Word: trivializes
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...Georgian Academy of Sciences recently sponsored a symposium on the concept of the unconscious. In the U.S.S.R., talk therapy or "rational psychotherapy," is mostly a series of admonishing lectures. The doctor listens to the patient, then tells him how he ought to behave. If the complaint is deemed too trivial-anxiety, or mild depression-a patient may be told not to come back at all. Hypnosis is often used by doctors to encourage healthier behavior, like trying to get an alcoholic to stop drinking. Says Dr. Vyacheslav Kotov, chief doctor-psychiatrist for the city of Moscow: "A psychiatrist should understand...
...problem with principle ought to leave. On the other hand, if there is an agreement on principle, your disagreements are tactical and therefore soluble. This Administration has no coherent philosophy. If in the fourth year of an Administration, the Secretary of State resigns over principle, that is not a trivial matter. And it explains why it is that foreign peoples and foreign leaders have such a sense of uncertainty about where we are going...
...slanting shadow that bisects his face seems to infiltrate the meaning and scope of the entire scene: the faces in the crowd appear distinctly conspiratorial; the girl has been debased into a symbol, and is happily oblivious to what that symbol embodies or supports; and even inanimate objects and trivial details--the sheen of the car and the incomplete lettering of a storefront in the background--possess an enlarged, fictive meaning, a circuit of tension and a certain chill suggestive of all that is sinister, ridiculous and mesmerizing about displays of institutionalized eroticism...
...Urfirer and his fellow organizers seem to have forgotten (amnesia perhaps?) the basic requirement for a successful concert, that is, hiring a band that people will pay money to see. The choice of a trivial, second rate group of musicians to headline a major concert is baffling. Why, when Brown can attract acts like Little Feat and Elvis Costello, do we have to settle for a nowhere act like Pousette-Dart Band. (Who knows who we will have next time. Petula Clark? Or maybe even Sean Cassidy...
There is also new information about the era's most famous flameouts (D.W. Griffith, Buster Keaton, Erich von Stroheim) and the best-documented veterans (Gloria Swanson, King Vidor, Lillian Gish). Even the trivia somehow does not seem trivial. It is touching to hear Frank Capra recall Mack Sennett's sad mansion full of unread books and overdressed servants. Director Henry Hathaway, who remained active past True Grit (1969), wittily brings back the days when his job was to follow DeMille around with a chair on location. A writer remembers the shock of seeing her credits on a silent...