On 26 October Chris Green drew attention to an article about a new book about misattributed quotations: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061025/en_nm/arts_quotations_dc
A quote from the article: "A new, meticulously researched book of quotations attempts to set the record straight on those beloved phrases that have crept into everyday use as signs of wisdom and wit, including Sigmund Freud's sage advice that "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." (He didn't quite say that, although his biographer thinks he would have approved of the idea.)" http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061025/en_nm/arts_quotations_dc >...his biographer thinks Freud would have approved of the idea< But how could anyone ever *demonstrate* in any particular case that "a cigar is just a cigar"? It is always, but always, possible to find associations (whether it is the analyst, as frequently in the case of Freud's analysis of "Dora", or the analysand doing the "free-associating") to any object of thought which lead *somewhere* (especially to the kind of "repressed" idea that the analyst is looking for -:) ), as Sebastiano Timpanaro cogently demonstrated in his discussion of the celebrated "aliquis" analysis from "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life". (An extract from Timpanaro's examination of this "slip" is in the chapter "Error's Reign" in _Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend_, ed. F. Crews.) References Crews, F. (ed.) (1998). Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend. London and New York: Viking Press, pp. 94-105. Freud, S. (1901). The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. The Standard Edition, vol. 6, London: Hogarth Press, pp. 8-14. Timpanaro, S. (1976). The Freudian Slip: Psychoanalysis and Textual Analysis. London: New Left Books, pp. 29-61. Incidentally, in the article "Freud, Minna Bernays, and the Conquest of Rome: New Light on the Origins of Psychoanalysis" (The New American Review, Spring/Summer 1982, pp. 1-23), Peter J. Swales makes a strong case that the young "aquaintance" whose "aliquis" slip is analysed is actually Freud himself (as is known to be the case in respect to the supposed interlocutor in Freud's 1899 "Screen Memories" paper). Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org/ http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=182 http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=201 --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
