John Cleese of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers fame is one of the funniest men alive. He’s also fearsomely smart. Beyond that, he has the vision and courage to oppose political correctness, one of the banes of comedy, creativity, and civilization itself. Thus it was an easy decision to snap up his new book, Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide (London: Hutchison, 2020), now out in paperback from Penguin. Creativity truly is a short book — I estimate about 20,000 words. It can be easily read in one sitting, and with great profit, for it is brimming with arresting insights and useful advice on cultivating one’s creativity. (more…)
Tag: Sigmund Freud
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How does memory work? What enables us to conjure up experiences, facts, and events from our past? St. Augustine wrote that our experience becomes memory by “going to a place which is yet not a place,” pre-empting Freud’s work on memory.
Incidentally, if you are ever racking your brains to try to remember some event, person, or fact, take this tip I learned from Freud (although, ironically, I can’t remember where): Don’t try to remember, don’t thrash your memory. Simply get on with something else and, in a minute or two, the memory will arrive. It works for me every time. (more…)
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187 words / 2:00:22
The eclectic scholar Kathryn S. was host Nick Jeelvy‘s guest on the latest broadcast of The Writers’ Bloc, where they discussed Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane and answered viewer questions, and it is now available for download and online listening.
Topics discussed include:
00:04:54 Mircea Eliade’s background and influence
00:06:56 Parallels to Jung and Freud
00:12:01 Influence on Camille Pagllia (more…) -
2,552 words
The relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung lasted just six years, from 1907 to 1913, moving from mutual admiration to friendship to professional association and finally to an irreconcilable split, and although there was a woman involved, Russian emigré Sabina Spielrein was not part of any love triangle with the two men. She was Jung’s lover, sporadically, and Freud became her confidante, but Fraülein Spielrein became a psychoanalytic theorist in her own right, even being credited (erroneously) with pre-empting Freud’s theory of the death instinct after her work on destruction and becoming as mutually supportive functions within the self. (more…)
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6,121 words
I read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods sometime in college. I found it more Flannery O’Connor than Marvel Studios, but it’s hardly surprising that the latter interpretation seems to have driven the new television series’ production team (but I haven’t watched). (more…)
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5,115 words
5,115 words
The next day, Melanie attends Cathy’s birthday party, as promised. It is held outdoors at the Brenner home, behind the house. A dozen or more children are present, along with some parents. Annie is also on hand, to help out. Colorful balloons have been strung up, and there is a long table covered in cake and other treats. Mitch and Melanie (still wearing her green suit) have been drinking and decide to leave the party briefly while the children play. (more…)
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“On the surface, Bram Stoker was a pillar of late Victorian respectability. . . . But just below the surface, he had something on his mind.”
The preceding sentences are from Christopher Frayling’s BBC documentary on Stoker’s Dracula, which was broadcast on A&E in 1996.
In a more recent television documentary on M. R. James, (more…)
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Le but de cet article est d’identifier la différence philosophique entre les deux systèmes psychologiques les plus influents de l’âge moderne, ceux de Freud et Jung, afin de pouvoir mieux apprécier leurs différentes implications sociales. (more…)
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October 10, 2014 Alex Fontana
Ezra Pound on Endless Trial
Robert Casillo
The Genealogy of Demons: Anti-Semitism, Fascism, and the Myths of Ezra Pound
Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1988.Robert Casillo’s The Genealogy of Demons is unique in Pound studies because the explicit purpose of it is to give critical insight into Pound’s anti-Semitism, and it accomplishes this by way of multiple techniques, which it must employ, because Pound’s anti-Semitism is prismatic. (more…)
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Lawrence and Psychoanalysis
Without question, the most unusual books D. H. Lawrence ever produced were his two “psychological” works: Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious (1921) and, especially, Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922). These texts are absolutely crucial for understanding Lawrence, for in them he sets forth an entire philosophy.
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The following lecture is an introductory treatment of Plato’s dialogue Laches. It was given on December 20, 2000, to a circle of friends and students in Atlanta. (more…)