An Impromptu Post - Edmund Bergler

Writer's block is better termed "creative inhibition" or "creative block." It is becoming more prominent: it was little known by the early Romantic writers, became more prominent during the epoch of the French Symbolists, and last, was rampant (and became a recognized entity) during the period of the great American novel. Today, in a manner similar to attention-deficit disorder, writer's block is a nearly unique American affliction (though it occasionally happens in other countries, vide infra).
(American Journal of Radiology) 

Edmund Bergler (1899-1962)

In an earlier post, I had been plauged by writer's block and I chose to do something about it. After all, "Writing about writer's block is better than not writing at all."  Following Charles Bukowski's words of wisdom, I wrote about my block but in order to understand what I was writing, I researched.  While sifting through my Google searches on overcoming writer's block, I came across an article that mentioned a psychoanalyst named Edmund Bergler.  Random.  So I asked, who is this Edmund Bergler?  He coined the term writer's block but who was he?  I'm sure you are wondering why in the hell am I writing about him.  Well, I don't know. I just felt the need to research a man whose name popped up in a random internet search and share what I found.  These are the paragraphs that brought forth my curiosity.

Writer's block has probably existed since the invention of writing, but the term itself was first introduced into the academic literature in the nineteen-forties, by a psychiatrist named Edmund Bergler. For two decades, Bergler studied writers who suffered from "neurotic inhibitions of productivity," in an attempt to determine why they were unable to create—and what, if anything, could be done about it. After conducting multiple interviews and spending years with writers suffering from creative problems, he discarded some of the theories that were popular at the time. Blocked writers didn’t "drain themselves dry" by exhausting their supply of inspiration. Nor did they suffer from a lack of external motivation (the "landlord" theory, according to which writing stops the moment the rent is paid). They didn’t lack talent, they weren't "plain lazy," and they weren’t simply bored. So what were they?

Bergler was trained in the Freudian school of psychoanalysis, and that background informed his approach to the problem. In a 1950 paper called "Does Writer’s Block Exist?," published in American Imago, a journal founded by Freud in 1939, Bergler argued that a writer is like a psychoanalyst. He "unconsciously tries to solve his inner problems via the sublimatory medium of writing." A blocked writer is actually blocked psychologically—and the way to "unblock" that writer is through therapy. Solve the personal psychological problem and you remove the blockage. This line of thinking is fine, as far as it goes, but it’s frustratingly vague and full of assumptions. How do you know that writers are using their writing as a means of sublimation? How do you know that all problems stem from a blocked psyche? And what is a blocked psyche, anyway?
(The New Yorker)

Who is he anyway?  

Just some guy.

Uh-huh....

Okay, not really.  Edmund Bergler was an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst whose books covered such topics as childhood development, mid-life crises, loveless marriages, gambling, self-defeating behaviors, and homosexuality. He was the most important psychoanalytic theorist of homosexuality in the 1950s. (Wikipedia)

And according to Wikipedia, Bergler's legacy is one that, I admit, I did not expect, especially with the mindset I had when I started this endeavor:

1. Novelist Louis Auchincloss named his book The Injustice Collectors (1950) after Bergler's description of the unconscious masochist of that type.
2. Bergler's Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life? (1956) was cited in Irving Bieber et al.'s Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals (1962). Bieber et al. mention Bergler briefly, noting that like Melanie Klein, he regarded the oral phase as the most determining factor in the development of homosexuality.
3. Philosopher Gilles Deleuze cited Bergler's The Basic Neurosis (1949) in his Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty (1967), writing that, "Bergler's general thesis is entirely sound: the specific element of masochism is the oral mother, the ideal of coldness, solicitude and death, between the uterine mother and the Oedipal mother."
4. Arnold M. Cooper, former Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College and a past president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, said of Bergler's work: "I have adapted my model for understanding masochism from the work of Bergler, who regarded masochism as the basic neurosis from which all other neurotic behaviors derive. As long ago as 1949 . . . he felt, and I agree, [that the mechanism of orality] is paradigmatic for the masochistic character.
5. Freud critic Max Scharnberg has given Bergler's writings as an example of what he sees as the transparent absurdity of much psychoanalytic work in his The Non-Authentic Nature of Freud's Observations (1993), writing that few present-day psychoanalysts would defend Bergler. Scharnberg disapprovingly notes Bergler's claim that all homosexuals "are subservient when confronted with a stronger person, merciless when in power, unscrupulous about trampling on a weaker person."
6. Bergler's theories, with their assumption that the preservation of infantile megalomania or infantile omnipotence is of prime importance in the reduction of anxiety, have been seen as anticipating Heinz Kohut's self psychology.
7. Psychotherapist Peter Michaelson has written several books with Bergler’s basic neurosis in mind. Among Michaelson’s prominent ideas is the notion of inner passivity; a passive attitude with which he claims people treat inner masochism. Michaelson’s inner passivity premise suggests victims sustain inner masochistic tendencies by assuming such tendencies are “happening to them” rather than the other way around.
8. Psychotherapist Mike Bundrant has based much of his work on Bergler’s early theory of psychic masochism, although Bundrant has distanced himself from Bergler’s views on homosexuality, claiming Bergler was victim to his own prejudice in this area, or simply mistaken. Bundrant discusses inner masochism in the form of “psychological attachments” that fit consistent patterns over time.

Hold on!!  I thought this was supposed to be about writer's block and not sexuality and masochism!?!

I know, which is why I was a bit surprised at first.  Took a little digging but I found an amazing article on writer's block on the American Journal of Radiology website.  However, this was the only mention of Bergler in said article:

Writer's block is a modern notion, and the term was coined in 1947 by Dr Edmund Bergler, a famous Austrian psychiatrist living in New York City. Today, it is well accepted that the notion of writer's block arose in conjunction with the sudden prestige of psychiatry in the United States after World War II. Dr Bergler, a follower of Freud, blamed writer's block on oral masochism and a milk-denying mother (that gives me something to think about because I know that I was bottle-fed!), in addition to other "phallic and anal" explanations along Freudian lines. Stress leads to panic, and some scientists believe that the reticular activating system in the brain stem will shift higher functions associated with writing from the cortex to the limbic system under duress. Others disagree and think that the creative writing process starts at the level of the limbic system, whereas more technical writing is initially fueled by the frontal cortex. If both were true, all writing would stop as functions shift from one location to the other. However, writer's block can be selective, as it is in my case. That is, I continue to write other articles, chapters, and books, but writing this specific series of essays is my problem. Writer's block is commonly seen in college and university students who consistently fail to turn in their written assignments. In them, procrastination (a behavior specifically called "academic trait procrastination") is a major component of writer's block. Procrastination is learned, so education specialists claim that it can be unlearned. Perfectionism is also blamed for the block; it seems to motivate some procrastination, and together these both promote writer's block. In academia, the notion of writer's block is disdained by younger members but seems to gain respect at higher levels where it occurs more commonly.  (American Journal of Radiology)

What did they just say?  

Believe me, if I hadn't majored with a degree that had a lot of psychology classes, I wouldn't be able to understand that either.  What that paragraph basically says is that Bergler blamed writer's block on mothers who did not breastfeed their child.  Later on in life, when that child had grown, stress causes chemicals in the brain to do silly things, including cause writer's block.

Now that I found the where Bergler believed writer's block originated, let's dig a little deeper.  Back to Google!  But, now I'm confused, I have other people telling me what he did, but finding his work is proving a little more difficult.  Why?

Several of Freud's disciples developed their own 'brand' of psychoanalysis, and eventually split off from Freud, but Bergler did not. He followed and extended Freud's work. He immigrated to the United States in 1938, where he worked as an author and psychoanalyst until his death in 1962. During that time, he wrote 24 books and published hundreds of papers in both professional journals and popular magazines.
In spite of these significant achievements, Bergler's work has— vanished! Any references to him have been removed from most, if not all psychoanalytical and psychotherapeutic institutions and associations.
(Edmund Bergler Society of Toronto)

Okay.... so his work vanished?  Is that good or bad?

If the Edmund Bergler Society of Toronto is correct, then yes, I guess his work disappeared.  At least they were kind enough to include his research on their website, laid out in such a format that it could be read as a textbook of sorts.  I'm not sure if the disappearance of his work is good or bad.  

Before you start criticizing me on not looking hard enough, I did find some of Bergler's published works.  However, none of the titles I saw were specifically directed toward writer's block and without the ability to hold those books in my hands and physically go through them, I won't be able tell you specifically what Bergler said.  It makes me wonder if a topic I believe should be researched thoroughly is even considered important.  I mean, don't get me wrong, maybe there is a better source of research out there, but I picked a dead end and the wrong guy to look into.  Bergler's research was revolutionary for his time.  Come on, masochism and homosexuality?  Weren't they frowned upon during Bergler's lifetime?  Perhaps he was one of those men born in the wrong era.  I could imagine that if he were around today, his work, in my opinion, wouldn't be stuffed into a box and shoved into a corner closet considering how much more accepting our culture has become (speaking from an American point-of-view).