TMoP Chap 1: Grief in TMoP, Freud on

[Mark Kohut]

Yes!


--- On Sat, 9/27/08, Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> From: Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: Re: TMoP Chap 1: Grief in TMoP, Freud on
> To: markekohut at yahoo.com
> Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>, "Richard Ryan" <richardryannyc at yahoo.com>
> Date: Saturday, September 27, 2008, 9:53 PM
> Dostoevsky's son only died days before his arrival in
> Petersburg.   I  
> think "shock" would be an appropriate word. 
> There are various  
> approaches these days to the grief process but one of the
> original  
> popular ones was developed by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in
> 1969.  She had  
> 5 stages - denial (this can't be happening),  shock, 
> (NO!),   
> bargaining,  (also known as 'magical thinking'), 
> pure-d sadness (the  
> pain of mourning),  and acceptance - we go on.    Other
> researchers  
> have other stages.
> 
> Joan Didion did a pretty good job of it in "My Year of
> Magical  
> Thinking."
> 
> I see  denial, shock and magical thinking in Coetzee's
> Dostoevsky.
> 
> Bekah
> 
> 
> 
> On Sep 27, 2008, at 3:11 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> 
> > I think you are correct; 'denial' is not the
> right (or only)  
> > word...but, I think the phenomenology of "blocked
> mourning"; willed  
> > non-mourning?---or whatever is the right phrase--is
> accurate and  
> > subtler than I can label in Coetzee...there is some
> desperate  
> > [manic], barely controlled desire for Life--the life
> force ala  
> > Freud?.....as in that admitted sexual desire for the
> landlady.  
> > (almost a rape fantasy?)
> >
> > Misc. personal: someone, male, once told me of how
> much he wanted  
> > sex for days-with his wife--after his father
> died....like life vs.  
> > death...
> >
> > "Denial (also called abnegation) is a defense
> mechanism postulated  
> > by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a
> fact that is  
> > too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead,
> insisting that  
> > it is not true despite what may be overwhelming
> evidence. [1] The  
> > subject may deny the reality of the unpleasant fact
> altogether  
> > (simple denial), admit the fact but deny its
> seriousness  
> > (minimisation) or admit both the fact and seriousness
> but deny  
> > responsibility (transference). The concept of denial
> is  
> > particularly important to the study of addiction. The
> theory of  
> > denial was first researched seriously by Anna
> Freud."---wikipedia,  
> > there's more.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --- On Sat, 9/27/08, Richard Ryan
> <richardryannyc at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >> From: Richard Ryan
> <richardryannyc at yahoo.com>
> >> Subject: Re: TMoP Chap 1: Grief in TMoP, Freud on
> >> To: "pynchon -l"
> <pynchon-l at waste.org>, markekohut at yahoo.com
> >> Date: Saturday, September 27, 2008, 12:48 PM
> >> Very nice.  Is "denial" quite the right
> word for
> >> Dostoevsky's state of mind though?  His
> morning seems
> >> to have a manic intensity to it.  Everything -
> sex,
> >> politics, art - leads him to think of Pavel.
> >>
> >>
> >> --- On Sat, 9/27/08, Mark Kohut
> >> <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> >> Subject: TMoP Chap 1: Grief in TMoP, Freud on
> >> To: "pynchon -l"
> <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> >> Date: Saturday, September 27, 2008, 10:19 AM
> >>
> >> Seems to me that Coetzee accents D's
> 'denial',
> >> as we call it these
> >> days, of his son's death...Feels it as a dark
> >> 'presence"....D.
> >> resists acceptance through mourning.....(as an
> inveterate
> >> gambler, he thinks of
> >> a turn of the wheel....)
> >>
> >> on Freud:
> >> "It was grief that came foremost to
> Freud's
> >> notice. Not only had many
> >> died during World War I, but also many of
> Freud's
> >> family members and friends
> >> were suffering from depression, agitation,
> physical
> >> ailments, and suicidal
> >> thoughts and behavior. Later he realized that many
> people
> >> lived in grief for
> >> deaths not related to the war and that these
> losses might
> >> account for their
> >> various emotional and physical problems.
> Freud's
> >> grief-work theory suggested
> >> the importance of expressing grief and detaching
> >> emotionally from the deceased
> >> in order to recover full function."
> >>
> >> MK Misc.
> >> Dreams of falling were seen by Freud---and are
> still seen
> >> by most analysts
> >> as anxiety dreams...dreams of losing
> control...drowning in
> >> TMoP? (as D. dreams
> >> of falling into water)
> >>
> >> Most important line below, imho, as the book
> unfolds:
> >> "The mourning or
> >> death process is similar to the creative
> process."
> >>
> >> "In his essay, Mourning and Melancholia,
> Freud states
> >> that melancholia,
> >> like mourning, is a reaction of grief to the loss
> of a
> >> loved object. "In
> >> mourning, it is the world which has become poor
> and empty;
> >> in melancholia, it is
> >> the ego itself."[3] Therefore, mourning is
> grief over
> >> the loss of someone
> >> or something beloved. Melancholia is grief over
> the loss of
> >> the ego. "With
> >> one exception, the same traits (of melancholia)
> are met
> >> with in
> >> mourning,"[4] Freud states. Melancholia
> remains an
> >> unnatural open wound;
> >> mourning, a natural process, frees the participant
> upon its
> >> completion. The
> >> mourning or death process is similar to the
> creative
> >> process … the mourning
> >> process is a death process for the living in which
> the
> >> participant travels the
> >> cycle of adjustment when a loved one leaves. In
> the death
> >> process one may or may
> >> not find permanent rebirth, but one loses
> self-awareness
> >> and so achieves a
> >> temporary rebirth at least. In the mourning
> process, one
> >> must find
> >>  rebirth; if not, one is in a cycle of melancholia
> instead.
> >> The mourning/death
> >> process, likened to the creative process,[5] gives
> new
> >> life, new art, new form.
> >
> >
> >
> >