Letter to Psychologist: Lisa Osborne, Ph.D. (1998-1999) 11/18/98

TO: Lisa Osborne
FROM: Gary Freedman
DATE: November 18, 1998
RE: Autobiographical Study
_____________________________

The enclosed disc contains the latest revisions in my autobiographical study. There are numerous minor revisions.

There are significant (that is, psychologically revealing) revisions in that portion of the writing that discusses the job termination of Jeffrey Masson by his employer, the Sigmund Freud Archives. I have printed out these pages.

The material has been revised to depict Masson's termination as if it were a dream about the Tausk suicide. Tausk had committed suicide by simultaneously strangling and shooting himself, following the abrupt termination of his psychoanalysis. In the revised version of the material relating to the Masson termination, the aggression that Tausk had inflicted on himself (shooting and strangulation) is projected onto the environment so that it appears that Masson is facing simultaneously a hanging and execution by firing squad. Additional references compare the atmosphere to a dream state.

This is psychologically important, since the material in its revised form can be interpreted as an "undoing" of the Tausk suicide; that is, the Tausk suicide is magically undone by transforming the suicide into a dream. And according to Masson a magical act of undoing is related to the repetition compulsion, a psychological issue that is also emphasized in the writing.

Masson writes: "The primary literature on mysticism is replete with alluring descriptions of states of mind characterized by depersonalization, derealization and deja vu--descriptions devoid of genuine emotional content, and offering instead bland and repetitive reassurances. The impression is that of a panicked attempt to conjure up contentment through a magic, counterphobic gesture. The result is an alien state of mind, anxious and disturbing because these derealizations, etc., are screens behind which lie painful, unconscious memories. . . . The mystic is seeking not future illumination, but protection from past dangers. . . . Thus the mystic, like all traumatized persons, is trapped in a compulsion to repeat, a component of which is an attempt at magical undoing. This may be the deeper layer of Freud's view of the repetition compulsion as an attempt at mastery." Masson, J.M. and Masson, T.C. "Buried Memories on the Acropolis: Freud's Response to Mysticism and Anti-Semitism." Int. J. Psycho-Anal. 59: 199-208 at 205 (1978) (emphasis added).