Date: 6 May 2000 13:14:10 -0000
Subject: Re: psychoanalysis


On Fri, 5 May 2000 11:21:15 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca wrote:
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>On 5 May 2000 13:15:47 -0000 dick gifford <dickgifford-AT-2hb.net> wrote:
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>> Indeed! That's what I've been thrashing out with these dogmatic Jungians. 
>Question:  Is what's "back there" important (the unconscious, "God", pure 
>consciousness)? Or is how you get there that's the real and only issue today?  
>They're trying to apply Wolff's (disciple of Jung) feminine archetypes to a 
>theory of cultural evolution, but spend most of their time arguing about 
>Valentinian gnosis. 
>
>What's "back there" is, in my opinion, overwhelmingly important. But there are 
>several issues at state here. The Jungian approach, it seems to me, rests on a 
>logical error: putting the metaphsychology before the clinical or social 
>research. 

[d]> 

To my mind, Jung was critical in so far as he combined a broad cross-culturalism with historicism. But I am not very well-versed in this secular(?) mythology Jung conjured up. Jung, for instance, studied "psychological" alchemy, discredited proto- (or iatro-) chemistry; but his alchemical texts struck me as impenetrable. I much prefer Joseph Needham's volumes on Chinese alchemy (especially the one on internal alchemy). Jung and Needham have something in common: they both got "distracted" by alchemy! But it is these distractions which the dilettante (read: very broadly interdisciplinary critical theorist) finds fascinating. 

[k]>

In other words, what stands to be demonstrated is assumed. That would 
>be a more positivistic way of putting it. The other problem(s) include an 
>appropriate metapsychology of what's back there to begin with. I've got no 
>problem with a fairly extensive notion of the unconscious, however Jung, it 
>seems to me, is running amok with his notion of the unconscious (ie. because we 
>don't know the limits, there are no limits)(surely I exaggerate). 

[d]> Following the (usually) ignored insights of Luce Irigaray, I "unilaterally" removed the laws of physics from the workings of the libido. Freud's thermodynamic model of the libido was carried over by Jung, and reiterated by Ulanov. Ulanov is the Jungian thinker being followed (and developed upon?) by these forum members. 
But, as soon as I get a little "flaky" -- unilaterally removing physical laws from mental life -- I don't get a response. Irigaray's "Is the Subject of Science Sexed?" (1986) was, to my mind, a monument/watershed publishing event with her flaunting of the "unscientific" terms permeability, fluidity, and reciprocity (which I take to be object relations terminology). 
I just two days posted a "getting out of Dodge" nicety, mentioning I'd be getting back to what I ordinarily do; but one of the prominent Jungian participants wants me to stick around for a while. 
To tell you the truth, I really don't quite know what to make of all I've been sitting in on in this forum. 
I ordinarily juxtapose aphoristic writings with selected feminist interpretations and interpellations of Freud. But this method appears disassociative to the psychologically-minded. 

[k]>

In any event, 
>I find archetypes and such useful as tropes or viewing goggles, but not so much 
>helpful in terms of explaining the genesis of social significations. 

[d]> 

This is just the thing. Symbolic systems "work". (if you know what I mean). Astrology "works" (to some lesser extent). But, when you say "the genesis of social significations" you can't stop, for instance, at the Sumerian conceptualization of "sky goddess", there's more behind that (if this is, indeed, what you mean by significations). 

[k]>

For that, 
>I'd turn to something like Cornelius Castoriadis or the Lacanians.

[d]> 

OH.... These folks are, for the most part, really anti-Lacanian "the Gallic Trickster" etc. etc. I don't know a whole lot about Lacan myself, but I do know that he shifted the emphasis on "castration" toward the symbolic (linguistic) and away from the biological. I cited a Japanese psycholinguistic clinical experimental study of the effect of pleasant-sounding and unpleasant-sounding verbal-labels on subjective appreciation of odors and retention in memory, and added that if there were a really sharp Lacanian lurking in the forum, he or she might recognize that these Japanese had inadvertently discovered one of the mechanisms of castration. 
No response (yet). 

Best, 

Dick. 
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