P.S. to my last posting: "As they departed in sex-segregated lines, my daughters stood transfixed. Serafina asked me, 'Why did that girl try to put the crab in the boy's pants?' 'Because she likes him,' I responded."
I think Freud would have had a rather different explanation. A propos of which, see Frank Cioffi's perspicacious response to his own question "When Did Women Stop Wanting Penises?", pp. 27-28, in his essay "Why Are We Still Arguing About Freud?": F. Cioffi, *Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience*, Open Court, 1998, pp. 1-92. http://tinyurl.com/6kjtgl Product Description For three decades Frank Cioffi has been at the center of the debate over Freud's legacy and the legitimacy of psychoanalysis. Cioffi has given startling demonstrations that, in one area after another, Freud's accounts of the development of his theories are untruthful. But Cioffi's even more impressive achievement has been to scrupulously distinguish the many different, often equivocal, assertions made by psychoanalysis, thus laying bare the mechanism of its rhetorical conjuring tricks. "...the ultimate division in the Freud controversy is between those who would be happy to purchase a used car from Freud and his advocates and those who would not." -- Frank Cioffi, "The Freud Controversy: What Is At Issue?" (*Freud: Conflict and Culture: Essays on his life, work, and legacy*, ed. M. S. Roth, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998, pp. 171-182.) Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org ******************************************************************* [tips] It's A Wonderful Freudian Life Allen Esterson Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:55:20 -0800 On December 2008 Michael Britt wrote re "It's a Wonderful Life": > Okay, how's this for Reaction Formation: remember the scene > where George goes to Mary's house (before they are married)? > We know he's in love with Mary but at first he pretends not to > care for her. In fact, he's even a little bit rude to her. Then they > get that telephone call (from that rich character whose name > I forget) and by the end of the call Mary and George are kissing. > What do you think - the rudeness was reaction formation? Or maybe it was just teasing: "As they departed in sex-segregated lines, my daughters stood transfixed. Serafina asked me, 'Why did that girl try to put the crab in the boy's pants?' 'Because she likes him,' I responded. This was an explanation Serafina and her older sister, Natalie, only partly understood. What I witnessed might be called 'the teasing gap'." http://tinyurl.com/6oszr8 Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
