there was an article in the paper a few years ago concerning the term "pschotic." We label someone a "psychotic" and what more needs to be known about them? "Tom Smith, a known psychopath......" He must be a screaming madman. And that is the problem with labels and diagnosis, on one level. They are permanent, and often erroneous. The article in question took the clinical criteria for determining a "psychopath," and suggested that 90% of American male teenagers would qualify.
Psychology, like English, is one of those professions that has cloaked itself in scientisms and argot in order to hide its sneaking suspicioun that some kind of fraudulence or hokum is inside of its most serious endeavor.....Jame Frazer notes the same phenomenon in shamans and witchdoctors. The successful ones, he notes, are those who actually do not think there is a direct correlation between their dances and chants, and the rain which comes to save the crops--or not. So they always have a way out, an alternative. Somehow we (all professionals in the 20th) seem to have lost the knack for objectively looking at our wisdom base and seeing--even accepting--a bit of chicanery in it. Consequently, we absolutely believe in the intellectual systems at our disposal as if our lives depended on them--and we protect them with argot and authoritative studies. I can't help but feel that there is some kind of loss to culture, when the successful witchdoctors can't occasionally question the greater value of all that they do, give a whoop and a holler, yet put the headress back on and take the next customer.
The nuttiest people whom I know are psychologists and psychiatrists. And I am not the only one to say that. So what? We need them. But we should only partly believe in them, in what they do. What we do. And we should only partly believe in ourselves. All of us.
Then we would stop taking our intellectual stake in our discussions so seriously that we can never put them down. The stakes aren't really that high. Isn't this true?
>>> Daniel Pearlman <[log in to unmask]> 10/28 8:06 PM >>>
Yours is an interesting paragraph, Richard. ...
I would find it pretty amazing, of course, if anyone
were seriously to suggest that Pound's use of
discontinuities stemmed from a "biological predisposition,"
i.e., mental illness. Almost all of Modernism would
then be subject to similar analysis (and dismissal).
One could say, however, that the non-linear style-
preference of the whole Modernist period drew to
itself certain predisposed, pre-cracked minds that
found in it a new ecological niche, temperaments
that could never have crawled out of the woodwork
in a bourgeois "logical" period. This idea gets
us into the need for an even more abstract metacritical
perspective, namely, the need to see art-periodization
itself in Darwinian terms as the effect produced on
a culture by Natural Selection when a culture needs
to cope with changing habitat, the changed habitat
offering sudden opportunities to previously suppressed,
marginal mentalities. This last idea I take at least
half seriously myself.
I won't go on, since I don't wish to rival the paragraph
to which I'm responding.
==Dan P
At 08:57 AM 10/29/98 +0800, you wrote:
>I sympathize with Tim Redman's plea to wait until publication, thank him
>for flying the kite and wish him the best with finishing the biography. In
>a sense the abstract discussion of approaches to the author's mental
>condition is unsatisfying without the closely argued evidence and case.
>There's not enough to go on. However, I would also want to take Daniel
>Pearlman's points concerning the vexed relations of lives and works. It
>might be an issue - if the bi-polar diagnosis turns out to be convincing -
>of whether the condition found the poetry or the poetry the condition. If
>one thinks of what William Empson, for one, said about the vatic state (I
>can't remember where), then mental imbalance is a hazard of the occupation
>- 'goes with the territory' - and whether there is biological
>predisposition or not, may wilfully be triggered, or at least not
>sufficiently avoided. One could also think of 'traditions' of melancholia
>accompanying the creative act (vide in visul art Margot and Rudolph
>Wittkower, Born Under Saturn, or Beckett's preoccupation with Burton's
>Melancholia) - 'traditions' that do not operate on creative artists in all
>other cultures - and in view of the fragmentary aspect of visual Cubism
>(perhaps also of the 'Modern condition') perhaps one would not want, or
>only want, to associate the discontinuities (or obsessive continuities) of
>the Cantos with the individual author's mental condition. Genetically,
>there are said to be many more schizophrenics than those who manifest
>symptoms, though I'm told the jury is still out on that one.
>
>Richard Read
>
>>Dan,
>>
>> Let's wait until I finish the biography before we discuss
>>what I'm doing -- I won't entirely know myself until I finish.
>>
>> Tim
>>
>>On Tue, 27 Oct 1998 18:02:46 -0500 Daniel Pearlman
>><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Tim,
>>>
>>> In an earlier posting you seemed to indicate that you were
>>> confining your study of the effects of this disorder to the
>>> life, rather than using your psychological conclusions to
>>> try to cast light on the work. I wonder if it is logically
>>> possible to walk this fine line. If, for example, someone
>>> were to prove pretty conclusively that Pound was clinically
>>> insane from, let's say, 1935 to 1945, wouldn't that necessitate
>>> a re-reading of all he wrote during that period?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> ==Dan P
>>>
>>> At 01:28 PM 10/27/98 -0600, you wrote:
>>> >I see clear indications of it starting in the '30s, and some signs as
>>> >early as the 'teens, though that is more difficult to document.
>>> >
>>> > Tim
>>> >
>>> >On Mon, 26 Oct 1998 11:42:47 -0500 Daniel Pearlman
>>> ><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> Tim,
>>> >>
>>> >> Are you referring to a disorder that shaped Pound's behavior
>>> >> all through his life or only for a certain period?
>>> >>
>>> >> ==Dan P
>>> >>
>>> >> At 10:11 AM 10/26/98 -0600, you wrote:
>>> >> >It shaped his behavior.
>>> >> >
>>> >> >On Mon, 26 Oct 1998 10:42:52 -0500 Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> >> >
>>> >> >> Tim Redman,
>>> >> >>
>>> >> >> Let's assume, arguendo, that the diagnosis of 'bipolar disorder'
>>> >> >> is on the money. Is it your contention that the mental aberration
>>> >> >> shaped Pound's art? His behavior? If the former, are there other
>>> >> >> artists from whose texts one can reach similar diagnoses? And is
>>> >> >> their art in any way like Pound's? I'm wondering where you have
>>> >> >> taken or intend to take the diagnosis. I'm curious also if you
>>> >> >> pass Pound's use of multiple "voices" through this filter.
>>> >> >>
>>> >> >> Tim Romano
>>> >> >
>>> >> >Tim Redman
>>> >> >School of Arts and Humanities, JO 31
>>> >> >University of Texas at Dallas
>>> >> >P.O. Box 830688
>>> >> >Richardson, TX 75083-0688
>>> >> >
>>> >> >(972) 883-2775 (o)
>>> >> >(972) 883-2989 (fax)
>>> >> >
>>> >> Dan Pearlman Office: Department of English
>>> >> 102 Blackstone Blvd. #5 University of Rhode Island
>>> >> Providence, RI 02906 Kingston, RI 02881
>>> >> Tel.: 401 453-3027 Tel.: 401 874-4659
>>> >> email: [log in to unmask] Fax: 401 874-2580
>>> >
>>> >Tim Redman
>>> >School of Arts and Humanities, JO 31
>>> >University of Texas at Dallas
>>> >P.O. Box 830688
>>> >Richardson, TX 75083-0688
>>> >
>>> >(972) 883-2775 (o)
>>> >(972) 883-2989 (fax)
>>> >
>>> Dan Pearlman Office: Department of English
>>> 102 Blackstone Blvd. #5 University of Rhode Island
>>> Providence, RI 02906 Kingston, RI 02881
>>> Tel.: 401 453-3027 Tel.: 401 874-4659
>>> email: [log in to unmask] Fax: 401 874-2580
>>
>>Tim Redman
>>School of Arts and Humanities, JO 31
>>University of Texas at Dallas
>>P.O. Box 830688
>>Richardson, TX 75083-0688
>>
>>(972) 883-2775 (o)
>>(972) 883-2989 (fax)
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Dr Richard Read Email [log in to unmask]
>Senior Lecturer
>School of Architecture and Fine Arts
>The University of Western Australia
>Nedlands WA 6009 Tel +61 8 9380 2140
>Australia Fax 8 9380 1082
>
Dan Pearlman Office: Department of English
102 Blackstone Blvd. #5 University of Rhode Island
Providence, RI 02906 Kingston, RI 02881
Tel.: 401 453-3027 Tel.: 401 874-4659
email: [log in to unmask] Fax: 401 874-2580
|
