Word: psychos
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...conquer it if he is to arrive at a metaphysical sense of self. No philosopher had a more playfully metaphysical sense of self than that most exoteric of existentialists, that master mirthful mentation--just in from the Danish Coast, here he is now, Ladies and Gentlemen, Soren "The Psycho" Kierkegaard. You may all stop reading now. I only introduced Kierkegaard as a further inducement for you to stop reading, primarily because I can't understand why any of you would be interested in Humor Theory, the most tedious of philosophical endeavors...
...Freud and Erikson schools. Freud grounded his theory of the primacy of sexual drive in a new and suggestive vocabulary (libido, repression, transference, regression) that was assimilated widely, if often too crudely. The same fate has befallen Erikson's catch-words "identity crisis," "life cycle," and the adjective "psycho-social." Freud also cultivated his Vienna Circle, which he assembled to carry on his legacy after his death; while Erikson never has sought to institutionalize his influence in the same way, an informal school of sorts did spring up at his summer home in Wellfleet, Mass., and was quickly dubbed...
...declared that he must not be a Marxist, and Freud, who disowned his potential heirs because of the violence he felt they had done to his theoretical system, Erikson has had to dissassociate himself, genteelly, from much of the simplistic garbage that has appeared under the banner of "psycho-history...
...perspective in establishing identity, he probably overestimates the general appeal of these insights. And when he rejoices over the spirit of gamesmanship that went into the founding of America and the Constitution, and goes on to praise the "leeway" that American society has allowed for people to test their psycho-social potential, in his excitement he seems to ignore the fact that American society has also deprived whole classes and races of the fundamental hope and stability needed to foster a sense of playfulness and to take advantage of social "leeway...
...merits admiration not just as an exciting thinker, but for being a thoughtful and caring humanist. Robert Coles made just this point in an exchange he had with MIT professor Bruce Mazlish in the New York Review of Books letter column several years ago. Mazlish, who wrote a crude psycho-biography of our former chief executive called In Search of Nixon, had attacked Coles for panning a group of similar psycho-biographies. He called Coles a traitor to the field and made a "Well, Erikson was just telling me over lunch" sort of remark in "the field's" defense. Coles...