I have a great deal of experience and very little interest (or time) to go
into it in detail--again (it's come up in the past). I don't hate
Freud--don't give yourself an easy out--but I don't have much use for his
theoretical matrix. Nonetheless, he--and Lacan--can be usefully
provocative--altho they take a lot of translating. And I appreciate that
there are people who have found analysis useful and perhaps have benefitted
from it in ways that they might not have from forms of treatment that don't
require the acceptance of a mythology. And more power to them.
I have always found in talk therapy that discovering and deconstructing the
particular patient's metaphors was more interesting than imposing my own.
At 09:10 PM 7/13/2000 EDT, you wrote:
>
>well Matthew,
>
>my understanding of Lacan is informed by a great deal more than just reading
>him -- it's funny how we Lacanians (how in the world did Derrideans get into
>this discussion?) tend to rely on the actual experience of analysis. the
>fact that you read Lacan and didn't get him doesn't necessarily reflect
badly
>on Lacan. if you, along with the other haters of Freud & company -- see
Mark
>Weiss' last post on this subject -- want to insist that everything Freudian
>or Lacanian is hokum, there's nothing more to be said about it. however, I
>do notice that you tend to be long on contempt and very short on specific
>discussions. it's too bad that no one can have a discussion about these
>subjects without having to deal with a lot of knee-jerkiness from people who
>really don't seem to have any real expertise, just an surfeit of uninformed
>opinions.
>
>jb...
>
>
>In a message dated 07/13/2000 6:54:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
><<
> Amazing how you Lacanians (and Derrideans etc) think that just reading your
> idols will bring about a miraculous conversion. It does prove you're
> sincere -and that you read in a very different way from me, since it was the
> agonizing experience of trying to read these people that put me off them in
> the first place. At any rate, reading The Mirror Stage doesn't help against
> the charge that Lacan is a pseudo-scientist, since it raises some very
> awkward questions about who exactly has observed and recorded the universal
> childhood reactions to mirrors that he so relies on, and which he is
> arrogant enough to provide absolutely no evidence for. It seems to me like a
> deliberate rhetorical ploy, an attempt to go even further out on a limb than
> Freud did in the dodgiest part of his own theory, the Primal Scene. Which
> does make it an interesting literary device, a sort of psychoanalytic
> burlesque - but it doesn't do much for his claims to scientific status.
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
> Matthew Francis >>
>
>
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