Is Pointsman based on Dr. William Sargant?

[Mark Kohut]

Monte writes: "there's an enormous gap between the "fire/not fire" duality
of single cortical cells, or the observation that one cell's activity can
inhibit its near neighbors... and global, whole-organism phenomena ("belief
system," "stress," "breakdown" etc.)"

yes, but does Pynchon overleap that gap in the set up of meanings for
Pavlov-Pointsman in GR? Doesn't he want to use Pavlov's beliefs as part of
the overarching crushing control theme? See Pirate's accurate paranoia that
They now all about him.

 Monte writes: " Pointsman has nothing but handwaving phrases like "the
idea of the opposite" to fill that gap. Just because he wears a lab coat
and has a budget line doesn't make him less of a fantasist than Blicero...

yes, Pointsman is also a fantasist but in the guise of a controlling
scientist. We might know this, but those in the novel do not, do they? and
I think this read of Pynchon's genius unseen, half-felt,  before: 'the idea
of the opposite seems to be based on fact, or a real world fantasy, so to
speak: p. 49 Pavlov writing to Pierre Janet. About the *untraparadoxical
phase "*which is the base of the weakening of the idea of the opposite in
our patients." Fowler sources this to fact; Pavlov writing
to Janet when he ran a research facility at a hospital for insane women.
Janet pioneered hypnosis for hysteria, which he believed rooted in the
emotions and not somatic in origin.
He sez Pynchon is setting up an aternative to John B. Watson's "Behavorism"
and its Iron Cage [Weber] of Cause and Effect, heredity, and conditioning
which will reappear @p. 85.

Pynchon found a perfect real world metaphor for a possible escape, a
possible viable 'counterforce' for the deterministic control of
Pavlov--Pointsman's psychological system.


On Sun, May 29, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree, with the caveat that "mechanistic" has a very loosey-goosey sense
> here. As I cautioned earlier w/r/t Pavlov->Pointsman: there's an enormous
> gap between the "fire/not fire" duality of single cortical cells, or the
> observation that one cell's activity can inhibit its near neighbors... and
> global, whole-organism phenomena ("belief system," "stress," "breakdown"
> etc.)
>
> Pointsman has nothing but handwaving phrases like "the idea of the
> opposite" to fill that gap. Just because he wears a lab coat and has a
> budget line doesn't make him less of a fantasist than Blicero...
>
>
> On Sun, May 29, 2016 at 4:44 PM, Thomas Eckhardt <
> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._H._R._Rivers#The_Great_War
>>>
>>
>> Very interesting. Again, Robert Graves turns up (along with Siegfried
>> Sassoon).
>>
>> As opposed to Rivers, Sargant detested psychotherapy. The full title of
>> his autobiography is "The unquiet mind: the autobiography of a physician in
>> psychological medicine." A physician. One article cited by Wiki is
>> "Psychiatric treatment in general teaching hospitals: A plea for a
>> mechanistic approach."
>>
>> Wiki also provides:
>>
>> "Sargant connected Pavlov's findings to the ways people learned and
>> internalised belief systems. Conditioned behaviour patterns could be
>> changed by stimulated stresses beyond a dog's capacity for response, in
>> essence causing a breakdown. This could also be caused by intense signals,
>> longer than normal waiting periods, rotating positive and negative signals
>> and changing a dog’s physical condition, as through illness. Depending on
>> the dog's initial personality, this could possibly cause a new belief
>> system to be held tenaciously. Sargant also connected Pavlov’s findings to
>> the mechanisms of brain-washing in religion and politics."
>>
>> Internalise belief systems, i.e. put the control inside...
>>
>> All of this helps to answer an earlier question of mine:
>> Pointsman's/Sargant's abreaction is not Jung's abreaction.
>>
>> The verb linked to "abreaction" or "Abreaktion" has, by the way, entered
>> German everyday language: "abreagieren" means "to let off steam".
>>
>> We may, perhaps, see a renaissance of the mechanistic approach in
>> so-called evidence-based medicine or education -- although there is of
>> course nothing wrong with evidence per se...
>>
>>
>> http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2013/mar/26/teachers-research-evidence-based-education
>>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20160531/6c0d2967/attachment.html>