The Dish – Page 643

Psychoanalysis As Poetry

The psychotherapist and writer Adam Phillips reveals why he thinks of it that way:

For me, Freud made sense then not in terms of the history of science or the history of neurology, but in terms of the history of literature. I had been lucky enough to read Tristram Shandy before I read psychoanalysis. One advantage of thinking about psychoanalysis as an art, instead of a science, is that you don’t have to believe in progress. The tradition I was educated in was very committed to psychoanalysis as a science, as something that was making progress in its understanding of people. As if psychoanalysis was a kind of technique that we were improving all the time. This seemed to me at odds with at least one of Freud’s presuppositions, which was that conflict was eternal, and that there was to be no kind of Enlightenment convergence on a consensual truth.

The discipline was practiced, though, as if we were going to make more and more discoveries about human nature, as though psychoanalysis was going to become more and more efficient, rather than the idea—which seemed to me to be more interesting—that psychoanalysis starts from the position that there is no cure, but that we need different ways of living with ourselves and different descriptions of these so-called selves.

For more on the theme, check out Phillips’ book, Promises, Promises: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Literature.

A Poem For Sunday

Another selection from Patrizia Cavalli translated, from the Italian, by Gini Alhadeff:

I cannot love what you are, no,
what you are is indeed a mistake.
But there is in you a grace that surpasses
what you obstinately are.
Something that’s yours and doesn’t belong to you,
in you from the start but separate from you,
that draws towards you cautiously, afraid
of its own uncontainable splendor.

(From My Poems Won’t Change the World: Selected Poems of Patrizia Cavalli, edited by Gina Alhadeff. Translation © 2013 by Gini Alhadeff. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved. Photo by Joel Olives)

Contemplating Confession

Twenty years after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, Morgan Meis reviews If I Did It, the bizarre hypothetical recounting of the incidents O.J. Simpson published in 2007. Rather than dwelling on the salacious details of this “extremely confusing book written by an extremely confused man,” Meis connects the confessor’s impulse to the Western canon, comparing Socratic and Augustinian approaches to guilt:

There’s a long tradition in Western culture of responding to accusations with an affirmation of the self. Think of it as the Socratic impulse. It is the need to give an apology — not in the sense of saying “I’m sorry,” but in the sense of the Greek word apologia. An apologia is not an admission of guilt or an expression of regret. It is, literally, a “talking back.” It is a response to an accusation in which the accused tells his side of the story. That’s what Socrates does in his apology. He tells his side of the story. He affirms who he is and what he is about. Let’s not forget that Socrates was guilty of his crimes. Just read I. F. Stone’s The Trial of Socrates. Socrates was, in fact, corrupting the youth of Athens. Socrates’ students and admirers — men like Alcibiades — were, in fact, being taught by Socrates to have contempt for the structures of Athenian democracy. Some of Socrates’ students did, in fact, overthrow and abolish Athenian democracy. So Socrates, in his apology, is not protesting his innocence so much as asserting himself, affirming his own point of view. “This is who I really am,” says Socrates, “this is what I am about.”

O. J. was grasping at something similar when he said, “I did what all accused men do at the moment of truth: I proclaimed my innocence.” Defending the truth or falsity of the accusations against him didn’t matter as much to O. J. The important thing to defend when you stand alone, accused, is your self. This is when you have a chance to say, “Here’s who I am, here’s my story and I will not surrender this story.” But there is another side to O. J.

This side does want to confess, wants to be able to discuss and come to terms with the actual murders. This side of O. J. wants to be released from the burden of self that he affirms in the Socratic impulse. In his confessional mode, O. J. doesn’t want to be responsible for his story. He wants to be able to give his story away. This desire to confess is the Augustinian impulse and it is fundamentally incompatible with the Socratic impulse.

Augustine’s Confessions are the writings of a man unburdening himself. Augustine wants to find himself by throwing himself away. He wants to loosen the bonds of self. He wants to find relief from his own story by giving it away to God. “For behold,” Augustine writes, “Thou lovest the truth, and he that doth it, cometh to the light. This would I do in my heart before Thee in confession: and in my writing, before many witnesses.” That is, more or less, what O. J. tries to do by embedding a confession in the sixth chapter of his strange book. Except that he cannot do it completely. He does it by way of a hypothetical, and then toggles back into Socratic mode for the rest of the book, in an attempt to reclaim his “self” once more.

Could Hitler End Up In Heaven?

Drawing on the 4th-century Christian theologian Gregory of Nyssa, Damon Linker explains how it could happen:

Gregory maintained that hell resembles something like what Catholics have traditionally called purgatory: A place of sometimes excruciatingly painful purgation of sins in preparation for heaven. The pain is not externally inflicted as punishment, but follows directly from the process of purification as the soul progresses toward a perhaps never fully realized union with divine perfection. Gregory describes this process as a “constant progression” or “stretching forth” (epektasis) of oneself toward an ever greater embrace of and merger with God in the fullness of eternity — a transmutation of what is sinful, fallen, and finite into the transcendent beauty of the infinite.

Hell, in this view, would be the state of agonizing struggle to break free from sin, to renounce our moral mistakes, to habituate ourselves to the good, to become ever more like God. Eastern Orthodox theologians (and, interestingly, Mormons, who hold similar views) call it a process of divination or sanctification (theosis) that follows directly from the doctrine of God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ. It is a formula found in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius, and other ancient theologians: God became a human being so that human beings might become like God.

All human beings.

One imagines that this would be a long, painful process — rendered longer and more painful for those who have fallen furthest from God during their lives. They are the ones for whom the afterlife is truly hellish — like a climb up a peak far, far higher than Mount Everest with little prior preparation or training, no expensive gear, and no Sherpas to help carry the load. But there would eventually be progress toward God, even for the climber who starts out in the worst possible shape, and from the lowest possible point in the valley below.

(Image: The 12th century Ladder of Divine Ascent icon showing monks, lead by John Climacus, ascending the ladder to Jesus, at the top right, via Wikimedia Commons)

Mental Health Break

A beautiful timelapse of ice in motion:

Quote For The Day II

“I understood that faith is not merely ‘the evidence of things not seen’, etc., and is not a revelation (that defines only one of the indications of faith, is not the relation of man to God (one has first to define faith and then God, and not define faith through God)); it is not only agreement with what has been told one (as faith is most usually supposed to be), but faith is a knowledge of the meaning of human life in consequence of which man does not destroy himself but lives. Faith is the strength of life. If a man lives he believes in something. If he did not believe that one must live for something, he would not live. If he does not see and recognize the illusory nature of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he understands the illusory nature of the finite, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith he cannot live…

For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite,” – Leo Tolstoy, A Confession.

(Hat tip: Maria Popova)

Face Of The Day

Photographer Chloe Aftel photographs agender youth:

In the wake of a horrific incident in which Sasha Fleischman, an 18 year old “agender” youth, was set on fire after falling asleep on a bus in the Bay Area, San Francisco Magazine commissioned photographer Chloe Aftel to capture a series of portraits of young people (including Fleischman) who defy the male/female gender binary.

Aftel’s “Agender” series seeks to raise awareness of an overlooked and misunderstood community of gender fluid people who face oppression and harassment simply for not conforming.

See more of Aftel’s work here.

Having Faith In Overfishing

Adam Weymouth traveled to Alaska to cover “the trial of 23 Yup’ik fishermen who had violated a ban on the fishing of king (or Chinook) salmon”:

In court, the fishermen’s civil disobedience has been framed as a First Amendment issue: The Yup’ik believe they have an obligation to continue their ancestral traditions. As Jim Davis summarized it, in a brief submitted before the trial: “If Yup’ik people do not fish for King Salmon, the King Salmon spirit will be offended and it will not return to the river.”

But collapsing fish stocks have put those beliefs in conflict with conservation efforts:

“Nobody here knows the weather,” said 66-year-old fisherman Noah Okoviak, speaking from the witness stand in the Bethel courtroom. “Nobody here knows how many fish will come. Only the creator.”

Judge Ward listened to Okoviak’s defense and found his beliefs to be sincere. But as with the other 22 fishermen, he found Okoviak guilty. The state had sufficient reason to impose the ban, the judge explained, and the fishermen had violated it. But the sentences were lenient—a year of probation and a fine of $250 apiece (in one case, $500) to be paid over the course of a year or sometimes two. At times, the judge was openly sympathetic. “When this case goes up for appeal,” he said, as Okoviak took his seat, “the cold transcript will not reflect that everyone in the courtroom was standing, and that record will not reflect that there are a number of people in the courtroom with tears in their eyes.”

The fishermen’s cases have indeed moved on to the Alaska Court of Appeals, where their oral arguments may be heard as early as this summer. There, state-appointed judges will grapple with the same question the court faced in 1979, when an indigenous hunter named Carlos Frank was charged with illegally transporting a newly slain moose. Frank argued that he had needed the animal for a religious ceremony. Two lower courts found him guilty, but the Alaska Supreme Court reversed the verdict, calling moose meat “the sacramental equivalent to the wine and wafer in Christianity.”

“Happy Talk”

Last year, Philip Seymour Hoffman gave a speech by that name at the Rubin Museum with Simon Critchley. Above, the excellent PBS series Blank on Blank has animated a segment of the discussion:

[A]nimator Patrick Smith captured Hoffman’s self-deprecating whimsy as he discussed the difference between pleasure and true, lasting contentment. Hoffman also discussed the ever-present nature of the past and the fleeting status of moments of happiness—as well as how each person’s internal darkness affects how he plays his parts.

“Learning how to die,” he explains, “and therefore learning how to live.”

Watch the full conversation here.

Can Agnostics Get A Little Love?

In a brief but compelling history of agnosticism, George Dvorsky laments that “the current culture war” over religion has little use for intellectual humility:

Atheists and theists are battling it out for memetic supremacy, each side making cocksure proclamations as to whether or not God truly exists. Theists make the case for God by appealing to faith, scripture, or any number of now-archaic arguments. Atheists take the diametrically opposed stance, arguing that there’s no reason to believe that a supreme being exists. And woe betide anyone who dares to complexify the polarized nature of this debate. As far as this battle is concerned, the answer is either black or white; there’s no tolerance for nuance or doubt.

The vociferousness of these sentiments have largely forced agnosticism to the philosophical sidelines. That and some fairly serious misconceptions as to what it really means. These days, agnosticism is often mischaracterized as an undecided response to a question. And in fact, the term is frequently applied outside of a religious context when describing things for which we haven’t yet made an opinion. For example, we can say we’re “agnostic” about climate change, neither believing it or disbelieving it. Alternately, it’s used to express our ambivalence about something, using the term to equate to such sentiments as, “I don’t care,” “I don’t really want to know,” or “I don’t even want to think about it.”

But this casual usage of the term betrays its original purpose, an epistemological stance and methodology in which skepticism and empiricism – two hallmarks of the scientific method — takes center stage.