On Reason and Freud

"I gotta work out. I keep saying it all the time. I keep saying I gotta start working out. It's been about two months since I've worked out. And I just don't have the time. Which uh..is odd. Because I have the time to go out to dinner. And uh..and watch tv. And get a bone density test. And uh.. try to figure out what my phone number spells in words." - Ellen DeGeneres

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On Reason and Freud:

[Ed: This post is (kind of) followed up by Balderdash: On Freud, valid forms of Critique and valid types of Data]

Me: reading your posts gives me a headache

Someone: if i simplify it too much it's more open to misinterpretation
i try to anticipate somewhat counterarguments

Me: because people will actually understand what you're trying to say?

Someone: oh, yes and no
it's precisely th taken-for-granted undersatnding that needs to be questioned
i had a headache in questioning my own takne-for-granted understanding too

Me: so basically you managed to mindfuck yourself
and now all is good

Someone: why do you say i mindfucked myself?
im perfectly alright

Me: ...

Someone: and "all is good"???

look, gabriel. the easiest thing to do in the world is for people to simply ignore your posts
because...they understand it
"understand"

Me: what is easy is not necessarily good
conversely, what is hard is not necessarily good either

Someone: i can understand your POV, and i can ignore it too
so, what is good, is still not answered

Me: what is good is what is true

Someone: there are different notions of truth

Me: only in people's minds
objective reality does not change

Someone: i am completely conversant with, and still beholden to scientific truth
and what, precisely is "objective" reality?

Me: that would depend on what we are talking about

Someone: ok, in empirical science there is a fixed notion of objective truth
one can know everything about an object
study its chemcial composition etc.

Me: not true
and in any case you can always screw around with universal skepticism

Someone: i don't deny, within science, its "objective" truth

but when it comes to social constructions...
of human beings
that's a matter for debate

Me: that depends on what you mean by social construction

Someone: yes, race, being one
gender too

Me: not true
there is plenty of evidence that gender is objectively real

and race has quite a bit too, but it's a more politically sensitive subject so people don't usually talk about it

Someone: there is a biological basis for sex, yes, X and Y chromosomes and all that
but how do we experience gender?

Me: what do you mean by experiencing gender
men and women are wired differently
generally

Someone: yes
and it can also be, some men are more women than women can be
more "feminine"

how does a man appear as a man??
or woman as woman??

Me: some men are more women than some women can be
no one disputes these things

Someone: is sex = gender?

Me: race and gender do not consist of isolated and distinct islands
they are clusters along continua

sex is a large part of gender

Someone: one can have male sex organs and appear completely as a gendered woman
gendered, as a woman
human beings are gendered as they grow into adulthood

recall: the south african athlete who was recently disputed wrt her gender

Me: socialisation complements intrinsic sex
recall that Caster Semenya is a hermaphrodite
and that despite being raised female, she is very manly

Someone: yes
she appears masculine in many respects

Me: so your point is?

Someone: whatever her biological sex is, determinate or not, is quite independent of her gender

we perceive her gender depending on how we construct "masculine" and "feminine"

Me: we view her as a manly woman

Someone: yes, her higher testosterone levels make her muscles more developed
make her frame larger

Me: it's not just her physical appearance
it's also her behavior

Someone: but if we allow our construction of "woman" or "femininity" to have a wider range...
and likewise masculinity
it's like she cannot appear properly as a person without fixing her sex and gender
we cannot get over the "natural" idea that femininity must conform to XX chromosomes or certain physical characteristics

i am the first to admit i have problems myself
im trying to become aware of it myself too
allow people to exist in all their differences and multiplicity

Me: so what range of "woman" or "femininity" do you want?
won't your range be challenged?
unless your claim is that we should abandon categories altogether
but categories are something that people value. it's a cognitive tool that acts as a market of identity. by getting rid of it you are shortchanging the vast majority

just because some people do not resemble archetypes does not mean we should get rid of these archetypes
and it doesn't mean that these people are somehow bad or evil

as someone who does not adhere to archaic norms of proper behavior, I do not let others' standards affect me
but likewise I do not impose on them and insist their standards change for my sake

Someone: to put it rather reductively, "categories" have value in fixing people, trapping them, restricting freedom unnecessarily

Me: to recognise difference is not the same as to oppress difference
that's only if you let the categories fix you
and/or if you only want to belong to one or a few categories

people want to feel a sense of belonging
which is why they find categories to belong to
and they value them

Someone: yes, yes

Me: group solidarity is important to people
which is why people identify as feminist, progressive etc
which are themselves categories

Someone: passionate subjection or attachment to subjection--we desire a limited submissive existence, better than nothing
like how no one wants to become stateless

but you claim too much when you say "only if you let the categories fix you"
it's not a matter of your own powers to prevent others from fixing you

language doesn't belong to you
categories don't belogn to you

you seek your existence in already-given langauge and fixed notions of who you can be
namely: race, gender, ethnicity etc.

you can cry and bemoan and wail as hard and loudly as you like

Me: I am for freedom of thought
I do not presume to dictate what others think of me

you can choose with what you identify

Someone: but somehow there will be ways for others to capture you in certain ways
they may not mean to, but they do

Me: ok lor
big deal

"One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny."

Someone: as i say, you claim too much for a "free human individual subject"
before you become free you must subject yourself--become a citizen or PR or whatever

Me: I respect individual autonomy

Someone: you have an enlightenment notion of the free human
descartes' era

Me: I like to think of myself as a Renaissance Man, but I uphold the values of the Enlightenment

Someone: but we have "moved on"
Darwin, Freud
Lacan

First, copernicus showed that man is not centre of universe
then darwin showed that man is not centre of evolution
then freud showed that man is not master in his own house

it took lacan to bring out freud's "discovery'/revolution fully
hence he says "return to freud"

Me: upholding Enlightenment values does not mean that Man is the centre of the universe of evolution

that's because Freud was a fraud
and people had to "reinterpret" him so he made sense

there's a reason most psychology ignores freud

Someone: freud was a fraud because you presupposed him to be so

Me: no
it's because he talked rubbish

Someone: you had already made up your mind that he's rubbish
i used to think so too

Me: no
I looked at the evidence
and what he said
and found they were different

I feel like I'm talking to a Christian

"Why do you hate God?"
"You've already made up your mind that God does not exist"

Someone: look, i think freud's claim is precisely that empirical scientific evidence is insufficient
to diagnose/cure/treat, in his times, hysteria

Me: so we just sit in our couch and talk nonsense?

hysteria was nonsense
though it did give us the vibrator

Someone: let me ask you, you must believe that cognitive neuroscience can explain everything about the human brain and behaviour and culture

Me: no I don't
but just because you don't know everything doesn't mean you can make up rubbish

that's like whitewashing a fence by painting it black

the point is to increase your understanding
not give up

Someone: besides "rubbish" is that all your criticism is worth?
how is freud's work rubbish?

and, before we get lost in this, it's not simply freud, mind you
Nietzsche, and following, Foucault

Me: modern psychology recognises he was talking rubbish

for example, the elektra and oedipus complexes don't exist
or the oral and anal fixations

he made up an alleged history of child development
which was completely speculative
and obsessed with sex

he made up an alleged history of human history
which has been shown to be completely wrong
and sex obsessed, don't forget

Someone: one needs to read freud with care
i haven't had all teh time to read all his works yet
but his ideas about our consciousness are no less useful or valid

Me: i.e. ignore what he was saying
and "re-interpret" what he said so it makes sense
in other words, like christian apologists who manage to twist the words of the bible so it means whatever they want

I agree with the future of an illusion
but that's because he wasn't making stuff up about history or human development

Someone: feminists ought to hate him for prescribing that women are fixated on the phallus etc.

but for all that they still use his ideas, with modifications (eg. Melanie Klein's school of object-relations)

Me: that's because they talk rubbish also
so they're natural allies

Someone: i think freud and lacan probably mark the stopping point of how far empirical science can penetrate the human mind in understanding all its manifest behaviours

both of them trained as medical doctors
and very concerned with treating disorders of one sort or another

i also think, that they have insights into how culture can produce brain disorders

he believed whole-heartedly in the empirical medical sceince

Me: "HJ Eysenck claimed that Freud set Psychiatry back one hundred years, consistently misdiagnosed his patients, fraudulently misrepresented case histories and that what is true in Freud is not new and what is new in Freud is not true"

Someone: i think there is truth in that his diagnoses and therapies were not successful
but lacan, who tries to be faithful to freud, saying that freud himself doesn't even realise the full extent of his discoveries

Me: this is like nostradamus's fans
who reinterpret his prophecies

Someone: psychiatry...foucault has alot to say about it too

i don't think one has to abandon scientific rationality, atheism, and anti-superstition if one takes psychoanalysis seriously

Me: psychoanalysis is very speculative

do you abandon scientific rationality, atheism, and anti-superstition if one takes homoepathy seriously?

Someone: not seemingly less than cutting edge of physics
superstring

Me: string theory is laughed at by many non-string theorists

Someone: much your disparagement of cultural studies and literary theory works on smearing

Me: no
it works on looking at what has been written

Someone: i suppose i'll soon enter into one of your caricatures of those who have "succumbed" to pomo and Christian bullshit

Me: I do not draw caricatures
I let what people write and say speak for themselves

if a Christian used the usual sort of arguments against you, what would you say, given that you use many of the same ones yourself?

Someone: unfortunately, much as i would have liked to, i do not have sufficiently advanced understanding of theory yet to distance myself from christian apology

Me: ???

Someone: i don't see myself as employing the same sort of defence as christian apology

you like to ally ppl who disagree with you with naive unthinking "fundamentalist" fanatical believers

i probably shouldn't have spent such an inordinate amount of time "defending" psychoanalysis
there are many other things worthy of my attention

Me: let me show you some of the many examples

freud was a fraud because you presupposed him to be so <-> god does not exist because you assume he does not

i used to think so too <-> i used to defy god also

empirical scientific evidence is insufficient <-> reason is insufficient. you need god

you must believe that cognitive neuroscience can explain everything about the human brain and behaviour and culture <-> you must believe that science can explain everything about the world

one needs to read freud with care <-> one needs to read the bible with care

both of them trained as medical doctors. and very concerned with treating disorders of one sort or another <-> luke says that he wanted to record faithfully everything that happened

he believed whole-heartedly in the empirical medical sceince <-> the apostles believed that jesus was resurrected

i don't think one has to abandon scientific rationality, atheism, and anti-superstition if one takes psychoanalysis seriously <-> i don't think one has to abandon scientific rationality and anti-superstition if one takes the bible seriously

Someone: yes, insofar as against your rigidly rationalist-empiricist viewpoint goes i tried to make a claim on behalf of possible truth of psychoanalysis
but i suspect i might also have put up a similar defence on behalf of any theoretical scientific speculation such as string theory for which experimental/empircal evidence is sorely lacking

like, existence of extraterrestrial life

Me: the existence of extraterrestrial life is a possibility
not a certainty

Someone: am i any less able to maintain any sort of critical distance towards what i defend?

Me: if you aren't rationalist-empiricist, how do you determine which truth claims are correct?

Someone: one can argue for a limited range of truth-claims for a novel or poem or artwork
correctness is not necessarily singular

Me: not necessarily
but often it is

Someone: like i said i don't claim to have the last word on psychoanalysis. i'm far from a deep understanding of it

i was simply making a case for it

anyone could make a case a la christian apologetics if they tried to learn it

i do think there remains alot to be said for how the human mind is affected by culture, somewhat independently if biology
and the things that remain to be said, very interestingly, are in cultural theory

Me: there are some gems here and there

Someone: i think you also wouldn't deny christianity has its own limited 'truths' to make as well

allegorical maybe
but no less truths

Me: that's a cheap fudge
in that case nothing can ever be false

as descartes pointed out, even if a deceiving demon was painting false pictures of reality to him, at least the colours of the paint would be real

that's "truth" in a very shallow, superficial way


Someone else: "My brother is a fan of Freud; I have contemplated disowning him - my brother that is. Except that, that in Freudian terms, will be taken as an expression of my repressed sexuality."