Expanded Consciousness

In the popular imagination, the ability of the creative genius is shrouded in mystery. Their creativity is seen as the result of a singular mind spinning gold by inexplicable means. While creativity may ultimately be irreducible to simpler elements and resistant to a full explication, light can be shed on certain aspects of the phenomena. Some of the fog drifts away when it is acknowledged that no creator begins their work as a blank slate. The surrounding culture and its body of past knowledge provides the framework from which new creations emanate. In addition to these external influences, the creator’s own childhood marks the slate. The child is impressed upon by the idiosyncratic constellations of demands and wishes that issue from their particular family members. Family deeply influences the shape taken by the later mind. In the case study on Sigmund Freud’s personality I connected specific biographical events with the formation of notable character traits (namely, his father’s submission before an anti-Semite with Freud’s avowed boldness and Freud’s inordinate jealousy during his engagement with his determined introspection). These traits are generally associated with creativity and are found in the personality of many creative notables. However, in this case study I will bring forth particular realities from Freud’s early familial life and argue that they provided the impetus that drove him specifically to his creation of psychoanalysis.

The need to solve riddles was instilled early in Freud. The young Freud was faced with a “bewildering texture of familial relationships he found very hard to sort out” (5, Gay). Freud’s mother, Amalia, was only 20 when she married Jacob Freud, who at 40 was entering his third marriage. Jacob had two sons from his first marriage, Emmanuel and Phillip. Emmanuel was only sightly older and Phillip a year younger than their father’s new bride. Emmanuel had a son, John, who was a year older than Freud. John was Freud’s main playmate and also his nephew. Peter Gay sums up the questions percolating in little uncle Freud’s mind: “Such childhood conundrums left deposits that Freud repressed for years and would only recapture, through dreams and laborious self-analysis, in the late 1890s. His mind was made up of these things – his young mother pregnant with a rival, his half brother in some mysterious way his mother’s companion, his nephew older than himself, his best friend also his greatest enemy, his benign father old enough to be his grandfather. He would weave the fabric of his psychoanalytic theories from such intimate experiences” (6). Gay is conveying the concerns and fantasies that preoccupied Freud’s mind when faced with so many incoherent pairings. For example, step-brother Philip appeared to Freud a more appropriate companion in age and temperament for his young, beautiful mother than his father. In reality, the mother and step-brother were not lovers. These questions formed a pressure in Freud’s mind that only an older Freud would be equipped to address. His early need to understand the perplexing relationships surrounding him transformed over time into a great creative energy engaged in constructing a comprehensive theory for explaining human relationships, psychoanalysis. Freud exemplifies the creative individual as one who is compelled to understand a specific facet of life. A mortal being raised in a particular family. Not a mystical being possessed of a limitless creative quotient that they could chose to apply to any field with equal success.

Biography: Freud: A Life For Our Time. Author: Peter Gay

Posted in Psychoanalysis Tagged: Biography, Creativity, Freud, Intellectual, Knowledge, Personality, Peter Gay, Sigmund Freud

The Best Analysis of Guns N’ Roses Chinese Democracy (know of any others?)

rags847 — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:17:14 +0000

From AMG:

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
To put Chinese Democracy in some perspective: it arrives 17 years after the twin Use Your Illusion, the last set of original music by Guns N’ Roses. Consider that 17 years prior to theIllusions, it was 1974, back before the Ramones and Sex Pistols, back before Aerosmith hadRocks and Toys in the Attic, back before Queen had A Night at the Opera — back before almost anything that Axl Rose worships even existed. Generations have passed in these 17 years, but not for Axl. He cut himself off from the world following the trouble-ridden Use Your Illusion tour, retreating to the Hollywood Hills, swapping every original GNR member in favor of contract players culled from his mid-’90s musical obsessions — Tommy Stinsonfromthe Replacements, Robin Finck from Nine Inch Nails, Buckethead from guitar magazines — as he turned into rock’s Charles Foster Kane, a genius in self-imposed exile spending millions to make his own Xanadu, Chinese Democracy.Like Xanadu, Chinese Democracy is a monument to man’s might, but where Kane sought to bring the world underneath his roof, Axl labored to create an ideal version of his inner world, working endlessly on a set of songs about his heartbreak, persecution, and paranoia, topics well mined on the Illusions. Using the pompous ten-minute epics “Estranged” and “November Rain” as his foundation, Axl strips away all remnants of the old, snake-dancing GNR, shedding the black humor and blues, replacing any good times with vindictive spleen in the vein of “You Could Be Mine.” All this melodrama and malevolence feels familiar and, surprisingly, so does much of Chinese Democracy, even for those listeners who didn’t hear the portions of the record as leaked demos and live tracks. Despite a few surface flourishes — all the endless, evident hours spent on Pro Tools, a hip-hop loop here, a Spanish six-string there, absurd elastic guitar effects — this is an album unconcerned with the future of rock & roll. One listen and it’s abundantly clear that Axl spent the decade-plus in the studio not reinventing but refining, obsessing over a handful of tracks, and spending an inordinate amount of time chasing the sound in his head — that’s it, no more, no less.Such maniacal indulgence is ridiculous but strangely understandable: Rose received unlimited time and money to create this album, so why not take full advantage and obsess over every last detail? The odd thing is, he spent all this time and money on an album that is deliberately not a grand masterpiece — a record that pushes limits or digs deep — but merely a set of 14 songs. Compared to the chaotic Use Your Illusion, Chinese Democracyfeels strangely modest, but that’s because it’s a single polished album, not a double album so overstuffed that it duplicates songs. Modest is an odd word for an album a decade-plus in the making, but Axl’s intent is oddly simple: he sees GNR not as a gutter-rock band but as a pomp-rock vehicle for him to lash out against all those who don’t trust him, whether it’s failed friends, lapsed fans, ex-lovers, former managers, fired bandmates, or rock critics.Chinese Democracyis the best articulation of this megalomania as could be possible, so the only thing to quibble about is his execution, which occasionally is perplexing, particularly when Rose slides into hammy vocal inflections or encourages complicated guitar that only guitarists appreciate (it’s telling that the only memorable phrases from Robin Finck,Buckethead, or Bumblefoot or whoever are ones that mimic Slash’s full-throated melodic growl). Even with these odd flourishes, it’s hard not to marvel, either in respect or bewilderment, at the dense, immaculate wall of god knows how many guitars, synthesizers, vocals, and strings.

The production is so dense that it’s hard to warm to, but it fits the music. These aren’t songs that grab and hold; they’re songs that unfold, so much so that Chinese Democracymay seem a little underwhelming upon its first listen. It’s not just the years of pent-up anticipation, it’s that Axl spent so much time creating the music — constructing the structure and then filling out the frame — that there’s no easy way into the album. That, combined with the realization that Axl isn’t trying to reinvent GNR, but just finishing what he started on the Illusions, can make Chinese Democracy seem mildly anticlimactic, butRose spent a decade-plus working on this — he deserves to not have it dismissed on a cursory listen. Give it time, listening like it was 1998 and not 2008, and the album does give up some terrific music — music that is overblown but not overdone.

True, those good moments are the songs that have kicked around the Internet for the entirety of the new millennium: the slinky, spiteful “Better,” slowly building into its fury; the quite gorgeous if heavy-handed “Street of Dreams”; “There Was a Time,” which overcomes its acronym and lack of chorus on its sheer drama; “Catcher in the Rye,” the lightest, brightest moment here; the slow, grinding “I.R.S.”; and “Madagascar,” a ludicrous rueful rumination that finds space for quotations from Martin Luther King amidst its trip-hop pulse. These aren’t innovations; they’re extensions of “Breakdown” and “Estranged,” epics that require some work to decode because Axl forces the listener to meet him on his own terms. This all-consuming artistic narcissism has become Rose’s defining trait, not letting him move forward, but only to relentlessly explore the same territory over and over again. And this solipsism turns Chinese Democracy into something strangely, surprisingly simple: it won’t change music, it won’t change any lives, it’s just 14 more songs about loneliness and persecution. Or as Axl put it in an apology for canceled concerts in 2006, “In the end, it’s just an album.” And it’s a good album, no less and no more.

Posted in Music Tagged: Axl Rose, Classic Rock, Electric Guitar, GNR, Guitar, Guitar Hero, Guns N' Roses, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Metal, Metal News, Power Metal, Progressive Metal, Rock, Rock & Roll, Rock N Roll

AC/DC Makes The Same Album Over And Over Or Are They Trendy Posers? Read a dissenting view.

rags847 — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:32:00 +0000

AC/DC: Disco Punk Funk Glam Rock Brit Pop Superstars

Julian Marszalek, April 15th, 2009 04:47

writen by Julian Marszalek, April 15th, 2009 04:47

AC/DC are often held up to be 100% rock & roll in it’s purest form. This just isn’t the case says Julian Marszalek after examining the evidence

It was the withering contempt of the music press that gave rise to the notion that AC/DC did little more than release the same album over again. Interviewed on the eve of their 1984 Monsters of Rock headliner by a sneering Andy Kershaw for the Old Grey Whistle Test, the soon-to-be champion of world music and recipient of several restraining orders was moved to ask Angus Young in contemptuous tone how it was that the band managed to differentiate themselves in the world of heavy metal and hard rock.

“A lot of people say we’ve made the same album eleven times,” replied the diminutive guitarist before adding, “and really they’re lying because it’s actually the twelfth time.”

And so the myth began that every AC/DC album sounds the same. Palpable nonsense, says The Quietus. Though the band has enjoyed a critical rehabilitation of sorts, the notion of musical change within the AC/DC camp is anathema to most of the gentlemen of the music press (and where AC/DC are concerned, it most certainly will be gentlemen). But these are cloth eared dolts, the kind of buffoons that would have you believe that AC/DC exist in a bubble that refuses to acknowledge outside influences.

Come join us, gentle reader, as we prove once and for all through a series of carefully monitored and scientifically-controlled, double blind tests with water-tight methodology (listening with the volume at full + air guitar x personal prejudice = opinion) that, despite the erroneous reputation attached to their voluminous output, AC/DC are a band very much of the times in which they live…

THE GLAM ROCK YEARS

ALBUMS: ’74 JAILBREAK, HIGH VOLTAGE, DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP

THE EVIDENCE: At the heart of the crunching ramalama that is AC/DC lies an unapologetic pop band and as these early recordings show, the influence of glam rock is never far way. Granted, as evidenced by TNT and its snotty chants of “Oi! Oi!”, AC/DC owe less to the androgyny and sexual ambivalence of David Bowie and more to the brickie-in-heels/futurist aesthetic of Sweet and Gary Glitter but the glam influences are firmly in place. As are the nods to Bay City Rollers with ‘Can I Sit Next To You Girl’, a track that sails perilously close to ‘Shang-a-Lang’.

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap follows in a similar vein. Phil Rudd’s beats on the title track are a pure glam stomp; the sound of a thousand stack heels brought down hard on the concrete terraces the world over. See also the breathing effect on the verses that double up as Glam’s secret weapon: handclaps. These albums are so glam that Mickie Most must have wondered where his production points were and for further evidence, check out Malcolm Young’s knee length boots on the back cover of High Voltage.

THE PUNK ROCK YEARS

ALBUMS: LET THERE BE ROCK

THE EVICENCE: Received wisdom has it that punk rock had absolutely no effect on AC/DC. This, of course, is total bollocks; the band’s reaction to the nascent punk scene is most keenly felt on Let There Be Rock. To the untrained ear, AC/DC’s fourth album is a tightened up version of what went on before but this is to miss punk’s influence on AC/DC’s activities.

Having moved to London in 1977, AC/DC were somewhat bemused to find themselves lumped in with punk rock. Finding little in common with the barrage of the Pistols, The Clash et al, the Antipodeans reacted against the prevailing winds by delivering an album of blistering rock’n’roll in its purest sense.

They may have reacted against punk, but also Let There Be Rock benefits from the same liberating force that other punk bands did.

THE DISCO YEARS

ALBUMS: POWERAGE, HIGHWAY TO HELL, BACK IN BLACK, FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK

THE EVICENCE: Most metal scholars will, over the course of several pints, return to make the point in misty-eyed terms that Powerage is AC/DC’s best album and they’re not wrong. Featuring some of Bon Scott’s most poignant lyrics (see the junkie horror of ‘Gone Shootin’”, the street-blues of ‘Rock’n’Roll Damnation’), the album pushes and pulls with a rhythmic intensity that had been missing from their previous releases. Not without good reason is this Keith Richards’ favourite hard rock album. But there’s an extra element at play here that contributes to its deep grooves: disco.

By 1978, disco was impossible to ignore. Once the preserve of blacks, gays and other marginalised groups, the success of Saturday Night Fever ensured that disco went supernova in a very short space of time. The Rolling Stones, never a band to miss a passing bandwagon, soon hitched a ride and hit paydirt with ‘Miss You’.

AC/DC’s flirtation with disco was less obvious though no less keenly felt. Powerage is a triumph of the groove. Cliff Williams’ minimalist and Zen-like bass playing harks back to disco’s forebear Northern Soul (compare the bass lines of ‘Down Payment Blues’ with Mr Bloe’s ‘Grooving With Mr Bloe’) as elsewhere, Phil Rudd’s signature 4/4 beats are more in keeping with the times than keeping time.

But it was the arrival of Robert John “Mutt” Lange that sealed AC/DC’s disco credentials. Lange had already propelled the otherwise unremarkable City Boy into the pop charts with ‘5705’, a track that combined the overblown harmonising of AOR with a chart friendly sheen, as well as aiding The Boomtown Rats in securing pole position with the Springsteen tribute that was ‘Rat Trap’. The resulting Highway To Hell album is a dance monster of epic proportions. The title track’s disco credentials are sealed thanks to a dynamic that finds Phil Rudd taking centre stage once more as Angus Young weaves in and out of those infectious dance beats. Their appearance on Top Of The Pops to promote ‘Touch To Much’ is one of the most surreal TV appearances ever as their usual headbanging constituency is replaced by teenage girls employing the same moves they’d use to Odyssey’s ‘Native New Yorker’ at the youth club disco.

Despite the death of Bon Scott, 1980s Back In Black became a planet-shagging success. With Lange twiddling the knobs again to songs that were infinitely more streamlined than anything they’d recorded before, AC/DC had reached a state of disco nirvana. ‘You Shook Me All Night’ proved to be such a colossal example of the genre that Celine Dion and Anastacia were moved to the cover the songs in one the most bizarrely misguided duets of all time. Consider also that new vocalist Brian Johnson auditioned for the band by singing Ike & Tina Turner’s ‘Nutbush City Limits’. Coincidence or evidence of a dance element that had always been in their music? We know which way we’re swinging.

THE MULLET YEARS

ALBUMS: FLICK OF THE SWITCH, FLY ON THE WALL, BLOW UP YOUR VIDEO, THE RAZORS EDGE

THE EVICENCE: The 1980s were an unkind time to many a band of a certain vintage and AC/DC were no exception. Bereft of drummer Phil Rudd, the lumpen contribution of his replacement Simon Wright only added to the rubbish that was filling their albums. Meanwhile, the fall-out from Live Aid rehabilitated some of the worst dinosaurs from the previous two decades as the cruise control switch was flicked and the cash poured in.

AC/DC’s concession to 80s was for Angus Young to sport a dodgy-looking mullet that at least ensured a high profile for the band in the American mid-West, a territory unconcerned with matters of taste and what the rest of the world was up to. The rest of the world reciprocated in a similar fashion.

THE BRITPOP YEARS

ALBUM: BALLBREAKER

THE EVIDENCE: Where previous generations of rock & rollers were only too happy to apply iconoclastic methods in a bid to get themselves noticed, the Class of ’94-95 were so reverent and in thrall to past masters such as Ray Davies and The Beatles that it seemed as if the tribute bands were finally taking over. Who needed The Bootleg Beatles when Oasis were so readily available?

Clearly, AC/DC were paying close attention. Rehiring drummer Phil Rudd and placing uber-fan Rick Rubin in the producer’s chair, the band effectively became a tribute to themselves and released their strongest album since 1981’s For Those About To Rock.

THE HERITAGE YEARS

ALBUMS: STIFF UPPER LIP, BLACK ICE

THE EVICENCE: It was no less an authority than The Rolling Stones who discovered that it was perfectly feasible to continue to release album in order to promote a tour, rather than vice-versa. So it was that AC/DC set out on the epic Stiff Upper Lip tour on the back of another pretty weak album. Tellingly, AC/DC played only the title song and ‘Safe In New York City’ before the latter track was quietly dropped in favour of more material from the Bon Scott era. Little wonder that the two bands shared a bill in 2003.

Yet the current Black Ice tour shows all the signs of reversing this trend. Five cuts from the new album are making it into the set list but this is hardly surprising. With their strongest album in over 25 years, AC/DC really have re-discovered their mojo. As rumoured, it may well be their last hurrah, and if it is, they’ve taken significant steps to ensuring that they’re to be remembered for pushing ever-onwards.

In doing so, AC/DC join a log list of artists ranging from Leonard Cohen to Brian Wilson to Bruce Springsteen who have all enjoyed a renaissance of sorts over the last few years. The reasons have varied from artist to artist yet the desire to leave something of worth is the common thread that binds them all together. AC/DC are no different, and in doing so, have proved once again that, far from churning out the same album time and again, outside influences continue to play a discernable impact on their activities.

Posted in Music Tagged: AC/DC, Classic Rock, Electric Guitar, Guitar, Guitar Hero, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Metal, Metal News, Music, Music Analysis, Music Criticism, Power Metal, Rock, Rock & Roll, Rock N Roll

Sigmund Freud: Personality Profile

rags847 — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 07:24:24 +0000

Sigmund Freud

1. Bold

Sigmund Freud is the epitome of the bold thinker. In an earlier time, his subversive and revolutionary ideas on the hidden nature of our psychic life may have ended with the great radical thinker and heretic burned at the stake. Copernicus had offended by removing us from the center of the universe. Darwin had shocked by placing us in the animal continuum. Freud followed and affronted many by offering a comprehensive challenge to our illusion that we are masters of our own complex mind. Fittingly, any account of his tremendous boldness should trace formation of that quality back to his earliest years. His parents, listening to a peasant woman’s prophecy that the young Freud would become a great man in the world and witnessing him earn first in his class every year, fostered his voracious reading and cherished signs of his precocious intelligence. Even going so far, when the budding young scholar complained of distraction from the noise while studying, to remove from the home the family piano his sister took lessons on. Freud’s sense of importance and the foundation for stirring bold ambition, were laid down early. Another key and early contributer to the development of his courage, can be found in his reaction to a story told by his father, Jacob. An anti- Semite had once hurled insults at Jacob and threw his cap into the mud. The father simply picked up his cap and walked off. The young Freud vowed to right that wrong and never back down from an enemy. Later in life, Freud must have experienced great satisfaction when he chased off a group of ten assailants that were hurling anti-Semitic disparagements at his son, Martin. Fearlessly, he charged towards them with his walking stick. This entrenched courage would aid him greatly when he introduced the world to psychoanalysis and faced a medical establishment and cultural sensibilities easily taxed and imposed upon by his ideas. In a letter to his friend Wilhelm Fliess in 1900, Freud suitably wrote of himself, “I am nothing but a conquistador by temperament … with all the inquisitiveness, daring, and tenacity of such a man” (Peter Gay, xvi). As evidenced by Freud, a creator must not only invent, but also be fortified with enough boldness to present the outcome of their labor to the judgment of the masses.

2. Introspective

The great psychologist was introspective to the extreme. Looking out to the world with a scientific disposition, Freud closely observed and dissected connections in his patient’s narratives and made systematic inferences on the nature of their mind, as well as making inferences to the universal nature of the human predicament and psyche. He also deftly turned his penetrating gaze inward to his own experience and past, with nothing less than Proustian energy. In another revealing note to Fliess in 1895, Freud announced his long evolution transitioning from neurologist, to hypnotist treating hysterics, to his present arrival at the advent of his revolutionary invention of psychoanalysis. He concluded, “a man like me cannot live without a hobby horse, without a dominating passion, without – to speak with Schiller – a tyrant, and he has come my way. And in his service I now know no moderation. It is psychology” (74). He was hard at work, spending years scouring his own depths, especially his dreams and the memories they linked to and the treasures of insight that were unveiled. The resulting work was the one he would always regard as his greatest achievement, The Interpretation of Dreams (published in 1900). Fearless in his self-scrutiny, he exposed much of his discovered interior in print. Although, he did reach impasses where self-exposure had to yield to respect for his own privacy and he accurately asserted that “whoever is quick to reproach me for such reserve should himself try to be more candid than I” (xvi). Freud’s intrepid and audacious introspection, and his willingness to lay bare his findings, were essentially bound to his power to create.

3. Jealous

Freud learned all about the travails of love, by falling in love. As well, he learned about the particular intensity of love’s sister emotion, jealousy. This jealousy was fed by the hardship of an engagement that occurred while living apart and proceeded mostly by love letters. As Gay writes in a memorable passage worth quoting at length:

“Being in love subverted Freud’s self-confidence. His intermittent bouts of jealousy at times bordered on the pathological in their intensity, their sheer irrational anger … [his] jealousy went beyond the understandable resentment a lover might harbor against rivals. Martha Bernays [his fiancée] must not call a cousin familiarly by his first name, but, formally, must use his last name. She must not show such a palpable predilection for two of her admirers, one a composer and the other a painter: as artists, Freud wrote glumly, they had an unfair advantage over a mere scientist like himself. Above all, she must forsake all others. But these intrusive others included her mother and her brother Eli, who was shortly to marry Freud’s sister Anna, and Martha Bernays refused to countenance his jealous demands that she break with them. This generated strains that took years to dissipate” (40).

All ended well. Freud worked his way out of his miserable state, married Martha and they enjoyed a long life together in a lively household of six children. Important to stress, these events did not occur alongside and separate from the course of his developing intellectual endeavors. The considerable emotional upheaval of his engagement moved Freud to greater efforts at self-observation than he had ever undertaken. Also, he needed to secure a certain income in order to start a family and obtain his future mother-in-law’s approval of the marriage. For no other reason than to win his bride, he left his promising and cherished career as a neurological medical researcher, publishing papers and being recognized by luminaries of his day like Ernst Brucke and Jean Martin Charcot and entered clinical practice. A clinical practice treating hysterics with hypnosis ensured a respectable income. So, Freud’s evolution to and creation of psychoanalysis was no mere isolated and purely intellectual exercise. Without love and jealousy, the exacting medical researcher would never have become the world-famous and revolutionary father of psychoanalysis.

¹Biography: Freud: A Life For Our Time. Author: Peter Gay

Posted in Psychoanalysis Tagged: Biography, Bold, Boldness, Freud, Intellectual, Introspection, Jealousy, Personality, Peter Gay, Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud

Various Replies of Mine

rags847 — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:35:42 +0000

On Freud:

Nice post. It’s excellent your able to productively reflect on your past relationships.

I’m gonna throw down some challenges to you, in response to your comments on Freud.

“[Pheromones] seem more viable than Freud?”
Hmmm … really? It is either one or the other? So, if your father had been different, you wouldn’t have felt different and, perhaps, chosen different men? It is all predetermined in pheromones and genes and thus the effect of experiences after sperm met egg is eliminated?

Ah, cocaine and Freud-bashing. Bringing up cocaine is just an ad hominem attack. I suppose if I drank coffee (caffeine, another stimulant) and felt a little energized and a little mood lift and then told you 2+2=4 you could “discredit my reputation completely” and never deal with my answer to the math equation directly?

Also, Freud didn’t discover an incest desire. The laws against incest date back to our prehistory. One can deduce from any law that exists (prohibiting an act) that there are people who desire to commit that act or why would the law have ever come about? Freud is only saying that we have feelings and attachments from early life on and he is putting a spotlight on the feelings we had in the beginning stages of our life, before our minds were developed enough to reason and deal with all of them. I think the problem that comes about when people think about Freud is semantical. If Freud had told you that, at times, the small child has strong feelings of attachment and strong fears of losing the parent and strong feelings of worry and jealousy if they see that parent loving someone else, people would readily agree. I think Freud called it “sexual” because he was building a comprehensive model of the mind and seeing the person at all levels, including the biological. So, he was tracing back the roots of feeling-states to biological instincts. Which by the way, is the same thing you and others are doing with the focus on the pheromones connection (feelings –> biology). Ironic, isn’t it?

http://missmollyhardcore.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/freud-sigmund/

On The Fetish-izing of Science:

Show me the scientific, peer-reviewed, double-blind study that proves that Shakespeare (or any literature or art) is great, insightful and worthwhile. You can’t. So, you must conclude it is not. You make a religion out of science. Science as the all-knowing, all-seeing God. Science is the Great Negator. Science proves nothing. For science believes nothing is true and proven. Science believes the only thing that it can have is a hypothesis that seems true after 1000s of tests. And that’s it. A hypothesis. It seems true and is not proven true, for it only takes 1 single test to disprove it. Then hypothesis is dead and gone (and never was a proven truth). The only thing it believes in is disproof, as it should. And that should put it (and you) in a humble position. Not an arrogant one that acts like it knows it all, is the final arbitrator of truth, and everyone else and their contribution to our knowledge is bunk. And real scientists know and believe this and don’t have such an arrogant-orientation.

Also, science and psychoanalysis are not diametrically opposed, either/or propositions. “The mindless materialism which left little causal room for the mental is now an anachronism so that affective mind and unconscious motivation are no longer banished from behaviouristic psychology which has appropriated psychoanalytic concepts. Including defence mechanisms, the unconscious, therapeutic alliance, attachment and the notion that early relationship templates colour how people perceive and interact with the world as adults. Other psychotherapy models (CBT, IPT and others) have incorporated psychoanalytic concepts without proper crediting, while denying the increasing empirical support for the theory and the growing evidence base for analytically oriented therapies.” (Westen, D. 1998, Psychological Bulletin. 124(3): 333-371; Solms, M. & Turnbull, O. Cortex, 2007 and issues of the journal Neuropsychoanalysis, including 2008 and Todd, P.B. (2008). “Mind and Matter”, Volume 6, Issue 2). The journals mentioned as a sample in this posting are all professionally peer-reviewed.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOSEuPHAkZA

“To Eran Segev on the Peril of Doctrine Precluding Observation in the “Myth of Mental Illness” Debate.

Thanks for your comments and defence against my allegation of ad hominem argument against Szasz. I suggest that you consider my April 13 posting on “The Biopsychosocial Model” applied to diseases generally and to the scientific understanding of the vast spectrum of phenomena subsumed under the rubric of “mental illness”. One difficulty which I have with many sceptics, including Michael Shermer, is that they seem to conflate doctrine with the necessity for empirical research into the multifactorial causality of disorders. For instance, such statements as “mind is brain process” and “mental illnesses are therefore other species of neurological disorder” seem to be manifestly empirical assertions derived from research observation and experiment. However, these often dogmatically expressed remarks are epistemological doctrines about the nature of such disorders, otherwise known as neural reductionism, or metaphysical materialism.

The conclusion that “mental illnesses” are necessarily diseases of the brain follows from a questionable premise, specifically that mind and consciousness as well as such unconscious mental processes as defence mechanisms and emotions are both illusory and causally inefficacious by-products of brain processes. Both biological psychiatry and behaviouristic psychology created an epistemological framework for the scientific understanding of human behaviour and “mental illnesses” which banished affective mind and left little or no causal room for the mental or for phenomenological and subjective experience as a source of robust and useful scientific predictions. Basil Skinner regarded emotions as a “fiction”. “Mountains of research data” to which I have referred in previous postings to this site, however, have challenged the reductionist doctrine and explanatory framework. While suggesting the need for a paradigm shift in understanding and treatment (eg., Pribram, K. 2004:Fonagy, P. et al 2005; Solms, M & Turnbull, O. 2007; Todd, P.B., 2008).

Apropos the metaphysical doctrine of physicalism, refuted for instance by Philosopher Karl Popper in a book co-authored with Nobel laureate neuroscientist John Eccles (The Self and its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism, Springer, 1990), generations of academics and practitioners have nevertheless been required to construe mind, consciousness and “mental illness” in terms of an exclusively reductionist ideology masquerading as science.

The principle that science (unlike religion) rejects the philosophical notion of “synthetic a priori” or self evident empirical truths has more frequently been dishonoured or disregarded than upheld in practice. And therefore in the tertiary initiation of psychiatrists and psychologists into the dogma of neural reductionism and the unquestionable belief that “mental illnesses” are nothing but brain diseases (for instance, due to such genetically encoded anomalies in structure or neurochemistry as those proposed by Susan Greenfield and others). Psychoanalysis was banned in the former Soviet Union because its perceived mentalistic theoretical framework conflicted with the Marxist doctrine of dialectical materialism. Psychoanalytic theory, research and practice have been regarded either as pseudoscience with ritual debunking of Freud in undergraduate psychology courses or as subversive in the biological psychiatry taught to medical graduates. In spite of mounting evidence for such robust and useful scientific predictions in the fields of neuropsychoanalysis and psychosomatic research as those to which I have referred previously.

The efficacy of psychotropic medications in such conditions as schizophrenia and bi-polar mood disorder does not permit the logical leap to imputing exclusive causal significance to neural factors, including the entire pharmacy of neurotransmitters known to cascade through the central nervous (and immune) systems. Again, comprehensive scientific explanation means determining both necessary and sufficient conditions for a disorder, whether physical or “mental”. Contemporary and multidisciplinary research evidence is not consistent with simplistic notions of unitary causality. Science and logic aside, however, paradigm dominance and economic rationalism may covertly dictate or rationalize the over-prescription of drugs and the adoption of short term-interventions. The propaganda that psychoanalytically oriented approaches are not “evidence based” is contradicted by mounting empirical research, as I have indicated in other postings.

Posted by: Peter B. Todd | Apr 17, 2009 at 06:08 PM“

http://blogs.abc.net.au/allinthemind/2009/04/thomas-szasz-sp.html#comments

Posted in Psychoanalysis, Uncategorized Tagged: Freud, Intellectual, Knowledge, Psychoanalysis, Science, Sigmund Freud

CHICKENFOOT: LISTEN TO & AND DISCUSS THE NEW CHICKENFOOT SONGS HERE (“OH YEAH,” “DOWN THE DRAIN,” “SOAP ON A ROPE”)

rags847 — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:40:26 +0000

OH FUCK YEAH!

What the hell is going on?

I dig a Sammy Hagar song?

Fucking Twilight Zone!

“Oh Yeah” is an excellent, great song!

–>The Chickenfoot Player<–

Played it 10 times already.

OK. So, someone got through to Hagar, finally. Satch, Chad or a producer and said none of that Van Hagar crap.

I went to IMEEM and played some Van Hagar cuts to make sure I wasn’t loosing my mind.

Why Van Hagar suxed donkey balls [Van Hagar cringe-worthy elements]:

Over-earnest singing and lyrics.

Singing: Trying to push all the emotion out of each line. Forced. Nerdy. Too precious. No air, no space, no relaxing into a groove. Over-singing. Even the screams are forced. Don’t sound like a natural, uncontrolled celebration, but look-at-me-I’m screaming. Almost over-singing the scream, if you will. And singing and screaming in too high a register. Too high and too forced = nerdy. No art to it. No artist-vibe. Cool, open, free, creative – ya gotta feel it in a relaxed, natural way if yr gonna make music, man. Not look-ma, I’m earnest, I’m straining, I’m over-singing, over enunciating.

Lyrics: Cliche, Hallmark Card, bore-me-to-tears, so common-place they say nothing, can’t get into them. Over-earnest. Little-boy-showing-it-to-mommy sweet lyrics.

Why Oh Yeah! [I'm calling it Oh Fuck Yeah!] is a great song:

Singing: Someone made Hagar relax a little. Restrained him somewhat. Sing in a little lower. Not straining high. There is some space and air, lets a little authentic feeling into the delivery. A little coolness. There you go, Sammy. With “Ain’t nothing I wouldn’t do for you” and a ton of other lines and even with the screams – you can just feel Hagar being restrained and just where the Van Hagar dude would have pushed it outta the zone. “Oh Lord I could sing” – Van Hagar would have forced that line through the stratosphere and drenched it with over-emotions

and strangled it completely to death. And his vocals are louder in the mix than with Van Hagar (where perhaps he is straining just to be heard, huh?).

Lyrics: Not pissing me off. Tells a story. Rock n roll lines. He doesn’t nerdy it up.

What the fuck!

Satch is being very tasty. Bravo. No mechanical “scale” and robotic guitar-work or soloing.

Chad. Don’t miss the drums. He’s got an excellent touch and dynamics and sound quality. And puts alotta details in there. Not boring. Not pedestrian.

Mikey. Someone plugged him in finally and turned up his base (I can hear it!) – and even lets him explore his fretboard. Mikey is part of the song, finally. Satch let’s bass players be bass players in his bands. Listen to the first note and the opener.

So, Bravo! The first rock from old-timers since Velvet Revolver that I really like. Most of the other releases from old-timers have been: Well, boys. Good later day effort. Good to hear from you. Play it a few times, then drift away from it. (That fun Motley Crue last effort The Saints Of Los Angeles was one exception. Still good to spin).

Hell, maybe someone played the first 6 Dave-VH albums for Sammy and explained why they were great – cause they were cool and unforced – had space and air. Now the rest of the album just has to be as natural. They better have controlled his bad habits throughout. I don’t want this to be like U2′s album with “Get On Your Boots” being great and then nothing else on the album sounding even remotely like it. Old bait and switch.

Well, there you go. See, I never was an automatic Hagar-hater. Van Hagar just offended my ears and artistic sensibilities.

Can’t believe they restrained Hagar and made him be cool for once. Actually sounds like a goddamn artist for once. Musta made him look up the word “atmosphere” in the dictionary – cause this song’s got it.

*And now we just need Diamond Dave to undergo the same treatment in the studio. Control, restraint. Bring some pot to the studio, if you need to. Make him relax, too. Cause he had some similar problems on his solo work (after Eat Em And Smile, that is – a great record). For him it was straining for an unnatural high note and those pinched lines and those disharmonies. They were nowhere to be found on the first 6 VH records. Well, they made him concentrate on the singing on the ’07/’08 tour. So, hopefully they will work with a strong producer and put out some shit that’s in the groove.

Like this little new song, “Oh Fuck Yeah”!

View This Poll

Posted in Music Tagged: AOR, Chad Smith, Chickenfoot, Classic Rock, Commentary, Electric Guitar, Glam, Guitar, Guitar Hero, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Joe Satriani, Melodic Rock, Metal, Metal News, Michael Anthony, Music, NWOBHM, Power Metal, Progressive Metal, Rock, Rock N Roll, Sammy Hagar, Van Halen

WAS SIGMUND FREUD A CREATIVE GENIUS?

rags847 — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:07:05 +0000

SIGMUND FREUD AND CREATIVITY

Introduction

Sigmund Freud synthesized an original and influential theory of human motivation (psychoanalysis). In this paper I will argue that Freud’s creative genius depended on the expression of three highly developed and dominant tendencies and that the etiology of these three personality traits can be traced by examining the biographical details of his youth and adulthood. The three character traits discussed are: intellectual (need for systematic understanding and mastery), introspection (need for self-knowledge and conflict resolution), and courage (need for bold reaction to inner and outer resistance). Freud’s life history is an example of the axiom: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” It was precisely when Freud experienced a profound need to solve the riddles presented by human psychology that he originated psychoanalysis. A number of pressures impinged simultaneously on his person and triggered a Herculean fusing and deployment of these three highly developed abilities.

1. Intellectual

Freud spent his youth in a lower economic rural Viennese household and was raised by parents that did not engage in any intellectual endeavors or creative pursuits. However, they recognized the precocious, quick mind of their young son (the mother’s first born) and fostered within him the love of books and learning, as well as the belief that he would achieve intellectual greatness. Much of the history of Western thought was consumed by Freud. In creating psychoanalysis he drew on his wide-ranging knowledge that included medicine, Positivism, Darwinism, literature, poetry, history, ancient cultures, mythology and many other areas. Psychoanalysis was the end-product of an act of creative divergent thinking, par excellence. If Freud had not been as intellectually driven or merely driven toward one field of inquiry, he would have never been able to construct a new way of conceiving human reality. Psychoanalysis owes its existence to Freud’s voracious reading and to the value his parent’s placed on learning and education.

2. Introspection

The creation of psychoanalytic theory required an inquirer that not only looked outward and closely listened to patients and looked backward to learn from history, but also one willing to look deep within. In the five years leading up to the advent of psychoanalysis (commencing upon the publication of his seminal work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)), Freud questioned and developed his new ideas by reflecting on his treatment of hysterics with hypnosis and by undergoing an intensive self-analysis. His introspection was fueled by both his need to help his patients and by a need to understand himself. Love was on the line. Success at winning the hand of his fiancée required understanding his family history, overcoming strong reactions of jealousy, and changing career paths (abandoning the medical research he was passionate about and starting a private practice treating hysterics in order to earn a salary large enough to support a family). Freud succeeded at love. One of Freud’s greatest legacies was to radically alter the modern view of the very nature of troubled individuals. Prior to Freud there was very little medicine had to offer individuals who suffered psychologically and the most extreme cases were deemed moral failures to be left to the church or as beings who’s experience of life appeared so irrational that they were viewed as essentially non-human. Freud induced and revealed that everyone is in possession of the same mental structures and mechanisms and that those who suffer the greatest were not of a different kind, but merely farther down on a universally shared human continuum. Freud’s profound need and ability to introspect deeply is directly responsible for a paradigm shift that has resulted in both our modern understanding of the human mind and in the humane treatment of those who suffer psychologically.

3. Courage

During Freud’s youth, his father told him a story that impressed him deeply. An anti-Semite had once thrown his father’s cap in the mud, the father picked up the cap and walked away. The young Freud raged internally, both at the injustice of the act and at the obsequiousness advocated by the story, and vowed to himself that he would never back down from a fight. Later in life, he concluded that the anti-Semitic bias and hatred he had received during his lifetime had served to steel his resolve. Freud worked closely with a colleague, Joseph Breuer, during the years in which they both treated hysterics with hypnosis. Breuer became unnerved by his patient, Anna O. (who later became known as the first psychoanalytic patient and the woman who coined the term “talking cure”) and abandoned further use of the novel treatment method. He had been overwhelmed by the content of Anna O’s. freewheeling narrative. In contrast, Freud was fascinated by the Anna O. case and all that he could learn from it. From the very inception of psychoanalysis, Freud’s courage allowed him to overcome resistances (internal and external) and pursue lines of thought against all tides. Psychoanalytic ideas were radical and bold and Freud fought hard against hostile reactions that were launched from some members in the medical establishment. In addition, his courage also triumphed over internal resistances that he experienced during his self-analysis and when he published an account of his self-analysis that revealed extremely personal details. Freud viewed himself as an intellectual conquistador and it was solely due to his possession of a frequently tested fortitude that psychoanalysis was able to survive its birth pangs and persist long enough to establish itself.

Conclusion

Creative geniuses tend to be endowed with a stellar IQ and fortuitous brain structures. However, any attempt to explain the determinants of creative masterworks must, in addition to researching and accounting for biological underpinnings, examine at the level of the person and scrutinize their life history. Locating the life events that shaped the three catalytic traits discussed here (intellectual, introspection, and courage) has increased our understanding of Freud’s creative energy. Freud gave birth to a system of explanation that influenced not only psychology, but numerous domains and aspects of modern culture. Psychoanalysis had the great fortune to be born of just the father it required.

Posted in Psychoanalysis Tagged: Creativity, Freud, Intellectual, Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud