[Buddha-l] freud jung

[Katherine Masis]

There are so many rumors going around about the founders and members of the psychoanalytic movement, it’s hard to sort out what’s true from what isn’t.  Was Sabina Spielrein in a forced or a consensual relationship with Jung?  Is it really true that Freud had a longstanding affair with his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, right in his own home and enabled by Martha, his wife?  Perhaps we will never know.  
 
The main value in pointing out the faults, mistakes and vices of great historical figures is to keep us from idolizing them.  That doesn’t necessarily mean we should dismiss everything they said and did because they weren’t perfect.
 
It has been said that the American love affair with Freud was actually a love affair with the later Freud, who veered away from the interpersonal toward the intrapsychic.  Of course this is part of a never-ending debate.  Clara Thompson (one of the <<mothers>> of psychoanalysis and the first to call attention to cultural and gender issues in  psychoanalysis half a century ago) explains it quite well in *Psychoanalysis: Evolution and Development*.
 
Katherine
P.S. I'm using << >> instead of regular quotation marks because they are showing as ? in my posts on this list.  Any suggestions?