FREUD’S ‘UNCONSCIOUS’ robs us – time it went–

Yes, we have emotional blindspots – BUT they’re all curable –

                          

[Another post from the Critical Psychiatry Network]

I drew these up for a seminar.

1.    The last thing I want to do in this post is to shake the confidence of therapists who follow one or other of the three great titans of 100 years ago – Freud, Jung and Adler. The pioneering work they did then was mind-blowing, and their legacy, especially Adler’s, enormous.

2.    However, it has to be said that flaws have appeared in Freud – he is no longer as dominant as he was. I studied 10 of his clinical cases in treating obsession over the decades from 1900 to the 1930s, for an MD Thesis, and the striking thing is that he changes his ‘model’ repeatedly over time – the one thing that is missing is consistency.

3.    So when the phrase unprocessed rage was introduced onto these pages, it turned on a light for me. It helped extend my favoured therapeutic approach. In particular, I now include Freud within its scope. So if you happen to be an ardent fan of those early psychoanalytic pioneers, decide now whether to follow on here, or not – because I am about to indulge in a spot of iconoclasm, commensurate with a Critical Psychiatry Network.

4.    I successfully applied a traumagenic model to a serial-killer, here called ‘Alec’, who I first worked with in Parkhurst Prison when he was 24. He had decided to kill every two years and could see no reason why he should stop. A succinct background to his case is given by the Trauma Tetrad – a four-point summary of what had happened to him, and what he needed to do to put it right. Thus –

(1)  Was Alec’s father wrong to throw his mother downstairs, when aged 4? YES.

(2)  Could Alec tell his father this, aged 24? NO.

(3)  Should he be able to? YES. And

(4)  did he know that all his symptoms of serial-killing came from his inability to tell him? NO, but when he could – they went.

5.    None of this was obvious to start with. Indeed, at first, Alec would fiercely deny it had anything to do with anything – that’s because it was all wrapped up with his survival emotions. Once these can be put into abeyance, i.e. he became convinced his father was NOT going to throw him downstairs ‘next’ – only then could his frontal lobes start ticking again, and his speechlessness evaporate – as it did. Once it went, it took with it, all his explicit need for any violence. Prior to that point he had, he said, only been able to “talk with my fists” – not what he really wanted to do, nor very fruitful in either his social or his domestic life.

6.    So on the assumption that this Tetrad reflects clinical reality faithfully enough (though never 100%), let’s take a closer look at point (2) – Could he tell his father this, aged 24? NO

7.    And that is absolute. The knowledge of any ‘abuse’ from earlier, is simply NOT available. Indeed if you press him to divulge, prematurely, without explicit consent, he reacts aggressively, not to say homicidally. So no, there’s no access from his past, as in point (1), to his conscious mind, when aged 24. This blockage is reinforced by Bessel’s brainscans – his frontals and speech centre are ‘out’ – there’s no traffic between.

8.    You could call this his ‘Unconscious’. Certainly it’s Unknowable. Is this the same as a Freudian ‘unconscious’? Or something entirely different. Occam’s razor would advise they overlap. In which case, we have an excellent reason for the very existence of an unconscious – indeed we also have brain-scan evidence to show that it is indeed impervious.

9.    From this viewpoint, the ‘unconscious’ has a cause, and it serves a life-saving function. Don’t think about the abuse, or it’ll be the last thing you’ll think. Only trauma which passes the life-survival threshold triggers the frontal blockage.

10. Now assuming that point (2), and Freud’s ‘unconscious’ are coterminous, not only does the latter have a distinct trigger – but it also has a cure. Now this is where Freudians tend to get jumpy. We are all meant to have one each, and the idea that the ‘unconscious’ is something you can get rid of, is anathema. So that’s why this post is iconoclastic. I confidently propose that trauma-induced-blockage and Freud’s ‘unconscious’ coincide – ergo, deal with the trauma, and the ‘unconscious’ evaporates.

11. Which is where “unprocessed rage” come is. Now this is a concept too, that perhaps must be seen in action to really grasp how debilitating it can be. But it’s simple enough. Suppose something dreadful happened to you, as it did point (1) to Alec, and you became enraged. What would happen to that powerful negative emotion? Well, it could overwhelm, as it did Alec. What he needed to do was to ‘process’ it, i.e. to see that it no longer applied in adult life, but had happened 20 years before, and was now therefore over, 100% out-of-date. That is – his father could no longer damage him, however much Alec continued to fear that he might. The ‘processing’ requires the ‘simple’ task of bringing Alec’s mental furniture up to date – i.e. into today’s adult world – simple, but far from easy.

12. Now, as I’ve mentioned on these pages before, Freud too suffered severe trauma as a child, which, according to him, reverberated throughout his life, even to the age of 81. So let’s apply the Trauma-Tetrad to Freud, thus –

(1)  Was Freud’s father wrong to verbally terrify Sigmund when aged ‘7 or 8’? YES.

(2)  Could Sigmund tell his father this? NO.

(3)  Should he have been able to? YES. But –

(4)  Since he never knew that he need no longer fear his father, even when aged 81, though his father had been dead 41 years – what else could he ‘know’ than that this was blocked off, into what he was moved to maintain was his ‘unconscious’.

13. The whole issue involved with ‘unconsciousness’ opens up the prospect of the analyst knowing more about the patient than they do. Not only that, it suggests too that the analyst also carries unknown, indeed Unknowable lumps of mental furniture. Which degrades human dignity, and disempowers without limit.

14. No, much more preferable is to have a clear model as to where the Unknowability, the ‘unconscious’, comes from, and to enlist that sufferer’s active consciousness to unpack it altogether. Of course, with ‘unprocessed rage’ there are powerful negative emotions which get in the way. However, once ‘processed’, the mind is cleared of no-go areas, and the person is then fully empowered to continue tackling life’s many challenges. Goodbye Freudian subconsciousness.

15. No no-go areas in the mind – what a wonderful objective. Freud, sadly, never achieved it. Which leads rather a lot of people to suggest that no-one can. Which is precisely what this iconoclastic post sets out to dispute. Wish me luck.

16. Throughout, we must never forget that Absolute Scientific Knowledge is a myth, and has been since Hume, and certainly since the Uncertainty Principle 100 years ago. So this is only a half-measure – it’s all we’re likely ever to get, especially with something as elusive as consciousness. But, as with all things clinical – keep as realistic as you can, and coupled with intrinsic human resilience, we should be able to muddle through, provided we are all prepared to give each other the benefit of the doubt.

Rock on

Bob