Monday 28 January 2008

X marks the spot (a state of illusion)

x-marks-the-spot

(Click on image to enlarge)

"The male has instinctual urges and predatory ideas. The female has a breast, the power to provoke lust, and the idea that she would like to be attacked by a hungry male. These two phenomena do not come into relation with each other till the woman and man live an experience together. I think of the process as if two lines came from opposite directions, liable to come near each other. If they overlap there is a moment of illusion - a bit of experience which the man can take as either his hallucination or a thing belonging to external reality."

(From D.W. Winnicott, 'Primitive Emotional Development', in Through Pediatrics to Psychoanalysis (London: Hogarth Press, 1975), p152 - Prozacville edition

13 comments:

switch said...

if/when there is overlap there is always illusion, no?

death soon?...I'll cross that illusion when I come to it.

Debra Kay said...

What a lot of horseshit. I am sure men want a lot more than sex, but I am not one, so I can't be THAT sure. But I am a woman, and procreation is the furthest thing from my mind (thankfully) when I'm having sex. And the urge to overlap with someone new and different is there for us too. Pfffft.

Steve said...

The female sex drive resolves itself, in the long term, in family-bonding and mothering. Men are simply created to fuck. That is our function, our raison de etre. And biology is destiny. When we're not fucking, we're sublimating that by drawing horseshit.

You can take on millions of years of evolutionary biology if you like Ms Kay, but you ain't ever going to come out on the winning side, I'm afraid.

Keep on taking your liquid Prozac,

P.

Debra Kay said...

Oh please, YOU'RE just jealous because we have multiple orgasms, admit it!!!!!!You guys rule the world, put your penis centric take on the entire world, but once or twice and you're DONE for the night.

I'm back to pills-alas, the liquid has such a funky after taste. I wish they made a patch.

Steve said...

I AM jealous, and ever-so-muchly embittered, and hair-trigger emotive, AND a whole load of other noxious impulses.

Prozacville means never having to say you're sorry, but I seem to spend a lot of my time doing just that.

I realise this piece seems radically, one might even say, rudely simplistic, but in all that horseshit, there be an ounce of unicorn shit (a far rarer substance....)

Debra Kay said...

Hmmm, so you are just frustrated because you can't screw a lot of women and not do the whole family thing?

I guess your unicorn shit is that society ventured away from the evolutionary path long ago. Is that good/bad, who knows? I sure don't.

The concept of family is a whole pandora's box for me. On a cynical day like today, it seems that family is just another of society's constructs to get free labor and someone lower than you on the pecking order so that you don't notice you are procreating to provide more worker bees for the hive.

What is reminds me of (and get ready to roll your eyes) is the ape clan on Orangutan Island. Solitary creatures forced by circumstance to live in a group setting. They are improvising as best they can.

Even though we have a few more years of group life under our belts, I think the human species is still just improvising, because, well, that's what we DO. Then a few of us get together and try to shove our solutions down someone else's throat. It will be interesting to see if the Orangs invent God.

But don't be mad at women-it was you guys who made up all the rules so you could track who your offspring was.

Debra Kay said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

X-certificate

the therapist said...

Oh Prozac, I fear the secrets of men are no longer safe in your hands, are they?

regards.

Catnapping said...

uh...woah. wait a minute, here.

women also have instinctual urges to mate.

men also have the power to provoke lust.

you say that women "would like to be attacked by a hungry male." girls are TAUGHT...programmed by TV and stupid books that tell us that rape is sex and that ravishment is a compliment.

it's all about socialization. children are socialized to believe certain things about themselves and others. norms...values...all taught by elders...social comparison...exposure.

yes. i think some crap is innate. but the idea of rape/attack or equating sex with conquest is not innate. it is taught to boys and girls via books, tv, video games, etc.

Anonymous said...

I would rather be the child of a mother who has all the inner conflicts of the human being than be mothered by someone for whom all is easy and smooth, who knows all the answers, and is a stranger to doubt.

Mim said...

I like the way the little pill guy loses his hair.

Ms Melancholy said...

Poor old Winnicot. I fear he has been quoted wildly out of context but it made me smile nonetheless. Winnicot was not aware of the functions of our limbic system, which makes this whole biological drive thing much more complex than simply the need to fuck. And Ms Kay makes the very good point that we are essentially social animals and the socialisation process plays a very significant part in the development of the personality. You are provocative, Mr Prozacville, but I like it.