my dear man, spendius
You are extracting a high toll for your much appreciated attention. Learning is good, but my homework has been extensive. I've been on quite a little ride on Google. Consider for a moment this quotation of Henry Miller:
Quote:Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.
How back handed of the man! Heaven forbid a cure should be offered. How would a person occupy himself if cured? Consciousness is no evil, unless you're talking backward.....which Miller may be. In that case evilness is considered desirable..........
In the words of Sigmund himself:
Quote:Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient's ego freedom to decide one way or another.
Sigmund Freud
Apparently, Miller through Anais Nin came into contact with psychoanalysis through Otto Rank, another early colleague of Freud's who begged to differ. Rank moved away from Freud's theory of intrapsychic conflict dominated primarily by oedipal themes such as jealousy and competition and moved in the direction of the influence of the mother. His conclusion was a more active, or interactive treatment method which involved a hands on approach, so to speak.....which is the way many of these mother theories go. It may have appealed to Miller and Nin.....although that's pure speculation. But Miller doesn't seem to have developed an appreciation for psychoanalysis.....but maybe I'm wrong. Psychoanalysis in those days was quite different than it is today.
I'm not one of those Vagina Monologues feminists, although there is nothing wrong with vaginas. But I'm a true believer in penis envy and the like......if it's not universal, you couldn't prove it by me....as a matter of fact, I can't call myself a feminist at all. I'm a humanist, and whether it's secular or not is still up for debate. Freud is so terribly misunderstood.
As to Dylan and his Thumb, consider the liner notes:
Quote:. . . . the songs on this specific record are not so much songs but rather exercises in tonal breath control. . . . the subject matter -- though meaningless as it is -- has something to do with the beautiful strangers . . . . the beautiful strangers, Vivaldi's green jacket & the holy slow train
It's true, I do see the funny side of Just Like Tom Thumb Blues, but that's my cross to bear in my life. I see the humor and the positive side of almost anything......however I was much challenged to come up with something positive about the results of the last election, other than that I stand to become considerably richer now than before Nov. 2. That's not a bad one......but at what price?
And Wilhelm Reich....now there's a character. <yuck yuck> I have known of Reich for some time. His work on character analysis is actually brilliant, as far as it goes.... And he was right on, in my opinion, about the uselessness of the concept of sin and evil. We are all animals, after all. But the poor man died in an unhappy place.
Quote:Reich died on November 3, 1957, in the Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he was sent for criminal contempt. The criminal charge was levied because Reich refused to obey an injunction against selling quack medical devices such as the Orgone Accumulator and orgone "shooters," devices which allegedly could collect and distribute orgone energy, thereby making possible the cure for just about any medical disorder except, perhaps, megalomania and self-delusion.
And it's a shame too, given his early work.....however, even then he was heavy handed and most would call him insensitive. His confrontive style was abrasive. Most people on the couch don't like to be confronted by their methods of defense or told of their animal nature, not right off the bat anyway.......it's poor psychoanalytic technique, I understand.
Reich differed from Freud in a most fundamental way.......he moved from the intrapsychic to the organic.......the path his mind travelled before his death, apparently
Reich's insanity was rather far advanced before he was imprisoned.
Quote:Wilhelm Reich claimed he had discovered a universal cosmic and biological energy present everywhere and detectable through specified experiments. He called this energy orgone. He built a box with organic material on the outside and metal on the inside that he called an orgone accumulator, which he believed collected and accumulated orgone in the atmosphere. He claimed that exposure to orgone, particularly through sitting in the accumulator, promoted health and vitality, and was an effective treatment for cancer. He also claimed to detect another energy, oranur or deadly orgone radiation (DOR), which produced negative health effects and reacted to orgone. He also built a device he called a cloud buster, with which he claimed he could manipulate the weather by manipulating the orgone in the atmosphere. Reich's claims aroused much controversy, and he was taken to court for fraud by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The court ordered his books and research burned and his equipment destroyed. Reich was given a prison sentence, and he died in prison in 1957.
It's interesting they sent him to prison rather than the psychiatric institution. Just goes to show ya that it's dangerous to mess around with the FDA.
In my goggle fun this morning, I uncovered a previously unknown to me play written by a certain philosopher named, Robert Anton Wilson. Is he a member of the CPD, btw?
The play is called Wilhelm Reich in Hell.
http://www.rawilson.com/hell.html
And it's quite funny, and along the lines of my poem, now that I think of it. It's a shame that the preponderance of information available on Google about Reich is about his crazy stuff. But that's the way some of us are.....always hungry for the quick and sensational gratification.
Ted Hughes........I have several books of his poetry in my library....but not the one about the Goddess. I'll have to remember to order that book, it looks most interesting. And do I know Phillip Larkin? Don't think so........But I'll tackle that another day.
This post is too long. Bother! But I appreciate your appreciation of my poem, even with your right brain and left tit comment. Humpt........
