The 'Freud' Tag Archive

Below you'll find all my writing tagged with the word Freud. The posts are listed in chronological order. Click the post title to read more.

November 13th, 2008

Paging Dr Freud To The Lincoln Bedroom

Obama will be given a set of panic buttons: One for his pocket, one on his desk and one beside his bed. They are credit card-shaped and simply have to be squeezed to summon a posse of agents.

At one time, the President and Vice-President were given three-inch-high models of the Washington Monument to put beside their beds. They had simply to knock them over to summon the guards.

But the models were abandoned after Vice-President Dan Quayle – noted for being clumsy – knocked his over late one night while making love to his wife.

In seconds, the door burst open, the lights went on and Mrs Quayle was thrown out of bed to the floor as bodyguards flocked around her husband to ensure his safety.

From The Mirror UK

BOB HERBERT: You guys have seen the ad a number of times, I am sure, and you have it here in-house.  First thing you see are a couple of images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, right?  And we see an image of Barack Obama right after that, comes quickly right at the beginning of the, you remember that, right?  Do you remember any other startling images right there at the beginning?

Silence on the set.

HERBERT: Alright. There is an image right there in that very beginning of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and there is an image of the Washington Monument. Look at the beginning of that ad again.  And you tell me why those two phallic symbols are placed there [snaps fingers]—pow!—right at the very beginning of that ad.

Over the course of the segment, the rest of the gang tried to gently talk Herbert down from his bad trip, calmly explaining that what he was seeing were in fact images of the Victory Column in Tiergarten Park in Berlin, where Obama chose to give his speech.  But by the end, Herbert was still speaking of seeing “two phallic symbols.”

From NewsBusters

November 12th, 2008

Like We’ve Learned Nothing

“‘My darling,’ said he, ‘I beg of you for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?’”

From The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)

Number of French Psychiatric Theses on Hysteria

“Two scientists, drawing on their own powers of observation and a creative reading of recent genetic findings, have published a sweeping theory of brain development that would change the way mental disorders like autism and schizophrenia are understood.

“The theory emerged in part from thinking about events other than mutations that can change gene behavior. And it suggests entirely new avenues of research, which, even if they prove the theory to be flawed, are likely to provide new insights into the biology of mental disease.

“Their idea is, in broad outline, straightforward. Dr. Crespi and Dr. Badcock propose that an evolutionary tug of war between genes from the father’s sperm and the mother’s egg can, in effect, tip brain development in one of two ways. A strong bias toward the father pushes a developing brain along the autistic spectrum, toward a fascination with objects, patterns, mechanical systems, at the expense of social development. A bias toward the mother moves the growing brain along what the researchers call the psychotic spectrum, toward hypersensitivity to mood, their own and others’. This, according to the theory, increases a child’s risk of developing schizophrenia later on, as well as mood problems like bipolar disorder and depression.”

Continue reading at the New York Times. (Nov. 12, 2008)

“Female hysteria was a once-common medical diagnosis, made exclusively in women, which is today no longer recognized by modern medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment was routine for many hundreds of years in Western Europe. Hysteria was widely discussed in the medical literature of the Victorian era. Women considered to be suffering from it exhibited a wide array of symptoms including faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and ‘a tendency to cause trouble’.

Since ancient times women considered to be suffering from hysteria would sometimes undergo ‘pelvic massage’ — manual stimulation of the anterior wall of the vagina by the doctor until the patient experienced “hysterical paroxysm”. This deep psycho-emotional release is today referred to as the ‘g-spot’ or ‘female’ orgasm (see article orgasm), qualitatively different from ordinary genital (clitoral) orgasm.”

Continue reading at Wikipedia.

October 28th, 2008

Freud, the etymologist

“Other portions of the same dream enabled us to discover further that she had guessed that the English ‘box’ was related to the German ‘Büchse‘ ['receptacle'], and that she had then been plagued by a recollection that ‘Büchse‘ is used as a vulgar term for the female genitals.”

Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)

October 13th, 2008

Milan Kundera and Ashton Kutcher in the crucible of my subconsciuosness.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) — A document written by the Czech Communist police claims that author Milan Kundera informed on a purported Western spy in the 1950s, a state-sponsored institute said Monday.

The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes said a team of historians and researchers found a document written by the SNB, or Czech Communist police, that identified Kundera as the person who informed on a man who was later imprisoned for 14 years.

The usually reclusive Kundera, author of ”The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” rushed to reject the charge.

”I am totally astonished by something that I did not expect, about which I knew nothing only yesterday, and that did not happen. I did not know the man at all,” Kundera was quoted as saying by the CTK news agency.

Kundera accused the institute and the media of ”the assassination of an author.”

Kundera, 79, has lived in France since 1975 and it is there that he published his most famous books, including ”The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” ”The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,” ”The Art of the Novel” and ”Immortality.” He was granted French citizenship in 1981.

The author lives in virtual seclusion, only travels to his former homeland incognito and never speaks to the media.

Continue reading: The New York Times.

This reminds me of a dream I once had. Let me recount it to you.

At the point at which I become conscious of myself dreaming, I encounter Ashton Kutcher. He has written three books, all of which have been quite successful and are critically respected. I don’t know the details of the first and the third, but the second book is a remake of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Kutcher had starred in the film adaption of the book, and then he had written his own version of the story, stripping away the actual intellectual content and replacing it with pseudo-intellectualism that appeals to people my dream-self considers half-wits. Whether or not the book has any intellectual merit, my waking self is left to speculate. It’s also of note that he has three books. His first book was acclaimed before he ever starred in or wrote the remake of the Kundera classic, and then he wrote another well received book afterward. He’s solidly established, and by all measures, a well-respected author and a veritable master of his trade.

When I actually meet Kutcher, we’re in a large green field with trees, which I take to be a golf course. We’re not golfing, and it seems like maybe there are some buildings somewhere behind us, but nowhere within the frame of my view. Kutcher’s sitting on a fence, talking to some high school girls, whom I would estimate are about fifteen years old. Within moments they’re fondling him through his pink and yellow plaid shorts while he half-heartedly discourages them. It’s at this point that I wake from the dream, wide-eyed and panicked.

Photo from A Photography Blog.

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