My starting point for thinking about evil is John A Sanford’s Book: “Evil The Shadow Side of Reality”, 1981. He states: “From the point of view of psychology, then, evil is a necessity if individuation is to occur.” This quote is typical of the pulpit style of Sanford’s book in which he makes tidy assertions without […]
Analytic Training – Three Blind Mice
Barbara Tholfsen on LinkedIn alerted me to this Ella Sharpe Quotation from 1930 about the necessity of reading “three blind mice” etc. if you want to be an analyst: “In any reading for analytical qualification I would make compulsory the following books: Nursery Rhymes, the Alice books, Hunting of the Snark, Grimm, Andersen, the Brer […]
Freud, Terrorism and Rhetoric: A Preliminary Discussion
The suggestion that “the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and ensuing attacks around the world including Bali, Madrid, Mumbai and London show just how right Freud was about our malaise” is shown to exist within a discourse that is terrorist itself.
Neuroscience – As Seen On TV!
As I drive back from analysis several times a week I pass a billboard advertising plastic surgery. “The Six-Pack Redefined” it proclaims, and shows a ‘before’ and ‘after’ picture of a man who has been given a sexy “six-pack body”. Even at the darkest moments of my analysis I have not been tempted. I think […]
Ethics: From Socrates to Psychoanalysis
I hugely enjoyed listening to Neville Symington last night speaking on ‘Ethics: From Socrates to Psychoanalysis’. His thinking as always ranges across the gamut of civilisation and thought. However he located his argument by referring to an intellectual act originating with the pre-socratic philosopher Parmenides that grasps the universe as a singularity, being everything that […]