Impenetrable

What kind of Freudian language is that?:-)

Ik ben een dwaas.

For me the esthetic of Hitler / Natonaalsocialism is the esthetic of the cuckoo clock. That's what Hitlers painting show: kitsch. Another example is the megalomania of Speer and the statues that represented the ideals of the nazidoctrine.
Only Riefenstahl transcended it and turned it into art,but it's wrong to take her work as the norm for their ideology.

PS

I relate the work of Riefenstahl more to Nietzsche then I do to Hitler. The deathcamps came only to existance a decade later.

I attended the symposium on Psychoanalysis and Language also. Is Mr Grunberg charmingly unaware of his lacanian relevance? His lecture was a convincing exploration of the world 'beyond the pleasure principle' i.e. beyond words into the desert of the Real (The Matrix/Baudrillard). There what is possible is permitted if not mandatory. He contrasted the romantic love 's eternalization of the (love)object with its consumption and subjective abolition in perversion. XTC implies a prohibition of language and (hi)story. It transforms the subject into a thing among things. The lecture of Grunberg provided an excellent essayistic pendant to the (indeed) dazzling lacanian exposition of De Kesel! The audience was offered psychoanalysis and culture in intimate i.e. symbolic intercourse!

Charlatan

Noam Chomsky has called Lacan a "charlatan". I think mainly referring to Lacan's linguistic theories. I would perhaps go further and suggest there is a certain charlatany in all psychoanalysis.

Would any sane person consider being treated by a Lacanian?

Charlacan

There are good and bad psychoanalysts, just like there are good and bad butchers or plumbers. After Freud Lacan 's is probably the broadest elaboration of psychoanalytic ethics and anthropology. As for the so-called sane person and to put it cynically: 'Tout homme sain est un malade qui s'ignore':). In fact the difference between sane and insane disappears in our sleep: we all dream the same impossible, forbidden, perverse or 'insane' dreams... Quod analysandum est!

Carlos

To detest Freud is to detest storytelling.

Mark Klinet

As far as I know Lacan never treated anyone in their sleep. Although I must admit it is possible. After all, he treated one man by conducting 3 minute interviews through a barely ajar door.

But this also does not make sense. An insane man is not sane while he is asleep, he is an insane man sleeping. A sane man does not turn insane while taking a nap.

Arnon

Storytelling is the essence of shamanism. Perhaps we should view Freud and Lacan in this light. As with any story, however, the listener must want to believe.

The unconscious exists only for who listens to it

By the end of his life Lacan lost touch as it (alas) happens to many of us. To use this kind of 'argument' is a classic ad hominem phallacy. I'll try just one more jump (not for business but for fun) by paraphrasing Ben Okri: 'We live our dreams c.q. nightmares and those of others. Sometimes we get caught in them'. It is one of psychoanalysis' scandals: man suffers from his own fiction. Thus storytelling paradoxically is at once man's illness ànd his remedy, while psychoanalysis is the art of listening. Amen and bye bye:)!

Carlos

Storytelling is also the essence of literature.

Mark Kinet

An "ad hominen phallacy" is a phallocentric fallacy.

The subconscious exists. And you cannot help listening to it.

Every good story must sound logic and inevitable, I think. I enjoy telling my weird and common stories to my analyst, because I need a listener. And the listener slightly influences the stories. At last we share stories.

Carlos

Wouldn't it be nice Carlos waking up tomorrowmorning slowly realizing that you are lying on your shiny back, your six little feet floundering in the air.

Hanny

That's your fantasy not mine...

Shamanism/ storytelling/fiction

Can there be a society without the glue of fiction?

Mieke

I don't think you can even think without fiction. Even our concept of "real" is a fiction.

Societies seem to produce collective myths and stories. These are often manipulated to maintain social hierarchies. Personally, I wonder whether this is a necessity or a by-product.

Carlos

I think it's more then a by-product.
F.E.1) Think of the phenomenon of political correctness.
2)I myself come from a subgroup with its own myths and stories wich differ slightly from what history teaches at school. This group consisting out of dozens small clubs, each supporting each other formed ultimately a political party wich supports in return their view.These myths are carefully installed and kept to attain power. I once wrote a critical letter to a newspaper about how they function as a group. Well it isn't forgetten yet. Some called it patricide, others treason and it installed my reputation as the eternal rebel.