Edmund Bergler Pt. 1

Hello everyone! How are y'all? This is LaVel Moorehead: reader, writer, and book blogger extraordinare! :-) Today, I want to blog a little bit about Edmund Bergler. Do you know who he is? Well, of course you don't. He's the man who came up with the term Writer's Block back in 1947. Cool, huh? I took notes about him, his life, and his theory concerning what's known as "psychic masochism." Read on my friends, read on, and learn about the background on writer's block and Bergler's theory on how WB comes about.


Edmund Bergler and Psychic Masochism Notes
“For thirty years it has been my gradually developed belief that...a complete overhauling of our thinking concerning the structure of neurosis is necessary. It is my contention that the first and foremost conflict of the new-born, infant, baby, consists in the fact that he must come to terms with his inborn megalomania. That conflict invariably and without exception results in
a masochistic solution, the ‘pleasure-in-displeasure pattern. This constitutes the ‘basic neurosis’.” (1)

Masochism: gratification gained from pain, deprivation, degradation, etc.,inflicted or imposed on oneself, either as a result of one'sown actions or the actions of others, especially thetendency to seek this form of gratification.

-megalomania: a symptom of mental illness, marked by delusions of greatness, wealth, etc.
-Bergler was an Austrian Jew, fled Nazis in 1937-1938, wrote 25 psychology books, 273 articles published in professional journals (2)

-Bergler worked with Sigmund Freud in Vienna clinic in 1930s ; among first generation of psychoanalysts after Freud (2)

-“True, the neurotic outsmarts the torturer by changing his torture into inner pleasure. But this pleasure is unconscious; and every ounce of unconscious pleasure must be paid for with tons of conscious misery.”(3)


Development of Psychic Masochism in Infants:
“1. offense to infantile megalomania;
2. mobilization of fury, inexpressible fury;
3. turning of the child's aggression against himself." ...but this doesn’t work...the
child becomes too uncomfortable...
4. “Thus we have to add a fourth point:...libidinization* of the boomerang aggression by making it an UNCONSCIOUS pleasure. Nobody can go through the protracted helplessness of childhood without acquiring some traces of this psychic poison. Psychic masochism is a universal human trait...”” (2)

Examples of this:

“TROUBLEMAKER # 1: Infantile megalomania.
Each time the infant’s megalomania is offended (his needs not tended to
automatically), fury is aroused.
TROUBLEMAKER # 2: Helpless fury: Aggression. This is the aggressive DRIVE
operating. But the infant’s means of expressing this fury are ineffectual: crying,
vomitting, spitting, flailing of arms and legs, etc.
TROUBLEMAKER # 3: Psychic Masochism.
“The child’s intuitive genius finds a solution! By learning to ‘like’ displeasure, he extracts pleasure from an ‘impossible’ situation. This pleasure-in-displeasure pattern’ is technically called psychic masochism.” (It is important to understand that this ‘solution’ is not arrived at consciously by the child. His rational faculties have not yet developed. These ‘troublemakers’ form unconsciously.) (5)
-“We have said above, in describing the emergence of psychic masochism, that the child learns to like displeasure... libido can therefore add to the child’s troubles when frustrated or deposited in the wrong place. Unexpectedly, we find libido seated in the ‘trouble council’ as Troublemaker #4.” (5)
-Trouble Maker #5: The Super Ego also known as the Unconscious Conscience