06 May 2016

Sometimes A Longer Crank Arm Is Only A Longer Crank Arm...

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

Truer words were never uttered.  (All right, very few truer words were ever uttered.)  Who said them?

The same person who said,

Everywhere I go,  I find that a poet has been there before me.

Hey, I can get with that, too.  Or:

Dreams are most profound when they are the most crazy.

Such a pronouncement is ironic, coming from a man who hated radios and telephones--he would use the latter, but only when absolutely necessary--because of the noise they made.  He even hated music!  He also hated motorcycles, which came out in the middle of his life, for the same reason.



He also hated bicycles, which no one--not even his closest family members and associates--could explain.  He never explained it himself.  However, I think it may have had something to do with his being a control freak, a label attached to him by everybody who knew him.  Or it may have been about his relationship with his son, who was an avid cyclist.

Ahh, father-son conflicts.  Did I hear "Oedipal"?  All right...now, perhaps, you have a clue to whom I'm referring.

Yes, I am talking about none other than Sigmund Freud-- who, if he were alive, would be 160 years old today.

What would he make of the fact that so many cyclists, particularly males, are riding longer cranks these days?  What would he have to say about wheels, and what our choices about spoke patterns--or discs--say about us?

About his hatreds:  Here's one that, perhaps, overshadows the others:

Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake.

What would he make of the current Presidential race?
 

4 comments:

  1. It has been said (maybe it was by me) that a major conflict in the birth of modern psychology was between Freud's cats and Pavlov's dogs.

    Freud's Oedipal conflicts? For sure. But look into the relation between Freud and his daughter Anna Freud. She was one of his major deciples and he trained her by deeply psychoanalyzing her while he engaged in a sort of auto-analysis himself. Mutual no holds barred discussion of sexual fantisies between father and daughter. The relation was bordering on insest. One might call it an Electra situation, the opposite of an Oedipal situation. But this is why Freud was great: his open and even brutal honesty with himself.

    Leo

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  2. Typical, forty years ahead of the trend as usual, went for long cranks in the mid seventies...

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  3. Freud -a true distorted individual who has done much damage.

    .

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  4. Coline--I had a sneaking suspicion you're part of the avant-garde.

    Leo and Chris--I am still torn about Freud. I think his work on the subconscious mind--even if the particulars, such as the Oedipal or Electra complex turn out to be wrong--are valuable because it gave us a framework for seeing behaviors as a manifestation of something besides poor choices or character--or of daemonic possession.

    On the other hand, when he was wrong, he was very, very wrong and did damage, especially in regards to what he said about women. Was he truly misogynistic or did he merely reflect male attitudes about women that were prevalent at the time?

    One thing I know: I am living proof that he was wrong about penis envy. After all, I am a woman and I never, ever wanted one!

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