Is Pointsman based on Dr. William Sargant?

Tue May 31 09:37:20 CDT 2016

yeah. I might have been parsing some non-existent distinction
I was making in your post.

 I just wasn't sure if what you wrote
about Pointsman's desire for control was
felt in any way differently by the characters,

and I wanted to reemphasize my surprise this reading about 'the idea of the
opposite"
which, in real life, gave P an overlapping real world possibility to show
that
determinism (in some sense) might not be total. As the Counterforce kids
allows
about social control/determinism.

but, I think we are on the same page, as they say,

On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 10:06 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> MK> Doesn't he want to use Pavlov's beliefs as part of the overarching
> crushing control theme?
>
> Blicero believes that launching Gottfried will transcend the Nazis' defeat
> and bring about our Perfect Polythene S&M Home in the Sky. How'd that work
> out?
>
> MK>  ...'the idea of the opposite' seems to be based on fact, or a real
> world fantasy, so to speak...
>
> Fact = fantasy, or maybe not = but so to speak, as it were, in a sense,
> both/and. There's really no difference worth thinking about between the
> *desire* for control and actual control, is there?
>
> I'm just a cranky blinkered old dualist, I guess, and really don't know
> how to engage with this sort of thing. Roll on.
>
> On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 6:42 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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