Psychoanalysis sweetheart

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So. Last semester I took a Psychoanalysis in Literature course, and now, unfortunately, this stuff has been pounded into my brain: oh yes, it's quite ridiculous, and even my utterly brilliant professor felt a bit funny sometimes trying to convince a roomful of students that it was serious business but yes! So, and then to make matters worse Lacan was thrown into this mixed bag of treats and suddenly I start feeling like using the word jouissance in at least one conversation every day-- But, here's the point: everyone kind of throws Freud off as some silly business, but I've noticed that on talk shows, in newspapers, magazines, message boards, regular chats with strangers that not only is Oedipal business brought up constantly, but also--Psychoanalysis as a whole. Yes, this is no longer really practiced as a method, but rather, now it's some eventual hands-in-the-air baddie, blame it on daddy sort of thing. If some fuck ups are on the Ricki Lake show to talk about their obsessive nymphomania there are buzz words of No Father Figure--if one is obsessively neat they are anal-retentive. So, what the dilly? Psychoanalysis is bunk, but why all the chitter-chatter?

― Mandee, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, when it goes to Ricki Lake extremes, yeah, it is bunk. But it can be a very useful way of getting to know yourself and how you think. It's helpful for getting some perspective on yourself.

― Prude, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

All I'm saying is not to dismiss the entire practice. (Especially on the basis of only one course.) It can get out of hand, in which cases it can become, at best, silly or, at worst, destructive.

― Prude, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But it can also help.

― Prude, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I didn't know "anal-retentive" came from Freud. I say it all the time, too. Explanation please?

― Maria, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Maria, see Pete's spectaculary inappropriately timed ANAL: WHY? thread

― N., Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The anus is the scissors of th e rectum.

― Dan Perry, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

thanks, nick.

― Maria, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Why 'sweetheart'?

MyMomSays's question sure overflows with semantic vim.

I guess what she's getting at is, historically:

1) psychoanalysis (psych.): threatening and scandalous - to 'the bourgeoisie' (who really existed back then) et al. A few brave souls had to stand up for it. (eC20)

2) psych. becomes accepted: intellectuals (who really existed, etc) use Freudian terminology all over the place. Pop culture accepts it, in general, half-baked terms (eg. Now, Voyager). (midc20)

3) age of scepticism - Postmodernism - lc20: psych. comes under fire from various quarters: literary types talk about it as rhetorical / fiction rather than as literal. People are no longer so ready to use its terminology literally re. human beings; possibly they do so ironically.

But what has happened through this narrative is that the intellectual models of psych. have become pervasive, *under and beyond* the credibility of psych. itself. We use 'ucs', 'repression', 'trauma', 'uncanny' blah all the time, but not meaning serious belief in psych.

This account is just from my POV - which is POV of someone with no investment in psych. whatsoever - who actively dislikes it as a discourse / idiom. But it's like what Foucault used to say about Marx: every historian's a Marxist by now, whether they like it or not. ie: rhetorical and intellectual horizons / paradigms have been reshaped, even for people who are non-psych.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Actually I think what I say above gives too much away to psychoanalysis, which is a load of rubbish at the end of the day.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

literary types talk about it as rhetorical / fiction rather than as literal

Also, existentialism (better as literature than philosophy) and some topics in the philosophy of language (linguists skeptical of theories that suggest that language determines perception, but Whorf-Sapir hypothesis commonplace in popular culture--how many words do Eskimos have for snow?; also, linguists seem to minimize disjuncture between language and the world, to take the relation for granted, unlike philosophers).

A rational, scientific view opposed to a mystical, romantic one. (Okay, so Freud thought he was being scientific.) Is it possible to argue for both? It seems that sometimes you need different ways of looking at things. Psychoanalysis as a form of therapy seems ridiculous, but it has made fairy tales more interesting. Would Remembrance Of Things Past have been possible without Freud?

― youn, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Why 'sweetheart'?

I just thought that if the thread were called simply "Psychoanalysis" it'd be boring!

Thank you for reiterating my question far more coherently than I managed to do--yes--and, yes--but why? I mean, even I catch myself using phrases like "impossible object" and "modes of desire" and such, and it's, well.. annoying. But I guess it's like a good mullet siting, there's no resisting it.

― Mandee, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I just thought that if the thread were called simply "Psychoanalysis" it'd be boring!

I thought it was a reference to "Secrets And Lies". Heh.

― Dan Perry, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It's weird being intimate w/someone who goes to the shrink all the time. Half the time they seem like they really have their shit together - all sorts of phrases and explanations for things at the ready - but this same kind of "endless rehearsal" which makes them so well-prepared also kind of defines the territory that they're able to comfortably trod - over and over again. Why all the chitter chatter: readymade language concepts help people think they've they've got their crazy minds under control. Rolling your eyes and saying "oh god it's ALL about her father" is easier than figuring out what's actually going on right then with her. But it's not satisfying (to me).

Freud is very important though I think. Not only was he one of the first clinicians to theorize a relationship between language and life, but he was maybe the first famous "postmodernist" in that he looked for solutions and cures in places of failure - he looked to the gaps in the system, where the mind breaks down or becomes "irrational", in order (presumably) to produce rationality and regularity. Talk shows, interestingly, rely on this same formula.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

By most accounts I'm aware of, Freud was a great writer and conceptualist in his native German, and when his works were translated into English, that was when a lot was lost. I think Bruno Bettelheim talks about this a lot in his book "Freud and Man's Soul". One example I remember most is that Freud's original terms for ego, superego, and id were "Der Ich" ("The I"), "Der Ueber-ich" ("The Over-I") and "Das Es" ("The It"), respectively. There was also a 'developmental' theme to this very precisely-chosen language--the id, which is the first existing component out of the three (I think in his early works, he hadn't even come up with the superego yet), has a neuter German pronoun to link it thematically with children ("Das Kind", child, is also neuter); the theme of immaturity and gratification of needs, like when a child says "MINE!". All of this context becomes lost when you use the drier, Latin terms.

One other thing (again, to my understanding) is that Freud, who began his career as a physician, came up with his theory from that standpoint; that things like the "Ego" were actual structures in the brain that might one day be found. What's ironic is that the theories he came up with are so difficult (and ardent critics would say impossible) to test scientifically in a satisfiable manner.

One thing I hate is when people ask me what I do, and I mention clinical psychology, and then they proceed with "So, I guess your *analyzing* me right now, huh?" or something equally lame about couches or dreams (often like they think they're the first ones to have ever made the joke with me). But, whether I like it or not, that's proof of Freud's profound cultural influence.

― Joe, Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The main prob. with Freud for me is that he came up with a some real heavy stuff that only really applied to himself, or to his position in the society he was living in at the time, much of which he proposed as a model for all people. If I were talking to him I'd crack "so you're probably analyzing *you* right now, eh?" (gales of laughter)

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I take the Bloomian POV that Freud, while heralded as a 'scientist', was in fact a misty romantic Viennese poet (same as Jung, where this is much more obv.), engaged in agon with Shkspr. One can have no investment (or cathexis, haha) in The System of Freudianism, but still find certain tropes (revitalisation of myth, the psycho- structure of language jokes etc, the uncanny) attractive (taking the signifier without the signified as someone once said) in the same way that one can find bits of the Bible beautiful or profoud without being a Xtian.

― Edna Welthorpe, Mrs, Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes yes but we are all missing the obvious: it is not a COUCH at all (for i haf been in his consultancy room as preserved at the FREUD MUSEUM) it is a GIANT LEATHER BEANBAG!! Do you see!!??

(Also the way they arrange the African Fetisch objs on his desk it is clear he just read the paper secretly out of sight of patients... I know I have made this point before but WHO AMONG US IS NOT OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE??!!)

I believe everything anyone said ever.

― mark s, Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

'Agon with Shakespeare?' Ouch!

The 'sweetheart' thing is still bizarre.

― the pinefox, Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The 'sweetheart' thing is a Murukami reference, no? More people should use the word sweetheart on ILx. (What is the best song to use the word? My choice: 'It happened in Monterey': "Stars and steel guitars and luscious lips as red as wine,
Broke somebody's heart and I'm afraid that it was mine.
It happened in Monterey, without thinking twice
I left her an' threw away the key to Paradise.
My indiscreet heart, longs for a sweetheart,
That I left in ol' Monterey!" {Mabel Wayne/William Rose})

― Edna Welthorpe, Mrs, Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

'More people should use' = bonkers. If we all used it it would have zero impact.

― the pinefox, Friday, 1 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one year passes...

(The monument of psychoanalsyis must be traversed - not bypassed - like the fine thoroughfares of a very large city, across which we can play, dream, etc.: a fiction.)

― the pinefox, Thursday, 20 February 2003 15:38 (twenty-three years ago)

>>> I mean, even I catch myself using phrases like "impossible object" and "modes of desire" and such

Mandee, I have met you: and you never threatened to use any such term or anything remotely like them.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 20 February 2003 15:42 (twenty-three years ago)

one month passes...

I've moved on, I guess. At the point where I posted this thread, I was in college and like, thinking. My brain has now officially turned to oatmeal.

― Mandee, Monday, 14 April 2003 16:14 (twenty-two years ago)

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