Abigail's Case Fiction

Abigail’s case fiction, Part I

Abigail had vanquished repression. She did what she wanted, when she wanted, with whom she wanted. After taking her to dinner, Carlos, a respectable Venezuelan exporter of Indian folk art, had called to invite her to an evening at the theatre. Abigail rejected his offer forthrightly. She said: “Frankly, you are wasting your time pursuing me.”

When her friend Phoebe mentioned that Abigail was welcome at her family’s Christmas dinner, she responded: “Thanks, but no thanks. Your family reminds me of the Big Apple Circus. I would rather be alone.”

Abigail felt immense pride in her openness and honesty. The few friends that she had left found her trying. Some even tried to help her out. To little avail.

How did a woman who had perfected the art of rudeness have any social life at all.? Her new life coach, Seymour, did not have to give the matter much thought. Facing him in the leather armchair was one of the most exquisitely beautiful creatures he had ever encountered. Decked out in a pink Chanel suit, with a blue and gray Hermes foulard, her long red hair resting easily on her shoulders, Abigail had long since learned how to use her natural endowments to her advantage. 

Tall and slender, she had worked for several years as a fashion model, eventually to parlay her knowledge of clothing and cosmetics into a lucrative consulting business. Not only could she create an image that was worthy of an artist’s gaze, but she had an acute awareness of fashion trends. She produced monthly reports about what was in and what would soon be in. Her unfailing sense of style and glamour allowed her to command exorbitant fees, and to lead a lifestyle that took her to the finest parties, the most sumptuous restaurants, and the mot modish vacation spots. 

Seymour was sitting across from a woman who could light up any room. Hers was a desired presence at any function. Her outrageous remarks simply made her more entertaining.

As Abigail began to discuss what had brought her to consult him, Seymour was worrying that he would be so blinded by her appearance that he would lose professional focus and begin dottering like an idiot. To calm himself he began evoking a single word that best comprised this young woman. That word was flamboyant. Concentrating on the word calmed him for the moment,

As might be imagined, Abigail’s ravishing exterior hid some disagreeable experiences. After finishing high school in Iowa she had signed on to do some modeling at the Ford agency. She had never made the ranks of top models, contenting herself with catalog work and occasional promotions. She had traveled the world and indulged whatever pleasures were offered.

To numb herself to that lifestyle, Abigail had developed a taste for cocaine and alcohol. She did not, however, consider herself an addict. No one in her family knew about the sordid side of her past. All they wanted to know was when she was going to get married.

For her part Abigail eschewed all domestic constraints. She did not want children, she declaimed loudly. Children would cramp her style and ruin her image. She was 38 years old. Seymour would have given her ten years less.

When Abigail remarked that she had already done some therapy, Seymour asked her what had drawn her to treatment. She explained calmly that there were many reasons, but she had done so because her modeling career was ending. She felt lost and did not know how to set forth on the next stage of her life journey. In the end Antoinette had guided her toward her current work as a consultant.

Antoinette had approached Abigail’s career difficulties as a career counselor. Well and good. But Seymour was not persuaded that the work, which had lasted for nearly ten years, was limited to discussions of careers in fashion.

More salient to the therapist was the information that Abigail had suffered a pattern of sexual abuse, beginning when she was nine. Then a teenage son of a neighbor, named Delbert, had repeatedly forced her to perform fellatio on him. He had also undressed and fondled her, occasionally producing pleasurable sensations. 

The molestation had lasted for years. When Abigail tried to mention it to her mother, her mother declared that it was impossible, and that she was making things up.

In the end it had destroyed her ability to trust men. She had learned to divide the human species into victimizers and victims. She chose to become one of the victimizers. She had spend much of her life settling scores with random males, exploiting their weaknesses, draining their resources, and then discarding them. Cynically, she lured them into falling in love with her, eventually to dump them.

Interestingly, Antoinette had openly expressed her own emotions. She was frankly horrified at the abuse that Abigail was suffering and was thoroughly empathetic. At times she even confided the abuse she herself had experienced as a child, creating a bond of intimacy that had sustained Abigail in her darkest moments. At times she also explained how difficult it was being a single parent in New York City. At times Abigail wondered who was the therapist and who was the patient.

Seymour was not entirely opposed to this technique, but he was aware of the simple fact that no one needed professional training to confess and emote, so he believed that the ethos of self-expression belied the seriousness of professional work.

Strange to say, Antoinette was trying to raise her patient’s self-esteem. No one, she often asserted, has the right to judge you. You ought to express yourself freely and openly, and people should not think less of you for being honest.

Abigail began to see herself as a vessel filled with toxic substances. If she allowed them to fester, they would destroy her soul. Expressing them was like expelling poison; it would make her feel happy and clean. Of course, she needed to learn how to ignore the chagrin and the anger she elicited in her interlocutors. 

Evidently, Seymour did not approve. He saw Antoinette’s approach encouraging verbal bulimia. Now he would have to teach this woman the value of considering other people’s feelings, of ceasing to make every conversation a test of the interlocutor’s tolerance. In short, Seymour would need to teach her to be an adult, with a mind, as well as a body and soul.

Seymour was puzzling to himself how he could disabuse Abigail of the pseudo-wisdom she had purchased from Antoinette. So he asked the obvious questions: “But, what brings you to consult with me?”

He did not receive the reply he had expected. Abigail confessed that she was confused and anxious. She was having trouble sleeping. She thought that she had been going mad. After some reflection she concluded that she was falling in love. It was not part of the program.

And then she met Bertram in Bloomingdales. He had struck up a conversation in the housewares department while they were both selecting Calphalon skillets. After they had both purchased the same model, Bertram invited her to have lunch with him at Le Train Bleu, the store restaurant. He seemed reasonably amusing, and more than commonly good looking. He was in his early 40s, with chestnut hair, dressed entirely in Armani. 

He seemed rather normal, straightlaced and composed, and she had, strange to say, never quite met a man like him.

As soon as they sat down and unfolded their blue linen napkins, she learned that he was nothing more than a CPA from KPMG Peat Warwick. At least he was a partner.

Hearing this news she responded, “How tedious!” Not only was Bertram not offended. He was amused, even dazzled by Abigail’s high spirits. Of course, he was also impressed by her beauty. Rather than take offense at her arrogant dismissal of his life’s work, he endeavored to make it sound interesting, by launching into a passionate explanation of budgets, tex codes, audits and the like.

Abigail was not entirely oblivious to such things-- she had her own business-- but, as Bertram explained what he did, she found herself fascinated, not so much by the visions of columns of numbers, as with his evident love for his work. After a while Abigail even forgot to shower the man with contempt. She was so intrigued by the conversation that she barely picked through her salad. While she could not wrap her mind around the idea of having sex with an accountant, she was fantasizing actively about wrapping her legs around this one.

Abigail was getting lost in her reverie when Bertram announced that he had to get going. He was delighted to make her acquaintance. Hearing these words Abigail scowled mildly; it was much too formal for her taste. He then proposed, and she accepted that they exchange business cards. Abigail decided that he had done so to be polite.

After she got home, she kicked off her loafers, sprawled out on the living room sofa and put on Brahms. Quickly, for her at least, she fell asleep. Soon she was dreaming that Bertram was on top of her. The dream awoke her and she found herself clutching a large silk pillow. Distressed by this manifestation of a desire she refused to acknowledge, she moved to her bed and fell asleep.

When she awoke the next morning Abigail felt ill. Too ill to go out, as it happened. So she busied herself with a few domestic chores. As she dusted the porcelain her eyes kept glancing at the telephone. By 4 in the afternoon she realized that she was expecting Bertram to call. She felt a twinge of disappointment each time she heard the wrong voice on the line.

Feeling like a smitten schoolgirl, Abigail thought she was losing her mind. She felt paralyzed, or perhaps she still had some pride left. Removing his card from her purse she gazed at it as though it was a portrait of her love. She called her friend Camille, who recommended that she consult with her life coach, Seymour.

Seymour could not see her right away, but, by the time of her appointment, three days hence, things had changed. Bertram had called her home while she was at work. She had gotten the call very soon thereafter, because she was checking her voice mail obsessively. 

By making a Herculean effort Abigail managed to delay calling him back for two hours. When she did she was in a sorry state, nearly incoherent on the phone, giggling uncontrollably, feeling a mixture of happiness that he had called mixed with chagrin about how foolish she appeared. Finally, he invited her to dinner on Thursday. She quickly accepted, even though it forced her to cancel two previous engagements.

When Seymour explained that he was puzzled over Abigail’s distress, Abigail responded that she had believed herself inoculated against such emotional excesses. She exclaimed: “If I fall in love with this man I will no longer know who I am. 

Seymour complimented her on her acuity, and did not add his other thought, that this might not be such a bad thing. 

For consultations contact me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com.

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Young Women on the Job

The days of DEI are passing away, and not a moment too soon. Hiring and promoting on the basis of race or gender cannot possibly advance corporate efficiency. Discrimination against white and Asian males does not necessarily produce more corporate profits. And it undermines the work ethic, to the point where in everyday parlance, DEI now stands for-- didn’t earn it.

The Wall Street Journal has published a standard issue complaint about the lack of women at the top of corporations. It does not offer another explanation beyond bigotry. It does not ask whether women want those jobs, whether they are willing to do what is needed to earn those jobs, whether they command the respect of their subordinates and whether their performance is worthy of the exalted corporate titles.

Corporations are in the business of producing goods and services, and earning a profit. Why did anyone think that these companies are sabotaging themselves by hiring and promoting white males, in order to undermine their profitability.  

Ought we really to be surprised to discover, reported by the Journal, that women have largely limited their advances to human resources and marketing. Exception given for a certain presidential candidate, one who most certainly did not earn it.

One does not like to have to mention it, but nowhere in the article does the author remark that some of these incipient female executives might have children at home and might decide to spend more time with their offspring.

Of course, the article assumes that men and women should be represented equally at all levels of the corporate hierarchy.

That means, the failure to institute equality must mean that some serious prejudice is afoot. The only explanation is bigotry, i.e., sexism. Young women who are raised on this feminist swill must come away thinking that the corporate world is stacked against them. And they act accordingly.

Dare we say, the Journal never asks any questions about the work ethic of the women who are not being promoted. Has feminism made them better workers or has feminism made them insufferable?

Zoe Strimpel describes young Gen Z women in The Spectator. She invents a new fiction, a woman named Keffiyeh Karen.

In her ready and confident fury, her rudeness, her iron-fisted appetite for confrontation over infractions of what she deems political and moral gospel, the Keffiyeh Karen is related to a broader epidemic of the Gen Z Mean Girl. These Mean Girls have graduated from running the schoolyard to terrorizing the workplace. If there is one type to be afraid of in modern offices, it isn’t the lech or the shouty, hungover male middle manager. It’s the twenty-three-year-old gluten-free vegan graduate, wet behind the ears. We know what these misanthropic misses are capable of — we’ve seen the Phoebes and Annas of Just Stop Oil chuck soup on Van Gogh.

Would you want to promote someone who behaved this way? Is such a woman preparing herself for the executive suite or is she one step from being fired.

Strimpel continues, describing Gen Z, or at least the British version:

Several good friends of mine who work in corporate settings have told me tales to chill the blood — women in their early twenties conducting bullying campaigns, being proudly insubordinate to their bosses. They never face consequences.

Insubordinate, disrespectful, full of themselves, incapable of cooperating. They do not face consequence because any overt rejection will be taken to be a sign of deep seated bigotry. Strimpel also connects it to the #MeToo movement:

But in setting up a “guilty because I say so” system, turning Twitter into an open-air arena in which slander and accusation took on rapid real-life consequences and gave the accuser instant power and fame, #MeToo armed young women with new and magnificent powers to accuse and destroy.

The word for this is-- empowered. Strangely, these strong empowered women do not know how to work together with other people in a corporate setting. And then they do not get promoted, and, they have something to complain about. It’s a saving grace, since complaining is their primary social skill.

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Wednesday Potpourri

First, not to be outdone by the British Labour Party, Hillary Clinton has declared that anyone spreading misinformation should be jailed. It is about what you would expect from a woman who never got over losing to Donald Trump.

To which Sara Carter recommends that we first apply the rule to Hillary herself. Via Twitter:

Well, then Hillary Clinton should be the first one to turn herself in… there has been no one more prolific at lying and spreading disinformation than her - STEELE DOSSIER anyone? that’s just for starters …. Bleach bit, smashing phones, white water, Epstein, etc…. But a vote for Harris is a vote against your freedom …. Believe me, Believe what they say…Clinton is one of the top Puppet masters of the Dems. These Marxist like ideologues will do anything to retain their power and money They despise any American that doesn’t agree with them

Second, just in case you did not understand why Kamala Harris does not do interviews with journalists, she did one with a journalist in Philadelphia. It was a non-stop embarrassment, a mix of word salads and predigested lines that she had memorized for the debate with Donald Trump.

Here is a transcript, beginning with the first question by moderator Taff.

TAFF: At the debate the other night you talked about creating an “opportunity economy” — what if we can drill down on that a little bit. When you talk about bringing down prices and making life more affordable for people, what are one or two specific things you have in mind for that?

HARRIS--

Well I’ll start with this. I grew up a middle-class kid. My mother raised my sister and me, she worked very hard. Um, she was able to finally save up enough money to buy our first house when I was a teenager. I grew up in a community of hardworking people, construction workers, and nurses and teachers, and I try to explain to some people who may not have had the same experience, you know, if, but, a lot of people will relate to this, you know I grew up in a neighborhood of folks who were very proud of their lawn. [smiles and nods with hands upheld] You know? And, um, and I was raised to believe and to know that all people deserve dignity. And that we as Americans have a beautiful character. You know, we have ambitions and aspirations and dreams. But not everyone necessarily has access to the resources that can help them fuel those dreams and ambitions. So when I talk about building an opportunity economy, it is very much with the mind of investing in the ambitions and aspirations and the incredible work ethic of the American people, and creating opportunity for people, for example, to start a small business. Um, my mother, you know, worked long hours, and our neighbor helped raise us. We used to call her, it was, I still call her, our “second mother.” She was a small business owner. I love our small business owners, I learned who they are through my childhood, and she was a community leader, she hired locally, she mentored, our small businesses are so much a part of the fabric of our communities, not to mention, really, I think the backbone of America’s economy.

Third, Harris’s backup, Governor Tim Walz is not much better.

REPORTER: What is your *specific* plan to make life more affordable for Americans?

WALZ: Let me spend five minutes talking to you about radical stuff no one cares about like "climate change"

Fourth, do you remember Tariq Ramadan, a European Muslim intellectual who was all the rage once upon a time.

The news about Tariq Ramadan is not good.

It turns out that he was just convicted of rape in a Swiss courtroom. Hmmm.

Robert Spencer reports:

Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim intellectual who has been one of the foremost exponents, at least to non-Muslims in Europe and North America, of Islamic reform, has been convicted of rape.

It is impossible to overstate how shocking this is for those who have praised Ramadan to the skies for so very long. For many years, Tariq Ramadan was the darling of the Western intelligentsia. In 2002, Salon hailed him as “the Muslim Martin Luther.” In 2004, Time Magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world today. In 2012, Foreign Policy included him on its list of the top 100 global thinkers “for telling us that Islam and democracy can go together — just when it matters.”

Now those accolades, and the many others that Ramadan received, stand as mute witness to the left’s tendency to shower with honors those who tell it what it wants to hear. Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Tuesday that Ramadan has been “convicted on appeal of rape and sexual coercion by a Geneva court.” This has been a long time coming, as Ramadan has faced numerous accusations in recent years of “masking violence and radicalism behind a mild facade.”

Fifth, news from the Middle East. The Israelis have found a new way to attack Hezbollah. Blow up their pagers, thousands of them. Only a few deaths, but many significant injuries, especially to private parts. 

The New York Post explains:

The Israeli spy agency Mossad allegedly intercepted Hezbollah’s shipment of new pagers months ago and rigged them with high explosives — resulting in the stunning attack on the Lebanese terror group Tuesday, according to a new report.

Mossad agents reportedly placed Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a highly explosive material, inside the batteries of the pagers, sources told Sky News Arabia, according to a translation from the Times of Israel.

Sixth, Columbia University compiled a report about the incidence of anti-Semitism on campus. Bill Barr, formerly Attorney General summarizes the conclusions:

Reading the report issued last month by Columbia University’s Task Force on Antisemitism, one could be forgiven for thinking that it describes the University of Heidelberg, circa 1933. It contains accounts of observant Jews being harassed and assaulted, and open calls for the murder of Jews. But no, this is not Nazi Germany. This is the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 2024. There—in one of the nation’s most elite enclaves of higher learning—the oldest hatred is alive and well, gussied up in academic robes.

The admittedly “serious and pervasive” antisemitic incidents detailed by the report are disturbing. Even more troubling is the extent to which Columbia faculty and administrators were complicit in the problem. One instructor kicked off a class in the Masters of Public Health program with a discussion of the Jewish “capitalists” who “laundered” their “dirty money” and “blood money” through donations to the university. Others silenced Jewish students in class discussions of the Holocaust and Israel. Still others moved class sessions and office hours to Columbia’s “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” where Jewish students were routinely threatened and physically attacked.

Seventh, the free market works. Considering how bad a job ABC journalists did at the last debate, it feels right and just that David Muir’s evening news broadcast should have lost 12% of its audience.

Eighth, if you thought that tampon Tim was bad, consider the Canadian military. It put up tampon dispensers in men’s bathrooms. Guess what, the soldiers threw them out:

The Canadian Military put tampons in the men’s bathroom. They started getting pulled down and thrown out.

After initially thinking they were going missing due to high demand, officials eventually realized and requested this be investigated as a HATE CRIME.

Ninth, those who are manifesting for a free Palestine, which means a Palestine free of Jews and practicing Sharia law, should consider this, from Pakistan, offered by Dr. Maalouf on Twitter:

PAKISTAN: a woman was raped, and instead of arresting the rapist, the Sharia council determined that the rapist’s sister should be raped by the victim’s brother. The innocent teenage girl was publicly raped in front of 40 people in what is called ‘revenge rape’ in Sharia law.

Do feminists embrace this?

Tenth, Daniel Greenfield exposes on Twitter the Kamala Harris prosecutorial record on rape:

In 2010, when Kamala first ran for attorney general, there had been 8,325 rapes in the state. By 2016, when Kamala was fighting to take Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat, there were 13,695 rapes. Kamala presided over the single largest increase in sexual assaults on women in California.

Eleventh, a few words from Kamala herself, words that are not a salad, but are not very encouraging.

Ben B@dejo reports on Twitter about some remarks Kamala made at the National Association of Black Journalists:

Here  is Kamala Harris gloating about withholding 2,000-pound bombs from Israel, implying that it’s Israel’s fault that Hamas executed six hostages, and promising to “continue putting pressure” on Israel. She is not a friend of Israel. Beware.

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Another Assassination Attempt

Ryan Routh did not get a shot off. Hiding in the bushes at Trump International Golf Club for a dozen hours, the somewhat deranged Routh was honing in on Donald Trump when a Secret Service agent, having espied a gun barrel sticking out from the shrubs, did get a shot off. 

Of course, he missed the target, but Routh got up and tried to run away. A sharp eyed citizen saw his vehicle and took down the license plate number. Police officers from the area needed very little time to stop Routh’s SUV and to arrest him.

As of now he is being charged with the illegal possession of a firearm. 

The assassination attempt has been foiled. But the blame game has just begun. Because what really matters is both affixing blame and ensuring that no one considers that the people who have been calling for the assassination of Donald Trump are held to moral account.

It reminds us of the efforts to blame October 7 on the Israeli Prime Minister.

It does not matter if the reasoning is lame. The effort to blame Trump for an attempt to assassinate him did not require the exercise of anyone’s rational faculties. It was an exercise in stupidity, a chance for certain radicals to affirm their commitment to the cause.

From the top down, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris declared Trump to be an existential threat to democracy, to America and to everything we hold dear. 

Funny thing, I had thought that climate change was the ultimate existential threat.

Naturally, calling someone an existential threat doesn't mean that we should defeat him in an election. That would be far too democratic. It means, as Rep. Dan Goldman, ultimate Congression nepo baby, that Trump must be eliminated.

And Stacey Plaskett, non voting delegate to the US House of Representatives declared:

He [Trump] needs to be shot.

And then there is David Plouffe, currently a Harris campaign advisor. In 2016 Plouffe wrote this on Twitter:

It is not enough to simply beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again.

Of course, we are not talking about democracy. We are seeing eliminationist rhetoric. And yet, Plouffe did not know what Trump presidency would bring, but we all do, and, dare we say, the Republic is still standing. Those who think that their political opponents should not be defeated in elections, but should be destroyed are thinking like dictators in banana republics.

Other commentators have taken the occasion of the assassination attempt to show us how stupid they really are. Lester Holt at MSNBC declared that Trump had provoked the attempt by speaking ill of the Haitian immigrants who have been settled in Springfield, Ohio. You see, Trump and JD Vance had said that these migrant were eating family pets and, one understands, that suffices to set one Ryan Routh off the rails.

The fact that Routh has been contemplating his action for quite some time now does not seem to count.

So, someone created an environment where a deranged roofer could seek fame and glory, to become a hero of the revolution, by shooting the former president.

Please do not use the word democracy any more.

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Gen Z on the Job

 One hears tell of the antics of Gen Z from time to time. Those who have the unenviable task of managing that generation in the workplace are invariably pessimistic about their futures. One hates to say it, but if an entire generation is filled with dysfunctional losers, our country is in some serious trouble.

If you are musing about the revival of American industry, you need also consider that we might not have the human capital to effect the recovery.

The New York Post reports the bad news:

Gen Z employees are entitled, too easily offended, lazy and generally unprepared for the workplace — according to their bosses.

The dismal assessment of workers born between 1996 and 2010 comes in a poll of 966 business leaders across the country taken last month by the online education magazine Intelligent.com.

The survey found 75% of execs felt most of the recent college grads they hired were unsuccessful — and 60% said at least some of them had to be fired.

Dare we mention that this represents a colossal failure. Educators have failed children, and, dare we say, parents who are taking their cues from psychologists are also failing. Whatever they think they are teaching, their charges end up being fundamentally dysfunctional.

About 17% of leaders believe Gen Z, who range in age from their teens to about 28, is often “too difficult” to manage, and 39% said they have poor communication skills.

Jessen James, an international entrepreneur, business mentor and speaker, said some Gen Zers struggle to articulate themselves, don’t look you in the eye, and don’t project their voices.

“They lack charisma and personality skills,” he told The Post, adding, “I don’t feel they are in tune with what it takes to impress others.”

One wonders how much of these problems derive from a culture of DEI, where hiring and promotion have less to do with ability, less to do with hard work, and more to do with extraneous factors. If such is the case, young people have been trained to see that good conduct and hard work is not rewarded.

Psychologically, the younger generation is weak and ineffectual, prone to meltdowns and to emotional self-indulgence.

James has seen what he calls “snowflakeism” — some Gen Zers “crumbling” under even a little pressure.

“It’s almost like you have to walk on eggshells around them, being super sensitive when managing them, in case you offend them, upset them, or push them too far,” he said.

Some twentysomethings have even brought a parent with them to job interviews for support.

The first rule of adult behavior: don’t bring your mother to a job interview!

Let’s see. A generation that was brought up on therapeutically correct principles is filled with people who have mental health problems. Could it be that making therapy a way of life is not very therapeutic.

Now, corporate environments have tried to adapt to the new cohort:

Corporate environments and office culture have relaxed in recent years, Nguyen noted, and are viewed differently between generations.

But even with a more laid back office environment, recent college grads don’t dress professionally and don’t use “appropriate” language for work, 19% of those surveyed said.

For those who think that perhaps managers are misperceiving the behaviors of their Gen Z staff, the Post continues:

While some of the beliefs are subjective, others are not, he said, like being on time.

About 20% of respondents said Gen Zers are often late to work, and 15% said they frequently hand assignments in late.

The younger generation is also more likely to use up their sick days than their older colleagues, recent studies have found.

So, managers consider Gen Z to be chronically immature. They have been trying to teach them better social skills and better work habits.

But many bosses are trying to tame the immature hires, even mandating “office etiquette training.”

Fifty-four percent of the company leaders surveyed said they offer the training and many mandate it for new hires — and a quarter of them specifically require it for Gen Z recruits.

Nearly 80% of companies surveyed reported placing at least some of the disappointing hires on “performance improvement plans.”

At the least, they all have high self-esteem.

As for how you develop better work habits, if all else fails consult with me, via StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com. I will be happy to coach you through the process.

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Shakespeare and Psychoanalysis

Get ready for yet another rescue mission. Two distinguished thinkers, the child psychologist Adam Phillips and the literature professor Steven Greenblatt have joined forces in order to rescue Freud.

Clearly the Viennese neurologist needs some serious rescuing. Once a philosopher king of considerable standing, Freud’s work has largely been superseded by recent therapies. But, then again, as the authors point out, Freud never really considered that his dangerous method would work to cure anyone of much of anything.

One might argue, as I certainly would, that Freud’s theorizing represents a series of efforts to explain why his ideas did not work in practice. He eventually arrives at the notion of the death drive, which means that people are so totally driven to destruction that they cannot possibly get well. It feels a bit like Kant’s crooked timber of humanity.

The fault does not lie with Freud and does not lie with his theories. It lies in human nature.

You might have guessed that I have not read the book. I have, however, spent a considerable amount of time with both psychoanalysis and Shakespeare.

I read a review written by one Anna Ballan for the Hedgehog Review, and I find myself agreeing with her sense that the book is largely a theoretical muddle.

Even if psychoanalysis does not cure, serious thinkers consider that literature, that is, Greek tragedy, does.

It is not an accident that Freud read human psychology into the Sophoclean version of the Oedipus story. And we recall that Aristotle explained that tragedy produces a catharsis, an emotional cleanse.

Is this the kind of therapy that Freud was offering? Does it represent a second chance at God only knows what?

To clarify matters, Aristotle argued that tragedy produces a sense of dread, as you identify with the tragic hero and believe that his inevitable downfall can also be yours. But then, you recognize at another moment that you have misidentified and are not going to suffer his fate. You then feel pity for him and feel a sense of relief.

This represents an emotional catharsis, and if you would like to think that it represents a good feeling, the one thing it does not do is to show you what you should do to improve how you function in the world. At best, you have learned not to consider yourself a tragic hero or to dread your fate.

Rather than blame it on some self-destructive instinct, we would do better to understand that Freud made a fundamental mistake in thinking that life was a Greek tragedy.

Life is not a Greek tragedy. You will not be finding any real advantage to thinking that it is. Cleansing your emotions will not improve your ability to play the game of life. It does not really suit the notion of second chances. As it happens, the notion of second chances animates the Phillips and Greenblatt opus.

That Freud was full of himself, like a tragic hero, seems easy to grasp.

Now, art creates alternative realities. The authors suggest that art gives us the chance to recover what has been lost. It is a second chance. Apparently, they believe that psychoanalysis is about recovering your lost childhood. It is no longer Sophocles; it is Proust.

Dare I say that this does not make a lot of sense. Consider this possibility. Take a real event, not a fiction. Take the student protests that filled Tiananmen Square in May and June of 1989. Without tormenting ourselves inordinately about the actions taken by Chinese leaders back then, let us imagine that you were to ask why they did not simply allow the student protests to peter out. Why did they think it necessary to intervene with tanks and snipers?

We will happily ignore all of the other problems that these protests were producing in China. And we will remark that the nation’s leaders had been there and done that before. Deng Xiaoping especially had seen student protests in Tiananmen Square turn into a cultural revolution that had just about destroyed the nation.

And let us imagine, without doing too much historical research, that when the student protests broke out in the 1960s, leaders of the Politburo, including Deng himself, chose to do nothing, to let them peter out.

Ask yourself how that one worked out? 

It might well have appeared to the Chinese leadership in 1989 that another Cultural Revolution was in the offing. And perhaps they believed that they were being given a second chance, to get right this time what they got wrong the last time. That meant, they did not want to repeat the same error and let the movement take its course, but that they had to crush it before it crushed them.

To take the question of second chances in Shakespearean terms, in something that I assume the authors wrote about, Hamlet is a fine example of someone who gets a second chance to do what he ought to have done the first time. But, then again, are we certain that he ought to have done it?

After failing to murder his uncle when said uncle was praying, Hamlet struck out in a fury at someone who was hiding behind an arras in his mother’s chamber. It turned out to be Polonius, but the prince did not miss his second chance.

Finally, Hamlet did murder his uncle, not when he had a second chance but when he was dying himself. It was his last chance.

Unfortunately, it is not really about second or third chances. Hamlet’s problem is quite simple-- how does he know that his father was really his father. His uncle, upon taking the throne, names him as heir. Why did his supposed father not do the same, unless there was some doubt about whether he was really his father.

Of course, we are here in the realm of action, not of emotion or feeling.

Apparently, the authors believe that therapy must involve recovering the past, having a second chance at childhood. This feels, to say the least, like a good way to avoid current responsibilities in favor of wallowing in nostalgia. 

Do you really think that this kind of indulgence is going to make you a better chess player or a better marketing executive? Surely, it will make you a very good psychoanalytic patient and will console you as you see that you are not getting any better.

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