In the summer of 1992, I traveled to India to visit my family: my mother, my brother, his wife (my sister-in-law), and my little, then barely six months old nephew. The monsoon lay around the corner, promising mixed relief from the brutal heat of the North Indian plains; the humidity would still oppress, but evenings andContinue reading “An Unforgettable Image, Appropriately Contextualized”
Tag Archives: psychoanalysis
Simone Beauvoir On Psychotherapeutic Healing As Mutilation
In Simone de Beauvoir‘s The Mandarins (WW Norton, New York, 1954; 1999, pp. 64), Anne Dubreuilh, a practicing psychoanalyst wonders: Why does healing so often mean mutilating? What value does personal adjustment have in an unjust society?….My objective isn’t to give my patients a false feeling of inner peace; if I seek to deliver them from their personalContinue reading “Simone Beauvoir On Psychotherapeutic Healing As Mutilation”
Freud On Group Production (And ‘Intellectual Property’)
In ‘Group Pyschology’, (Standard Edition, XVIII, 79; as cited in Peter Gay, Freud for Historians, Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 150), Sigmund Freud writes: [A]s far as intellectual achievement is concerned, it remains indeed true that the great decisions of the work of thought, the consequential discoveries and solutions of problems, are possible only toContinue reading “Freud On Group Production (And ‘Intellectual Property’)”
Doris McIlwain On The Rationality Of ‘Irrational’ Love And Hate
In Living Palely: On the rationality of a certain fullness of feeling (Artlink, Vol 29 No. 3, 2009), Doris McIlwain writes: Friendship and love are not fully rational enterprises. They become strangely symptomatic when we approach them as if they are….To me the sign that you really like someone is when you cannot quite offer a fullContinue reading “Doris McIlwain On The Rationality Of ‘Irrational’ Love And Hate”
The Fall Of Norman (And Norma) Bates
We know the story of Norman Bates: Norman had been excessively dominated by his mother since childhood, and when she took a lover, he became insanely jealous that she had “replaced” him, then murdered his mother and her lover. Later, he developed a split personality to erase the crime of matricide from his memory andContinue reading “The Fall Of Norman (And Norma) Bates”
Ghost From The Machine: Once Again, The Dead Return
Matt Osterman‘s Ghost from the Machine (2010)–originally titled and known internationally as Phasma Ex Machina–is touted by its marketing material as a ‘supernatural thriller’. A low-budget indie, it uses a cast made up of genuine amateurs who sometimes look distinctly uncomfortable and self-conscious on camera, and wears its modest production values on its sleeve. The story sounds hokeyContinue reading “Ghost From The Machine: Once Again, The Dead Return”
April Bernard on Margaret Drabble as Moral Psychologist
In reviewing a selection of Margaret Drabble‘s novels, April Bernard writes: Drabble, as a moralist, seems to believe that it is less important what and why we do what we do, than how we think about it—before, during, after….If the reason that a man always sins is that he is sinful, what matters can onlyContinue reading “April Bernard on Margaret Drabble as Moral Psychologist”
The Pleasures of “Emotional Difficulties”
In his review of several exhibitions showcasing the work of Félix Vallotton, Julian Bell writes: Vallotton is not so much an autobiographical artist as an artist who coolly and procedurally recognizes that his own emotional difficulties might supply him with viable imaginative material. Vallotton wouldn’t be the first or last artist to recognize this, ofContinue reading “The Pleasures of “Emotional Difficulties””
Shame, Rage, and Fascism
Jonathan Lear, in the course of a memorial address to the American Philosophical Association–dedicated to Bernard Williams–noted: For Williams, shame needs to be conceived in terms of its inner psychological structure, in particular, in terms of internal objects and our relations with those objects. The basic experience connected with shame is of being seen inContinue reading “Shame, Rage, and Fascism”
Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero and the ‘Hidden Presence of Others’
Michael Ondaatje‘s Divisadero is a wise book, elliptical and allusive in his distinctive style, one replaying close, attentive reading to its many lovely, lyrical lines, too many to excerpt and note. Here is one that hones in on a truth already known to those who create: Everything is biographical…What we make, why it is made,Continue reading “Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero and the ‘Hidden Presence of Others’”
Samir Chopra 