Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 12:24:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Howard Hastings <hhasting-AT-osf1.gmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Re: Nazi Modernism and Yeats


On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Stephen A Ross wrote:

> OK, the subject line is misleading by now, since thing seem to have
> devolved upon the appropriateness of psychoanalysis as a literary critical
> technique.

One could link the questions of psychoanalysis back to the original issues
of the thread easily enough, if one remembers that psychoanalysis is a
"jewish science."
 
It is another one of those intellectual influences, like romanticism and
deconstruction and marxism, that disturb conservatives, so I am wondering
if it too has somehow been linked to fascism.  I know there were actually
some Aryans trying to elaborate a fully Aryan psychoanalsis back in the
30s, but I am guessing real Nazis viewed them about the same way they
viewed Heidegger--i.e., as a threat to the Volk.

By the way, anyone out there read klaus Thewehleits Male Fantasies, the 2
volume psychoanalytic study of the Freikorps?  THere is a good use of
psychoanalysis to help understand the fascist imagination and its fears of
contamination by women and Jews, often represented in terms of bodily
violation.

> I find it interesting that the discussion so far has focussed exclusively
> on Freud as the representative of psychoanalytic thought.  Surely we are
> doing a disservice to this approach by ignoring such competing thinkers as
> Melanie Klein and, dare I say it, Jacques Lacan.

Under the terms of Mr. Knapp's objections, I don't think Klein or Lacan
would make the grade either.  But I fully agree with you that Klein and
Lacan are valuable resources.

  I can't recall who it
> was who indicated a preference for some variety of psychoanalysis that
> paid attention to the vagaries of language and thought in the post-JG
> Frazer era of humanism, but if that's what you are looking for, then Lacan
> is your man.  I only recently began reading him (about a year ago), but he
> is highly compelling.


> Of course, he is also disturbing in some ways (particularly his attitudes
> towards women), but by and large I think he provides an excellent way to
> approach language, literature, and the intractable problems of how and why
> we always mean more than we say.  

I think he does even more than that.  His work helped Althusser
reformulate a Marxist theory of ideology which integrates pscyhoanalysis. 

Lacan makes it easier to link the problem of gender with the problem of
power. That still goes a long ways in today's academy.
 
> Lest I grow tiresome, let me just finish by saying that Lacan, not Freud,
> is the reason psychoanalysis continues to exercise such a hold on literary
> study.  And, I think, for good reason.


Still, I am willing to bet that those 6,000 at Mr. Knapp's conference who
heard about Freud's shortcomings would find Mr. Lacan even more not less
dubious if you explained the matter to them, because of his emphasis on
language.  

hh
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