Rant of the Week

Seduction Theory

Another of Fliess's ideas was the theory of 'nasal reflex neurosis'. This became widely known following the publication of his controversial book "Neue Beitrage und Therapie der nasaelen Reflexneurose" in Vienna in 1892. The theory postulated a connection between the nose and the genitals and related this to a variety of neurological and psychological symptoms; Fliess devised a surgical operation intended to sever that link.  Freud referred occasional patients to Fliess for treatment of their neurosis through nasal surgery and also via anaesthetization of the nasal mucosa with cocaine. Wikipedia

Wilhelm Fliess was a colleague and intimate friend of Sigmund Freud, until 1904, when Fliess became convinced that Freud had shared some of his theories with another researcher who then took credit for it.  Fliess and Freud were developing the framework of modern psychoanalytic theory.  And nose jobs. 

Freud referred a young woman named Emma Eckstein to Fliess for a nose job (not a cosmetic one-- to sever the "link to her genitals", I guess).  Fliess botched the surgery so badly that the woman was left permanently disfigured.  Freud appears to have manipulated Eckstein on behalf of Fliess and the young woman didn't bear a grudge about the matter.  So far as we know.

No one should underestimate the importance of ambition and ego in the careers of famous theoreticians and scientists and, yes, even psychoanalysts.  Please don't use the word "science" in reference to a field that still, 100 years after it's inception, cannot provide a reliable theoretical framework for what happens inside the human mind.

Which doesn't prevent people from developing studies and research projects to show that people will behave in certain ways, mostly, or sometimes, in some situations, if not others, and, therefore, can be be reliably said to have been exposed for all the world to see.  We know what you're thinking.  When we say we do.

 

Freud suspected, in addition to hysteria, a "nasal reflex neurosis", a condition popularized by his friend and collaborator Wilhelm Fliess, an ear, nose, and throat specialist. Fliess had been treating "nasal reflex neurosis" by cauterizing the inside of the nose under local anesthesia with cocaine used as the anesthetic. Fliess found that the treatment yielded positive results, in that his patients became less depressed.  Wikipedia

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