[lbo-talk] denial

[Carl Remick]

>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
>Katha Pollitt wrote:
>
>>Susan's question is exactly what is so frustrating about the Freudian POV. 
>>If you accept it, fine. if you reject it, you're in 'denial."
>
>Or as Katie Roiphe once said to me, explaining why she hated Gloria 
>Steinem,feminists are "humorless and anti-sex." A roughly equivalent level 
>of caricature.
>
>Denial isn't just about "rejecting" something - it's about the nature of 
>that rejection. A disproportionately or weirdly intense rejection of 
>something smells like denial ....
>
>The quality of many of the anti-Freudian arguments here, coming from a 
>bunch of intellectuals, has been so weak that I suspect that they're not 
>emerging from the higher cerebral functions.

Seems to me that qualifies as a "weirdly intense rejection" of Katha 
Pollit's astute assessment of Freudianism's inherently totalitarian mindset. 

  I believe it is you who are in denial, Doug.  As for intellectual rigor, 
Freudian analysis itself ranks right up there with astrology, homeopathy, 
alchemy and phrenology.

Carl