Those given to an Eastern bent of mind are fond of quoting the saying that there are many paths up the mountain. It is no doubt true. But while the different paths may end at the same point, they are not the same thing, at least not when it comes to what we call the […]
Reading to Write
October 4, 2012 By
Writers read to write. It is words in before words out. Without the reading and the waiting that goes with it, nothing useful emerges. Who knows where the inspiration comes from: it arrives unexpectedly on tracks laid down – not by a wish to do good – but an urge to address a nagging question; […]
Can’t Buy Me Love
October 2, 2012 By
Times are tough and the Government is giving us money. We are encouraged to spend it. I can’t help thinking that Rudd’s economic arousal package should come with a health warning – ‘This money is to stimulate the economy, but don’t expect it to make you happy. Money can directly damage every aspect of your […]
Dr Cake and John Keats
September 30, 2012 By
Jane Campion’s new film, Bright Star, follows the last three years of John Keats’s life, from the time he fell in love with Fanny Brawne, to his death of tuberculoses in Rome in 1821. It is a love story, and by all accounts, a well told and moving one. Keats is one of the great […]
To What Extent is the World Going Mad?
September 28, 2012 By
On stage in an oversize army shirt below a mass of greying wavy hair was the artist, Michael Leunig. He had a felt pen in one hand and spoke off the cuff. In the audience, using drug company ballpoints to write on drug company notepads were hundreds of psychiatrists. Apart from the note-taking – thought […]
A Tribute to Freud
September 26, 2012 By
While it is theorised within an inch of its life, psychoanalysis is a practical business. It abounds in ideas, but can only be known the way Milton knew “every alley” of his “wilde wood”; that is, by walking through it. As Freud insisted, you need to do it. But do what exactly? Talk, of course, […]
New Sexualities
September 24, 2012 By
In some ways it is the most basic question of all. Are you are a man or a woman? For centuries, it seemed simple. Men had male sex organs; women had female ones. This did not do a lot for hermaphrodites, who were born with both, but science seemed to solve the impasse by coming […]
Secrets of the Soul
September 21, 2012 By
At the end of his survey of psychoanalysis – a journey that weaves in and out of some of the most exciting ideas of the past 150 years – Eli Zaretsky examines the body of Freud’s offspring and pronounces it ailing but alive. There is no corpse, but after so much battering, abuse and wayward […]
Media Madness
September 19, 2012 By
Blaise Pascall, the 17th century French philosopher and mathematician, thought the world’s problems could be solved if we could each learn to sit quietly in a room. But we have never been able or content to do that. We want distraction, and what we call ‘the media’ has provided it. Maybe it always did. Only […]
Lifestyle
September 17, 2012 By
Literature and psychoanalysis share an interest in neurosis. Many great novels are a study of neurotic character. From Emma Bovary to Holden Caulfield we are in the world of neurotics, that is, people who, to some extent, misconstrue their surroundings, particularly their relationships. Emma, the Madame Bovary of Flaubert’s novel, sees her 19th century life […]
