It Wasn't All Penises and Penis Stuff?
I recently attended a symposium at SFU. The link for this is here. This was a wonderful symposium. There were, of course, large parts where I had no idea what was going on. But I tried to keep up. I'm not sure I did so well but whatever.
It was nice to be in a room with people who had an admiration for Freud. A realistic respect for the man and his works. So often you find yourself surrounded by people who hate Freud. Often, those same people are the ones who have never read a single line of his work. A glance at introductory psychology texts does not do justice to the huge mind that Freud was. They all have agendas.
The jokes about Freud are numerous and quite funny. The memes out there with him or his quotes are always good for a laugh. The motherfucker remarks are cute and sometimes witty. The average person, or lay person as he would say, does not read him though. And this is really at their peril. They then become victim to specialized agendas who are nothing more than vultures picking the meat from bones, vultures and scavengers who will attack each other hoping for more scraps. Seems like a reliable source..
Christopher Fortune presented on Saturday morning. He presented on Russell Jacoby. He referred to a book called Social Amnesa. Of course, on the lunch break I found the book and last night I read it. Luckily for me a used copy was kicking around. This is a wonderful book. I am going to skip through a lot of good stuff and quote a few parts here to show a side of Freud you don't always see.
"Not in any beyond, but here on earth most men live in a hell: Schopenhauer has seen that very well. My knowledge, my theories and my methods have the goal of making men conscious of this hell so that they can free themselves from it." - Frued quoted at the beginning of chapter 6.
"I do not know if you have detected the secret link between The Question of Lay Analysis and The Future of an Illusion, in the former I wish to protect analysis from the doctors and in the latter from the priests. I should like to hand it over to a profession which does not yet exist, a profession of lay curers of souls who need not be doctors and should not be priests." - Freud in a letter.
"Given the vast amount of neurotic misery 'the quanitity we can do away with is almost negligible'. For this reason Frued backed the idea of state psychoanalytic clinics for the poor." - Freud's words in italics. Freud said that poor people "suffer from neuroses no less than the rich." Next time you pay for treatment remember that quote.
In this selection of quotes I don't see Freud talking about penises or mothers. Where are these quotes when people are pushing their anti-Freudian agendas? I don't care how arrogant or strange Freud was or was accused of being, he seems to be on our side. As much as someone in his shoes can be.
But then again asking people to read a text before forming an opinion hasn't worked so far. The path of least resistance has always been to go with the flow, don't make up your own mind. What happens when you are forced to make a decision all on your own? You get a taste of responsibility. Freedom doesn't taste so good when people have to own what they do. They would prefer to scapegoat something or someone, some idea, or globally entire countries, cultures...
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