Cafe de Jenkster - Erm... - Comments

James Casey — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 14:10:42 +0000

But he's only doomed insofar as his relationships with two people are concerned. The self-blinding bit isn't part of it.

The point I've not yet made, I realise, is that in the play, all the doomed stuff has already happened - perhaps you didn't know this, I'm now realising I should have realised earlier. I don't know if you've read either the Seneca or the Sophocles. It's the finding out what he's done that's the drama. He doesn't have to. People try to stop him. He's not doomed to find out.

We - the audience - are not more aware of his options than he is. We're just more aware of their consequences.

Kris — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 13:54:14 +0000

Ooh, thanks for the link B.

As for old Oediplatypus, you're quite right that he didn't have an Oedipal complex. He didn't want to kill his father and possess his mother, he just ended up doing it anyway.

The book I'm reading wasn't really talking about the Oedipal complex, but it was still using Freud's favourite myth to illustrate one of his thoughts. And I'm using it to illustrate one of mine: Oedipus was on a doomed path from the start - a path he lacked the flexibility to get off of. We, the audience, should be more aware of his options than he is.

Of course, if he weren't doomed to a fixed path, a fixed way of relating to the people in his life, then there wouldn't be a drama worth watching. The opposite seems true for real life...

James Casey — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 12:33:15 +0000

Oedipus was only able to shack up with Mum once he was man enough to kill Dad.

I haven't read Freud, but I have read Oedipus Rex and Oidipous Tyrannos. Does Freud apply the Oedipus complex to Oedipus himself? Because that doesn't make sense based on the myth.

In the end, Oedipus blinded himself. He only had one way of viewing his relationships, and when that broke down he decided to close his eyes permanently. That should have warned Freud right from the start. It was the very time they should have opened.

Not entirely sure what this one way of viewing relationships is... clarification? Sorry. Commenting on the only bit I really know about.

Brian — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 11:33:24 +0000

For those that are interested, there's a good and recent BBC Radio series on Freud here to which you can "Listen Again". It consists of 5 programmes of about 15 mins each in length covering his major essays on sexuality.

Dragon Mama — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 10:23:06 +0000

I've never been very comfortable with Freudian theory about children and sexuality. Rather than children having unsatisfied sexual desires which, as adults, they are able to pursue, I think the reverse is also a possible reading: that sexuality in adults is an attempt to regain the comfort of childhood in some ways. Oedipus the man desired his mother because she reminded him of his mother and made him feel safe like a little boy again.

Brian — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 23:50:33 +0000

Ooo...a serious post....

Let me say from the start that Im not a fan of Freud. One of my very best friends is a very talented clinical psychiatrist and hed be the first to admit that Freud and his ideas have been largely redrafted and discredited over the years and different studies in this field are very much in play. But he does not dismiss the idea that issues surrounding sex and sexuality, particularly the repression of the latter, can have a very detrimental effect on the general well-being of the individual. Of course, my friend is a homosexual and has a little bit of personal (and perhaps biased) insight into this but I dont doubt the general sentiment and the rejection of Freud. He, my friend, is after all an expert with that expertise based on clinical experience.

On friendship, I think what makes those people who are my friends great is manifold, and you can never pin it down totally, but at the heart of it is that they are not afraid to be honest with themselves and with others. They are willing and able to lay their vulnerabilities bare in front of others even if that experience is (at first) a painful one. The friendships are better as a result and the honesty of my friends has improved my confidence. Id like to hope that the feeling has been a mutual one. The people that count as my dearest friends are those individuals who have shared something about themselves, which perhaps few or no others knew about, and vice-versa. Those that havent remain, I suppose, simply acquaintances. Yet I would like to hope that even the acquaintances could become friends. I want to be surprised because that is one of the ways I learn and grow.

What also makes those friendships interesting, and I think you are alluding to that in this post, is that those friends are not afraid to take the odd risk with their lives, they're not afraid to try something new, and they're not afraid to break the mould even if it goes against what you'd always assumed to be their natural character. Or, if they are afraid, they are willing to confront those fears. That's why my friends are not safe and dull people whose idea of a good time is getting plastered every Saturday night and rounded off, if theyre lucky, with a one-night shag.

By the way, this bright pink friend intrigues me. I never knew that you and Barbara Cartland were so close....

Erm...

Kris — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 21:26:04 +0000

I want to write a load of things at the moment - about confidence (and how it relates to me) and understanding people (and how people understand me) and self-centredness (and how it has nothing to do with me at all), but I'm finding it a little tricky to get started.

Let's start with Freud, just because I'm reading a book by his number one fan. As we all know, Freud pretty much viewed everything in terms of one kind of relationship: sex. It says in my book here that Freud said the difference between children and adults is that both have (sexual) desire, but only the adult can consumate it. Oedipus was only able to shack up with Mum once he was man enough to kill Dad. Freud took this difference in adult power and set about painting the psychological town red.

It reminds me of a Barbie this guy I knew married. She was unreal. She was the pinkest, putting-on-an-act-ditziest woman I ever met. I'm sure she was a good person, but a lot of her character was hidden behind a stereotype what it means to be a girl. And everything in her life was pink. Her handbags were pink, her lipstick was pink, her voice was pink. That's how she related to everything. She'd gone inside her head and painted everything pink, and was now coming out to make sure everything matched. It's great way to solve your colour-coordination problems, but it doesn't really lead you to everthing life has to offer.

Now Fran's parents are on a different side of this equation. I'm not sure they know what to do with me. Her dad once said that I was a very hard man to get to know. And I've sometimes felt that they've tried to pin down who I am, without success. Am I hard to know? Maybe. But people aren't like billiards.

Gregory Bateson said that difference between a billiard ball and a dog was "collateral energy". Dogs have it, billiard balls don't, and that's why when you throw a billard ball, as long as you know which direction it's going in, you know where it's going to land. When you throw a dog all bets are off. Anything can happen.

Most of my friends have collateral energy. In fact, all of them do. You don't stay friends with a billiard ball, do you? One of them, beyond all predicatability, is about to run the London marathon. Another is off to work in Ghana, where the sun shines and the rhythms beat and the gin will strip paint from the walls. The world's getting much wider for both of them this year, and it makes you wonder if you can ever pin anything down.

When things are that wide open, you're able to start seeing clearly. It was all there before you, but now it's too much to codify. Things come out of the walls and surprise you. And that, I think, is where life's good. A year ago I wouldn't have thought my two friends would do anything like the adventures they've set before themselves. There's more to them than I can predict. That makes them more interesting than billiard balls. More energy; more value; less predictable.

So when Fran's dad said that he found me hard to know, that could be a good thing. I certainly enjoy their company more and more as time goes on, and I think the feelings mutual. Besides, I'm fairly easy to know in the moment. It's always reasonably clear which direction I'm travelling in, even if you don't know where that's going to land.

And it's better than being monotonic. My bright pink friend was happy for a short while, she couldn't keep it up. Sooner or later everything clashes with something. It's better to be flexible.

And it's better not to be Freud, or Oedipus, for that matter. I was reading my book this afternoon and was forced to the conclusion of logic that Freud's difference between me and a child is this: a child can desire a ham sandwich, but only I could murder a really juicy steak. In the end, Oedipus blinded himself. He only had one way of viewing his relationships, and when that broke down he decided to close his eyes permanently. That should have warned Freud right from the start. It was the very time they should have opened.