Hi,

I'm Neil Gorman, and this is The Gorman Limit --my weekly email newsletter.

I've started to write this edition of the newsletter as I'm going into week four of a sixteen-week semester. Every semester I teach, I begin to feel tired at about this time (week four or five). I feel that tiredness setting in now! Along with the tiredness, I start to suspect that there is not much point in doing the things I do. It is that "is anyone taking any of this stuff I'm making in?" sort of feeling.

Be that as it may, I'm going to keep writing words, keep teaching, keep facilitating my seminar, and making podcasts.

Podcasts:

The Gorman Limit Podcast now has eight episodes out for people to listen to. I've been able to keep up a weekly release schedule for the past several weeks, but things are happening that will put an end to that this coming week.

The number of downloads and subscribers is slowly going up. I'm hoping that explicitly drawing attention to the podcast in this newsletter will increase the number of people who listen to it. So...

Episode 006 was how everything embarrassing is also potentially hilarious.
Episode 007 was about how clinicians want to help people but often fail to be helpful because they are too worried about being disliked.
Episode 008 was about psychotherapy techniques.

There is a lot of one-click subscribe options here.

If you read TGL and like what you read, I'm reasonably sure you'll also enjoy the podcast.

Reading:

I usually have a section in this newsletter about the things I'm attempting to write. Other than the tenure dossier, which I wrote about in the last TGL, there is nothing new on that front. Ergo, I'm going to use this section to tell you all about some cool stuff I'm reading.

I just finished The Aims of Analysis by Thomas Svolos. It was one of the best books I've read on Lacanian psychoanalysis. I think part of the reason for the text's readability is that the book was made from a transcript of and Svolos teaching this stuff at a seminar in Miami. When someone is talking to people, instead of writing alone in a room, how they express ideas is changed, often for the better, in terms of how easy it is to understand the content.

The middle two chapters, in particular, have been in my thoughts for several days now. I think several of the ideas from those chapters may make their way into some of the future Lacanian Mojos I send out.

In February, I'm switching my reading up a bit. I'm going to read some fiction. The book I'm getting started with The Noise of Time, by Julian Barnes.

So far, there have been some very good sentences in this book! For examples,

"His situation had come out of the blue, and yet it was perfectly logical. Like the rest of life. Like sexual desire, for instance. That came out of the blue, and yet it was perfectly logical."

"Destiny. It was just a grand term for something you could do nothing about."

"In the old days, a child might pay for the sins of its father, or indeed mother. Nowadays, in the most advanced society on earth, the parents might pay for the sins of the child, along with uncles, aunts, cousins, in-laws, colleagues, friends, and even the man who unthinkingly smiled at you as he came out of the lift at three in the morning. The system of retribution had been greatly improved, and was so much more inclusive than it used to be."

Good writing can do a lot without using lots of words.

Tools:

I've been using the password manager LastPass for years now. It is one of those things that I will use every day, and using it has become so natural that I don't even think about it.

The cost of LastPass is $3.00 per month, so about $36.00 per year. It's money well spent.

Living in the Jackpot:

All I'm going to put in this section of the newsletter this week is a graph I saw on Axios. It seriously freaks me out.

Ghost of My Life:

For me, the best albums of 2020 were

Overall best -- The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity, Seeming.
Most fun -- Up All Night, by Moonbeau.
Best Ambient -- Happiness Will Bevall (15'th aniversity edition), by Lawrence English.

If you have not listened to these, I think you should give them a try!

Fin:

That's it for this week. (Kind of a short version of TGL.) I'm going to be taking next week off, and when I come back, I'll say more about why this one was short and why I needed the time off.

Till then, make glorious mistakes.

-N