Cassie on Kristeva on depression:
"Anyhow, it's a great read, very thought provoking."
Sure, but so is lots of fiction. So is 'Journey to the
Centre of the Earth'. Sorry if I'm being a bit
flippant, but my hostility to pseudo-scientists like
Kristeva and Lacan, and to structuralist and
post-structuralist French stuff in general, is based
largely on the belief that it has been taken very
seriously - taken uncritically, even - by people who
have some quite tricky jobs. Kristeva and Lacan have
had a very considerable influence on psychiatry,
despite the fact that their theories are untestable
and they are not properly trained in science. Think
of all the damage that Freud's wacky ideas about
women and gays wrought, all the deadends that Jung's
silly mysticism led desperate patients down, all the
schizophrenics who killed themselves because RD Laing
decided they didn't need medication (easy decision for
him to make)...what's to say Kristeva's ideas are any
better. I would prefer to be treated by techniques
that have their feet on the ground. It's quite
fascinating reading about phrenology, all the claims
its (always sincere) advocates made for it and so on,
but if I needed to know what was really going on
upstairs I'd prefer a CAT scan (there's probably a few
ppl on this list who think I need one!) to a
going-over from a phrenologist anyday. I would be
really, really concerned if a depressed person, or
someone close to a depressed person or, worse still, a
psychiatrist carriesd away by Kristeva's reputation,
attempted to treat depression using such a speculative
'theory' as hers. I mean, a number of alarm bells ring
as soon as one reads ...
"Unlike what happens with psychotics... .depressed
persons do not
forget how to use signs."
In the first place, this is a ridiculous
generalisation to attempt about ppl suffering from
psychosis - they are not all chips off the same
block!There is an argument that has been raging for
many years amongst experts as to whether the category
'schizophrenic' should be done away with, chopped up
into more precise categories, such is the variety it
covers. And a significant number of ppl who are
treated for depression also suffer from a psychosis -
where does that leave Kristeva's distinction?
Also, Kristeva seems unaware of the studies that have
been done of 'psychotic discourse' which indicate that
it (some of it, at least) is meaningful, does employ
tokens of meaning in an organised fashion...
"Dostoyevsky considers two antidotes for that
catastropic motion: suffering,
and forgiveness."
Give me prozac anyday over bad literary criticism by
bad French philosophers!
Cya
Scott Hamilton
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Subject: Julia Kristeva's "Black Sun"
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Some thoughts on the feminine/ language/ depression
from this brilliant book
by Kristeva:
"Listen again for a few moments to depressive speech,
repetitive,
monotonous, or empty of meaning, inaudible even for
the speaker before he or
she sinks into mutism. You will note that, with
melancholy persons, meaning
appears to be arbitary..."
And later:
"Unlike what happens with psychotics... those who are
depressed maintain a
paternal signifier that is disowned, weakened,
ambiguous, devalorized, but
nevertheless persistent until asymbolia shows
up...depressed persons do not
forget how to use signs."
And later:
"The spectacular collapse of meaning with depressive
persons- and, at the
limit, the meaning of life- allows us to assume that
they experience
difficulty integrating the universal signifying
sequence, that is, language.
In the best of cases, speaking beings and their
language are like one..."
And also:
"In the analytic cure, the importance of speech's
suprasegmental level
(intonation, rhythm) should lead the analyst... to
extract the
infrasignifying meaning of depressive discourse that
is hidden in fragments
of lexical items, in syllables, or in phonic groups
yet strangely
semanticized."
A final quote:
(regarding 'The Brothers Karamazov')
"Dostoyevsky considers two antidotes for that
catastropic motion: suffering,
and forgiveness. The two movements take place at the
same time and, perhaps
thanks to an underground, dark revelation, difficult
to grasp in the tangle
of Dostoyevsky's narrative, are nevertheless percieved
with sleepwalking
lucidity by the artist... and the reader."
"Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia", Julia
Kristeva, Columbia University
Press, 1989
Kristeva seems to be arguing in this book, amongst
other things, that
clinical depression involves a collapse of speech's
meaning, but that there
often remains a symbolic structure hidden behind the
speech of most
depressives, if we can only listen for it. And also
that to resolve despair,
a valid way out is forgiveness, which can both restore
selfhood and speech's
meaning and allow for new and creative uses and
awareness of language.
Anyhow, it's a great read, very thought provoking.
Cheers,
Cassie
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"Why is it not possible for me to doubt that I have never been on the moon? And how
could I try to doubt it? First and foremost, the supposition that perhaps I have
been there would strike me as idle. Nothing would follow from it, nothing be
explained by it. It would not tie in with anything in my life... Philosophical
problems occur when language goes on holiday. We must not separate ideas from life,
we must not be misled by the appearances of sentences: we must investigate the
application of words in individual language-games" - Ludwig Wittgenstein
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