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« Freud »
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“Psycho-analysis, with the inspired hand of Sigmund Freud, has lifted the cover of the well which is poetically called the “soul”. And what has been revealed? Our conscious thought is only a small part of the work of the dark psychic forces.”
“The extension of Freudian hypotheses seems ‘educated’, even scientific, but it is ignorant, bungling. Freudian theory is the modern fashion. I mistrust the sexual theories of the articles, dissertations, pamphlets, etc., in short, of that particular kind of literature which flourishes luxuriantly in the dirty soil of bourgeois society. I mistrust those who are always contemplating the several questions, like the Indian saint his navel. It seems to me that these flourishing sexual theories which are mainly hypothetical, and often quite arbitrary hypotheses, arise from the personal need to justify personal abnormality or hypertrophy in sexual life before bourgeois morality, and to entreat its patience. This masked respect for bourgeois morality seems to me just as repulsive as poking about in sexual matters. However wild and revolutionary the behaviour may be, it is still really quite bourgeois. It is, mainly, a hobby of the intellectuals and of the sections nearest them. There is no place for it in the Party, in the class-conscious, fighting proletariat.” --Lenin
This thread has your name all over it. Have you read Freud?
Your line on sex being a basic instinct and problems resulting if it is not met comes from Freud.
Believe it or not no, I have never read Freud. Lenin sums up nicely my opinion about psychology.
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Joined: Jun 2005 Gender: Female Posts: 234 Location: stolen land
Re: Freud « Reply #3 on Aug 19, 2005, 7:53pm »
FW biowimmin embracing freudian ideology is evidence of the extent that they identify as the male gender.
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The truth may hurt and be depressing. It does not mean we can afford to do without the truth of oppression and exploitation. We have always said that if people do not find the current reality depressing and hurtful, then there is something wrong with them. They need to be taken out of the "Matrix."
"Some of the manifestations and properties of the super-ego can be more easily detected in its behaviour in the cultural community than in the separate individual.
The cultural super-ego has developed its ideals and set up its demands. Among the latter, those which deal with the relations of human beings to one another are comprised under the heading of ethics. . . . Ethics is thus to be regarded as a therapeutic attempt--as an endeavour to achieve, by means of a command of the super-ego, something which has so far not been achieved by means of any other cultural activities. . . . In our research into, and therapy of, a neurosis, we are led to make two reproaches against the super-ego of the individual. In the severity of its commands and prohibitions it troubles itself too little about the happiness of the ego, in that it takes insufficient account of the resistances against obeying them--of the instinctual strength of the id. . . . Consequently we are very often obliged, for therapeutic purposes, to oppose the super-ego, and we endeavour to lower its demands. Exactly the same objections can be made against the ethical demands of the cultural super-ego. It, too, does not trouble itself enough about the facts of the mental constitution of human beings. It issues a command and does not ask whether it is possible for people to obey it. On the contrary, it assumes that a man's ego is pscyhologically capable of anything that is required of it, that his ego has unlimited mastery over his id. This is a mistake; and even in what are known as normal people the id cannot be controlled beyond certain limits. If more is demanded of a man, a revolt will be produced in him or a neurosis, or he will be made unhappy."
"Civilization and Its Discontents" (NY: Norton & Co., 1961), pp. 89-90.
[Below are quotes from mousnonya echoing Freud:]
And I think the decadant view will prevail. People are insatiably curious. When you forbid them to do something that just makes them want it all the more. I also think they are instinctively horny.
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Revolution is not necessarily about your happiness. When you say "sex is more important to me than being in a political party," you effectively mark yourself as a non-revolutionary, if not as a counterrevolutionary. For there will be no socialist revolution without a vanguard party, and you certainly do not belong in a party if it has to take a back seat to your hedonist "instincts." I strongly recommend that you re-evaluate your priorities.
Yes, sex is like eating or sleeping. It's an instinct. Not as immediately vital as breathing -- but nonetheless a vital instinct.
Hey, what did you delete some posts mousnonya?
Wilhelm Reich followed up on the Freud above and wrote a whole book titled The Sexual Revolution. It's coherent, but it belongs in the Western-Liberal-Trotskyist camp. If Reich is right and not MIM, then credit goes to the Trotskyists.
[Translate: super-ego=cultural pressure ego=individual, conscious id=individual unconscious sex/aggression drives] Hey, what did you delete some posts mousnonya?
I deleted one post of mine last month and this month someone else deleted one of my posts. Otherwise I have not deleted any of my posts. Sometimes I modify my posts for spelling or to make things more explicity, not to change my line but where I write a thought which could be taken two ways, i.e. disambiguation.
I don't believe in the super-ego. I think that's claptrap. I sort of believe in instincts, but could be convinced otherwise. I don't think that instincts, if they exist, are separate from who a person is. I don't see any persyn as at war with their own instincts and what society says abut their instincts. The wars that are happening are not about instincts or social control thereof. They are about ca$h money.
The little I know of freud is such obvious garbage that I've never bothered to read primary literature. Heuristics.
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[Translate: super-ego=cultural pressure ego=individual, conscious id=individual unconscious sex/aggression drives] Wilhelm Reich followed up on the Freud above and wrote a whole book titled The Sexual Revolution. It's coherent, but it belongs in the Western-Liberal-Trotskyist camp. If Reich is right and not MIM, then credit goes to the Trotskyists.
Just why does MIM oppose the individualist/liberal line on sex? I mean, the obvious answer is "to oppose subreformism". A less obvious answer is "until one is aware of class relations and dialectics individual choice in a meaningful sense is impossible": However, MIM goes on to write off sexuality nearly entirely, I think the line goes beyond what would be needed if it was only about opposing sub reformism and getting a proper dialectical matieralist and class analysis on the phenomenon. What vital line of MIM thought am I missing that will get me out of the liberal individualism that you accuse me of?
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Escaping Freud on the Amerikan "Left" is near impossible. How to do it? There are two approaches: 1) I think that ElC's posts so far have been the classic Leninist approach. They basically boil down to saying if I have to discuss this with you you are already pornified and I don't want to make it worse by discussing it further (it's an implicit view of the nature of porn); 2) MIM etext.org-cell's approach where we try to take each argument from the various thinkers and trends "seriously."
Against me and my comrades, it could be said that we only stir up pornography by talking with people about all this. Many comrades in the TW and former socialist countries including Lenin believe in a disciplined silence.
On the other hand, that is just another reason we get off course in the FW. The people who have been through the revolutions don't make sense to us in the FW and to us it appears that they don't even argue much.
The way it is right now, criticizing Lenin on gender questions or criticizing MIM, no matter how good the intentions, almost always ends up back in Freud in the FW, because that is what is there and "normal," sexual Liberalism and psychological individualism. So there are people who come to this forum to criticize MIM without mentioning what they are FOR. And when you go look at what they are standing for, it turns out they are way confused and hypocritical.
So my answer is not to be surprised that opposing Freud seems difficult. It's not going to succeed without JDPON. For now, you should read that Feminism Unmodified book by MacKinnon. There are other feminists who lace into Freud as well, but to my knowledge MacKinnon is the easiest for a Leninist to interact with.
Escaping Freud on the Amerikan "Left" is near impossible.
What I find really vile about Freud is his idealism. Show me a super-ego. Where in the brain is it? At least with his id, I can say "yeah, humans have a reptile brain, and all it does is beat the hart, breath, eat, drink, sleep, sh*t and f*ck". But with his whole ego/superego he's setting up a nice idealist way to rationalize (lie) about anything. And we can see this in psycho therapists who rape their patients and then call it therapy. We can thank Freud for his loose manipulable theroy since it shows, as Foucault says, just how f*cked up western spychiatry is!
However, I don't *necessarily* want to escape from "liberalism" on sex. I certainly don't want to be subjected to a feudal regime. The liberal "vision" of sex is everyone f*cking in any way they like as long as its all subjectively consensual. Of course, this "vision" is idealist, and ignored the material base of reality -- poverty, patriarchy. So spychology and freudism set the world up, at best, for subreformism. So subreformism and the obvious fact that plenty of psycho logists themselves crazy (i.e. power hungry and manipulative, just for examples) makes it fairly easy to reject first spychiatry and liberalism on sex.
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How to do it? There are two approaches: 1) I think that ElC's posts so far have been the classic Leninist approach. They basically boil down to saying if I have to discuss this with you you are already pornified and I don't want to make it worse by discussing it further (it's an implicit view of the nature of porn);
That's a principled and self consistent position. However, it meshes very nicely with liberalism and individualism. It's like Daddy standing at the door, tapping His foot with His arms crossed when His Little Princesse comes home at 12:30. I don't think any pornified persyn is going to look at disdainful silence as anything other than ridiculous and just a license to keep on with the porn.
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2) MIM etext.org-cell's approach where we try to take each argument from the various thinkers and trends "seriously."
Against me and my comrades, it could be said that we only stir up pornography by talking with people about all this. Many comrades in the TW and former socialist countries including Lenin believe in a disciplined silence.
Sure thing daddyo.... or, more nicely, we are already pornified. So being disdainfully silent really looks irrelevant. You're on the right track, at least for the first world.
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On the other hand, that is just another reason we get off course in the FW. The people who have been through the revolutions don't make sense to us in the FW and to us it appears that they don't even argue much.
Yeah, though Kollontai did write stuff and I'm being lazy and not reading it hoping MIM3 who has no time will spoon feed me. I should know better. Its not like they said *nothing* about sex.
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The way it is right now, criticizing Lenin on gender questions or criticizing MIM, no matter how good the intentions, almost always ends up back in Freud in the FW, because that is what is there and "normal," sexual Liberalism and psychological individualism.
Arrr, Billy, there's the rub. That and my friends and/or family who got their dose of rape for real make even pornified little 'ol me ready to take a baseball bat to some frat boy. (Luckily, none are here, so that statement cannot be taken as a threat or a flame).
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So there are people who come to this forum to criticize MIM without mentioning what they are FOR. And when you go look at what they are standing for, it turns out they are way confused and hypocritical.
Oh, well, truth to tell I'm for wild f*cking in the streets. But that is a nice lumpen / anarchist line. So I'm figuring MIM will provide some leadership. Like any lumpen there is a certain calculated laziness to my method. Still I shall endeavor to read more of Kollontai.
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So my answer is not to be surprised that opposing Freud seems difficult. It's not going to succeed without JDPON. For now, you should read that Feminism Unmodified book by MacKinnon. There are other feminists who lace into Freud as well, but to my knowledge MacKinnon is the easiest for a Leninist to interact with.
I take that as directed at me; I actually have read some of MacKinnon (notably, a feminist theory of the state). Other than her collectivism, I don't see here as a great leap forward. She's looking at liberal individualism and rejecting it, but I think (correct me if I am wrong, I may well be!) she is an essentialist (an essentialist is someone who puts the fundamental contradiction on male female and says female=biology; sort of like gender nationalism, or even gender chauvinism. Chauve by the way is french for bald). I know MIM thinks she is pre-Leninist and thinks her "all sex is rape" line is just a gambit. That makes it tough for me to take her seriously. In fact I've read more of MacKinnon than of Kollontai. I understand her "porn causes rape" line. She's looking at causality not in individualist liberal terms but in collectivist terms. But then, instead of going all the way and taking up MLM she burns out on sub-reformism, trying to pass anti-porn legislation at the city and local level, hoping to thereby draw out the first amendment crowd onto undefensible terrain. It's not worked in the last decade and its not going to work because the society is pornified and because the causal link she sees between porn and rape is tenuous. In fact, the incidents of rape which I am familiar with involved alcohol, alcohol, and more alcohol, not porn. Of course, my "sample survey" is necessarily pathetically small. If MacKinnon has any sense of praxis and is not trapped in idealism (which idealism would lead one to say things like all sex is rape and that porn causes rape, at least if one were an essentialist...) then she will look around, toss some flowers on Dworkins grave, and take up MLM thought and ditch the not-working and not-gonna work subreformist anti-porn crusade and take up the cause of the Third World proletariat. I think you could even give her tactical pointers about how to reach whatever vision of sex/gender you both seem to share.
By the way, what vision is that? It's certainly not Islam, with multiple wives, and hajib -- though Islam was the most progressive religion on race (no racism) and gender (wives could divorce) and tolerance of other monotheisms. Or am I wrong? Does MIM think Islamic sex relations are better than in the first world? And if not, what is the MIM vision?
This is also why it is tough to oppose Freud/liberalism -- lack of any alternative vision.
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Joined: Jun 2005 Gender: Female Posts: 234 Location: stolen land
Re: Freud « Reply #11 on Aug 28, 2005, 1:59am »
MacKinnon does not say female=biology.
MIM opposes oppression, and opposes rape. The alternative to rape is no rape. That is the world we should be struggling for. If eliminating rape means eliminating sex then so be it. But i don't think that is a question we can answer at this time.
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The truth may hurt and be depressing. It does not mean we can afford to do without the truth of oppression and exploitation. We have always said that if people do not find the current reality depressing and hurtful, then there is something wrong with them. They need to be taken out of the "Matrix."
MIM opposes oppression, and opposes rape. The alternative to rape is no rape. That is the world we should be struggling for. If eliminating rape means eliminating sex then so be it. But i don't think that is a question we can answer at this time.
If MacKinnon isn't an essentialist then why does she place the principle contradiction as man womyn?
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Re: Freud « Reply #13 on Aug 28, 2005, 9:37pm »
I am not aware of her every explaining why she thinks gender is most important. I would guess it is probably for persynal reasons and not a scientific conclusion as to what will push society forward the fastest. Gender oppression is something that angers her. I'm just going on how you define essentialist here, as i'm not familiar with the term. In practice she obviously deals with gender primarily. She deals with class as a product of gender and nation as a complicating factor to gender. But she clearly believes that many biowimmin identify with the male power structure. She also seems to believe that no amount of integration can quite get a biowomyn the same power as men though. Which i don't have any disagreement with.
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The truth may hurt and be depressing. It does not mean we can afford to do without the truth of oppression and exploitation. We have always said that if people do not find the current reality depressing and hurtful, then there is something wrong with them. They need to be taken out of the "Matrix."
I am not aware of her every explaining why she thinks gender is most important. I would guess it is probably for persynal reasons and not a scientific conclusion as to what will push society forward the fastest. Gender oppression is something that angers her. I'm just going on how you define essentialist here, as i'm not familiar with the term. In practice she obviously deals with gender primarily. She deals with class as a product of gender and nation as a complicating factor to gender. But she clearly believes that many biowimmin identify with the male power structure. She also seems to believe that no amount of integration can quite get a biowomyn the same power as men though. Which i don't have any disagreement with.
Before answering your question let me ask one: Do you think MacKinnon would be comfortable addressing or working with trotskyites? I know my answer, but would like yours.
I think MacKinnon is idealist and even dualist. How else should she get the principal contradiction wrong despite the MIM?
Sure, MacKinnon is far far less wrong than any one in the imperialist system. So what? She is in that system and she is not infallible. So if we see, and if you agree, that she is not in fact applying the materialist method then that tells us that MIM is right to say that MacKinnon moved the liberals forward a bit yet that MIM in many ways was already beyond her pre-Leninism.
Essentialism should be distinguished from separatism. Separatists believe wimmin should simply form communities apart from men. MacKinnon is not a separatist. Essentialism, as I understand, is the argument that there is a fundamental material difference between men and wimmin and thus that gender distinction is inevitable. Since I think MacKinnon is not a materialist its no surprise to me that she rejects essentialism. And indeed, as Marxists we must say she is right to reject essentialism. Wimmin are constructed by society at least until one learns about dialectical materialism one is trapped by society inevitably. However, I think MacKinnon equivocates on essentialism. She knows that denying essentialism leads to liberalism. She knows to reject liberalism. But she also knows essentialism dovetails perfectly with racism, eugenics and genocide. She's in a quandry on essentialism and she knows it.
Because she places the principal contradiction at the wrong point. If adopted materialism then she would quickly put the principal contradiction where it belongs and all her other problems would resolve themselves.
Because MacKinnon places the principal contradiction at the wrong point all her contortions both within and to change the liberal system are simply pointless. Her method is the only one within a liberal structure that might end porn. But it hasn't and won't. Not because people are inevitably genetically biologically driven to pornify themselves either as voyeurs or exhibitionists -- though plenty of people are and I see no problem with that. Rather MacKinnon will not end porn or rape or any other problem she claims to desperately want to solve because her praxis is simply idealist.
Hell, if I went around fighting only the things that made me angry I'd be an excellent little individualist and of no political effect whatsoever! Since I don't see any exploitation of the third world in my daily life it must not exist, right? so then I would only fight, hm, against people that mistreat me.
What a stupid line, if MacKinnon seriously places the principal contradiction on gender because gender oppression offends her subjectively then I must really say MIM should rethink hitching so much of its line to her wagon!
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[quote author=fdapatriarchy board=w thread=1124380854 post=1125279439]Before answering your question let me ask one: Do you think MacKinnon would be comfortable addressing or working with trotskyites?
I would say yes.
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I think MacKinnon is idealist and even dualist.
Yes, MacKinnon errs in the direction of idealism. She openly admits that she is non-Marxist, which is the honest thing to do. We Marxists can still learn from non-Marxists and improve our politics with some of their ideas, although typically we will have to do the scientific work of developing those ideas. So MacKinnon should not be rejected out of hand just because she is an idealist.
Yes, MacKinnon errs in the direction of idealism. She openly admits that she is non-Marxist, which is the honest thing to do. We Marxists can still learn from non-Marxists and improve our politics with some of their ideas, although typically we will have to do the scientific work of developing those ideas. So MacKinnon should not be rejected out of hand just because she is an idealist.
True; I don't say she is stupid, lazy or foolish. She is however wrong as can be seen by the fact that her 20 year crusade has, excepting its influence on MIM had no effect whatsoever.
To her credit she has done some work against torture in the Third World. I'm not saying she could not correct her line. But as it stands her line may reach the right results but even if it does (no sure thing at all!) where it does, it reaches those results by accident. Some right answers, maybe, but wrong answers as well, and the right answers are generally for the wrong reasons. The only thing going for her really is her rejection of liberalism and acceptance of group analysis. I mean, she even plays the false consciousness card. How someone can dance all around Marxism like that without (supposedly...) being aware of any of it is beyond me. I can't believe anyone takes her "I'm not a marxist claim" seriously, but I guess they do as she has a job. Anyway, I regard her as a crypto Marxist. She should just come out of the closet, then her line would correct itself and she would actually succeed.
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