<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title></title> </head> <body> In one of the best episodes of the 1st season(?), Tony's shrink, a woman, is raped.  She is able to identify the rapist, but the police mishandle the evidence and the man walks free. At the next session with Tony, she bursts into tears, and we are made to understand that she wishes, more than anything else in the world, to tell Tony what happened so that he could "squish him like a bug." Which, in fact, we all know he would gladly do. But, she doesn't tell him. Why? She doesn't say, but a couple of reasons are possible: 1) it would break the psychoanalytic contract according to which the doctor takes care of the patient, not vice versa. 2) it would not undo the rape, just add another act of violence. I can think of very few women who would not think of  severely hurting the man who raped them. Maybe you would harbor no ill thoughts if you were raped Carrol, but you don't really know that until it happens to you. I do remember that when I was licensed to carry a gun, one of my most satisfying thoughts was that if I witnessed a rape, I could shoot the rapist. So, I do think it makes sense to universalize certain mental responses and to describe what happens in this show relative to how one is able to act out or not act out such responses. It is also the case for Dr. Melfi, that her status and self-esteem are not destroyed by this crime. Whereas, other people, who are brutalized from the day they're born or who have nothing else to look forward to except a life's worth of  brutalization, a life of crime is preferable. And the upper crust, who has the cops to act out their violence for them, can hang on to their moral niceties. Joanna Carrol Cox wrote: <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid445270E3.4AE0155A@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap=""> Dennis Claxton wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Carrol wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">I've had some vicious thoughts in my life, but never, not once, not even as a first impulse, have I ever, in childhood or as an adult, even remotely wished that anyone would be fired. And I would bet that there are at least 50 to 150 million who could say the same thing. Try again. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap="">So fill in the blank with a vicious thought you have had. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> I was responding to a statement about what we "all" think, feel, etc. I was merely negating that proposition (hence my reference to the millions more that must be free of this "universal" response. What's your point? That universalizing propositions about individual responses are apt to be empty. Carrol ___________________________________ <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk">http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</a> </pre> </blockquote> </body> </html>