I played with real looking guns all the time: the first battery operated squirt guns were very realistic and the water was held in extended clips that you could pop-out and replace. Loved them. Of course, I was white, so no-one ever shot me.
I understand what you mean. It’s why I have been divorced since 1.5 years ago! I didn’t use the same terminology that you are, but I did actually start writing down and graphing the shifting sands of subconscious inconsistency.
What you describe reminds me of Wilhelm Reich’s early work, and what he referred to as The Emotional Plague, such as in his “Sex-Pol”, “The Function of the Orgasm”, and “The Mass Psychology of Fascism”. And also to Deleuze’s and Guattari’s collaborative works. Also Korzybski’s “Science and Sanity” - where he argues that the crucial first step for any argument/debate to be communication between equals is to define the terms used. Because otherwise people tend to identify other people and concepts with their own handy mental labels and try to simply beat their biases into others.
I like the early stuff as well, especially the people that spit from Freud (although in hindsight many of these epic battles were more over politics and jargon than substantive differences). Karen Horney was quite good, Fenichel went to a lot of effort to be readable and if you skip the outdated Freudeanisms he’s very quotable. A family therapist, Bepko, had one good book. I enjoy Reich quite a bit although his detours in childhood sexuality are weird and towards the end he’s starting to talk about orgone energy, but “Character Analysis” is still considered an important book. Alfred Adler is also a nice light read, and although he oversimplies things, he’s still very important even though theorists like Kerneberg go to great lengths to snub Adler. I’m very impressed with a recent publication “Object Relations Psychotherapy” http://www.amazon.com/Object-Relations-Psychotherapy-Individualized-Interactive/dp/0765705184
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The point of traditional psycho therapy was to see what emerged in the “transference,” which was when the analyst presented a neutral passive position and the patient would uncontrollably project their aggression onto the analyst. Although this is not usually highlighted in case histories, the transference usually featured many sessions where the patients accused the analyst of being mentally ill. As Fenichle said, all object relations (relations between people where there is an emotional component) involve a transference, so I guess we would expect these people to go around accusing pretty much everyone of being mentally ill unless the other person is able to respond with the corresponding scripted responses learned in childhood.
But psychoanalysis has been greatly influenced by the supportive therapy techniques of Carl Rogers, who basically said “Fuck that noise, I’m here to be your surrogate mommy during these sessions.” This is absolutely sure to make some feel better, especially if they did not have a functional mother, but this simply isn’t going to work on some people. Which reminds me, it’s Sunday I need to call Mom…
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Rather than a weird diversion, I think he makes a strong case for people’s problems with childhood sexuality being a fundamental cause. Most people nowadays would probably not find it controversial that a person’s adult behaviors are often influenced by conflicts brought to them as they get to know themselves. For example, a toddler could become fixated after having been beaten for playing with their own poo, when then they would have naturally grown out of it anyway. But people are still far more accepting of kids behaviors that don’t involve genitals, and have real issues with accepting that child sexuality even exists.
Consider the notion that much creative and social impulse amongst humans can be considered as sublimations of sexual attraction, these impulses can be twisted as one becomes “socialized” towards collectively neurotic and repressive attitudes towards sexuality. People who are determined to (understandably) “defend the children” against sex with adults tend to have no clear rationalization for neurotic attitudes towards masturbation and other forms of completely safe sexual expression. The same thing can even be observed with regards to the popular denial of sexual identity to disabled people. It’s the elephant in the room nobody wants to consider because some groups of people are apparently perceived as “not supposed to” be acknowledged as having a sexual component to their personalities.
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Probably quite correctly. As the quote goes “Anybody who wants to spend their time listening to other people talking about themselves must be crazy.”
The history of psychoanalysis is very much like that of religions, with their many splits and arguments over doctrine. In fact, in my sociology of religion studies, we looked at psychoanalysis from exactly that point of view, and the argument that Freud created a system that was internally consistent but scientifically untestable with the technology of the time, so that its status is indeed that of religion and not science.
In the UK, psychoanalysis has very little status (unlike the US) and is regarded by most people as bunk. You could draw a parallel with the status of Christianity in the two countries. I really do not think that on average either country is less mentally healthy than the other.
I think the thing about Reich is this (IIRC)… it was very common for middle class German boys to lose their virginity playing Sexy Time With The Servants. However, Reich wanted to get naked with the adult chambermaids when he was only five. I think he overgeneralized from his own experiences. He was also one of the people who declined to be psychoanalyzed himself, even though the analysts practiced on each other back then. And then there was the whole part about unnecessarily going to prison for evangelizing about the miraculous qualities of orgone energy.
What does that even mean? Clubs of competing doctrines are the worst, least interesting thing about either religion or psychoanalysis. Their value lies only in offering of methodologies which may or not be of interest to you. This would make either, in their best practice, arts rather than sciences. In the same way that meanings and motivations in art can be rather nebulous - what lasts and what matters is how they applied their own methodology, and got the results they did. Everything else is subjective, which might be immeasurably vital for the practitioner concerned, but no help whatsoever to outsiders.
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The future of British psychoanalysis was shaped by the “Controversial Discussions” during WW2 when the Viennese Freudeans negotiated a truce with the Brits and Kleineans. I guess the Nazis had chased out the Viennese for being a bunch of Jews.
I would definitely say so, those that have problems with authority are usually the most critical of it, so logic would dictate that this is the same with him.
LOL Good one 
Possibly because that short story got thoroughly absorbed into ‘Fahrenheit 451’, which is rather more famous?
Chernobyl was much exaggerated?
In the context of this news story, “The Pedestrian” is much more relevant.
I really hate that parents are not allowed to let their children have some independence. Especially now when you literally can know where your child is 100% of the time. I biked/skated/walked all over my neighborhood when I was young. Dating myself here, but I would even travel upwards of 2 miles away from home to go to the Blockbuster to rent games or movies. Kids need time away from authoritative entities to help them develop who they are.
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Probably quite correctly. As the quote goes “Anybody who wants to spend their time listening to other people talking about themselves must be crazy.”
Indeed, which is why the analyst would take a neutral rather passive stance and observe as the patient spun out of control with accusation, aggression, and fantasy. The goal was to deprive the patient of insights into the therapist, but the need for information would emerge immediately and the patient would start prying and fantasizing about the therapist. It didn’t matter if the therapist was a nut or not at that point. And some patients would actually stalk their therapist to get more information about them. And not divulging personal information to people like that often immediately caused them to accuse the therapist of being mentally ill. Of course, they wouldn’t quit therapy, they’d just accuse the therapist of being mentally ill, session after session.
Now before anyone says “Ha ha ha Freud!” (who am I kidding they bailed a long time ago with much hooting), Ralph Waldo Emerson was making that point as early as 1860:
We need not much mind what people please to say, but what they must say; what their natures say, though their busy, artful, Yankee understandings try to hold back, and choke that word, and to articulate something different. If we will sit quietly, — what they ought to say is said, with their will, or against their will. We do not care for you, let us pretend what we will: — we are always looking through you to the dim dictator behind you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct Of Life: Worship
Worship
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My generation played with real guns, black kids and white kids both. Well, except for upper and upper-middle class kids who had to make do with Daisy BB guns and Crackfires, which were made of wood and metal and could shoot your eye out.
That wasn’t what I meant, though in fact the death toll was greatly exaggerated - we were very lucky that such a criminally stupid set of actions killed so few people, but many Ukrainians died through the effects of displacement and loss of their homes and society, not through radiation.
What I meant was that the effect of the Chernobyl fallout on the UK was exaggerated, as I thought was clear from the context. The significant fallout from US and UK H-bomb tests was largely kept secret, the 1957 Windscale fire, as stupid as Chernobyl but on a smaller scale, was talked down, the vast amounts of tritium and short lived isotopes dumped in the Irish Sea ignored, but the Chernobyl fallout caused a panic and sheep slaughter on hill farms.
Personally I am quite happy living not far from Hinkley Point and welcome its expansion, I have worked with radioisotopes, and I am far more worried about mercury and cadmium than about uranium. But I can understand why the British Government’s constant lying to us about the subject has made people nervous. It is exactly like the right wing newspapers spreading FUD about risks to children.
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2012?!
Do you let your kids around anyone at all that they know? Including close family members? Do you know how much more likely children are to get harmed (in various ways) from RELATIVES than they are compared to complete strangers? Or have you ever spent any actual, real time considering and researching this? I mean, except to pull up a nearly TWELVE YEAR OLD case.
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That should say 2002 but I can’t edit? Anywho. LOL. What a ridiculous comment, @PrestonSturges
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