[lbo-talk] Age

Ted Winslow egwinslow at rogers.com
Sun Oct 10 08:43:43 PDT 2004


Jon Johanning wrote:


> Other people have other interests in music. Do you have a problem with
> that?

It depends what you mean by "problem"? If you mean that I must accept that no rational and critical exploration of why I like particular things is possible, then I would have a problem with that. Moreover, it isn't obvious that such an exploration (however difficult -for the reasons pointed to by psychoanalysis - it might be) wouldn't enable me to improve my "tastes" i.e. enable me to appreciate objects productive of a higher form of "happiness." Simply asserting that tastes can't be rationally explored and criticized doesn't demonstrate that they can't be.

Many experience rational criticism as sadistic coercive violence directed at their person rather than at their ideas, feelings, etc. They can't imagine discussion other than as "warfare." It's possible this is a sign of a very weak unintegrated ego using psychotic defenses against its own instinctive tendency to sadistic violence, an instinctive tendency it experiences, on account of its weakness, as "the overwhelming." This is consistent with the self-contradictory denial of the existence of its own "ego," i.e. of its existence as a real "subject," and with the experience of the instinctive aspect of itself as the not-self.

Ted



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list