48-54 The Problem of the Pavlovian Penis

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Am 09.05.2016 um 04:49 schrieb Joseph Tracy:
> Thomas has suggested the connection of
> Pointsman's pursuit of experimental subjects to MK Ultra 
>which was
> clearly drawing upon  ideas emerging from behaviorist 
>research. Those
> MK Ultra scientists also had wacky and unproven notions 
>of reducing
> human experimental subjects to "a clean slate”. They sold 
>these ideas
> to the CIA on a remarkable scale with nothing but 
>theorizing and
> scientific sounding mumbo-jumbo. Part of P’s point in 
>contrasting the
> psychics with the behaviorists is to show how easy it 
>seems to be to
> seduce the powerful into any scheme that might afford 
>greater
> control, no matter the moral or metaphysical 
>implications.

Yes.

I assume that Pointsman's efforts to wipe the slate
of the human mind clean can be linked to Pynchon's
apparent knowledge about the CIA's mind control
experimentation. For me, the scene in COL49 I referred to
suggests that Pynchon was aware of these experiments, some
aspects of which could be traced back to human 
experimentation
in the concentration camps.

(Experiments similar to those of the MKUltra scientists
were conducted by the military at Edgewood Arsenal and
in Porton Down/UK.)

It is a tenuous link though. As far as I can tell,
Pointsman is not and cannot be related
to MKUltra which of course started much later (perhaps he
will be linked to the OSS later in the book?).

Probably one should not focus on MKUltra too much here
but instead on Pointsman's misuse of trauma therapy (cf.
Weisenburger) to further his own goals. It is clear that 
in Pointsman's
hands psychiatric science is not a therapeutic instrument
to cure people from their neuroses and traumata but
a tool to achieve control over them (put the control
inside, perhaps?).

But then there is the next question:

If I am not mistaken, Pointsman's therapy consists of
inducing a series of abreactions (reliving the traumatic 
experience)
until his patients give in to the pressure. Then, 
catharsis is
achieved, the patients' memories are erased and they
become (like) children again.

I find surprising that the abreaction/catharsis scheme is
linked to a complete erasure of memory in GR. Aren't these 
two types of trauma therapy
two very different things, in fact mutually exclusive?

1) "reliving an experience to purge it of its emotional
excesses -- a type of catharsis" (Wiki); indeed a return
of the repressed, of repressed desires and memories, into
the consciousness, the cornerstone of Freud's
psychoanalysis.

2) memory erasure or induced amnnesia (including
drug-induced amnesia) -- which is still a method of
trauma therapy today, the goal being to erase unwanted
memories (not to "wipe the slate clean" as Ewen Cameron
and Pointsman want nor to reprogramm the mind after it has
been emptied as the CIA
wanted).

Any thoughts?



  



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