Word: bergler
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...says Manhattan Psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler. In Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life? (Hill and Wang; $5), published last week, he swiftly demolishes some popular misconceptions. The common definition of a homosexual as one who "derives his sexual excitement and satisfaction from a person of his own sex" is less than a half-truth, says Bergler, because 1) it accepts a kind of parity between homosexuals and heterosexuals, "and hence becomes a useful argument in the homosexuals' advocacy of their perversion"; 2) it ignores the fact that certain personality traits, partly or entirely psychopathic, are specifically and exclusively characteristic...
Injustice Collector. Homosexuality, says Analyst Bergler, is neither a "biologically determined destiny, nor incomprehensible ill luck." In Freudian terms he traces a complicated pattern of the development of homosexuality from infantile frustrations, through "pleasure in displeasure." to unconscious psychic masochism. The full-grown homosexual, as Bergler sees him, wallows in self-pity and continually provokes hostility to ensure himself more opportunities for self pity he "collects" injustices-sometimes real, often fancied; he is full of defensive malice and flippancy, covering his depression and guilt with extreme narcissism and superciliousness. He refuses to acknowledge accepted standards even in nonsexual matters, assuming...
...this formidable treatise, Analyst Bergler wrestles with the problem of the writer who has copy paper, a late-model portable, an old farm in Connecticut, a nice wife, the right agent, and no ideas. The fellow need not worry, since Analyst Bergler finds that he can cure nearly 100% of such cases, and says so in a brash passage recalling the palmy days of the old sure-cure Indian remedies...
...such a happy time, says Writer Bergler, there is little need for thought, either, since ideas don't come that way; they just originate in the hurricane cellar of the unconscious, and the writer traps them as they break for the open. According to Bergler, the writer's function is like that of a man erecting a prefabricated house; in writing, he merely assembles slabs of his inner conflicts and his repressed desires in story form...
...Analyst Bergler has developed his ideas about writing and writers from the case histories of 36 writers who felt wretched enough to go to him for treatment. What Bergler may not clearly see is that in developing his interesting argument, he is performing a party trick rather like pulling a rug out from under his own feet. By the book's end, the reader has been taught to wonder what compulsion makes a man set out to explain most of the world's literature as just an infant's whimper for a bountiful teat...