On Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia"

[gaudior]

Sometimes, you read an article by Freud, and being young and just starting grad school, you say, "Ew, Freud! Penis envy! Castration! EW!" and basically read the article with your fingers in your ears singing "La la la I can't hear you, you sexist authoritarian jerkface!" Then you read it again a few years later, and think, "Ah, yes, Freud,

Comments

[mobiuswolf]

Interesting. Lots to think about here. Thanks for sharing.

[gaudior]

Thank you! And you're welcome! (And thanks for commenting-- I feel like when I write a big long entry, people tend to go "Oh, I need to formulate complex thoughts and respond to this," and then don't. So thank you.)

[gaudior]

Use it if and when it's the right tool to do something worthwhile, y'know?

Yeah, absolutely. Grin. I agree-- any theory is going to be problematic if you use it all the time for everything. I like psychodynamic theory (and am, in fact, quite fond of that Gabbard book) because it does try to go deeper than CBT or, gods save us, the DSM. But I also think it's very worth keeping in mind that everyone has a different "deeper"; while it's useful to think about the unconscious, it's also useful to think about the fact that everyone's unconscious is different.

[gaudior]

Thank you! I'm glad.

[gaudior]

Oh, cool, I'm glad it was useful. And good luck-- how did the deleting go?

[gaudior]

Yes, absolutely-- go ahead, and I'd love to hear what he thinks of it.