The Liminalist # 79.5: Conditions for Contact (with Jamieson Webster)

Jamieson2Part two of conversation with Jamieson Webster, on calcified neuroses, the closing down of speech, the loss of conversation, the power of the Trump spectacle, conditions for contact, the crisis of the unconscious, seeking the trajectory back inward, embodied guidance, finding coherence, psychoanalysis & the spiritual quest, a permanent state of enlightenment, the question of progress and insight, finding the lost pieces, reinventing the wheel vs. Valhalla, a search for safety, the shamanic path, marriage & the egregore of blame, ego & integration, recognizing the witness, deferred affect, the need for participation, the value of acting out, the difference between seeing & acting, thinking as deferred action, finding the reverse pathway, acting our thoughts, Sebastian Horsley & dandyism, scripted conversation, sexual defense vs. the conceptual encounter, the prohibition against pleasure, sinking into existence, a baseline of pleasure, the inverse of pleasurable autonomy, punishments of pleasure, millennial brats, a self-rejecting implant, the transmission of shame, children as parental avatars, emotional investing in children, driven by ancestral fragments, Freud on the incest taboo, Plutonian carriers of wealth, penis-baby-feces-money, the abstraction of life, the last iteration, the gift of conversation, money & psychoanalysis, the end-point of therapy, the protective function of money, turning money back into time, keeping score of oneself, how to think outside the demands for success, embracing a sense of futility, what comes with age, the psychoanalysis of fire, the forbidden pleasure.

Songs:  “The Kommema and his Religion” and “Of the Lakes,” by SunWalker; “Move It,” by Pierre (The Urchins).

12 thoughts on “The Liminalist # 79.5: Conditions for Contact (with Jamieson Webster)”

  1. The final paragraph of Jean Laplanche’s brief article on Nachtraglichkeit from http://nosubject.com/Talk:Deferred_action:

    “Instead of considering only the bipolar temporal vector connecting the child with the adult that the child has become, we need to add a third term, external to the subject, which is the message emanating from the other adult, a message which is imposed on the child and which the child must translate. Indeed it is the idea of “translation” so understood that may be expected to cast a new light on the Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit. “

    Reply
  2. I like upsight instead of insight
    penis baby feces money
    um, I mean, did you retrieve the ring ?

    embrace futility, anything less would be futile

    long interview – cutie – transference

    Reply
    • the interview conversation was the usual duration. Yes to cutie, and yes to that causing a a different (deeper) dynamic, whether or not that pertains directly to transference, I am not sure.

      the ring stays buried.

      Reply
      • sorry, did I type interview ? ugh, old habits

        long because of it’s deepness or intimacy maybe, not clock time
        felt like a large data exchange took place – especially the 2nd part

        might have just been the resonance of your voices together
        both sort of monotone – level and collected – but not in a restricted way

        also, bangs – best trend the hipsters ever brought back 🙂
        thanks again

        Reply
  3. Great conversation and fascinating guest. As a side-issue I was surprised to hear you in pt 1 draw an analogy between the stigmas attached to astrology and psychiatriy. I think there are very good reasons to doubt the whole basis of astrology whereas psychiatry, whether it works or not, is easily understandable as an attempt to understand and resolve certain dilemmas of the human mind. (For the record I used to be a believer in astrology – mainly beause I come from a family where it was accepted without question – but am now 90% sure it’s pure Mumbo jumbo.)

    Reply
    • You must not have had the right astrologer. 🙂 The same would be the case if one went to a poor psychologist & got no results, it would all start to seem like mumbo jumbo. Astrology works, beyond a sliver of doubt; how it works, and why, is another question. But then the psyche itself is something of a nonscientific proposition.

      Reply
      • ‘Beyond a sliver of doubt’ seems a very dogmatic stance for a liminalist to take. I wouldn’t be half so sure. Magical thinking and delusion are widespread in the astrological community. Regardless, I enjoy the podcasts and hope you keep them coming.

        Reply
        • Point taken; Liminalism is a hard calling to live up to. There is doubt about everything, but let’s say to roughly the same extent I am sure you & I are able to communicate via the English language now, that this method works, so I am sure that astrology works, I know it, experientially. That doesn’t mean I know how it works, but then I don’t really know how we are able to communicate via language either. It just happens.

          Reply
  4. I think Jasun is more of a Jungian; at least he uses many terms from Jungian psychology, e.g., shadow, archetype being the most salient. I had an initial infatuation with Jung because of my teenage obsession with the novels Hermann Hesse who underwent analysis with a pupil of Jung’s and even had a session or two with the master himself. There was also a work of literary criticism by a man whose last name was Beer (!) that employed Jungian concepts to explain Hesse’s work. But now I’m a Freudian but treat him as the literary critic Harold Bloom suggested, as wisdom literature along with the essays of Montaigne or the philosophy of Nietzsche or Schopenhauer. On the other hand, my hunch is that the real value of Freud’s work has yet to be mined and that it lies in the direction that the philosopher and translator of Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann, suggested, namely, Goethe’s notion of science as executed in his Theory of Colors and his botany involving the notion of “urpflanze,” or the archetypal plant. Kaufmann pointed out, usefully I think, that a concordance to the works of Freud would be replete with references to Goethe. Freud was in many ways inspired by Goethe, could be said to have been his disciple.

    Reply

Leave a Comment