Evelyn, this was an amazing read! I'm really glad that you chose to do this. I did not know about the two classic stories. I knew about the fairy tale but not the "one that got away" but now that you've mentioned it, it's everywhere! Roadrunner and wild e coyote, Bugs bunny and Elmer Fudd, Tom and Jerry, Sylvester and Tweetie... So many! Also, the Freud analysis is fascinating. In university, the Electra and Oedipus complexes just didn't wash with me when it came to character analysis. Now I know why!
I'm so glad you liked it! Relieved too I have to say, as it ended up being a lot longer than I intended.
I'm the same with the Oedipus and Electra complexes, and to be honest I think they may have been well and truly debunked since, in the sense that I don't think psychologists take them seriously anymore. In particular because children simply don't have a sexuality (because they don't have the hormones), plus there is an innate 'taboo' against incest - partly for obvious biological reasons (inbreeding) but also because any adult who abused children in that prehistoric communal setting would've been ostracised. In that way, detrimental behaviours get kind of rooted out of the gene pool, so to speak. Eventually you're left with 'good behaviour' as the norm.
Neuroscience has also somewhat changed the parameters of this kind of discussion, in terms of brain development. I think a lot of the 'complexes' idea of developmental psychology are a kind of projection, as I suggested in the essay, and say more about Freud et al. than they do about children. Which in a way, in the fairytale sense of the thing, is itself a warning. Then again I did have some bad experiences with psychologists!
Yeah, it is fascinating how these story templates just keep on cropping up. And I do love mischievously subverting them!
Another thought that pops into my head about the complexes. The so-called 'Freudian coverup' thing. The basic psychological thinking here is that Freud himself was a victim of serious childhood abuse, which he had repressed. So when he encountered female patients who claimed to be victims, he dismissed their complaints as not real ('it doesn't happen in middle-class society, you know'). As a result of this, he then (logically) came to an erroneous psychological conclusion/theory that they must be expressing some kind of secret attraction to the father. Unfortunately, this was then picked up by the psychological community, and we are still feeling the effects of this today, in that victims are so often not believed. A similar thing is definitely true when it comes to rape - I believe the conviction rate is something like 1.3%, which is horrendous. You often encounter 'defence barristers' trying to claim that the victim 'secretly wanted it'. Then you get these awful people talking about 'rape fantasies'. So the amount of damage that Freud has done here is really quite shocking.
Also, I had no idea of the previous names of "flash fiction" I particularly enjoy vignette. I write a lot of vignette's and it's a more fitting word. I like it.
Your link from the most recent piece brought me here, and I'm really grateful it did. So yes, people do click on your links and I'm proof of that.
I'll comment on this one by saying that even though I've never delved into studying psychology, I've always thought about myself as a good "reader" of people's psyche in general. Give me 2 weeks where I get to spend 24/7 with anybody, and I'll be in position to give you their psycho-profile. Not it Freudian or Jungian terms, but in general, people's version of it. The older I get, the easier and quicker it gets.
Anyway, as it pertains to your writing style, you got me laughing to the point where my work buddy came to check on me as he was probably thinking I went mad. Talking about the banana symbol and then asking "Do lesbians ever dream of bananas?" is what got me to burst out into laughter. The best one so far and you've had quite a few of them lined up ! Kudos for that.
On a side note - did you know that Siggy had one more trait, a rather distinguishing feature? He was a cocaine "researcher" (a considerate description for junkie) and even wrote about it, dubbing his opus "Cocaine papers". :-D So not only did his own wretched childhood mold his personality and psyche, he was chasing his demons while being high as a kite... As men abusers of cocaine would confirm, it tends to cause issues with their manhood, turning it into a rather flabby one. Which, imho, made Siggy even more frustrated than before. I wonder if he ever noted this side-effect or was he dysfunctional a priori? ;-) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1081929/?page=1
I stand corrected about the links - thanks! Hopefully in future pieces I will be able to provide some external links (I do love research). There are a few in this post actually. The one about the Freudian coverup is interesting, and I have been minded to a piece specifically on that one.
Yes, I was aware of Freud and cocaine - his quackery extended, for example, to thinking that injecting coke into someone's back could cure sciatica. It's an interesting point you make about his flabby manhood actually - I hadn't thought of that before and it makes a lot of sense. It's certainly true that Freud effectively 'projected' his own pathologies onto his patients. Later, in what must've been some rare moment of lucidity, he sort of admitted this and called it 'transference'.
I have a few interesting theories about Freud which do kind of crossover with the Katrina story, in particular regarding dissociation. I know myself that sustained abuse in childhood causes dissociation (e.g. multiple personality, MPD). In MPD the alter personalities are conscious beneath the main personality, so when Freud says he 'discovered' the unconscious, then this too could be a projection of his own pathology onto everyone else. That's to say, the greatest lie in psychology is the existence of the unconscious. The 'unconscious' makes a person think there really is some kind of living conscious world beneath the mind's surface. And it's the use of the word 'discovered' there, which subliminally makes a person think that it's a real thing and shouldn't be doubted.
Freud was essentially doing an 'abdication of responsibility' for pathologies, blaming it on something else (like the scapegoat). It's also a form of slavery to some hidden authority. So if Freud himself had a dissociative condition, in which an 'unconscious' (which is a real consciousness) did exist, then for himself the 'unconscious' exists, but for 'normal' people it doesn't. There are reflex autonomous drives and neural short-circuits etc. (creating pathological behaviour) but to call them 'conscious' is a mistake. They are just behavioural or personality traits.
So I shall definitely have to do a proper paper on that one.
I'd forgotten about the lesbians and bananas. Yeah, that is a good one! I get these funny things just sort of popping into my consciousness on a regular basis and I have to fit them in somewhere if I can.
I agree with you about being able to read people. In my case I had to learn how to do that from a young age as a kind of survival mechanism. In particular, by 'reading' them, I had to read their intentions, which is unspoken and deeper. So for example today if I see some politician or 'journalist' on the TV (not that I watch TV but one catches clips on social media) I can see beneath their words to discern their intention. Once I have that, I can then interpret or analyse their actual words accordingly. And this all happens virtually instantaneously. Whether I should be grateful for this almost-telepathic superpower is another question...
Oh yes, reading people is a true gift, no doubt about it. It may be an ancient survival mechanism - seeing through your enemy before he becomes one with his deeds. Or choosing your partner properly, etc. It has to be taught or trained, having a talent or being gifted isn't enough. But that's how things work with any of our traits or talents, right? Constant training makes us the masters of certain abilities.
I like your 'ancient survival mechanism' thing. Of course I delve into that evolution a fair bit in the Circe article(s). I would imagine it is also a trait which is developed by social animals. I did, as it happens, read an interesting article earlier about how brain activity can synchronise between, say, a human and their dog (they used non-invasive EEG in the experiments). A Mathisian presumably might talk about either sharing charge field emanations, or perhaps a better description would be aligning personal charge fields (like with auras maybe). By aligning, that could simply mean sub-atomic particles spinning in the same direction/vector. Doing it consciously, though, without the other person knowing, that's a step further. But certainly if we go back to our little groups of 150 people in the wild then synchronising with each other, like a well-organised team or small infantry unit, is a definite survival benefit.
I'd imagine social animals that don't use the same complexity of language which humans do for communication would have a heightened sense of this synchronicity.
Then there's the thing about groups of women living together synchronising their periods.
So it's definitely a real thing. And you're right, it can be trained and practised. I do love all this sort of stuff. The world is full of wonders.
Evelyn, this was an amazing read! I'm really glad that you chose to do this. I did not know about the two classic stories. I knew about the fairy tale but not the "one that got away" but now that you've mentioned it, it's everywhere! Roadrunner and wild e coyote, Bugs bunny and Elmer Fudd, Tom and Jerry, Sylvester and Tweetie... So many! Also, the Freud analysis is fascinating. In university, the Electra and Oedipus complexes just didn't wash with me when it came to character analysis. Now I know why!
I'm so glad you liked it! Relieved too I have to say, as it ended up being a lot longer than I intended.
I'm the same with the Oedipus and Electra complexes, and to be honest I think they may have been well and truly debunked since, in the sense that I don't think psychologists take them seriously anymore. In particular because children simply don't have a sexuality (because they don't have the hormones), plus there is an innate 'taboo' against incest - partly for obvious biological reasons (inbreeding) but also because any adult who abused children in that prehistoric communal setting would've been ostracised. In that way, detrimental behaviours get kind of rooted out of the gene pool, so to speak. Eventually you're left with 'good behaviour' as the norm.
Neuroscience has also somewhat changed the parameters of this kind of discussion, in terms of brain development. I think a lot of the 'complexes' idea of developmental psychology are a kind of projection, as I suggested in the essay, and say more about Freud et al. than they do about children. Which in a way, in the fairytale sense of the thing, is itself a warning. Then again I did have some bad experiences with psychologists!
Yeah, it is fascinating how these story templates just keep on cropping up. And I do love mischievously subverting them!
Another thought that pops into my head about the complexes. The so-called 'Freudian coverup' thing. The basic psychological thinking here is that Freud himself was a victim of serious childhood abuse, which he had repressed. So when he encountered female patients who claimed to be victims, he dismissed their complaints as not real ('it doesn't happen in middle-class society, you know'). As a result of this, he then (logically) came to an erroneous psychological conclusion/theory that they must be expressing some kind of secret attraction to the father. Unfortunately, this was then picked up by the psychological community, and we are still feeling the effects of this today, in that victims are so often not believed. A similar thing is definitely true when it comes to rape - I believe the conviction rate is something like 1.3%, which is horrendous. You often encounter 'defence barristers' trying to claim that the victim 'secretly wanted it'. Then you get these awful people talking about 'rape fantasies'. So the amount of damage that Freud has done here is really quite shocking.
Also, I had no idea of the previous names of "flash fiction" I particularly enjoy vignette. I write a lot of vignette's and it's a more fitting word. I like it.
It sounds nicer too! vignette. Like plinth. That's another good word.
Your link from the most recent piece brought me here, and I'm really grateful it did. So yes, people do click on your links and I'm proof of that.
I'll comment on this one by saying that even though I've never delved into studying psychology, I've always thought about myself as a good "reader" of people's psyche in general. Give me 2 weeks where I get to spend 24/7 with anybody, and I'll be in position to give you their psycho-profile. Not it Freudian or Jungian terms, but in general, people's version of it. The older I get, the easier and quicker it gets.
Anyway, as it pertains to your writing style, you got me laughing to the point where my work buddy came to check on me as he was probably thinking I went mad. Talking about the banana symbol and then asking "Do lesbians ever dream of bananas?" is what got me to burst out into laughter. The best one so far and you've had quite a few of them lined up ! Kudos for that.
On a side note - did you know that Siggy had one more trait, a rather distinguishing feature? He was a cocaine "researcher" (a considerate description for junkie) and even wrote about it, dubbing his opus "Cocaine papers". :-D So not only did his own wretched childhood mold his personality and psyche, he was chasing his demons while being high as a kite... As men abusers of cocaine would confirm, it tends to cause issues with their manhood, turning it into a rather flabby one. Which, imho, made Siggy even more frustrated than before. I wonder if he ever noted this side-effect or was he dysfunctional a priori? ;-) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1081929/?page=1
I stand corrected about the links - thanks! Hopefully in future pieces I will be able to provide some external links (I do love research). There are a few in this post actually. The one about the Freudian coverup is interesting, and I have been minded to a piece specifically on that one.
Yes, I was aware of Freud and cocaine - his quackery extended, for example, to thinking that injecting coke into someone's back could cure sciatica. It's an interesting point you make about his flabby manhood actually - I hadn't thought of that before and it makes a lot of sense. It's certainly true that Freud effectively 'projected' his own pathologies onto his patients. Later, in what must've been some rare moment of lucidity, he sort of admitted this and called it 'transference'.
I have a few interesting theories about Freud which do kind of crossover with the Katrina story, in particular regarding dissociation. I know myself that sustained abuse in childhood causes dissociation (e.g. multiple personality, MPD). In MPD the alter personalities are conscious beneath the main personality, so when Freud says he 'discovered' the unconscious, then this too could be a projection of his own pathology onto everyone else. That's to say, the greatest lie in psychology is the existence of the unconscious. The 'unconscious' makes a person think there really is some kind of living conscious world beneath the mind's surface. And it's the use of the word 'discovered' there, which subliminally makes a person think that it's a real thing and shouldn't be doubted.
Freud was essentially doing an 'abdication of responsibility' for pathologies, blaming it on something else (like the scapegoat). It's also a form of slavery to some hidden authority. So if Freud himself had a dissociative condition, in which an 'unconscious' (which is a real consciousness) did exist, then for himself the 'unconscious' exists, but for 'normal' people it doesn't. There are reflex autonomous drives and neural short-circuits etc. (creating pathological behaviour) but to call them 'conscious' is a mistake. They are just behavioural or personality traits.
So I shall definitely have to do a proper paper on that one.
I'd forgotten about the lesbians and bananas. Yeah, that is a good one! I get these funny things just sort of popping into my consciousness on a regular basis and I have to fit them in somewhere if I can.
I agree with you about being able to read people. In my case I had to learn how to do that from a young age as a kind of survival mechanism. In particular, by 'reading' them, I had to read their intentions, which is unspoken and deeper. So for example today if I see some politician or 'journalist' on the TV (not that I watch TV but one catches clips on social media) I can see beneath their words to discern their intention. Once I have that, I can then interpret or analyse their actual words accordingly. And this all happens virtually instantaneously. Whether I should be grateful for this almost-telepathic superpower is another question...
Oh yes, reading people is a true gift, no doubt about it. It may be an ancient survival mechanism - seeing through your enemy before he becomes one with his deeds. Or choosing your partner properly, etc. It has to be taught or trained, having a talent or being gifted isn't enough. But that's how things work with any of our traits or talents, right? Constant training makes us the masters of certain abilities.
I like your 'ancient survival mechanism' thing. Of course I delve into that evolution a fair bit in the Circe article(s). I would imagine it is also a trait which is developed by social animals. I did, as it happens, read an interesting article earlier about how brain activity can synchronise between, say, a human and their dog (they used non-invasive EEG in the experiments). A Mathisian presumably might talk about either sharing charge field emanations, or perhaps a better description would be aligning personal charge fields (like with auras maybe). By aligning, that could simply mean sub-atomic particles spinning in the same direction/vector. Doing it consciously, though, without the other person knowing, that's a step further. But certainly if we go back to our little groups of 150 people in the wild then synchronising with each other, like a well-organised team or small infantry unit, is a definite survival benefit.
I'd imagine social animals that don't use the same complexity of language which humans do for communication would have a heightened sense of this synchronicity.
Then there's the thing about groups of women living together synchronising their periods.
So it's definitely a real thing. And you're right, it can be trained and practised. I do love all this sort of stuff. The world is full of wonders.