The Liminalist # 155: Wild Discourse & the Mess of the Left (with Jamieson Webster)

Part one of a two-part return conversation with Jamieson Webster, on the burden of being physically attractive, the company of the blind, a cripple for a father, Jordan Peterson as father figure, wounded by academia, a series of father figure investigations, mapping the wound, Peterson’s private life, an anecdotal disclosure vs transparency, a liminal line, the therapeutic space, an intense sleight of hand, faith in order, Frankfurt school & Fabian Society, the radical left & conspiracy theory, the mess of the left, saying No to bullshit, a tide of social dissatisfaction, the psychoanalytical conundrum, the great family myth, facing an abyss, Lacan & destitution, getting in touch with the soul, trusting the mundane, a taste for the quotidian, a wild discourse, Ferenczi, out on the edge, the catastrophe of genitality, emerging from the sea, the fall of Lucifer, Freud and Ferenczi, mutual analysis, Freud’ wildness, Dalrymple’s view of Freud, Peterson & taking a position, becoming unstoppable, the use of the Humanities, becoming competent, a weird mix of disciplines, an anti-ideological ideology, giving free market capitalism a free pass, the primary goal of success, being raised up by one’s community.

Articles by Jamieson

Songs: “I’m Going Insane” by Lee Maddeford; “Go Go Girl” by the Limiñanas; “Second Fences” by We Is Shore Dedicated; “Strip Mall Babylon” by Rose Windows.

14 thoughts on “The Liminalist # 155: Wild Discourse & the Mess of the Left (with Jamieson Webster)”

  1. From the Abyssal According to Joris:

    After the Lacanian de-subjectification that freed me from identification with my Family Neurotic Fantasy, and in the absence of any other objects to which my sticky identifiers could attach themselves, I oozed across the limen of my analyst’s door, and as ooze, in public, I freed myself from identification with the burden that was my physical attraction.

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  2. I like what Jamieson said re: Ferenczi and Freud’s wildness. It reminds me of a trilogy, “Discovering the Mind,” by Walter Kaufmann, aggressive atheist and translator of Nietzsche, in which Freud (and Goethe) figure as heroes. Kaufmann observes that Freud was steeped in Goethe (as a concordance to Freud’s works suggests) and that Goethe pioneered the idea of the development of an individual from childhood to adulthood as illustrated in his inventing a new genre of novel called the Bildungsroman of which Wilhelm Meister is the exemplar.

    As a young man studying art history, I read Freud’s daring essay on Leonardo, a great instance of wild psychoanalytic biography.

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  3. Regarding avoiding the truth by Psychobabble, left intellectualism, cultural Marxism, fake idealism, disconnectedness:

    This is exactly what psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, founder of “orgonomy” (which he developed from psychoanalysis,)already observed in the 1930s and 1940s. He wrote

    I highly recommend Reich´s work regarding his threelayered model of psyche (core etc.), contactlessness both to other people and to your core, the contactlessness of the left including the discrepancy between their social, “good-willing”, “idealistic” façade and their hidden will to power and control etc.
    This is why Reich never really turned communist, although he read a lot of Marx´s writings and repeatedly is considered a “Freudo-Marxist”- which is not true.
    Based on his character-analytical work Reich appreciated “conservative” characters more and more and became a fanatical anti-communist supporting Eisenhower after he had immigrated to the US.

    Good introductions into these aspects are:
    http://www.orgonomie.net/hdoeng07.htm
    http://www.orgonomy.org/articles/Baker/The_True_Liberal_The_Modern_Liberal.pdf

    Further reading:

    http://www.orgonomy.org/articles/Science_Links/character_and_society.pdf
    http://www.orgonomy.org/articles/Konia/The_Biophysical_Basis_of_Sociopolitical_Thought.pdf
    http://www.orgonomy.org/articles/Science_Links/no_man_is_an_island.pdf
    http://www.orgonomy.org/articles/Konia/The_Biophysical_Basis_of_Sociopolitical_Thought.html
    http://charleskonia.com/editorials/where-have-all-the-communists-gone/
    https://charleskonia.com/the-consequences-of-the-socio-political-redshift-on-peoples-thinking/

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  4. BTW:

    If you´re attracted to Psychoanalysts who are largely unnown or even suppressed by society you cannot avoid Wilhelm Reich- no other psychoanalyst has been defamed, obstracized and ridiculed in this scope…

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    • Not really; I first heard of Reich in my early 20s & he comes up constantly in alt. & “spiritual” circles; he’s about as ostracized as Tesla, culturally speaking.

      I predict an HBO show about him by 2022

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      • That´s part of the problem: Reich´s work has been misconstrued and misused by “spiritual” people and leftists for decades.

        Reich not only hated the left but also the “mysticism” already in his time.

        That Reich comes up in such circles does not tell us something about Reich but the people in these circles, about their character structures.
        Many spiritual schools have some kind of energy concept, but people´s armoring, their fear of full liveliness makes them avoid the essential and tip over to mystic teachings. All these sophisticated rituals, exercises, chants, spirits, ghosts, is a in psychological terms a diversion, an avoidance

        If you Reich´s writings there is nothing mystical about orgone energy. The individual armoring creates a distorted perception or sensation of orgone, thus they perceive some kind of energy flow, or spirits etc.

        The true Reich is still buried, his work looted by others, who misuse for their own neurotic or even perverted purposes.

        http://www.orgonomie.net/hdoeng12.htm

        I hope you understand what I mean, because I am not a native speaker.

        This article explains the things that were mentioned in your interview:

        http://www.orgonomie.net/hdoeng07.htm

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      • “’Mysticism’ here means, in the literal sense, a change of sensory impressions and organ sensations into something unreal and beyond this world.”

        https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/415579-mysticism-here-means-in-the-literal-sense-a-change-of

        And the image of Reich as a father of the sexual revolution Hippies and Woodstock is a myth. He lived in Berlin in the 1920s during the emerging Jazz fad, and lived long enough to see the the rise of the Beatniks, Rock´n´Roll etc. He hated these styles and movements (referring to Jazz as “shagger music”) and was annoyed by his wiritngs being miscontrued by young beatiks and “sexual liberators”.

        Reich was not about fucking around. See article by Ellsworth Baker:

        http://www.orgonomy.org/articles/Baker/Sexual_Theories_of_Wilhelm_Reich.pdf

        Baker was the only psychiatrist appointed by Reich to take over the training of students of orgonomy with the right to certify orgonomists.

        After Reich´s death, Baker became his successor as chairman of the American College of Orgonomy. After Baker´s death, Charles Konia took over.

        Baker and Konia are representatives of true, unadulterated orgonomy- which is non-mystical/-spiritual and conservative.

        http://charleskonia.com/

        If you read Reich´s, Baker´s and Konia´s articels about contactlessness, social facade and core, left intellectuals, communism etc.you´ll see they have come to conclusions strikingly similar to yours

        the best summary:
        http://www.orgonomie.net/hdoeng07.htm

        BTW:

        There was a bad, boring feature film with direct-to-TV film quality rehashing all cliches like Reich as father of the Woodstock generation etc.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strange_Case_of_Wilhelm_Reich

        A new documentary has come out:

        http://loveworkknowledge.com/

        The myths, halftruths and distortions are wide-spread, “modifications”, “improvement”, “combinations with X”, watered down and syncretized versions (spiritual teachings) are rampant

        But the Reich-Baker-Konia thread is on the verge of dying out- donations for the Reich trust are waning.
        https://nachrichtenbrief.wordpress.com/2018/04/29/warum-wenden-sich-orgonomen-von-der-orgonomie-ab/writ-2/

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      • An addition:

        Reich´s Orgonomy is NOT about shagging, occultism, spirituality- and NOT about drugs. Look at the titles:

        An Adolescent Comes Out of the Fog of Marijuana
        Peter A. Crist, M.D.
        Reprinted from the Journal of Orgonomy, Vol. 36 No. 2

        The Destructive Effects of a Psychostimulant on a Teenager
        Edward A. Chastka, M.D.
        Reprinted from the Journal of Orgonomy, Vol. 45 No 1

        Marijuana’s Role In Inducing Social and Indiviudal Chaos: An Orgonomic Perspective
        Dee Apple, Ph.D.
        Reprinted from the Journal of Orgonomy, Vol. 33 No. 1 & 2

        http://www.orgonomy.org/media_articles_topic.html#Marijuana

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      • Reich versus Kinsey (p. 4 of the article)

        “Modern “sexual
        research” is today governed more by political sentiments, and predominantly follows the degenerate
        views of Alfred Kinsey, a masochistic bi-sexual who preferred homosexual relations, and saw no
        problems with pornography, pedophilia or bestiality. Kinsey’s “raw discharge” theory basically
        “equalized” every kind of sexual expression, no matter how self-centered, coercive, impotent or
        laden with sado-masochism. His discussions on “orgasm” had little to say about love or emotion, and
        were therefore completely at odds with Reich’s findings and views which emphasized the emotional
        and gentle-loving context of sexual relations. Kinsey believed that any kind of sexual climax (for men,
        defined as ejaculation) was “an orgasm”, and all were of equal value no matter how they were
        achieved, even in the sexual abuse of children. Kinsey actually used serial child-rapists as
        “informants” to obtain “data” on the “time to orgasm” for children between the ages of 6 months to
        14 years old. He coached such sexual criminals in how to “gather data” so as to make it usable for his
        own research. These data are published right in his major books, Sexual Behavior in the Human
        Male, and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, for anyone with eyes to see. Those two very
        popular books also used extremely sloppy and statistically invalid data-sampling procedures, notably
        interviewing subjects from prisons, homosexual bars, seedy hotels used by prostitutes, and so forth,
        with his findings then generalized to ordinary heterosexual people across the USA. Even some of
        Kinsey’s modern biographers have been forced, by the evidence and many public disclosures, to
        acknowledge these facts.
        Unfortunately, Kinsey was lionized and carried forward into society as on a parade with cheering
        crowds. Publication of his ideas appeared in all the “top” mainstream media, with pop-enthusiastic
        interviews and his ideas written into public propaganda and new laws. Reich, by contrast, who
        opposed pornography and considered pedophilia a crime against children, and who also wrote about
        his observations on homoerotic sadism within the Third Reich, was isolated, shoved aside and
        treated like dirt. Reich was slandered as a pervert in the same mainstream media which cheered
        Kinsey, and finally was thrown into a prison cell. His books were burned by the same public mediamob
        that held Kinsey and friends in such high regard. Today, Kinsey’s ugly ideas and past history
        have been largely cleansed by his own mainstream cheerleaders, while Reich is wrongly tarred and
        feathered as having supported such things as only Kinsey supported — the pornography, poly-sex,
        pedophilia and so on. And Reich was never a “member of the Frankfurt group” of Cultural Marxists,
        who championed the Kinsey agendas, and not Reich’s more decidedly tame Sex-Pol agendas.”

        http://www.berndsenf.de/pdf/DeMeo_2014_1.pdf

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      • Who got funding in s”exology form the Rockefeller Foundation? Reich?

        No, Kinsey

        Did Reich get funding from the Rockefeller foundation for his microbiological research? No

        “As Strick also demonstrates, Reich’s Norwegian detractors had a vested interest in attacking Reich and his work: they were competing for the same funding from the Rockefeller foundation, the only major funding body around in the Depression era (p.227).”

        http://www.histhum.com/?p=302

        “Wilhelm Reich as A Laboratory Scientist, 1934-1939 and Beyond By James Strick, Program in Science, Technology and Society, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 17604 ABSTRACT: In exile from the Nazis in Oslo, Norway from 1934 to 1939, Marxist psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich began pursuing some of his theories about the nature of the energy behind psychic drives into the biological laboratory. By 1936 he had stumbled upon a series of experiments he thought directly related to the origin of life on Earth. His version of “dialectical materialist biology” bears interesting comparisons with the ways in which J.B.S. Haldane, J.D. Bernal, Aleksandr Oparin and others were applying Marxist philosophy to the life sciences at this time, especially to the origin of life problem. But Reich eventually realized his focus on an energy principle made his work fundamentally different from other “dialectical-materialist” forms of research. More importantly, trends in the life sciences toward more and more extreme reductionism, driven especially by Rockefeller Foundation funding, opened up a steadily widening chasm between Reich’s line of research based upon pursuit of an energy principle and mainstream biomedical research, which shifted dramatically toward a molecular, physical-chemical approach, culminating in the “molecular biology” of Watson and Crick”

        https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234093798_Wilhelm_Reich_as_Laboratory_Scientist_1934-1939

        see

        https://books.google.de/books?id=mQ-WBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA340&lpg=PA340&dq=wilhelm+reich+rockefeller&source=bl&ots=9LGDxIWNmq&sig=B5cSbmumvlac0ok9EeaBWXWSR6g&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi468ik2s_bAhXDaVAKHUfMAX0Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=wilhelm%20reich%20rockefeller&f=false

        On Rockefeller Foundation´s dominance in microbiology:

        Molecular Vision: Rockefeller Science
        https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/molecular-vision-rockefeller-science/

        Rockefeller´s dominance in Medicine, FDA etc.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZcUd3V8L30

        As Reich also did cancer research, could he have been an thorn in the flesh of the medical establishment?

        More about Reich´s prosecution:

        http://www.orgonelab.org/ReichPersecution.htm

        Summary:

        Reich did not fit into society´s paradigm like Ferenczi 😉

        Reply
  5. Hi
    From the 48 minute mark you start talking about Ferenczi and ORPHA – A dissociative mechanism that allows access to the transpersonal space at the cost of being split of from the body.
    Can you give me some resources for further reading – Google doesn’t give much.

    From your description it seems similar to what Kalshed outlines in his Inner World of Trauma – Part of the Self falls into the archetypal world, the survival self turns into a diabolical caretaker that self sabotages as a reaction to the emptiness of feelings/ love affect in the body.

    Reply

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