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Two-part conversation with author & psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster, on discovering psychoanalysis, finding someone to listen, working with dreams, the absence of psychoanalysis in psychology programs, practicing clinical psychology, the school of Lacan, defining the psyche, a fetishized idea of mind, everything consciousness isn’t, shredding the ground, the recognition of the unconscious, recognizing embodied voices, expressing the psyche, conversion disorder & psychosomatic illness, reconfiguring reality, core truth about the body, Donald Kalsched’s Inner World of Trauma, universal trauma, the equality of the traumatized and the untraumatized, the fantasy of not being fragmented, antidepressants & escaping the body, a fundamental sense of ease, the uselessness of psychoanalysis, the removal of all objects, an experience of calm, Samuel Beckett’s love story, the consumption of consciousness, everything but flowers, history as traumatic piling up of objects, the trauma of speech, the physicality of the psyche and the constructed identity, staying coherent without falling back on the script, exchanging pieces of the puzzle, seeking the area of maximum resonance, Freud’s seduction theory, seeking Jimmy Savile in history, political & the psychological considerations around abuse, the dangers of concretization, unlocking the secrets of the body, the moment of separation, the desire to punish, skepticism about psychoanalysis, a return to psychology.
Songs: “The Kommema and his Religion” by SunWalker; “Here to Go,” by The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
Perhaps one reason that clinical psychology veered into pharmaceutical “cures” is that such a cure was viewed as cheaper and more efficient than talk therapy. Lacan, for example, occasionally, with some patients, used to charge exorbitant fees, and psychoanalysis is still very expensive and so has a tendency to economically select its clients. Also, even if fees could be made more affordable, the treatment times are very lengthy. From this I conclude that if all of us are traumatized, psychoanalysis can do little to alleviate that existential condition. Karen Horney, a psycho-analyst, wrote an intriguing book on self analysis but cautioned that it was very difficult to do on one’s own and that one could not really go very far with it in the end. Psychoanalysis is essentially a dyadic relationship with the psycho-analyst’s role as crucial because in the final stages the dissolution of the transference must be effected, and one cannot really separate from oneself in the DIY model, especially given the impossibility of achieving the transference on one’s own to begin with.
I’ve read a biography of Samuel Beckett but I don’t remember him having an alcoholic lover. But his French wife was angered at what she considered Beckett’s excessive drinking–a writer, an Irishman, oh well, with two stereotypes like that what chance did he have? Both he and his wife were in the French Resistance and there was the hair-raising episode of Beckett absent-mindedly–too much drink?–leaving documents containing the plans and names of contacts of the Resistance when fleeing their hotel rooms to evade a Nazi raid. Fortunately, they were able to retrieve the documents and escape with their lives.
nice to hear another youngish American listener/chatter use the H word with Jasun
what H word?
HAPPY :p
Thanks to you both for this conversation.
Jasun, you mentioned an interview by, or conversation with, Tracy Morgan. Do you have a link for that? Thanks!
here it is: http://newbooksnetwork.com/jamieson-webster-the-life-and-death-of-psychoanalysis-on-unconscious-desire-and-its-sublimation-karnac-books-2011/