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Topic

Notebook

This category is stuff that I come across in stuff I read, or watch, or listen to, and don’t want to forget. It’s also a record of thoughts that make up my head noise.

A note on The Transferential Unconscious V. The Real Unconscious

In doing some work, I came across this bit of text that I had highlighted in Thomas Svolos's book Twenty-First Century Psychoanalysis. (Let me add parenthetically, that in the later work of Lacan, more relevant today in practice, as further developed by Jacques-Alain Miller, in addition to this

In Pynchon: Collusion between tech companies, foreign governments and shadowy agencies crystallise

Summarizing the Pynchon novel Bleeding Edge, in a post titled "Down, Down, and Gone:" Gothic Cyberspace in Bleeding Edge, the blog The Wasted World writes: The novel’s protagonist is Maxine Tarnow, a recently divorced mother of two and fraud investigator, usually of the financial kind, who is

Some Notes on Inherent Vice by Pynchon

From Pynchon at the Beach: Inherent Vice is the key to understanding Thomas Pynchon. Why do critics hate it? By Jim Ruland. Throughout his [Pynchon's] novels—which address subjects ranging from the founding of America to the destruction of Europe—he is interested in those on the wrong

A Note on Pynchon's Themes

From Upper West Side Story: On ''Bleeding Edge'' and Thomas Pynchon's Tangled Web by Rachel Wetzler. Though their settings have varied wildly, from colonial America to 1970s Los Angeles, Mr. Pynchon’s basic themes have remained remarkably consistent: the dark underside of technological progress,

Democracy, Elites, & Legitimacy

From The Revolt of the Public by Martin Gurri: The fate of democracy, I believe, is inextricably bound to the fate of elites in democratic nations. The current elite class, having lost its monopoly over information, has been stripped, probably forever, of the authorizing magic of legitimacy. [...] We need to

Pure Psychoanalysis & Pure Punk Rock

From the opening pages of Our, Band Could Be Your Life, by Michael Azerrad. On September 24, 1991, an album called Nevermind by a band called Nirvana came out, went gold in a matter of weeks, bumped Michael Jackson off the number one spot on the Billboard album charts soon

Psychotherapy is About Reclaiming (Investing) in an Identification

In Pure Psychoanalysis, Applied Psychoanalysis, and Psychotherapy, Miller does a deep dive into what makes psychoanalysis different from psychotherapy. Miller highlights many things, but the text below strikes me as very important. (It is also connected to what I posted earlier here.) In terms of psychotherapy, one could say: the

Love & Transference

From Still Life with Woodpecker, by Tom Robbins. Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed,

Existing as an Individual & a Member of a Society

From Using Lacan, Reading Fiction, by James M. Mellard. Various theorists have embraced Lacan because his reading of Freud has placed particular emphasis on several elements that constitute us as individuals and social beings. This stands out to me because it references what I'd call the non-rapport (i.

Reading your work the way you read your student's work

From a Creative Independent interview with Joshua Henkin, regarding the drafting/revising process: CI: What is your revision process like? JH: I try to force myself to go all the way through to the end. I feel like big changes at the roots are much better than lots of small