Let’s
cut to the chase: the core insight of Zizekian Psychoanalysis:
“The working class is split into three, each part with its own ‘way of life’ and ideology: the enlightened hedonism and liberal multiculturalism of the intellectual class, the populist fundamentalism of the working class, and the more extreme, singular forms of the outcast fraction. In Hegelese, this triad is clearly the triad of the universal (intellectual workers), particular (manual workers), and singular (outcasts) . . . the proletariat is thus divided into three, each part played off gains the others: intellectual workers full of cultural prejudices against the ‘redneck’ workers, workers who display a populist hatred of intellectuals and outcasts, outcasts who are antagonistic to a society as such. The old call of ‘Proletarians, unite!’ is this more pertinent than ever: in the new conditions of ‘post-industrial’ capitalism, the unity of the three factions of the working class is already their victory.”
Slavoj Zizek, The Idea of Communism, How to Begin from the Beginning, p.226, Verso Books, 2010
One need only to transpose this figuration from society as a whole onto the individual psyche which is comprised of the dynamic interaction-concordant and dis-concordant by turns- of these triads (ways of life or, in the Rosenstock’s terms, algorithms) directed to the ‘vanishing point of self’: the impossible unity of the ‘proletariat’. The therapeutic goal of Zizekian psychoanalysis is thus expressed in the common saying:
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”*
The rest of Rosenstock’s book consists of various Lacanian obfuscations, Hegelian presumptions and awkward attempts to distinguish Zizekian psychoanalysis (so-called)from other forms of cognitive and behavioral psychologies which fall under the rubric of ineffective symptomologies; points fairly well made under the circumstances (of obfuscation) combined with rather comic attempts to reconcile his new insight and goals with the professional ethics of therapeutic communities and practice along with the need to justify charges submitted to insurance companies.
To reverse the analogy one could compare conventional therapy to traditional media, essentially authoritarian, the significance of whose reports and opinions and pundits are what positions, content and potential pundits they exclude. ‘Zizekian psychotherapy would be social media where the door is wide open for the individual to configure ‘feeds’ in whatever he/she deems suitable: dynamically inclusive, exclusive or wholly insubordinate: whatever, according the the ‘requirements’ of each passing moment.
*This is from Lao Tzu, not the Bible. For a more accessible philosophical treatment of this matter see Hans-Georg Moeller’s The Moral Fool e.g.
“The working class is split into three, each part with its own ‘way of life’ and ideology: the enlightened hedonism and liberal multiculturalism of the intellectual class, the populist fundamentalism of the working class, and the more extreme, singular forms of the outcast fraction. In Hegelese, this triad is clearly the triad of the universal (intellectual workers), particular (manual workers), and singular (outcasts) . . . the proletariat is thus divided into three, each part played off gains the others: intellectual workers full of cultural prejudices against the ‘redneck’ workers, workers who display a populist hatred of intellectuals and outcasts, outcasts who are antagonistic to a society as such. The old call of ‘Proletarians, unite!’ is this more pertinent than ever: in the new conditions of ‘post-industrial’ capitalism, the unity of the three factions of the working class is already their victory.”
Slavoj Zizek, The Idea of Communism, How to Begin from the Beginning, p.226, Verso Books, 2010
One need only to transpose this figuration from society as a whole onto the individual psyche which is comprised of the dynamic interaction-concordant and dis-concordant by turns- of these triads (ways of life or, in the Rosenstock’s terms, algorithms) directed to the ‘vanishing point of self’: the impossible unity of the ‘proletariat’. The therapeutic goal of Zizekian psychoanalysis is thus expressed in the common saying:
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”*
The rest of Rosenstock’s book consists of various Lacanian obfuscations, Hegelian presumptions and awkward attempts to distinguish Zizekian psychoanalysis (so-called)from other forms of cognitive and behavioral psychologies which fall under the rubric of ineffective symptomologies; points fairly well made under the circumstances (of obfuscation) combined with rather comic attempts to reconcile his new insight and goals with the professional ethics of therapeutic communities and practice along with the need to justify charges submitted to insurance companies.
To reverse the analogy one could compare conventional therapy to traditional media, essentially authoritarian, the significance of whose reports and opinions and pundits are what positions, content and potential pundits they exclude. ‘Zizekian psychotherapy would be social media where the door is wide open for the individual to configure ‘feeds’ in whatever he/she deems suitable: dynamically inclusive, exclusive or wholly insubordinate: whatever, according the the ‘requirements’ of each passing moment.
*This is from Lao Tzu, not the Bible. For a more accessible philosophical treatment of this matter see Hans-Georg Moeller’s The Moral Fool e.g.
https://johnshaplin.blogspot.com/2010/07/moral-fool-by-hans-georg-moeller.html
and
https://johnshaplin.blogspot.com/2010/07/closure-by-hans-georg-moeller.html
and
https://johnshaplin.blogspot.com/2010/07/closure-by-hans-georg-moeller.html
No comments:
Post a Comment