Since I'd been down with a terrible bout of cold cough last weekend, this "torture" had actually presented me with a wonderful opportunity to catch up on my reading, one of which is this book. Frankly speaking, I had started off reading merely to "preview" the movie version. This experience has so far taken off into another enjoyment of its own.
To summarise the plot of this autobiography, it would be how the interplay of dynamics between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, complicated with the presence of Sabina Spielrein, altered what and how pyschoanalysis was to be defined henceforth. Of course there is the underground romance between Jung and Spielrein, where the two's identities of physician versus patient get increasingly muddled up as the events proceed. However, lest we dismiss this autobiography to be simply that of a physician breaking moral norms, we need to examine how this issue itself ends up being a brokering chip, in Jung's mutating professional relationship with Freud, especially towards their eventual fallout. To equate Freud as a "Grand Master" enforcing strict professionalism within physician-patient relations would be incorrect, as we see later on in the book more and more, as Freud too does not conduct himself in the most impartial manner possible. In fact, Freud's interpretive arrangements within the International Pyschoanaylsis Association smack of outright dictatorship in a "schism" or "movement" not unlike that of politics, which is definitely not the way in which "science" goes about.
The most objective person in the sequence of events, Eugen Bleuler, one of Jung's first mentors in the Swiss psychology circle, who had repeatedly warned all parties that despite the merits of psychoanalysis, it was a seemingly dangerous method, as till then there had been no way to justify it to be classified as a "science". Thus the most pressing issue would be to resolve this crux of the problem. However, in the midst of the clash of personalities and power struggle between Freud and Jung, this critical issue has been swept under the carpet till this very day.
At the risk of reading too much into an otherwise riveting autobiography of two renown men, I cannot help but draw parallels between their power play and conventional office politics, myself greatly empathising with sometimes Jung, sometimes Freud, as the events in the autobiography proceeded.
All too often personality preferences and styles, end up making critical issues take a back seat for too long, festering in the dark like an over-ripe fruit. And by the time the stench is noticed, it may have already been too late, as the leaders involved will have long since passed on and the industry squandered a precious opportunity to rectify the situation. I guess the only conclusion I can draw from this book is that famous scripture verse from Romans 3:23 "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". If great men like Freud and Jung suffer from mistakes like these, what more we mere insignificant workers in our workplaces.
Workplace relations is neither a science, where rival point of views are essential to meaningful progress towards productivity, because it would hamper overall direction of the organisation. However it is not an art too, where the higher authorities have the sole right to enforce and dicate every single decision pertaining to the implementation of the daily operations, as their level of participation in it is restricted, sometimes hindering the wisdom of their choices. I would opt to say that workplace relations is a craft, where all members of the organisation adopt a unifying generic practical attitude of professionalism in line with the orgnisation's vision and mission as they go about operations, while leaving room for other essential matters of accomodation of styles, preferences, personalities to be flexible. However in many cases, the way in which an orgnisation runs has been held sway by a markedly few leaders for too long, such that their preferred manner of operations has constricted how the organisation is run, while simultaneously ingraining a conformed political mindset within employees of how to conduct themselves, with the sole aim of maintaining this constriction and nothing else.
I'll finish off this entry with a collection of my personal favourite abridged excerpts from the books, from which I got the inspiration to write my conclusion. The book is available in all bookshops and most branches of the National Library Board. Meanwhile I'd better start on watching the film version too.
In effect, Freud and Jung were contending to see which was the analyser, which the one anaylsed. What had once been a collaborative arrangement had collapsed into a situation in which only one of them could be the authority, only one the possessor of pyschoanalytic truth. Accordingly, each man now posed a special kind of psychological threat to the other, a kind of threat that was perhaps historically unprecedented. For not only was each man claiming to know the other better than he knew himself, but by that very act he was appropriating the other's right to his own identity as a psychoanalyst... The possibility of playing for such terrible, savage stakes was implicit in how psychoanalysis had evolved- without empirical checks or methodological safeguards, the right to discern the unconscious motives of another belonged to whoever was strong enough to seize it. Yet, paradoxically, the very nature of the psychoanalysis identity they were trying to wrest from each other demanded that they not indulge their fiercer passions any further. The identity of a psychoanalyst was a corporate one. If the two men wrecked institutional psychoanalysis with their different polemics, then neither would achieve the thing he was after.
"The Rest is Silence" pg. 434-5
Was pyschoanalysis a science, in which rival hypotheses were essential to a meaningful examination of the data? Or was it an art, in which case the original artist had the right to enforce to how his creation should best be completed? A case could have been made that the actual practice of psychoanalysis was neither an art nor a science, but a craft... indicated the practical attitude which the analyst should adopt toward basic phenomena...while they left more essential matters...completely hanging. Moreover, in such a conception of psychoanalysis, the theoretical and practical innovations of Freud, Jung and others would still have had their place as that which distinguished the craft of psychoanalytic psychotheraphy from other forms.
As brillant as it was, Jung's innovation stopped short of truly turning psychoanalysis from the path that it was on. For he was not arguing that different types of patients might require different modes of understanding and even different types of intervention, which would have been a truly clinical approach. Instead, he was arguing that different kinds of theorists produce different kinds of theories, Which was a different matter. The evolution of psychoanalysis theory had been under the sway of its two giants for so long that the primacy of the theorist over the patient continued to be inadvertently maintained even as the effort was being made to understand what was going on.
From "This History of the Psychoanalytic Movement" pg.443, 464
All this was not supposed to happen in psychoanalysis, for psychoanalysis was, it was said, a science. In science, neither the vision of the founder nor the counter-vision of the disciple is of any movement. this in a way is science's great consolation. What is established rest on replicatable experience, and though it may later be amended or even overthrowbn by yet more penetrating investigations, one does not have to worry about other issues, such as personal temperament or religious tradition. Indeed this wqas the great hope... perhaps finally one culd put all conjectures about man's essential nature on an empirical footing. Early in their association, both Freud and Jung counted on just this protection... their differences would work themselves out as data continued to come in. But the data came in, and things only got worse...the fact that Freud and Jung could ultimately arrive at two different schools of depth pyschology indicates that psychoanalysis, despite its claims, was not a science...The problem lay between the theory and the data; it lay in the method... whe the time came, he (Freud) found he could not even describe the rules for interpretation, let alone prove their scientific sturdiness. The use of scientific language did nothing to resolve Freud's methodological problems... The real tragedy of Freud and Jung is not that they failed to create a science... The real tragedy is what they did to pyschoanalysis as a clinical method. They allowed the interpretive range of psychoanalysis to be woefully constricted while simultaneously creating a political organisation that ensured this constriction would endure.
From "Afterword" pg. 508-511
