Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Reaction to sacking of the head of the Vatican Observatory

Continuing the psychological discussion, Freud's conceptualization of cathexis in the Project for a Scientific Psychology is more central to the issue of depression than is the old canard about 'your angry at somebody and it is unexpressed.' Psychoanalysis is more like case law than a double blind investigation and we can overemphasize aspects of a case. The psychoanalyst might say, 'Life is about getting and giving up.' It is the 'getting,' the cathexis, that provides happiness; the difficulty in 'giving up' inhibits us from getting there. In therapy or development, one should emphasize the Aim, not the defense. The emphasis on anger may suggest that we should control, by aggression, the object that has not given us what we want, which may be to encourage a regression to a grandiose attitude. To reflect on recent posts, this is the Gentiles complaint about Trotsky or other frustrated Jews, that, for example in the case of the Russians, they were not treated as objects in themselves. But I was depressed today by the Pope's action. I very much liked the Jesuit who was head of the Vatican observatory for the position he took against 'intelligent design' and even more admired him for taking it. I understand that one can get into a transcendental feeling and it is perhaps best not to limit that a priori, but to assert it simply has no place in science. For me the syllogism: idiot = Pope, Pope = Jesus, QED "You're a good fellow Charlie Brown" works pretty well.

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