[lbo-talk] conspiracism

[RE]

I'd agree, but groan at Lacan once more getting credit for ideas that were not original with him.  This is garden variety, bargain basement psychoanalysis that anyone on the editorial board of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly would agree with and yawn.  The form of the ideas serves a function, e.g. suspicion of cheating maintains an orientation to a third party, for whatever reason.  But it isn't necessarily functioning like a drive, it could be thought of as a serving a defensive function.  

From: Doug Henwood 
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 1:17 PM
To: lbo-talk 
Subject: [lbo-talk] conspiracism

Comment on my blog by one "Angelo" about 9/11 nuttery:


> I think Lacan’s point that a paranoid’s disorder is to be found in  
> the form of the illness and not in the content is applicable here.  
> When a husband who is suspicious of a cheating wife fixates in such  
> a way that the suspicion becomes a general attitude which thereafter  
> conditions all incoming experience, he has developed a disorder  
> regardless of whether or not his suspicions are founded or even  
> fully corroborated. So when you grant a conspiracy theorist a  
> suspension of disbelief and say “Ok I’ll follow, I accept your  
> evidence… now what?” It has been my experience that they don’t use  
> these “facts” to inform a program of action but, instead, as a  
> justification for looking for more “facts” – so it functions like a  
> drive. This is fine for the disenfranchised citizen trying to get at  
> least a little surplus enjoyment from an alienated existence but it  
> is pathological for a news organization. For me, this isn’t just  
> idiocy, it is insanity.

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