Fwd: Fishing with Fidel

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>>There is obviously a deep generalized unconscious human need to bite
>>one's fingernails, only it is repressed in those who don't bite 
>>their fingernails
>>and instead is expressed by a tendency to curl one's toes while thinking.
>>
>>Who can say nay to this?
>>
>>And those who do not bite their fingernails but deny curling their toes
>>while thinking are obviously in deep denial.
>
>This is almost too silly to respond to, but I can't resist. Carrol, 
>do you know anything at all about psychoanalytic technique? You 
>listen carefully to what people say and watch what they do and 
>scrutinize that evidence for clues about unconscious fears and 
>desires. Ditto with texts, for the literary application. You don't 
>assert preposterous relations like this.
>
>I think your denunciations of Freud are a fascinating symptom, but I 
>don't know you well enough to know what they're a symptom of.
>
>Doug

Doug, you end up making Carrol's point here.  See, anything and 
everything can become "a fascinating symptom" from a psychoanalytic 
viewpoint.  Both hearty endorsements and trenchant criticisms of 
psychoanalysis can be thought of in terms of "symptoms" of 
"unconscious fears and desires."  Psychoanalysis doesn't allow for 
any dismissal of psychoanalysis tout court (while it welcomes partial 
criticisms that generate endless variations of it); Saying "No" to 
psychoanalysis gets interpreted as "denial," "resistance," etc. and 
therefore as pathological.

Yoshie