Except they've bragged about doing it and Trump confirmed it....his slogan, drain the swamp, was created based on their psychoanalysis of his base (not mentioned in the article)...he thought it was stupid and awful, but tried it at a Florida rally anyway and the crowd erupted. It's the only instance I can recall of him admitting he was wrong.

As someone who knows Doom, the creators, game development, and creative media in general, this guy is stuffing words in mouths.
His Psychoanalysis might be accurate for the *creators*, by nature of their construction of narrative within the boundaries of our societies understanding, but I'm certain none of them would say "yeah! yeah that was totally our motivation/deeper meaning/intended symbolism."

Also, pretty certain Baphomet is not French, but I'd be interested in someone proving me wrong!

You are absolutely right, the results of elections in Greece do not create an obligation for fiscal transfers from other European countries.

But that plays right into what Varoufakis has been saying for years, doesn't it? The program over the last seven years has reduced Greek output by a quarter, and thereby its ability to service and reduce its debt. The troika is offering more loans, loans that cannot be payed back, in return for a further reduction in Greece's ability to pay back those loans in the first place. Extend and pretend, all the way. Nevermind the humanitarian cost or the threat to democracy itself.

It is either counter-productive or aimed at a different goal entirely. Greece wants an end to those loans, and all the loss of sovereignty that comes with it, while the Eurogroup in particular wants to stick to a program that only increased Greece's dependency to a point where they can throw the entire country into unbearable misery at a moment's notice (e.g. cut ELA access).

Take the privatisation demands as an example. The program demands that Greece agrees to sell specific property at a specific price. Both parties are keenly aware that this price cannot be realised during a fire sale, yet they still demand a promise by the Greeks to do so. Any promise would be a lie and everyone knows it.

Same for the demanded specificity of Greece's plans. After decades of nepotism, a fresh government made up entirely of outsiders is supposed to draw up plans of more detail than any previous government came up with. And they cannot even rely on the bureaucracy, given that a great number of people in it are part of the nepotic system they are trying to undo in the first place.

Taxes, same thing. The first king of Greece (1832'ish) was a prince of Bavaria who was accompanied by his own staff of finance experts, and they failed miserably. Greece went through occupation, military junta and decades of nepotism, and the new government is supposed to fix that within months.

Those demands cannot be met. The Greeks know it, the troika knows it, the Eurogroup knows it.

Zizek called it the superego in his recent piece on Syriza/Greece:

"The ongoing EU pressure on Greece to implement austerity measures fits perfectly what psychoanalysis calls the superego. The superego is not an ethical agency proper, but a sadistic agent, which bombards the subject with impossible demands, obscenely enjoying the subject’s failure to comply with them. The paradox of the superego is that, as Freud saw clearly, the more we obey its demands, the more we feel guilty. Imagine a vicious teacher who assigns his pupils impossible tasks, and then sadistically jeers when he sees their anxiety and panic. This is what is so terribly wrong with the EU demands/commands: they do not even give Greece a chance – Greek failure is part of the game."

Aside from all that, the entire continent is in a recession. Not enough demand, not enough investment, unsustainable levels of unemployment. Greece was hit hardest, Greece was hit first. It's not the cause of the problem, it is the canary in the coal mine. And Italy is already looking very shaky...

My post-structuralist and Lacanian psychoanalysis is getting overclocked right now.

This vid= "the human revolt against the irremediable. (s)he refuses the reason its reasons and begins to advance with some decision only in the middle of that colorless desrt where all certainties have become stones."
-Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

If you've never heard of Kenneth Williams can I recommend you look for some of the old "Just a Minute" radio shows? It's a British panel comedy game where contestants have to speak for 1 minute on a topic without repetition, hesitation, or deviation. Kenneth was a regular guest for many years, and was fucking hilarious. Clement Freud (grandson of the grand-douchebag of psychoanalysis himself) was also brilliant. Really fun stuff.

No, not like Spiral Dynamics.

More like Sartre or Foucault, oriented towards a psychology of science.

"Phenomenology of Perception"
or
"Structure of Behavior"
are good places to start, although the latter is quite dense.

Also, "Sense and Nonsense" is worth reading for those interested in a thoughtful conceptualization of the arts, ideas, and politics.

>> ^enoch:

In reply to this comment by Trancecoach:
This has been part of the psychological literature since the early days of psychology (late 1800s), but did not capture the mainstream attention in the ways that psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and experimental psychology has seemed to.
For anyone interested in the culminating work of the scientific investigation of these kinds of phenomena should check out Maurice Merleu-Ponty's work, especially the Structure of Behavior (circa early 1940s).
>> ^enoch:
this is a great talk but i find it interesting how western psychology is just now beginning to address this in a substantive way because this is NOT a new concept or philosophy.
WTG psychologists!!! 3000 yrs later and just NOW you are starting to get it!
woohoo!

awesome.gonna check out ponty's work.
would it be along the same line as spiral dynamics?

In reply to this comment by Trancecoach:
This has been part of the psychological literature since the early days of psychology (late 1800s), but did not capture the mainstream attention in the ways that psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and experimental psychology has seemed to.

For anyone interested in the culminating work of the scientific investigation of these kinds of phenomena should check out Maurice Merleu-Ponty's work, especially the Structure of Behavior (circa early 1940s).

>> ^enoch:

this is a great talk but i find it interesting how western psychology is just now beginning to address this in a substantive way because this is NOT a new concept or philosophy.
WTG psychologists!!! 3000 yrs later and just NOW you are starting to get it!
woohoo!


awesome.gonna check out ponty's work.
would it be along the same line as spiral dynamics?

This has been part of the psychological literature since the early days of psychology (late 1800s), but did not capture the mainstream attention in the ways that psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and experimental psychology has seemed to.

For anyone interested in the culminating work of the scientific investigation of these kinds of phenomena should check out Maurice Merleu-Ponty's work, especially the Structure of Behavior (circa early 1940s).

>> ^enoch:

this is a great talk but i find it interesting how western psychology is just now beginning to address this in a substantive way because this is NOT a new concept or philosophy.
WTG psychologists!!! 3000 yrs later and just NOW you are starting to get it!
woohoo!

>> ^persephone:

I'll take 20 minutes of meditation a day over any old Freudian psychoanalysis, thank you. Psychology is the business of any dedicated Buddhist.


While I agree that meditation is a worthwhile endeavor for any psychologist or any person aspiring to become happier and more at peace, I take issue with your misinterpretation of Freud's theories, which have been maligned ever since they were mistranslated into English.

In the original, they are as true today as they were at the time he posed them, perhaps even more so.

in the respect that freudian psychoanalysis is unfalsifiable horseshit that fucked up a great many people's lives. but you know, whatever.

>> ^bareboards2:
Holy crap!!!
I just clicked thru to You Tube and watched Part II of the interview.
Therein lies the legendary painful stuff.
My god, Parkinson was a complete invasive twit. He didn't ask questions -- he laid out his psychoanalysis of her in an incredibly invasive manner and got huffy when she didn't say "oh yes, oh my god, you are completely correct about me."
Watch the body language -- he leans into her more and more as he (mildly) attacks her, she leans back more and more, then he says -- well, you are certainly uncomfortable being interviewed.
I also read the article linked above. Parky says "she was so rude, she turned her back on the rest of the guests."
What a jerk. He never asked the other guests any questions, he never included the other guests, and somehow this is her fault?
What a twit.


I disagree with your analasys. Parkinson - the show - is about often 'invasive' questions, it's a show to get to the heart of the interviewee, and presumably they know this or they wouldn't attend. Parkinson is an old pro, and i seriously doubt that he would have asked ryan on the show under false pretences 'No invasive questions' and end up probing her invasively. I can't see that happening, i may be wrong, but at least my comments on the matter involve more thought than yours, and if you are right then it is by coincidence.

The body language of meg ryan reminds me 100% of how my step sister used to act towards my dad when she returned from HER dad's house. Her dad would feed her lines and lines of bullshit to turn her against my dad, so when she drove in a car in the front seat with me dad, she squeezed herself against the opposite door, legs crossed away from him, leaning away, and meg ryan looks exactly like that. What does that mean? Really, not a lot, she could just be comfortable in that position, but from my point of view it looks like she's trying very hard to get away from him at times in this interview. I believe parkinson leaned towards her and sat forward in his seat to close the distance and try to give a decent showing for people in the audience and at home - if he had sat back or god forbid mimicked her body language, sitting stance then the controversy would have raged even harder, and that's undeniable.

As for parkinson's comment about her being uncomfortable in the interview - well, you've missed a trick there. He is not sitting aggressively forward, waving his hands erratically to make her shy away from him and then saying "LOOK AT YOUR POSTURE YOU ARE CLEARLY UNCOMFORTABLE." For this you must strain your intellect and look past the literary meaning - the discomfort comes in the way of her brief answers whenever he asks her anything other than cosmetic. She reams off a speech when talking about her character in the film or the director of her latest film, but when asked about herself, she replies "no, not really" and other such briefeties.

Parky did actually ask her guests for interaction in the 2nd half of this interview, when he asked trinny and susanna (a vacuous british pairing who comment on other people's appearances with regard to style) about her shoes. She was complimented and basically said "uh thanks" and no more was said on the matter. No insight into shoes, no returned compliment (from my point of view this was a blessing). For some people this is a social faux pas, at least return the compliment. People see it as arrogant.

Anyway, this video is something that provides nothing other than potentially a desire to make you go and look for the 2nd half, it's a crap video if you ask me, but this appears to be the growing standard on the sift. Include a link or a message to the 2nd half and i'll retract these comments, but please put SOME thought into your sifts at least? I mean, you could at least watch them to make sure they contain the content which you summarise in the summary.

Holy crap!!!

I just clicked thru to You Tube and watched Part II of the interview.

Therein lies the legendary painful stuff.

My god, Parkinson was a complete invasive twit. He didn't ask questions -- he laid out his psychoanalysis of her in an incredibly invasive manner and got huffy when she didn't say "oh yes, oh my god, you are completely correct about me."

Watch the body language -- he leans into her more and more as he (mildly) attacks her, she leans back more and more, then he says -- well, you are certainly uncomfortable being interviewed.

I also read the article linked above. Parky says "she was so rude, she turned her back on the rest of the guests."

What a jerk. He never asked the other guests any questions, he never included the other guests, and somehow this is her fault?

What a twit.

>> ^burdturgler:
But that's not how it went. Honestly, I will try to be fair here and say it's impossible for either one of us to truly know what what was in either of their heads during these moments of the interview .. so I would hope that you could at least understand my side of this particular part of the argument. For me, she asked 2 questions. For you she asked one. I see where she was going .. trying to ask questions to get him to tell us about the deeper meaning behind his important work (if there was one). Common themes for this are religion and philosophy. It was really a gift for him to enlighten us all about what philosophical views he might have on the protection of animals .. the importance of wildlife preservation, man's connectivity with nature .. etc ..
Instead it became what it is here. So maybe there is some mental illness that makes him react angrily towards Christianity instead of promoting his own cause and letting us understand the philosophy that drove him to be a man who studied nature and all it's wonder. Instead we hear about how God created a worm to eat a kids eye. Where did that come from? Does that make sense to you in the context of all of this?


Are you insane? It's called conversation. She asked him if he was a religious man. He said no. She asked if it had philosophical implications on him. Philosophy could be anything, but since the preceding question was about religion and David seemed interested in talking about it, he started with that philosophic impact. He says he gets mailings from creationists that focus on the splendor and diversity, as if God created nature for humans entertainment and study. I know these kinds of people, they've probably said everything to him while failing to address the many horrific and indiscriminate parts of nature that adversely affect us for no apparent reason. Giving the worm that eats eyeballs as an example is just as good as any. For the type of God these people believe in, it is within God's power to eliminate these sources of human suffering and yet he chooses not to. Why does that worm have to exist? Why not create another butterfly instead? Why not except humanity from viruses and disease? For all your fevered ranting and psychoanalysis, you aren't explaining anything.

berticus,
whats with the adversarial tone bud?
all i was saying is that you cannot prove or disprove either argument concerning the validity and nature,or even existence of a soul.
your counter was,lets just say,less than creative.
and then you admonish me for making the conflation of jung being the father of humanism,well...i have the textbook right in front of me and the title of the chapter is.../drum roll
carl jung, father of humanism
if you disagree with that title take it up with the authors,all i was suggesting
was some reading,which i gather you have already done.
i also gather you found freud and jungs work ill-thought and crazy.
ok..thats your right..i dont.i guess psychoanalysis really IS dead,and the super ego was just a "fad".
i find neitzche nihilistic and depressing,but thats my opinion.i do like hegel though,you may not.
psychology is NOT an exact science,and anybody who says it is,is talking out their collective ass.
but all this is not the point,the point of my comment,one you conveniently ignored...is that arguing about the existence of a soul is a dead end argument.
you are free to feel and believe what you wish my friend,i am not your enemy,and my comment was not of a antagonistic flavor.it was just a statement,and an accurate one at that.even richard dawkins will concede the point i made.
but i do thank you for your contributions to this topic.
and BTW..
the answer is:socrates,kung fu tzu

Not only does Buddhism offer a sound and practical approach to understanding the human mind and its functions, but compared to Western theories such as those of Freud, you could say that it has also stood the test of time, offering as it has for thousands of years methods for alleviating mental distress, whereas one could not say that Freudian concepts are as useful today, as they appeared to be when first established.

I'll take 20 minutes of meditation a day over any old Freudian psychoanalysis, thank you. Psychology is the business of any dedicated Buddhist.