Counting the Leaves

Comments

1. 

   February 14, 2005

   arf

   “…the psychoanalytic profession and its inability to admit mistakes”?
   I’d say it’s more like the non-falsifiability of their theories. The problem is not that the practitioners are fools (B.S. fields do tend to attract B.S. artists, but they’re not all fools); the problem is that it’s impossible, or virtually so, to prove that a wrong theory is in fact wrong.
   I once read a very fine piece by a functioning adult with Asperger’s Syndrome (the relatively mild form of autism associated with software developers, engineers, et al.), in which the author explained how he compensated for his social deficiencies:
   “I learned to ape human behavior”.
   Heh heh heh. He’s right. That’s how you do it.

   Reply
2. 

   February 14, 2005

   arf

   Oh boy, this review of “Madness on the Couch” is fantastic:
   http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2WBWBWDS254P9/ref=cm_cr_auth/103-6127442-7261466?%5Fencoding=UTF8
   Not only does the reviewer damn the book as “American”, he goes on to observe that non-belief in Freud is a “hysterical symptom” of an “oedipal drama”. It’s a jewel in the same vein as Millburn and Conrad’s “The Politics of Denial” (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262631849/qid=1108423495/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/103-6127442-7261466 ), which defines conservativism as a mental illness. Yes, you heard that correctly. (Who published it? MIT!)
   I’ll be any man in this bar five bucks that somebody wrote the “oedipal drama” review as a deliberate joke. Joke or not, it approaches genius.

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3. 

   February 15, 2005

   Mick H

   Yes I noticed that review:
   “Here’s a piece, typical and distressing, of a current phenomenon which, in that its motivation is resistance, is, to any analyst, heartbreaking. Popular culture and thin, undisguised sentimentality conspire to refuse the reasonable questions of Freud qua historian of the psyche. The general manifestation of this resistance, the mass of texts like this one – hysterical symptoms all – witness the current general denigration of the Freudian. In the service of what?
   The only book worth reading of this ilk – and it hasn’t been written – is the one which treats this savaging of father Freud as symptom and which then interprets this oedipal drama according to the blindness which is descending upon western reason as its psychic space dissolves. Here is no solution but another sypmtom of the one crisis which matters in the realm of the psychoanalytic: WHAT DOES THE SUBJECT RETURN AS WHERE ITS PSCHIC SPACE DISSAPPEARS?”
   I’d like to think it’s a joke, but I’m not so sure.

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4. 

   February 15, 2005

   Ian

   Didn’t I mention Simon Baron-Cohen in an earlier comment ?

   Reply
5. 

   February 15, 2005

   Mick H

   Indeed you did, Ian – the “Lysenko in Sweden” post.

   Reply