Monday 29 December 2008

I get a kick out of you

i-get-a-kick-out-of-you


For the pseuds: Prozac is reading Charles Brenner's essay on 'Countertransference as compromise formation' from The Psychoanalytic Quarterly. Therapist is reading a Karen Maroda book.

Friday 26 December 2008

Monday 22 December 2008

Who, who, who do you talk to?

fern's-birthday
It's very much like Fern to give other people gifts on her birthday. Happy birthday Fernsky!

[Soundtrack]

Friday 5 December 2008

Can't deal, can't bear

i-hate-you-so-much-right-no
[Soundtrack]

"He [the analyst] must turn his own unconscious like a receptive organ toward the transmitting unconscious of the patient. He must adjust himself to the patient as a telephone receiver is adjusted to the transmitting microphone. Just as the receiver converts back into sound waves the electric oscillations in the telephone line which were set up by the sound waves, so the doctor's unconscious is able, from the derivatives of the unconscious which are communicated to him, to reconstruct that unconscious, which has determined the patient's free associations."

(Freud: 'Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psychoanalysis.' 1912.)

Sunday 30 November 2008

Find your joy

note-to-self

Was doing some marking today, listening to the latest Pavement wannabes, trying very hard to get my ears in sync with the hype. Sort of into-it-not-into-it, wanting it to be more than it was: which was average. So during a coffee break, I clicked on an oldie-but-goodie I haven't listened to for ages because I seem to spend so much time trying to keep up with the Next New Big Thing. A metaphor here. And as the pleasure of the familiar music coursed up and down my spine bringing tears to my eyes, I decided to break the habit of a lifetime and post something 'happy' and dare I say it, wholly life-affirming on Prozacville. Apologies dear readers. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Wednesday 12 November 2008

I've always tried to wonder how it must feel to be real

emptiness


With a nod to Lao Tsu and a please-buy-me-one-of-these-for-Christmas surreptitious head-tilt at the Travel Honeypot(supposedly very good for 'gratuitous winking'; I'm all for gratuitousness in the winking-stakes).

Tuesday 30 September 2008

How much is a sixty-year-old woman worth?

best-deal-going

Ma is looking for a job at the moment.
If anyone would like to pay her a little more than her current offers from Jules, Therapist, Nadler and Death, you know where to find her.

Sunday 28 September 2008

Hunga Munga

Went to the Hunga Munga festival today.
Much inspired by Nad's recent foray into jewellery-making, I decided to create my own line of cheap and cheerless necklaces made from cardboard and poster paint.

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Note that these pieces look good on wo/man and dog alike.

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Monday 22 September 2008

Somebody kill me please

pathetic

[Soundtrack]

"We both know that love will die at last, turn tepid and perfunctory, decline into mere companionship and affection, if there is not cruelty in it. Not physical harm or violence, but cruelty. The cruelty of loss. Of dread. Of jealousy. Whatever the counselling professions tell us about trust, where we are not jealous, we are not in love at all. Othello was within his rights, though it is not fashionable to say so, to claim he loved too well. His mistake was not to see that suffocating his wife was not the best way to express it. Inviting Cassio to his bed would have been the infinitely preferable option for all parties."

(Howard Jacobson, The Act Of Love, p285)

Friday 12 September 2008

Wednesday 3 September 2008

Let's get married, Gordon!

stamp-duty-holiday
[Soundtrack]

I think I've finally understood the notion of 'buying votes' in exchange for tax breaks.

As a wavering Labour-man, not particularly wowed by the dour, at times beige Scot that is Mr Brown (albeit respecting his impeccable intellectual credentials), I suddenly find myself getting wood whenever he appears on the box and will most certainly be selecting him and his party in the next election.

Might this have something to do with the fact that I am just about to buy a property and that Gordo has knocked £1,500 off my purchase price?

Saturday 30 August 2008

Who needs the perfect girl or boy?

we're-back

[Soundtrack]

"We possess, as it seems, a certain amount of capacity for love -what we call libido...directed towards our own ego. Later, though still at a very early time, this libido is diverted from the ego onto objects, which are thus in a sense taken into our ego. If the objects are destroyed or if they are lost to us, our capacity for love (our libido) is once more liberated....But why is it that this detachment of libido from it objects should be such a painful process is a mystery to us....We only see that libido clings to its objects and will not renounce those that are lost....Such then is mourning."

(Freud, On Transience, 1915)