Program note

I’ve drunk at the altar of Freud. Or, maybe more accurately, Freud is my bartender.

I believe in the unconscious. Profoundly. I speak the language of psychoanalysis, in all of its weird, uncomfortable-making ways.

I believe in the universality of Oedipus (not in the simplistic, every-boy-wants-to-fuck-his-mother sense, but in the more complex, every-child-learns-everything-s/he-knows-about-love-and-desire-primarily-through-her-or-his-relationships-with-her-or-his-parents sense).

I believe that what we experience as anger often corresponds to an unconscious desire to kill. And/or fuck.

I believe that what we experience as affection or desire often corresponds to an unconscious desire to fuck. An/or kill.

More generally, I believe our conscious thoughts often mask their unconscious opposites (see above, re: anger and desire).

I believe that we can’t control our thoughts, but that we often make ourselves suffer unnecessarily by imagining we should be able to.

I believe that if you could hear all my thoughts, you would truly think I’m insane.

I believe that’s true of EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE WORLD.

I believe in projection – that we often attribute our own feelings to others, to protect ourselves from those very feelings.

I believe in transference – that we often see contemporary situations through the (generally distorting) lenses with which our parents, our childhoods, fitted us.

I don’t believe that we only use 10% of our brains. But I do believe that our conscious thoughts and feelings represent something on the order of 10% of our total thoughts and feelings.

And finally, I believe that if more than two or three of these beliefs strikes you as controversial, or wrong, or at least uninteresting to contemplate, we probably speak sufficiently different languages that communication between us will be difficult. (Winston.)

5 comments

  1. I suffer a lot trying to control my thoughts. It’s hard, if not impossible, to get rid of such habits.

    This post was great.

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