TS's session, X and a Spengler ?

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

DudiousMax at aol.com wrote:

> Yo Terrance,
>                    C'est Moi.  Pepe le Pieu, with a question.  Wasn't the
> abreaction stuff done to guys who suffered with "Shell Shock," or some
> variant of battle-fatigue?  Or witnessed their best buddies being blown into
> hamburger?

Most of it, yes.

> I mean, TRP not withstanding, you don't think they were testing
> for hyper-sensitives who might anticipate where the next batch of V-2's were
> aimed?  Or do you?

No, not exactly. War is an instrument of Control and resolution of the immediate
consequences of economic, social, and political confusions and errors. And
problems are simplified in times of war in so far as the ends of military victory
are determined and other ends are subordinated to them, yet despite this apparent
simplification of ends, and the horrific means--often conducted off the field of
battle, and yes, sometimes in the form of psychological abuse of soldiers and
civilians by their own "intellectual/military," wars are hedged by disguised
forms of the same partisanships and limitations that led to the use of force.
Were there sensitives like Slothlop? No, not exactly, but there were sensitives
and they were abused, yes even by the USA. Some high IQ guys pull a Lardass
Levine and some get abused and some abuse others. Fuck the love were in WAR.

> I remember reading some things that were like, "It is a
> credit to psychotherapy's clinical methods that the army has been able to
> help shell-shock victims."

Some they can help and they deserve credit for this. I'm not knocking anyone or
anything that will help damaged soldiers. Quite the contrary, I assure you.

> Up to that minute in history, Freud stood in
> limbo, neither accepted nor unaccepted.  I think those "successes" were
> important to the Freudians,  and justified a rash of books, and the
> investment (on a national scale) into training a generation of shrinks (Don't
> forget, there was little or no relief for WWI shell-shock victims who became
> a kind of public health burden in the period between the wars.) who worked a
> generation to mixed reviews (The cliche is, and I don't know if I've seen any
> hard data to back it up: a third get better, a third get worse, a third stay
> the same.).

I don't know that we have any hard data. We have lots of people making lots of
claims, most recently, that men and women were not damaged in the Gulf Wars. Soft
stuff comes out of washington and yes, the investment on a national scale is all
sloshing around, while the bell tolls.

>

> Though they were well enough thought off at the time by the OSS
> (the pre-CIA), Wild Bill Donovan ordered some shrinks to "analyze" all known
> information on Hitler and come up with a secret psychological profile of that
> unhappy camper, with the anticipation that they might have to negotiate with
> him at the end of hostilities.  I am saying that the therapies of WWII were a
> lot less sinister, and maybe did a lot more good, than what Pynchon (who is,
> I think, an anti-Freudian, seeing the shrinks as a priest caste of those
> interested in social-control) portrays.  Of course, he doesn't think much of
> the Skinnerians and Pavlovians either, for similar reasons.  And to some
> extent he is playing those isms off against each other (in true Menippean
> fashion).

Right! Perfect examples of  Menippean morality (political- Pointsman's abuse of
Slothrop) and fantasy ( Slothrop down the rabbit hole). And Pynchon's laying down
some Parker licks in this dreamy fantasy as X, Jack, Cherokee, Crouch/Cruch
Field  are (he must be out of his mind, say it very fast in a Munchkin voice,
demisemiquevers) giving Slothrop shivers down my soul.

> But my main thrust here is,  I think the Psychological guys
> weren't necessarily "evil" or "mad scientists" as Pynchon would have us
> believe.

No of course not. But, have you read my silly poem Crash? Dr. Dolittle and his
crew are out there and they are mad and they take care of our shell shocked men
and women.

> They were guys who were trained in the disciplines of the time and
> even if their work is questionable by todays standards, maybe they were
> well-intentioned and doing the best they could with what they had, like
> American Civil War surgeons who didn't understand germ theory.

No doubt about it. No one should fault those guys, certainly not this guy.

>  And they did
> leave behind some incredible documents.  See, THE MIND OF ADOLF HITLER: The
> Secret Wartime Report: by Walter C. Langer, Basic Books (1972).
>                                            Max

I'll check it out.

Your innocent when you dream, but what about the guys that put you under?

Terrance