> a good point to raise with a freudian or neo-freudian who terms human
> relations "object relations."
>
> R
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: joanna bujes
>> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 5:17 PM
>> Subject: [lbo-talk] People are objects
>>
>>> Brian D writes:
>>>
>>> "But you have to remember that most people _are_ objects. Really."
>>
>> People are not "objects" relative to your ability to interact with
>> them. People are not objects. Think about it.
>>
>> Joanna
"The scientist whose investigations include the stuff of life itself finds himself in a situation that has a parallel in that of the patients I am describing. The breakdown in the patient's equipment for thinking leads to dominance by a mental life in which his universe is populated by inanimate objects. The inability of even the most advanced human beings to make use of their thoughts, because the capacity to think is rudimentary in all of us, means that the field for investigation, all investigation being ultimately scientific, is limited, by human inadequacy, to those phenomena that have the characteristics of the inanimate. We assume that the psychotic limitation is due to an illness: but that that of the scientist is not.
Investigation of the assumption illuminates disease on the one hand and scientific method on the other. It appears that our rudimentary equipment for 'thinking' thoughts is adequate when the problems are associated with the inanimate, but not when the object for investigation is the phenomenon of life itself. Confronted with the complexities of the human mind the analyst must be circumspect in following even accepted scientific method; its weakness may be closer to the weakness of psychotic thinking than superficial scrutiny would admit." W. Bion, Learning from Experience, in Seven Servants p. 14
Ted