unfortunately Freud was not bright enough to realize the true nature of metaphor and allegories, and their proper place in literature. He mistakenly understood the words of Charcot as literal. Allegories are great mechanisms used by teachers to introduce students to entirely new concepts. Because the concept might be so new, there might be no existing terms with which to describe it. Thus, the teacher uses analogy, metaphor, allegory to help the student understand. Metaphors are also great for purely entertaining writing, especially fiction. However, one cannot argue by analogy. This is not logically permitted. It produces what is called an informal error in deductive logic.
There is another, possibly equally serious objection to Freud: he was not himself a "Freudian" at the end of his career. Before he died, Freud rejected his own writing about the subconscious. These writings were kept from the public eye for years after Freud died, principally by his daughter. Copies of these writings were kept locked in a vault at McGill University for a time. Finally a great controversy erupted when a journalist saw them and was able to get them published. What followed was scandal and law suits.
It seems that Freud had a number of women come to him in his practice and tell him that as girls they were sexually used by their fathers and this had been gnawing at them all their lives since childhood. Freud simply refused to believe that all these women could have been raped by their fathers. So he invented the fantastic theory about a so called subconscious desire to have sex with one's parent. This, Freud believed, was what these women were telling him. He even gave these subconscious desires names: Electra Complex and Oedipus Complex. Borrowed from well known ancient myths.
It is most unfortunate that so much of the disciplines of Psychology and Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry in America have been overly influenced by Freud's ideas. He was, paradoxically, far more influential in America than in Europe. I have my own explanation for why this is so. But this is not the place to go into it.
I beg you to please not misunderstand me. I am not rejecting Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Psychiatry as legitimate disciplines and professions. My first academic degree was a BA in Psychology years ago. I am resisting only Freudian emphasis in those disciplines. Counseling of many kinds are valuable services in modern society.
Actually Freud realized that the Father or other Males involved in the abuse of his clients, were the ones who paid for the sessions. Thus he shifted the blame. He actually gave a good analysis of Victorian Males and projected it onto women, and all people throughout time as part of his megalomania.
Wow, thanx Moon cat, a rational explanation if I ever heard one. He clearly had a low, perverted view of human beings.
No knowledge is useless ( referring to a previous comment).
I, see all this hypnosis as helpful and hurtful to say the least since the men were in control of the women they would guess you could say, put under. A spell or anything else I found all this to be very mesmerizing for real. This is one of those stop and think moments as to how men who want to do good really are in it only to do bad. Why do they need the cocaine first place. Control, perhaps. Thank you Captain my Captain with lessons on Freud and his apparent magic spells as well. This is some deep stuff, Thom. It really is mesmerizing! Thanks for the insight to all this. I remember seeing old shows with some guy who is waving a watch in front of her and basically putting her under some type of spell. I and others laughed but hey maybe they had something. I don’t know. Thom I told you this is deep stuff.
Interesting historical article. One thing that stood out to me was that Freud committed suicide. He was treating people with thoughts such as these and he couldn’t even save himself.
Also, then as now these doctors would pray upon vulnerable women. I believe Dr. Breur impregnated that woman then sent her away.
Lastly, like William hypnosis didn’t work for me. I think you need to be more receptive than I was.
I'm not a big fan of Freud, but he did have cancer of the mouth, palate and jaw (possibly due to his cigar smoking), a hopeless disease at that time for which he'd undergone many surgeries, and not a nice way to die. He was also quite elderly, 83, when he committed suicide.
Very true. I would do the same under those circumstances which were dire and inevitable.