Ametamorphose 6 hours ago · LINKED COMMENT
Great video. Your videos lately have been very broad and big, I enjoy them lots. What did you mean about psychoanalysis when you said it reproduces a condition?
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+Ametamorphose Well for example, there is the nuclear family structure, which became a basic political unit under modernity. Europe can trace its movement toward modernity from around the time of Descartes. Historian Stephen Toulmin is particulary good at looking at the psychological ramifications of this shift. In Rhodesia/Zimbabwe we had in many respects not entered modernity yet, so the basic power structure was more akin to the wave of each generation passing through the system. Psychoanalysis, however, reproduces the system of intimate patriarchal power and control in relation to the nuclear family structure in modernity. (Modernity implies such things as efficiency in reasoning, lack of emotional interest in the functions of the body and sex, and the capacity to organise even larger power structures on the basis of the suppression of emotion.) If Dora wants to say this power system grates me, not just because it is controlling but because it oversteps the line between control and abuse, Freud will simply and patiently re-inscribe the patriarchal power structure whilst denying Dora has brought any worthwhile matter to his attention. He will undermine her concerns whilst reinforcing that she is subject to her father's will. He is like a dubious father figure who tries to patch over the obvious ruptures in the patriarchal system. Where does this leave Dora? Not only did she feel like she was going mad when her father tried to sell her into sex slavery, but now she has to deal with the additional problem that her madness is deemed unproblematic by by the authority (Freud).
