V-2nd C4 The Search for Bridey Murphy

[David Morris]

Your first paragraph below is a nice description of changing
"zeitgeists(?)."  Irritation at stasis is a fun way of describing the
evolution (or is it devolution?) of the arts.  But I think it hits on
your central point that the artist often doesn't know where he's
going, or even what he's done.  And that irritation is usually shared
by a great number of people, and usually more than a few reach similar
breakthroughs toward the next thing(s).

But you animus toward Freud is a little more than biased.  Your
opinions of him are not universal.  No opinions in psychology are
anywhere close to universal.  Freud was much more than a source of
scornful fun for Pynchon.  It is pretty commonly known that GR was
profoundly influenced by N.O.Brown's "Life Against Death," (I'm
assuming you've read it) a very deep reconsideration of Freud, and by
no means a repudiation.  Nobody's perfect, and Freud may have been
pretty arrogant, but he was clearly a majorly important step forward.

David Morris

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Ian Livingston
<igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:>
>
> I think the artist is often the one who leads the way by subconsciously synthesizing concepts to produce new ideas that eventually work their way into academic reasoning. [...]people get irritated by stasis and express their irritation in artistic form, or in some kind of acting out, before they know the real cause of their discontent. Thus P., among others, prefiguring much of what was to come in the academies.
>
> As to Freud, well, those who take him seriously deserve the confusion they inherit. For some reason, he remains a stale part of the literary canon. P. pokes grand fun at him, as do students of psychology. Even so, I stand by the assertion that no one is smart enough to be wrong all the time, so even Dr. Freud screwed up and got a couple of things right where he borrowed from literature.
>