"Narsizm Üzerine Bir Giriş" ve kendi yazdığı anılara dayanarak paranoyak bir kişiliği çözümlemeye giriştiği ünlü "Schreber Vakası". Yapıtların içine doğdukları koşullar ve başka düşüncelerle girdikleri etkileşimler onları kavramakta bazen yapıtın kendisinden bile fazla ipucu verir. Bu nedenle kitaba Saffet Murat Tura'nın her iki yapıtın psikanaliz tarihindeki önemleri üzerine önsözünü, Raşit Tükel'in "ben ideali"nin Freud'un düşünce gelişimi içinde izlediği yolu anlattığı makalesini ve D. Bloch'un, Schreber vakasını yazdığı sırada Freud'un yaşam koşullarını ele alarak yapıtı irdelediği, tartışmalara yol açmış bir yazısını da eklemeyi uygun bulduk.
Dr. Sigismund Freud (later changed to Sigmund) was a neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who created an entirely new approach to the understanding of the human personality. He is regarded as one of the most influential—and controversial—minds of the 20th century.
In 1873, Freud began to study medicine at the University of Vienna. After graduating, he worked at the Vienna General Hospital. He collaborated with Josef Breuer in treating hysteria by the recall of painful experiences under hypnosis. In 1885, Freud went to Paris as a student of the neurologist Jean Charcot. On his return to Vienna the following year, Freud set up in private practice, specialising in nervous and brain disorders. The same year he married Martha Bernays, with whom he had six children.
Freud developed the theory that humans have an unconscious in which sexual and aggressive impulses are in perpetual conflict for supremacy with the defences against them. In 1897, he began an intensive analysis of himself. In 1900, his major work 'The Interpretation of Dreams' was published in which Freud analysed dreams in terms of unconscious desires and experiences.
In 1902, Freud was appointed Professor of Neuropathology at the University of Vienna, a post he held until 1938. Although the medical establishment disagreed with many of his theories, a group of pupils and followers began to gather around Freud. In 1910, the International Psychoanalytic Association was founded with Carl Jung, a close associate of Freud's, as the president. Jung later broke with Freud and developed his own theories.
After World War One, Freud spent less time in clinical observation and concentrated on the application of his theories to history, art, literature and anthropology. In 1923, he published 'The Ego and the Id', which suggested a new structural model of the mind, divided into the 'id, the 'ego' and the 'superego'.
In 1933, the Nazis publicly burnt a number of Freud's books. In 1938, shortly after the Nazis annexed Austria, Freud left Vienna for London with his wife and daughter Anna.
Freud had been diagnosed with cancer of the jaw in 1923, and underwent more than 30 operations. He died of cancer on 23 September 1939.
This book was one of the first by which Sigmund Freud imprinted his indelible mark upon the modern world.
It displays his rational humanism at its zenith, and it decisively ruptures the connection of modern psychology with traditional psychotherapy.
As I pointed out in my review of Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Family Idiot, psychological procedure in the 19th century sought to bury the symptoms of neurosis through the enforced forgetfulness of prolonged rest.
This procedure is nowadays termed Scotomization - a minimizing of the patient’s too-widely-encompassing view of life.
It BURIES the disturbing symptoms. But Freud sought to CURE them.
You see, Freud said, we always LIE to ourselves: we FOLD over parts of our mind to HIDE them from ourselves. And Schreber, a sober judge, lived a lie.
UNTIL the day he caught himself dead to rights...
Freud’s methodology is radical, but CAN lead us to Remember and Repossess the Human Completeness we once knew in our childhood -
“A state of complete simplicity, costing not less than Everything.”
Now, Schreber himself was a high-ranking Austrian Judge of a rigorously ethical mindset.
Until, that is, the night that Insomnia seized him and claimed him as its victim.
Schreber, you see, was suddenly SURE that hundreds of other folks’ souls had possession of his most intimate thoughts and were now out to Get him - and turn him into a Woman (!).
Now I know that sounds bizarre, but bear with me a sec.
Schreber, you see, had ignored his subconscious.
Nowadays, the current high-pitched excitation of the media is turning out little Schrebers everywhere, somewhat in cookie-cutter fashion.
Happened to me in 1970 (I miraculously recovered, thank the Lord) and I saw it more and more frequently in the workplace before retirement.
One bright lady I know was Sure the senior execs of her outfit were tracking her every move, across the continent!
It’s called Paranoid Schizophrenia - if it continues unchecked.
Freud tried to prevent that with his patient Judge Schreber, and he failed. Schreber ended his life in an asylum.
My take is that Freud didn’t go deeply enough. Or didn’t wanna.
How so?
If you’re overwhelmed by your demons the vortex that’s pulling you down by your ankles is ALSO dangerous to your interlocutors.
But repressing facts as WELL as our subconscious causes paranoia too, you know. Outta control, it HAS to be stopped!
Nowadays, of course, our media pulls that stunt off quite handily....
What does this tell us? TAKE YOUR MEDS! I know we don’t WANNA - but we GOTTA. For they will wake us up.
And our enemies are Very Wide-Awake.
Never short-change yourself in this chaotic freefall of media-induced frenzy.
Freud would say, “Be a Mensch about it!”
Pretty hard, isn’t it, in a culture that coddles us with illusions when we’re being wimps?
As T.S. Eliot said in The Family Reunion, it always seems like it’s time once again for the evening newspeak news... but somehow “we must try to live!”
Never quit TRYING to see thorough the OLD song and dance behind the news, folks...
Giving Sigmund an extra star for saying he could be proven wrong. This is during the period when Freud was somewhat open to scientific criticism. But I wouldn't say he followed through on that promise. This is a relic of psychoanalytic theory that should be catalogued among demonology; perhaps the best guess going at the time, but as wrong as it gets in terms of modern psychological science.
Psikolojiye Giriş 101 kıvamındaki ben için, yeterince anlaşılır değildi. Hikayeleştirme yetersizdi. Ders kitabı tadında bilgi yüklü bir şeyler arıyorsanız, doğru adres.
I had to read it for a class, it was really awesome actually and put me into the mindset of a middle aged man who is having a sexual identity crisis. I found it quite funny! And it was only 96 pages give or take, so It only took a few hours to read, yay!
Freud'un iki makalesinden oluşan bu kitap, makalelerden önce ve sonra birer tane olmak üzere Freud'un çalışmalarına dair eleştirel ve açıklayıcı sunumlarla bütünlüklü bir derleme haline gelmiş. İlk makalede "Narsizm" kavramını ele alan Freud, bu konu üzerine temel görüşlerini ortaya koyduğu bir çalışma sunuyor. Yer yer fazla teknik olan bu metinde özellikle narsizmi "ben libidosu" ile "nesne libidosu" arasındaki bir karşıtlıktan yola çıkarak açıklamaya ve "her canlı varlıkta bir ölçüde bulunabilecek bir özellik" olarak ele alıyor. Tam da bu noktada benim aklıma şöyle bir soruyu getiriyor bu yorum: Eğer her insanda belirli bir ölçüde "narsistlik" bulunuyor ise patolojik bir vaka olarak ele alınan durumlarda patolojinin varlığına dair sınır çizgisi nasıl belirleniyor? Yani birileri "narsist", "nevrotik" hatta "deli" olarak adlandırılabiliyorken diğerlerinin "normal" olduğunu gösteren sınırlar ne? İlk makalede oldukça ilgi çekici ve faydalı bilgiler bulunsa da bana göre kitabın en ilginç kısmı Freud'un "Schreber Vakası"nı incelediği ikinci makalesidir. Psikoloji alanına dair çok da fazla bilgisi bulunmayan benim gibi bir okuyucu için fazlasıyla ilginç ve hatta şaşırtıcı bir hikaye mevcut. Bunun yanında Freud'un bu vakayı çözümlerken yaptığı çıkarımlara - bir başka deyişle psikanalizin gücüne- hayranlık duymamak da elde değil.
Schreber'in psikoz anılarını okuduktan sonra Freud'un yorumunu okumak da şart oldu. 1911'de yazdığı makalede vakayı libido kuramı bağlamında yorumlayışı ilk bakışta kusursuz gibi görünüyor ve 1914 tarihli Narsizm Üzerine yazısı da bu yorumun tamamlayıcısı oluyor. Gel gelelim, asıl vurucu olan, kitabın sonundaki Dorothy Bloch'un yazısı: Bu yazıyı dahil ettiği için Saffet Murat Tura'ya teşekkür etmek gerek, çünkü Bloch; Freud'un Schreber'in anılarını yorumlarken nasıl bir yol ayrımında olduğunu, neden çevresel faktörler (nurture) yerine içgüdü/dürtü bazlı kuramı (nature) tercih ettiğini, bunu yaparken Schreber vakasındaki bazı önemli verileri nasıl görmezden geldiğini açıkça ortaya koyuyor. Yine de, zamanının kaba kuvvete dayalı psikiyatri pratiğiyle karşılaştırınca, Freud'un paranoyayı anlama çabasını takdir etmek gerek. Raşit Tükel'in önsözü ise, bu iki makalenin Freud külliyatında nerede durduğunu tespit ediyor.
What a genuinely fascinating read. The case of Daniel Paul Schreber was something that had interested me for such a long time after I had seen a theatrical adaptation of this book and to see him being analyzed by Sigmund Freud of all people made the experience even better. I'm still not a fan of Freud's theories, however I can't deny he really does understand humans on a fundamental level. It's just, he uses that understanding to make up quite the explanations when he could've used it for good. It's unfortunate Schreber and Freud never ended up having a direct meeting but as the ending of the book says, they met each other in their notes.
Psikoloji okumalarına yeni başlamış bir edebiyat okuru olarak, geçtiğimiz yıl okuduğum üç kitabın (Erich Fromm - Sevme Sanatı, Alice Miller - Yetenekli Çocuğun Dramı, Engin Geçtan - İnsan Olmak) ardından yolum bu yıl da Freud ile ilk defa kesişti. Bu değerlendirme yazımı okurken psikoloji bilimi ile ilgimin herhangi bir teorik temelden yoksun meraklı bir okur seviyesinde olduğunu göz önünde bulundurmanızı öneririm.
Kitap kabaca 3 bölümden oluşmakta. Raşit Tükel tarafından kaleme alınmış ilk bölümde, psikolojiyle ilgilenmeye yeni başlamış ortalama okurun metni anlayabilmesi için gerekli bazı ön bilgiler verilmiş. Sonraki bölümler için kılavuzluk özelliği taşıyan bu bölüm, oldukça açık ve anlaşılır bir dille yazılmış ve Freud'un bu kitaba alınan 2 makalesinde önem taşıyan bazı kavramların kısa özetini içermekte.
İkinci bölüm, Freud'un "Narsizm Üzerine Bir Giriş (1914)" ve "Schreber Vakası (1911)" adlı makalelerini içermekte. İlk makalenin, gerçek bir olaydan haraketle yazılmış bir değerlendirme yazısı olan "Schreber Vakası" adlı makalenin, kendisinden 3 yıl sonra kaleme alınmış düşünsel temeli olduğu anlaşılıyor. Her iki makalenin de okunması yüksek zihinsel enerji gerektiren edebi metinler olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Gerek yazıda geçen kavramların benim durumumdaki okurlar için henüz çok yeni ve daha benimsenememiş konumda bulunması, gerek de bu kavramlar arasındaki düşünsel geçişlerin hayli hızlı yapılması gibi nedenlerden ötürü kitabın bu bölümünü oldukça yavaş ve sıklıkla geriye dönerek okudum. Ancak bu bölüm, her şeyin ötesinde, beni Freud'un dehasıyla tanıştırmış oldu. Bu bölümü bitirdiğimde Freud'un bilim insanı kimliğine, özellikle de veri toplama becerisine ve elde ettiği bu verileri analiz etme yeteneğine çoktan hayranlık duyar duruma gelmiştim.
Bu bölümü bitirdiğimde aklımda dönen en kuvvetli düşünce, günlük hayatta sergilediğimiz davranışların, takındığımız tavırların, bilinçdışı unsurların varlığından yoksun değerlendirilmesinin aslında ne kadar da olanaksız olduğu idi. Maruz kaldığımız aşırılık içeren tavırların, altlarında gizli kalmış ve açığa çıkması bilinç, bilinçaltı ya da bazı durumlarda her ikisi tarafından engellenen başka bazı izlerden kaynaklanan kontrol dışı tepkiler olduğu fikri de yine kitabın bu bölümünü tamamladıktan sonra zihnimde dolaşmaya başladı.
Kitabın üçüncü bölümü, Freud'un "Schreber Vakası" makalesi hakkında Dorothy Bloch tarafından yazılmış bir eleştiri yazısını içermekte. Bu makalede oldukça anlaşılır okunması keyifli bir dil kullanılmış. Freud'un babasıyla olan ilişkilerini ve "Schreber Vakası" yazısını kaleme aldığı dönemdeki ruhsal durumunu temel alan bu makalenin başında "Buraya kadar öğrendiğiniz her şeyi unutun!" gibi bir cümle kurulmuyor olsa da, sonunda Freud'un Schreber'e ilişkin çözümlemesi tartışmaya hayli açık bir noktada bırakılmış oluyor.
Son olarak; kitabın Freud hakkında üzerimde bıraktığı izlenim, akla ünlü bir spor insanı tarafından söylenmiş şu cümleyi getirir cinsten oldu: İyi bir jokey olabilmek için önce at olmak gerekmez.
"At the climax of his illness...Schreber became convinced of the imminence of a great catastrophe, of the end of the world...A world-catastrophe of this kind is not infrequent during the agitated stage in other cases of paranoia...The patient has withdrawn from the people in his environment and from the external world generally the libidinal cathexis which he has hitherto directed on to them. Thus everything has become indifferent and irrelevant to him...The end of the world is the projection of this internal catastrophe; his subjective world has come to an end since his withdrawal of his love from it....And the paranoiac builds it again, not more splendid, it is true, but at least so that he can once more live in it. He builds it up by the work of his delusions. The delusional formation, which we take to be the pathological product, is in reality and attempt at recovery, a process of reconstruction . Such a reconstruction after the catastrophe is successful to a greater or lesser extent, but never wholly so; in Schreber's words, there has been a 'profound internal change' in the world. But the human subject has recaptured a relation, and often a very intense one, to the people and things in the world, even though the relation is a hostile one now, where formerly it was hopefully affectionate. We may say, then, that the process of repression proper consists in a detachment of the libido from people--and things-that were previously loved. It happens silently; we receive no intelligence of it, but can only infer it from subsequent events. What forces itself so noisily upon our attention is the process of recovery, which undoes the work of repression and brings back the libido again on to the people it had abandoned. In paranoia this process is carried out by the method of projection. It was incorrect to say that the perception which was suppressed internally is projected outwards; the truth is rather, as we now see, that what was abolished internally returns from without."
“It cannot be the case that this detachment of the libido occurs exclusively in paranoia; nor can it be that, where it occurs elsewhere, it has such disastrous consequences...In normal mental life (and not only in periods of mourning) we are constantly detaching our libido in this way from people or other objects without falling ill…The detachment of libido, therefore, cannot in itself be the pathogenic factor in paranoia; there must be some special characteristic which distinguishes a paranoiac detachment of the libido from other kinds. It is not difficult to suggest what that characteristic may be. What use is made of the libido after it has been set free by the process of detachment? A normal person will at once begin looking about for a substitute for the lost attachment; and until that substitute has been found the liberated libido will be kept in suspension in his mind, and will there give rise to tensions and color his mood. In hysteria the liberated libido becomes transformed into somatic innervations or into anxiety. But in paranoia…the liberated libido becomes attached to the ego, and is used for the aggrandizement of the ego. A return is thus made to the stage of narcissism (known to us from the development of the libido), in which a person’s only sexual object is his own ego. On the basis of this clinical evidence we can suppose that paranoiacs have brought along with them a fixation at the stage of narcissism.”
The Schreber Case provides a fascinating crossroads between Jungian psychology and Freudian analysis for interpretation.
From my understanding, Freud suggests a rupture in the unconscious is a return of the repressed, or the taboo, where an individual regresses back - due to the crucible of withdrawn libido - to a fixated point during their formative psychosexual development. While Freud perceived libidinal energy as primarily sexual, the symptoms of Schreber clearly demonstrate undifferentiated libidinal energy, i.e., the internal conflict cannot be metabolised and sublimated in a structured way.
Therefore, due to its disruptive nature, a cathexis is forged in a psychotic manner to preempt ego annihilation. The totemic symbol of the Sun (symbol of the Father) becomes the love-object in attempts to sublimate Schreber's latent homosexuality. In this manner, Schreber's repression was not a sign of pathology, but ultimately led to pathology due to its failed synthesis - where homosexuality in this case was the map, but not the territory.
In this vein, we can see how religion serves as a scaffolding for such sublimations, particularly those with deep-rooted father complexes, or how the Catholic Church in the past gave refuge to homosexuals by joining the clergy for celibate vocation. And when the libidinal energy is knotted, just like in the Schreber Case, eschatological themes, perversion, narcissism, etc, always follow. We don't have to look too far into religious institutions to realise that, but I digress.
What I find interesting is how a Jungian interpretation might see this. For individuation to occur, the unanchored libidinal energy must be transmuted. The surfaced unconscious material is the prima materia for transformation to occur - and when She wakes, She brings fire - while Freud may perceive this as a managed compromise of wish fulfilment, Jung may see this an innate drive for union with the Imago Dei that has gone ungrounded. I'm not sure if Jung wrote on this matter specifically, but Schreber evidently failed to individuate and integrate his shadow, e.g., suffered from persecutory complexes and was swept away by symbols.
Lacan's Name-of-the-Father is worth a mention: the thought content in paranoia, psychosis and schizophrenia become tyrannical, whether its the police, government or religion, serve as an externalised projection of the Superego. These projected persecutions prompt search for justice, order and retribution, a trade-off per se, where Schreber becomes the Divine Bride (the bridge) - amid the two faces of God, e.g., Ahriman (war) and Ormuzd (peace). But the symbolic Father altogether must 'die', that is, deposed of its organising principle in the psyche otherwise it leads to ego disintegration and inflation, as seen in the case of Schreber. Nevertheless, Schreber attempted to integrate the repressed by intimating with unconscious archetypes and myth.
The different interpretations of libidinal energy are at the crux of this, and ultimately resulted in the end of their correspondence. However, both ironically arrive at the same end point, while one is cynical, the other is transcendent, and the man in the middle remained institutionalised until death - perhaps he was having a 'spiritual awakening' as many initiatory traditions might suggest, but that is neither here nor there without the right containment, he remained earthbound (terra nigra) yet striving to walk upon the wind (caelum).
Such is the clinical gaze; if it were up to contemporary clinical psychology to determine, it would flatten Schreber to a diagnosis of schizophrenia, possible subfeature of delusional disorder (erotomanic type) and gender dysphoria, which misses the incredible depth, meaning-making and nuance of this historical case - perhaps why the soul is so elusive in modern times!
El Caso de Schreber representa uno de los acercamientos de la teoría freudiana para explicar el funcionamiento de la psicosis, posteriormente desarrollada por Lacan. Recordando que solo es el análisis de un fragmento del caso, pues Freud solo leyó el libro y tuvo acceso al expediente, pero solo hasta ahí. El análisis del caso lo conduce a la investigación de la inversión de la libido sobre el Yo, el mecanismo de negación y proyección como parte de la problemática paranoica. Los textos que conforman este volumen algunos son importantes para la teoría, pues algunos nos hablan sobre la economía del aparato psíquico en términos de principio de placer y realidad, y cómo estos dos procesos se pueden comprender en los casos de psicopatología. Uno de los textos que más me fascinó fue acerca de la propuesta del psicoanálisis en el ámbito educativo, como prevención de conflictos psíquicos en el menor de edad, pues un docente también es responsable del desarrollo de la personalidad del alumno. Otro gran volumen a excepción de los textos sobre análisis de sueños, que llega abrumar tanta generalización
Canetti me trouxe aqui desde A Consciência das Palavras. Sua A Província do Homem também claramente se refere ao caso Schreber e a incapacidade de Freud de confrontar não só a realidade social que causou não só as guerras mundiais, incitou revoluções sociais e, imediatamente após, a repressão crescente e generalizada desembocando nas famigeradas sociedades totalitárias como a sistematização cada vez mais irrefletida que a psicanálise visivelmente se tornava até a total falsificação de tudo.
Referências à excessos sexuais cometidos pelos psicanalistas mesmos parecem se referir ao excêntrico Otto Gross. Segundo um filme de Cronenberg algo parecido ocorreu com Jung também.
Acho que uma das inspirações mais inusitadas com relação à esse período pré-guerra dos escritos de Freud foi Marcel Duchamp e suas recorrentes menções à atos masturbatórios das suas obras intituladas de 'máquinas celibatárias' justamente nessa mesma época.
The one time I willingly chose to read into Freudian analysis, I got no Freudian analysis…
If there was to be one self-documented case of complex psychosis to have perfect room for Freudian analysis it would be Schreber’s. Yet Freud does so surprisingly little but quote Schreber and make vague gestures to what he thinks to be the case (Schreber wanting to be a woman to restore world order means he’s gay? / he’d rather be demented than gay?)…
1. i'm so glad that there is no longer a cultural imperative to explain away autogynephilia by the construction of an entire cosmological system.
2. being that this is a mostly clinical thing, i think i am obligated to assess this from like a "scientific" or "correctness" point of view or whatever, as opposed to just how much fun i had. unfortunately, freud is probably just like wrong here. talk to like three nonbinary people and you will understand why. still a barrel of laughs though!
This was my first psychoanalysis book and it was really really interesting, I’d love to learn more - I really want to read more Freud and also critiques of his work by authors such as Judith Butler. 3.5 ⭐️ because I learnt a lot but I also understand his writing about queerness is definitely controversial, hence I will need to read Judith butler before I give my full review. Anyway, yeah, great read, need to learn more, must I say again.
Freud in new translation. Interesting. Surely the appearance of Penguin's book is always eye-catching, the book as an art. I read this book as a way of updating the knowledge about Freud's ideas, but i think this book also could be read by common readers as a kind of story of the soul.