Excellent article, albeit initially I thought that it was mere verbatim excerpts from Freud’s works as “Five lectures in psychoanalysis” or “The Unconscious”(1905/6).
>Excellent article, albeit initially I thought that it was mere verbatim excerpts from Freud’s works as “Five lectures in psychoanalysis” or “The Unconscious”(1905/6).<
I know you didn’t mean your comment to be taken literally, so I won’t ask you to state precisely what passages you had in mind, but what exactly in the long article is Freudian as against ideas about unconscious processes which were quite commonplace in the late nineteenth century? The historian of psychology and psychiatry Mark D. Altschule reports Henry Maudsley’s writing in 1867 on the relations between unconscious mental phenomena and emotions, and stating specifically that ideas not consciously perceived can cause sensory and motor changes. Francis Galton wrote in 1879 of layers of mental strata that lie beyond consciousness and of unconscious phenomena that are activated by association.
I can only see one item in the article that fits the bill – the report of the Northwestern University experiment. However, not only is the Freudian element merely an hypothesis to try to explain the results, one should ask if the study has been replicated by other researchers, an absolute prerequisite before experimental results are accepted. One would also like to know more about the methodological procedures and how experts in psychological studies assess them. Psychology is littered with studies having design faults that vitiate the conclusions, only apparent when the experimental procedures are subjected to close examination, as Fisher and Greenberg’s 1970s volumes have exemplified, and Eysenck and Wilson have demonstrated in their book *Experimental Studies of Freudian Theories*.
I appreciate your concern for the development of these young girls, and while the wearing of a viel may seem rather trivial I understand from your comments that this leads to more and is part of a larger issue.
My concern is that your ideas in regards to child development are utopian at best. I do not think that it is reasonable to think that if we put out different ideas, like choices on a menu, that we can expect children to have the ability to make good choices in the pursuit of truth, and wellbeing. Children are limited by their lack of perspective, and a limited faculty for moral judgement and therefore they do require training and guidance. If I return to my menu analogy and took it one step further as presenting ideas like food items before a child I think we could all agree that the vast majority of children would go towards the desert section without nary a thought to their long term wellbeing or implications there choices may have down the road.
Thus to say that it is society’s responisibility to offer a free, open environment for our children to develop without restrictions or guidance would be a form of abuse as well.
The challenge lies in the fact that we must pursue truth, first I guess agree that there is truth out there, and then guide our children into that pursuit. I recognize that this opens many questions, and a broad range of issues which are not easy to say the least, but your position on child development is simply untenable.
>Henry Maudsley’s writing in 1867 on the relations between unconscious mental phenomena and emotions, and stating specifically that ideas not consciously perceived can cause sensory and motor changes. Francis Galton wrote in 1879 of layers of mental strata that lie beyond consciousness and of unconscious phenomena that are activated by association.>
Yes and there were few more others : Binet, Myers, Mason, Prince ..and let’s not forget the great loser in the battle for “immortality through getting a place in history” : Pierre Janet.
By late 1880s (thus 5-7 years before Freud&Breuer “Studies”) Janet had already wrote 2 thesis (for MD and PhD) on subconsciously motivated neurotic behavior (using hypnosis to reach the underlying problem).
This led in the late 1890 early 1900s to a bitter conflict between Janet and Freud over priority. Janet maintained that Freud had stolen his work and simply re-worded it, as for instance by Freud replacing Janet’s “dissociation” with “repression” and “moral cleansing” with “abreaktion”.
Whatever the truth Freud remains as the one who put together in a theory the dozens of elements on the unconscious that were ‘floating’ in the cultural milieu of the time and the one who has shown that they were logically connected by underlying key concepts.
One can compare Freud contribution to the subject of unconscious with Einstein TSR( 1905) work.
Not that the TSR phenomena and the TSR equations were unkonwn ( even today they are called “Lorentz-Fitzgerald equations” not “Einstein equations”) and substantial work on it had been done before Einstein by Michelson, Poincare, Lorentz or Langevin in late 1890s/1900.
But Einstein is great for having put all this known but puzzling mass of facts together in a theory, for having shown how all logically flow from few simple key assumptions.
(and the same can be said of all great discoverers, say Newton or Maxwell, if you start digging for the history of the ideas they “discovered”, nobody lives and works in cultural vaccum)
Anne compares Freud’s notions on the unconscious with Einstein’s special theory of relativity, and writes
> Whatever the truth Freud remains as the one who put together in a theory the dozens of elements on the unconscious that were ‘floating’ in the cultural milieu of the time and the one who has shown that they were logically connected by underlying key concepts.<
This doesn’t hold water on more than one level. Whereas Einstein’s special theory of relativity is an integral part of modern physics, Freud’s theories are widely held in disrepute except in some fairly clearly defined areas. Among the latter are literary and humanities departments in the academy (which find in Freudian theories an almost inexhaustible supply of elastic notions to bring into their “discourse” on virtually any subject under the sun), journalists largely ignorant of the critical literature on Freud, and a sprinkling of eminent professors in the psychology or brain science fields who are still influenced by the traditional, but now mostly discredited, historical narratives about Freud, and again largely ignorant of the extensive critical and historical work on Freud of the last few decades. See the following for examples of the latter (featuring Howard Gardner and Eric Kandel respectively):
What Freud built around frequently dubious clinical claims were for the most part fantastical theories, made plausible by an exceptional literary talent which included a seemingly instinctive mastery of rhetoric. To a considerable degree he came up with the theory first, and then *interpreted* clinical material to provide ‘confirmations’, while persuasively purporting to have based the theory on clinical ‘discoveries’. As Frank Sulloway observes, “Time and time again, Freud saw in his patients what psychoanalytic theory led him to look for and then interpret the way he did; and when the theory changed, so did the clinical findings.”
Whereas Einstein’s special theory of relativity is a secure foundational element in modern physics, psychoanalysis originally developed on the basis of Freud’s theories has (from its early days) fractured into numerous competing psychoanalytic schools, many of which have disowned almost completely the theoretical framework of Freud’s to which Anne refers. So even in the field of psychoanalysis, major concepts that Freud regarded as essential to his theories have been explicitly or implicitly discarded by modern psychoanalytic schools.
Anne writes that Freud showed that contemporary notions in psychology were “logically connected by underlying key concepts”, presumably meaning by the latter concepts proposed by Freud. The British psychologist William McDougall subjected Freud’s theoretical edifice built on these “key concepts” to a close examination and found otherwise:
“Freud does not scruple to change his most fundamental propositions, and to pull them about in a way which, if they were the foundations of a logically constructed system, would bring the whole structure tumbling upon this mighty Samson and his devoted followers.”
And, again:
“The world of concepts in which Freud conducts his tours of discovery is so fluid and shifting that it lends itself to every manipulation. Every emotion, and every sentiment, is ambivalent, is both itself and its opposite, and can be transmuted into something radically different; every sign and symbol and symptom can be interpreted in opposite ways.”
References:
Crews, F. (1998). Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend.
McDougall, W. (1926). An Outline of Abnormal Psychology.
McDougall, W. (1936). Psychoanalysis and Social Psychology.
Paris, J. (2005). The Fall of An Icon: Psychoanalysis and Academic Psychiatry.
Sulloway, F. (1989): Freud: Biologist of the Mind.
I think something that is being missed out of the commentary on the ‘Einstein’s Wife’ nonsense is the feminist angle. It is not an accident that this has happened, but is part of the feminist propaganda that feminist ideologists promote. They don’t actually care what the truth is, only to promote the interests of women, that is to say, only to engage in and promote sexist discrimination. This particular issue is important because of the iconographic significance on Einstein. ON the other hand, the lies they are telling here are fairly trivial compared to the lies they tell about men in general, their support of false accusations of rape, their success in skewing the law to discriminate against men, and so on.
>Freud’s theories are widely held in disrepute except in some fairly clearly defined areas. Among the latter are literary and humanities..>
The logic of your argument is that if there are idiots amongs those enthusiast about your ideas then you must be wrong.
Albeit a logical fallacy ultimately (and one more piece of witty antifreudian rhetoric to be served to the unwary) there is some half-truth
in it.
Some friends (as Lacan or Marcuse for instance)are such an intellectual embarassment that you don’t enemies.
And viceversa (when criticzed by eminent philosophers) the logic doesn’t change.
For instnace after I read Berkley’s “devastating” critique of Newton’s Principia Mathematica I “knew” that something was wrong with Newton’s ideas and by extension with the whole Physics.
“And what are these fluxions? The velocities of evanescent increments. And what are these same evanescent increments? They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them ghosts of departed quantities?”
>> Freud’s theories are widely held in disrepute except in some fairly clearly defined areas. Among the latter are literary and humanities..<<
> logic of your argument is that if there are idiots amongs those enthusiast about your ideas then you must be wrong. Albeit a logical fallacy ultimately (and one more piece of witty antifreudian rhetoric to be served to the unwary)…<
That is *not* the logic of my argument. By highlighting what is merely part of an adjunct to my actual argument, you have sidestepped the argument itself. Or to be more precise, by omitting the first part of the sentence that you have partially quoted you have omitted my argument. So here is the argument again (as a rebuttal of your comparison of Freud with Einstein in relation to the respective intellectual milieux in which they produced their theories): Whereas Einstein’s special theory of relativity is an integral part of modern physics, Freud’s theories are widely held in disrepute.
All I was doing in the sentence from which you have highlighted one item was citing some notable exceptions to the widespread rejection of Freud’s theories. It is a complete misreading of that sentence to suppose that it constitutes an “argument”.
This makes your entire answer a non sequitur.
>By highlighting what is merely part of an adjunct to my actual argument, you have sidestepped the argument itself.>
Not really. What I did was to answer your 2nd argument (the sneaky implication “the feeble minded believe is true thus it is wrong”) which you seem now to realize that it was rhetoric since you have cut it out and left only the 1st as “my argument”.
In general it is difficult to answer someone who piles up argument on argument as if in an attempt to leave no chance to answer. I had to separte your argumentation is its parts.
Now to your argument.
>..So here is the argument again.. Whereas Einstein’s special theory of relativity is an integral part of modern physics, Freud’s theories are widely held in disrepute>
What makes you so sure. Do you have statistics ?. Is it your “feeling” and “impression” ?
You may very well read only antifreudian literature and get a sort of cognitive illusion that everybody agrees with you.
Firstly, 2000 citations in 10 years from a database that contains hundreds of thousands of indexed articles, is actually not very much.
Secondly, (assuming your simply searched the term ‘psychoanalysis’ without any further qualifiers) you will need to eliminate from you list of 2000 citations, all those items that are contained in ‘partisan’ journals, such as for example the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, (doh! of course it contains hundreds of citation on psychoanalysis). Quite why a medical/scientific database such as Medline should index psychoanalytic journals is beyond me. It may have something to do with the advanced persuasive power of many pseudoscience practitioners and charlatans (which no doubt psychoanalysts are). It is useful to remember that in the UK we have NHS funded homeopathic hospitals. That doesn’t make homeopathy worthy of clinical, scientific and professional respect.
Thirdly, once you have eliminated your ‘partisan’ items from your list of 2000, you still need to consider how many of the remaining articles published in non-psychoanalytic journals actually give any credit to the discipline and how many of them are a refutation of it.
Then you may have a slightly clearer picture of how much respect psychoanalysis enjoys in the medical/scientific community (which is very little, I can tell you now!)
I’m not sure there’s much point in continuing the discussion, since you insist on reading into my responses things that are not there.
I answered your comparison of Freud’s theories with Einstein’s special relativity by pointing out the crucial difference. (What you call “the first argument” is in fact the *whole* of my reply to your Freud/Einstein analogy.) I then went on to critically discuss Freud’s supposed accomplishments. Why you think there was something “sneaky” about a straightforward commentary on Freud’s ideas, backed by other scholarly views, to illustrate the fact that his theories are largely in disrepute is beyond me. Likewise, the suggestion that I implied that those who believe in Freudian theories are “feeble minded” is a figment of your imagination.
>In general it is difficult to answer someone who piles up argument on argument as if in an attempt to leave no chance to answer.<
As far as I’m aware, you are at liberty to reply at any reasonable length on this letters page.
>I had to separte your argumentation is its parts.<
As I’ve already pointed out, my “argumentation” does not require “separation” into parts. They were separate and distinct in the first place.
>Now to your argument.
>..So here is the argument again.. Whereas Einstein’s special theory of relativity is an integral part of modern physics, Freud’s theories are widely held in disrepute>
>What makes you so sure. Do you have statistics ?. Is it your “feeling” and “impression” ?
>You may very well read only antifreudian literature and get a sort of cognitive illusion that everybody agrees with you.
Nowhere do I say anything like “everybody agrees with me”. However, one only needs a wide knowledge of the literature on Freud to be aware that there has been a considerable number of scholarly critical books on Freud in the last three decades. College history of psychology texts now reflect the fact that much of the Freudian edifice is widely regarded as untenable, or at the very least dubious, and that Freud’s clinical methodology is suspect. In the United States, university psychiatry departments used to be dominated by psychoanalysts; nowadays it is relatively rare to find the head of a psychiatric department who is a psychoanalyst. These are not “feelings” or “impressions” but hard facts.
As to your suggestion that I “may very well only read anti-Freudian literature”, you couldn’t be farther from the truth. I have, in fact, read an immense number of books and publications by Freud, by Freudians and by psychoanalysts of different persuasions, both before I wrote my own book on Freud, and during the fourteen years since then, when I have had published several articles in peer-reviewed history of psychology and psychiatry journals.
Peter has dealt with that point already. I’ll just add to his comments the relevant observation, already noted, made by McDougall in 1926: “The world of concepts in which Freud conducts his tours of discovery is so fluid and shifting that it lends itself to every manipulation.” This is why, as I have said, people in literary and humanities departments find in Freudian theories an almost inexhaustible supply of elastic notions to bring into their “discourse” on virtually any subject under the sun. When one adds to this that the psychoanalytic world, splintered into many different groups each claiming for itself the most cogent way of understanding the human psyche, is a veritable publishing industry by itself, it’s hardly surprising that a web search brings up masses of citations. However, as Peter observes, statistics of this kind have little bearing on the validity or cogency of the material in question.
>I’ll just add to his comments the relevant observation, already noted, made by McDougall in 1926..>
Wow, but why “McDougall” and why 1926 ?
Because such obscurities fit your pre-judgements and add more material to (perhaps felt by you as otherwise too light) post ?
You could have qouted as well
significant psychologists. Historical figures that everybody knows and respects, as William James.
Great men at the apex of their power are grand figures. We could have enjoyed the momentousness of William James and Sigmund Freud (ages 67 and 53) meeting at Clark University in 1909. We could have felt again the thrill of academic philosophy acknowledging the new master when James put his arm around Freud’s shoulder and said prophetically : “The future of psychology belongs to your work.”
But why did you reply to AE last message and focussed on his quotation from McDougall, presumably to highlight the fact that the critics of psychothanalysis are highly selective in the choice of material?
Why did you not reply to my previous message on reserch methods and the number of citation on psychoanalysis to be found on this or that database? Are you perhaps still waiting for some feedback?
See, how easy it is to play that game?
Anyway this is my last message to you. I find your borrowed arguments and your ‘copy and paste’ messages (copied and pasted from other boards that is…) disjointed and not particularly interesting.
Allen is right. There really isn’t much point in debating with you. Sorry for the ad hominem…
>You could have quoted as well significant psychologists. Historical figures that everybody knows and respects, as William James… We could have enjoyed the momentousness of William James and Sigmund Freud (ages 67 and 53) meeting at Clark University in 1909. We could have felt again the thrill of academic philosophy acknowledging the new master when James put his arm around Freud’s shoulder and said prophetically: “The future of psychology belongs to your work.”<
Just to set the record straight, it was not Freud whom William James put his arm round, but Ernest Jones, as Jones records in his biography of Freud. More significant than this little scenario as reported by Jones is what James wrote to a colleague at that time: “Freud made on me personally the impression of a man obsessed with fixed ideas. I can make nothing in my own case with his dream theories, and obviously ‘symbolism’ is a most dangerous method.”
Not quite the fulsome endorsement that Anne’s comment would indicate.
> why “McDougall” and why 1926 ?
>Because such obscurities fit your pre-judgements and add more material to (perhaps felt by you as otherwise too light) post?
Anne may think that McDougall’s work is obscure, but in fact he was one of the most eminent psychologists of his day, and in 1920 he moved from Oxford University to take up the William James Chair of Psychology at Harvard University.
Why McDougall? Because he wrote extensively on Freud, and examined his writings in meticulous detail. Why 1926? Because I had already cited his 1926 book in a previous posting, and providing the date enabled anyone who so wishes to look up the book in which the comment can be found, and the basis on which he made it. Why use McDougall’s words? Because he lays bare that particular weakness of Freud’s expositions so beautifully, and better than any words I would have used to say essentially the same thing.
>More significant than this little scenario as reported by Jones..>
It isn’t more “significant” but it is very telling for your kind of Freudian studies, that is quoting only what fits you wished conclusion and ignoring the contrary evidence.
I could have given you few thousands of quotes praising Freud from the intellectuals of 20th century.
>Why did you not reply to my previous message on reserch methods and the number of citation on psychoanalysis to be found on this or that database? >
Didn’t feel like doing it perhaps, but if you insist.
> Firstly, 2000 citations in 10 years from a database that contains hundreds of thousands of indexed articles, is actually not very much.>
It is an “all medicine” database, you won’t find psychoanalytical viewpoints debated by gastroenterologists.
> I will need to eliminate from you list of 2000 citations, all those items that are contained in ‘partisan’ journals>
I remember now why I didn’t reply.
You will be able to prove that even Darwin isn’t popular nowdays except in journals by partisan evolutionists, who should be eliminated.
>..which is very little, I can tell you now!>
and I believe you, I have yet to meet a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist who is not informed on psychodynamics and defense mechanisms, a textbook of psychiatry whose categories are not explicitly or implicitly shaped by freudian ideas, or to read a college textbook on personalities theories that doesn’t start with Freud and his influence and contribution on all who/what followed.
Antifreudianism is a hobby, in many respects not different from anti-evolutionism.
Anne provides a hearsay favourable comment reportedly made by William James as recounted by one of Freud’s followers. In response I quoted a documented statement in which James expresses strong doubts about the theories that Freud himself described as “the securest foundation of psychoanalysis”, and Anne charges me with quoting only my wished conclusion and ignoring contrary evidence!
Far from ignoring contrary evidence, I have spent a considerable amount of time examining the evidence adduced by Freud, and explained why I found it wanting in my book *Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud* (Open Court, 1993).
I ask only one thing from Anne. She has suggested (erroneously) that I “may very well read only anti-Freudian literature”. I have responded to this suggestion with information about my what I have read (a considerable amount of Freud’s output, for starters). So Anne, in return (and no ifs or buts or evasions), tell us which serious works of scholarship critical of Freud you have read. Please state, say, two or three book titles, so that we know that you really have seriously considered scholarly criticism of Freud’s writings.
Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn’t know he was a novelist either.
Papers presented in 1905 had a strong fundamental aproach and serious mental tonality,which was Milevas caracteristic.Alberts early presenting style was loose,and later presentations did not have any substance at all and were based on old “money”.Why it is so dificoult to understand that Mileva was an enormous influence on Albert in life and in work.Alberts admiration,respect and devotion for Mileva made him disobey the old Jewish rules.He did wed Mileva.When the prases start comming in and Albert became The King of the Hill,he needed a change of image,and Mileva did not fit in.He did a decent thing,by the way, and actualy gave the proceeds of Nobel Prize money to Mileva.
Why are the Einstein private papers only available to Albert fans? Cearfully selected guardians of Einstein Myth/Legend .To deny any involvement of Mileva in Alberts profesional life and life in general is quite frankly Pathetic and totaly Paranoid.
Fact is: She was a senior Scientist and slightly older wife of a “legend” who did not have time for his children.
>Why are the Einstein private papers only available to Albert fans?<
This is untrue. Here is a statement in an email (4 March 2007) from Barbara Wolff, archivist at the Albert Einstein Archives, Jewish National & University Library, Jerusalem, in relation to the release of letters in July 2006 embargoed by Einstein’s stepdaughter Margot until 20 years after her death on July 8th 1986:
“There is nothing we are withholding from the public any more. Every researcher (without distinction, we don’t control his research) has access to all papers, notes, drafts, notebooks, diaries etc. in our possession… So there is no more one single paper, ‘archive notes or scientific enquiry’ which could be considered ‘withheld’.”
Alex writes:
>Papers presented in 1905 had a strong fundamental approach and serious mental tonality, whch was Milevas caracteristic. Alberts early presenting style was loose, and later presentations did not have any substance at all and were based on old “money”.<
1. Perhaps Alex would like to cite *documented* evidence of Mileva’s characteristic fundamental approach and serious mental tone.
2. Post-1905, Einstein continued to make major contributions in important areas of physics for more than 20 years, e.g., to quantum theory, statistical physics, and producing the general theory of relativity, widely regarded as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science.
Re his marrying Maric, Einstein had no problem in “disobeying” the old Jewish rules as he was raised in a totally secular family and never had any adherence to these “rules” in the first place.
Alex writes:
> Fact is: She was a senior Scientist and slightly older wife of a “legend” who did not have time for his children.<
Maric twice failed the Zurich Polytechnic exams for a diploma to teach physics and mathematics in secondary schools. Furthermore, in the words of John Stachel, founding editor of the Albert Einstein Collected Papers:
“In her case, we have *no* published papers; *no* letters with a serious scientific content, either to Einstein nor to anyone else; nor any other *objective* evidence of her supposed creative talents. We do not even have hearsay accounts of conversations she had with anyone else that have a specific, scientific content, let alone a content claiming to report her ideas.”
http://tinyurl.com/2dahyr
The trial came amid growing concern at the attitudes of some Asian men towards white girls which campaigners for women claim few people wish to address.
Parents have complained that in parts of the country with large Asian communities white girls as young as 12 are being targeted for sex by older Asian men yet the authorities are unwilling to act because of fears of being labelled racist.
Although campaigners claim that hundreds of young girls are already being passed around men within the Asian community for sex, she said that attempts to raise the problem with community leaders had met with little success, with most of them being in a state of denial about it.
>According to Rorty, “truth” has the same meaning in every culture : it expresses a sense of approbation and commendation..in other words, when, as members of a culture or ethnic group, we call something true, we simply make a compliment to one of our beliefs or convictions which we think so well justified that, for the moment, we don’t see any need for further justification. >
This Rorty-guy starts by confusing science with public relations and continues insightfully with noticing that was say that is true what we believe is true.
Dear God…where we went wrong ?…
why such a punishment ?… why such bufooneries are regarded as “great philosophy” entitled to receive monthly payments from the tax-payers funded academy ?
Anne wrote “Antifreudianism is a hobby, in many respects not different from anti-evolutionism”.
LOL.
Phew, I am glad it’s just a hobby and not a psychopathology or an example of *The Resistance* (otherwise known as the theory that the shrink is always right).
The moral police have taken over India,a country whose leaders and citizens often crow over the country’s liberal face.On the one front there is the rightwing Shiv Sena,on the other the Muslim fanatics.India has been reduced to a fanatics’ opera.It is surprising that fanatics are mollycoddled.The day is not far off when students in India will get to opt for a subject like Laws of Fundamentalism.If India is to survive as a vibrant nation ,it must learn to respect every shade of opinion.
This is a nation of monotheism, and this is the Islam that Allah wants to spread throughout the world, and to rule the land it its entirety. Allah wants this. He sent down the Koran and the hadith for that purpose….
….There are rules of shari’a in everything. We have counted almost 70 rules about how to urinate and defecate. In contrast, how do those beasts in the West answer the call of nature? They stand in front of other people, in toilets at airports and other public places. They do not care about covering their private parts. Even their underwear is colored and not white, so it can conceal all that filth. We are a nation that has long known the meaning of cleanliness, what to do when nature calls, and what the rules of hygiene are. The others, to this day, live like beasts.
[..]
anyone to teach them on racism, multiculturalism, sensitivity, tolerance, and the like ?
The commander of the Intelligence Police for Public Security Affairs in Gilan province in northern Iran, Yadollah Hosseini, has announced the arrest by security forces of 3,925 women in the province, under the country’s campaign to enforce the Islamic dress code.
He added that legal proceedings against 2,077 of them were underway, and that warnings had been issued to 25,214 women.
Your very negative coverage of Iran makes it increasingly imperative to state that an impartial observer must consider the hypothesis that the Israel Lobby has its tentacles in B & W.
Three of the five most recent posts on B&W are, without equivocation, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim. You count them. Any observer of the last several days could not miss the plentiful articles speifically knocking Iran.
>All five of the ajoining list of B&W >articles are unquestionably anti->Muslim.
And anti-Christian and anti-Judaiac and anti-Hindu (interstingly you don’t seem to notice, or be bothered, by that too).
Just read the archives and search for names as God, Yahweh, Hindutava, Allah, Dawkins, atheism, enlightenment, blasphemy, intelligent design, and the like.
Satan and his archangeles (the ‘jinnis’ in the islamic “pure monotheism”) have all clustered here at B&W.
“His exegeses are ingenious and original, and they all yield the same conclusion: religion is prohibition, culture is inhibition, authority is salvation, submission is wisdom, transgression is folly, and criticism of anything but the pretensions of critical reason is impiety.”
and “arbeit macht frei”.. Rieff forgot this one
What a useless life this Rieff-guy lived. There just wasn’t anything he didn’t get wrong.
The article by Jahanshah Rashidian is well written. I agree to most of it. Hijab is what I call a flag on a women that is not given equal rights. If you see women wearing a hija, it means she has given up her rights. The only way any society can go forward is by education, equal rights for both men and women and open mindedness. I have seen everywhere, when anyone loses an argument or cannot prove a point, they pull out a term like its haram. Hope people change and think about doing more good in the society than quarrelling over hijab on women. I believe in equal rights and I believe God being the most beneficient and most merciful gives an equal opportunity to everyone. Its up to women to tear of their hijab and get back their rights to equality.
“The Subconscious Mind”-article
Excellent article, albeit initially I thought that it was mere verbatim excerpts from Freud’s works as “Five lectures in psychoanalysis” or “The Unconscious”(1905/6).
to berrida
Vocabulary and style, not ideas and clear thinking, is their killing time game. Ennui.>
Well, maybe… However, I don’t know if this is the explanation for Deleuze & Guattari’s choice of language…
Anna writes:
>Excellent article, albeit initially I thought that it was mere verbatim excerpts from Freud’s works as “Five lectures in psychoanalysis” or “The Unconscious”(1905/6).< I know you didn’t mean your comment to be taken literally, so I won’t ask you to state precisely what passages you had in mind, but what exactly in the long article is Freudian as against ideas about unconscious processes which were quite commonplace in the late nineteenth century? The historian of psychology and psychiatry Mark D. Altschule reports Henry Maudsley’s writing in 1867 on the relations between unconscious mental phenomena and emotions, and stating specifically that ideas not consciously perceived can cause sensory and motor changes. Francis Galton wrote in 1879 of layers of mental strata that lie beyond consciousness and of unconscious phenomena that are activated by association. I can only see one item in the article that fits the bill – the report of the Northwestern University experiment. However, not only is the Freudian element merely an hypothesis to try to explain the results, one should ask if the study has been replicated by other researchers, an absolute prerequisite before experimental results are accepted. One would also like to know more about the methodological procedures and how experts in psychological studies assess them. Psychology is littered with studies having design faults that vitiate the conclusions, only apparent when the experimental procedures are subjected to close examination, as Fisher and Greenberg’s 1970s volumes have exemplified, and Eysenck and Wilson have demonstrated in their book *Experimental Studies of Freudian Theories*.
RE: “Veiling young girls must be banned!” article
I appreciate your concern for the development of these young girls, and while the wearing of a viel may seem rather trivial I understand from your comments that this leads to more and is part of a larger issue.
My concern is that your ideas in regards to child development are utopian at best. I do not think that it is reasonable to think that if we put out different ideas, like choices on a menu, that we can expect children to have the ability to make good choices in the pursuit of truth, and wellbeing. Children are limited by their lack of perspective, and a limited faculty for moral judgement and therefore they do require training and guidance. If I return to my menu analogy and took it one step further as presenting ideas like food items before a child I think we could all agree that the vast majority of children would go towards the desert section without nary a thought to their long term wellbeing or implications there choices may have down the road.
Thus to say that it is society’s responisibility to offer a free, open environment for our children to develop without restrictions or guidance would be a form of abuse as well.
The challenge lies in the fact that we must pursue truth, first I guess agree that there is truth out there, and then guide our children into that pursuit. I recognize that this opens many questions, and a broad range of issues which are not easy to say the least, but your position on child development is simply untenable.
to Anna:
I’ve been trying to find “The Subconscious Mind” article for a few days now. Could you please send me a link?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/health/psychology/31subl.html?ei=5090&en=62f9b092a91bc6dc&ex=1343534400&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1186313576-yK5aXY+kW0MdEdzBPIa37w
Who’s Minding the Mind?
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: July 31, 2007
>Henry Maudsley’s writing in 1867 on the relations between unconscious mental phenomena and emotions, and stating specifically that ideas not consciously perceived can cause sensory and motor changes. Francis Galton wrote in 1879 of layers of mental strata that lie beyond consciousness and of unconscious phenomena that are activated by association.>
Yes and there were few more others : Binet, Myers, Mason, Prince ..and let’s not forget the great loser in the battle for “immortality through getting a place in history” : Pierre Janet.
By late 1880s (thus 5-7 years before Freud&Breuer “Studies”) Janet had already wrote 2 thesis (for MD and PhD) on subconsciously motivated neurotic behavior (using hypnosis to reach the underlying problem).
This led in the late 1890 early 1900s to a bitter conflict between Janet and Freud over priority. Janet maintained that Freud had stolen his work and simply re-worded it, as for instance by Freud replacing Janet’s “dissociation” with “repression” and “moral cleansing” with “abreaktion”.
Whatever the truth Freud remains as the one who put together in a theory the dozens of elements on the unconscious that were ‘floating’ in the cultural milieu of the time and the one who has shown that they were logically connected by underlying key concepts.
One can compare Freud contribution to the subject of unconscious with Einstein TSR( 1905) work.
Not that the TSR phenomena and the TSR equations were unkonwn ( even today they are called “Lorentz-Fitzgerald equations” not “Einstein equations”) and substantial work on it had been done before Einstein by Michelson, Poincare, Lorentz or Langevin in late 1890s/1900.
But Einstein is great for having put all this known but puzzling mass of facts together in a theory, for having shown how all logically flow from few simple key assumptions.
(and the same can be said of all great discoverers, say Newton or Maxwell, if you start digging for the history of the ideas they “discovered”, nobody lives and works in cultural vaccum)
Anne compares Freud’s notions on the unconscious with Einstein’s special theory of relativity, and writes
> Whatever the truth Freud remains as the one who put together in a theory the dozens of elements on the unconscious that were ‘floating’ in the cultural milieu of the time and the one who has shown that they were logically connected by underlying key concepts.< This doesn’t hold water on more than one level. Whereas Einstein’s special theory of relativity is an integral part of modern physics, Freud’s theories are widely held in disrepute except in some fairly clearly defined areas. Among the latter are literary and humanities departments in the academy (which find in Freudian theories an almost inexhaustible supply of elastic notions to bring into their “discourse” on virtually any subject under the sun), journalists largely ignorant of the critical literature on Freud, and a sprinkling of eminent professors in the psychology or brain science fields who are still influenced by the traditional, but now mostly discredited, historical narratives about Freud, and again largely ignorant of the extensive critical and historical work on Freud of the last few decades. See the following for examples of the latter (featuring Howard Gardner and Eric Kandel respectively):
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=228
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=195
What Freud built around frequently dubious clinical claims were for the most part fantastical theories, made plausible by an exceptional literary talent which included a seemingly instinctive mastery of rhetoric. To a considerable degree he came up with the theory first, and then *interpreted* clinical material to provide ‘confirmations’, while persuasively purporting to have based the theory on clinical ‘discoveries’. As Frank Sulloway observes, “Time and time again, Freud saw in his patients what psychoanalytic theory led him to look for and then interpret the way he did; and when the theory changed, so did the clinical findings.”
Whereas Einstein’s special theory of relativity is a secure foundational element in modern physics, psychoanalysis originally developed on the basis of Freud’s theories has (from its early days) fractured into numerous competing psychoanalytic schools, many of which have disowned almost completely the theoretical framework of Freud’s to which Anne refers. So even in the field of psychoanalysis, major concepts that Freud regarded as essential to his theories have been explicitly or implicitly discarded by modern psychoanalytic schools.
Anne writes that Freud showed that contemporary notions in psychology were “logically connected by underlying key concepts”, presumably meaning by the latter concepts proposed by Freud. The British psychologist William McDougall subjected Freud’s theoretical edifice built on these “key concepts” to a close examination and found otherwise:
“Freud does not scruple to change his most fundamental propositions, and to pull them about in a way which, if they were the foundations of a logically constructed system, would bring the whole structure tumbling upon this mighty Samson and his devoted followers.”
And, again:
“The world of concepts in which Freud conducts his tours of discovery is so fluid and shifting that it lends itself to every manipulation. Every emotion, and every sentiment, is ambivalent, is both itself and its opposite, and can be transmuted into something radically different; every sign and symbol and symptom can be interpreted in opposite ways.”
References:
Crews, F. (1998). Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend.
McDougall, W. (1926). An Outline of Abnormal Psychology.
McDougall, W. (1936). Psychoanalysis and Social Psychology.
Paris, J. (2005). The Fall of An Icon: Psychoanalysis and Academic Psychiatry.
Sulloway, F. (1989): Freud: Biologist of the Mind.
i m muslim.
i have read this article.
i have not found any thing around me written in this article.
just auther dnt knw and he just has write things wht ever he found.
our women are more happy bz at least there have thier home and thier children respect them n love them n obey them. does ur women enjoy such rights.
not at all.
go n build up ur on society where children dnt knw who is thier father.
I think something that is being missed out of the commentary on the ‘Einstein’s Wife’ nonsense is the feminist angle. It is not an accident that this has happened, but is part of the feminist propaganda that feminist ideologists promote. They don’t actually care what the truth is, only to promote the interests of women, that is to say, only to engage in and promote sexist discrimination. This particular issue is important because of the iconographic significance on Einstein. ON the other hand, the lies they are telling here are fairly trivial compared to the lies they tell about men in general, their support of false accusations of rape, their success in skewing the law to discriminate against men, and so on.
>Freud’s theories are widely held in disrepute except in some fairly clearly defined areas. Among the latter are literary and humanities..>
The logic of your argument is that if there are idiots amongs those enthusiast about your ideas then you must be wrong.
Albeit a logical fallacy ultimately (and one more piece of witty antifreudian rhetoric to be served to the unwary) there is some half-truth
in it.
Some friends (as Lacan or Marcuse for instance)are such an intellectual embarassment that you don’t enemies.
And viceversa (when criticzed by eminent philosophers) the logic doesn’t change.
For instnace after I read Berkley’s “devastating” critique of Newton’s Principia Mathematica I “knew” that something was wrong with Newton’s ideas and by extension with the whole Physics.
“And what are these fluxions? The velocities of evanescent increments. And what are these same evanescent increments? They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them ghosts of departed quantities?”
G. Berkeley, The Analyst (1734)
Anne writes, quoting me first:
>> Freud’s theories are widely held in disrepute except in some fairly clearly defined areas. Among the latter are literary and humanities..<<
> logic of your argument is that if there are idiots amongs those enthusiast about your ideas then you must be wrong. Albeit a logical fallacy ultimately (and one more piece of witty antifreudian rhetoric to be served to the unwary)…< That is *not* the logic of my argument. By highlighting what is merely part of an adjunct to my actual argument, you have sidestepped the argument itself. Or to be more precise, by omitting the first part of the sentence that you have partially quoted you have omitted my argument. So here is the argument again (as a rebuttal of your comparison of Freud with Einstein in relation to the respective intellectual milieux in which they produced their theories): Whereas Einstein’s special theory of relativity is an integral part of modern physics, Freud’s theories are widely held in disrepute. All I was doing in the sentence from which you have highlighted one item was citing some notable exceptions to the widespread rejection of Freud’s theories. It is a complete misreading of that sentence to suppose that it constitutes an “argument”. This makes your entire answer a non sequitur.
>By highlighting what is merely part of an adjunct to my actual argument, you have sidestepped the argument itself.>
Not really. What I did was to answer your 2nd argument (the sneaky implication “the feeble minded believe is true thus it is wrong”) which you seem now to realize that it was rhetoric since you have cut it out and left only the 1st as “my argument”.
In general it is difficult to answer someone who piles up argument on argument as if in an attempt to leave no chance to answer. I had to separte your argumentation is its parts.
Now to your argument.
>..So here is the argument again.. Whereas Einstein’s special theory of relativity is an integral part of modern physics, Freud’s theories are widely held in disrepute>
What makes you so sure. Do you have statistics ?. Is it your “feeling” and “impression” ?
You may very well read only antifreudian literature and get a sort of cognitive illusion that everybody agrees with you.
Last time when I checked MedLine I got over 2000 citations for psychoanalysis in the last 10 years. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez
And this is the clinical stuff and leaves out anthropology, sociology, history. etc. (and literature, your half-point conceded)
Anna wrote — Last time when I checked MedLine I got over 2000 citations for psychoanalysis in the last 10 years. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez—
Firstly, 2000 citations in 10 years from a database that contains hundreds of thousands of indexed articles, is actually not very much.
Secondly, (assuming your simply searched the term ‘psychoanalysis’ without any further qualifiers) you will need to eliminate from you list of 2000 citations, all those items that are contained in ‘partisan’ journals, such as for example the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, (doh! of course it contains hundreds of citation on psychoanalysis). Quite why a medical/scientific database such as Medline should index psychoanalytic journals is beyond me. It may have something to do with the advanced persuasive power of many pseudoscience practitioners and charlatans (which no doubt psychoanalysts are). It is useful to remember that in the UK we have NHS funded homeopathic hospitals. That doesn’t make homeopathy worthy of clinical, scientific and professional respect.
Thirdly, once you have eliminated your ‘partisan’ items from your list of 2000, you still need to consider how many of the remaining articles published in non-psychoanalytic journals actually give any credit to the discipline and how many of them are a refutation of it.
Then you may have a slightly clearer picture of how much respect psychoanalysis enjoys in the medical/scientific community (which is very little, I can tell you now!)
Anne:
I’m not sure there’s much point in continuing the discussion, since you insist on reading into my responses things that are not there.
I answered your comparison of Freud’s theories with Einstein’s special relativity by pointing out the crucial difference. (What you call “the first argument” is in fact the *whole* of my reply to your Freud/Einstein analogy.) I then went on to critically discuss Freud’s supposed accomplishments. Why you think there was something “sneaky” about a straightforward commentary on Freud’s ideas, backed by other scholarly views, to illustrate the fact that his theories are largely in disrepute is beyond me. Likewise, the suggestion that I implied that those who believe in Freudian theories are “feeble minded” is a figment of your imagination.
>In general it is difficult to answer someone who piles up argument on argument as if in an attempt to leave no chance to answer.< As far as I’m aware, you are at liberty to reply at any reasonable length on this letters page. >I had to separte your argumentation is its parts.< As I’ve already pointed out, my “argumentation” does not require “separation” into parts. They were separate and distinct in the first place. >Now to your argument.
>..So here is the argument again.. Whereas Einstein’s special theory of relativity is an integral part of modern physics, Freud’s theories are widely held in disrepute>
>What makes you so sure. Do you have statistics ?. Is it your “feeling” and “impression” ?
>You may very well read only antifreudian literature and get a sort of cognitive illusion that everybody agrees with you.
Nowhere do I say anything like “everybody agrees with me”. However, one only needs a wide knowledge of the literature on Freud to be aware that there has been a considerable number of scholarly critical books on Freud in the last three decades. College history of psychology texts now reflect the fact that much of the Freudian edifice is widely regarded as untenable, or at the very least dubious, and that Freud’s clinical methodology is suspect. In the United States, university psychiatry departments used to be dominated by psychoanalysts; nowadays it is relatively rare to find the head of a psychiatric department who is a psychoanalyst. These are not “feelings” or “impressions” but hard facts.
As to your suggestion that I “may very well only read anti-Freudian literature”, you couldn’t be farther from the truth. I have, in fact, read an immense number of books and publications by Freud, by Freudians and by psychoanalysts of different persuasions, both before I wrote my own book on Freud, and during the fourteen years since then, when I have had published several articles in peer-reviewed history of psychology and psychiatry journals.
>Last time when I checked MedLine I got over 2000 citations for psychoanalysis in the last 10 years. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez
Peter has dealt with that point already. I’ll just add to his comments the relevant observation, already noted, made by McDougall in 1926: “The world of concepts in which Freud conducts his tours of discovery is so fluid and shifting that it lends itself to every manipulation.” This is why, as I have said, people in literary and humanities departments find in Freudian theories an almost inexhaustible supply of elastic notions to bring into their “discourse” on virtually any subject under the sun. When one adds to this that the psychoanalytic world, splintered into many different groups each claiming for itself the most cogent way of understanding the human psyche, is a veritable publishing industry by itself, it’s hardly surprising that a web search brings up masses of citations. However, as Peter observes, statistics of this kind have little bearing on the validity or cogency of the material in question.
Time to call it a day.
>I’ll just add to his comments the relevant observation, already noted, made by McDougall in 1926..>
Wow, but why “McDougall” and why 1926 ?
Because such obscurities fit your pre-judgements and add more material to (perhaps felt by you as otherwise too light) post ?
You could have qouted as well
significant psychologists. Historical figures that everybody knows and respects, as William James.
Great men at the apex of their power are grand figures. We could have enjoyed the momentousness of William James and Sigmund Freud (ages 67 and 53) meeting at Clark University in 1909. We could have felt again the thrill of academic philosophy acknowledging the new master when James put his arm around Freud’s shoulder and said prophetically : “The future of psychology belongs to your work.”
Anne,
But why did you reply to AE last message and focussed on his quotation from McDougall, presumably to highlight the fact that the critics of psychothanalysis are highly selective in the choice of material?
Why did you not reply to my previous message on reserch methods and the number of citation on psychoanalysis to be found on this or that database? Are you perhaps still waiting for some feedback?
See, how easy it is to play that game?
Anyway this is my last message to you. I find your borrowed arguments and your ‘copy and paste’ messages (copied and pasted from other boards that is…) disjointed and not particularly interesting.
Allen is right. There really isn’t much point in debating with you. Sorry for the ad hominem…
Anne writes:
>You could have quoted as well significant psychologists. Historical figures that everybody knows and respects, as William James… We could have enjoyed the momentousness of William James and Sigmund Freud (ages 67 and 53) meeting at Clark University in 1909. We could have felt again the thrill of academic philosophy acknowledging the new master when James put his arm around Freud’s shoulder and said prophetically: “The future of psychology belongs to your work.”< Just to set the record straight, it was not Freud whom William James put his arm round, but Ernest Jones, as Jones records in his biography of Freud. More significant than this little scenario as reported by Jones is what James wrote to a colleague at that time: “Freud made on me personally the impression of a man obsessed with fixed ideas. I can make nothing in my own case with his dream theories, and obviously ‘symbolism’ is a most dangerous method.” Not quite the fulsome endorsement that Anne’s comment would indicate. > why “McDougall” and why 1926 ?
>Because such obscurities fit your pre-judgements and add more material to (perhaps felt by you as otherwise too light) post?
Anne may think that McDougall’s work is obscure, but in fact he was one of the most eminent psychologists of his day, and in 1920 he moved from Oxford University to take up the William James Chair of Psychology at Harvard University.
Why McDougall? Because he wrote extensively on Freud, and examined his writings in meticulous detail. Why 1926? Because I had already cited his 1926 book in a previous posting, and providing the date enabled anyone who so wishes to look up the book in which the comment can be found, and the basis on which he made it. Why use McDougall’s words? Because he lays bare that particular weakness of Freud’s expositions so beautifully, and better than any words I would have used to say essentially the same thing.
>More significant than this little scenario as reported by Jones..>
It isn’t more “significant” but it is very telling for your kind of Freudian studies, that is quoting only what fits you wished conclusion and ignoring the contrary evidence.
I could have given you few thousands of quotes praising Freud from the intellectuals of 20th century.
To prove what ?
>Why did you not reply to my previous message on reserch methods and the number of citation on psychoanalysis to be found on this or that database? >
Didn’t feel like doing it perhaps, but if you insist.
> Firstly, 2000 citations in 10 years from a database that contains hundreds of thousands of indexed articles, is actually not very much.>
It is an “all medicine” database, you won’t find psychoanalytical viewpoints debated by gastroenterologists.
> I will need to eliminate from you list of 2000 citations, all those items that are contained in ‘partisan’ journals>
I remember now why I didn’t reply.
You will be able to prove that even Darwin isn’t popular nowdays except in journals by partisan evolutionists, who should be eliminated.
>..which is very little, I can tell you now!>
and I believe you, I have yet to meet a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist who is not informed on psychodynamics and defense mechanisms, a textbook of psychiatry whose categories are not explicitly or implicitly shaped by freudian ideas, or to read a college textbook on personalities theories that doesn’t start with Freud and his influence and contribution on all who/what followed.
Antifreudianism is a hobby, in many respects not different from anti-evolutionism.
Anne provides a hearsay favourable comment reportedly made by William James as recounted by one of Freud’s followers. In response I quoted a documented statement in which James expresses strong doubts about the theories that Freud himself described as “the securest foundation of psychoanalysis”, and Anne charges me with quoting only my wished conclusion and ignoring contrary evidence!
Far from ignoring contrary evidence, I have spent a considerable amount of time examining the evidence adduced by Freud, and explained why I found it wanting in my book *Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud* (Open Court, 1993).
I ask only one thing from Anne. She has suggested (erroneously) that I “may very well read only anti-Freudian literature”. I have responded to this suggestion with information about my what I have read (a considerable amount of Freud’s output, for starters). So Anne, in return (and no ifs or buts or evasions), tell us which serious works of scholarship critical of Freud you have read. Please state, say, two or three book titles, so that we know that you really have seriously considered scholarly criticism of Freud’s writings.
Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn’t know he was a novelist either.
John Irving on Sigmund Fraud
To All Albert fans:
Papers presented in 1905 had a strong fundamental aproach and serious mental tonality,which was Milevas caracteristic.Alberts early presenting style was loose,and later presentations did not have any substance at all and were based on old “money”.Why it is so dificoult to understand that Mileva was an enormous influence on Albert in life and in work.Alberts admiration,respect and devotion for Mileva made him disobey the old Jewish rules.He did wed Mileva.When the prases start comming in and Albert became The King of the Hill,he needed a change of image,and Mileva did not fit in.He did a decent thing,by the way, and actualy gave the proceeds of Nobel Prize money to Mileva.
Why are the Einstein private papers only available to Albert fans? Cearfully selected guardians of Einstein Myth/Legend .To deny any involvement of Mileva in Alberts profesional life and life in general is quite frankly Pathetic and totaly Paranoid.
Fact is: She was a senior Scientist and slightly older wife of a “legend” who did not have time for his children.
Sincerely
Alex
Alex writes:
>Why are the Einstein private papers only available to Albert fans?< This is untrue. Here is a statement in an email (4 March 2007) from Barbara Wolff, archivist at the Albert Einstein Archives, Jewish National & University Library, Jerusalem, in relation to the release of letters in July 2006 embargoed by Einstein’s stepdaughter Margot until 20 years after her death on July 8th 1986: “There is nothing we are withholding from the public any more. Every researcher (without distinction, we don’t control his research) has access to all papers, notes, drafts, notebooks, diaries etc. in our possession… So there is no more one single paper, ‘archive notes or scientific enquiry’ which could be considered ‘withheld’.” Alex writes:
>Papers presented in 1905 had a strong fundamental approach and serious mental tonality, whch was Milevas caracteristic. Alberts early presenting style was loose, and later presentations did not have any substance at all and were based on old “money”.< 1. Perhaps Alex would like to cite *documented* evidence of Mileva’s characteristic fundamental approach and serious mental tone. 2. Post-1905, Einstein continued to make major contributions in important areas of physics for more than 20 years, e.g., to quantum theory, statistical physics, and producing the general theory of relativity, widely regarded as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. Re his marrying Maric, Einstein had no problem in “disobeying” the old Jewish rules as he was raised in a totally secular family and never had any adherence to these “rules” in the first place. Alex writes:
> Fact is: She was a senior Scientist and slightly older wife of a “legend” who did not have time for his children.< Maric twice failed the Zurich Polytechnic exams for a diploma to teach physics and mathematics in secondary schools. Furthermore, in the words of John Stachel, founding editor of the Albert Einstein Collected Papers: “In her case, we have *no* published papers; *no* letters with a serious scientific content, either to Einstein nor to anyone else; nor any other *objective* evidence of her supposed creative talents. We do not even have hearsay accounts of conversations she had with anyone else that have a specific, scientific content, let alone a content claiming to report her ideas.” http://tinyurl.com/2dahyr
sex slavery in UK
The trial came amid growing concern at the attitudes of some Asian men towards white girls which campaigners for women claim few people wish to address.
Parents have complained that in parts of the country with large Asian communities white girls as young as 12 are being targeted for sex by older Asian men yet the authorities are unwilling to act because of fears of being labelled racist.
Although campaigners claim that hundreds of young girls are already being passed around men within the Asian community for sex, she said that attempts to raise the problem with community leaders had met with little success, with most of them being in a state of denial about it.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2237940.ece
Rorty…http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-08-07-salamon-en.html
>According to Rorty, “truth” has the same meaning in every culture : it expresses a sense of approbation and commendation..in other words, when, as members of a culture or ethnic group, we call something true, we simply make a compliment to one of our beliefs or convictions which we think so well justified that, for the moment, we don’t see any need for further justification. >
This Rorty-guy starts by confusing science with public relations and continues insightfully with noticing that was say that is true what we believe is true.
Dear God…where we went wrong ?…
why such a punishment ?… why such bufooneries are regarded as “great philosophy” entitled to receive monthly payments from the tax-payers funded academy ?
Anne wrote “Antifreudianism is a hobby, in many respects not different from anti-evolutionism”.
LOL.
Phew, I am glad it’s just a hobby and not a psychopathology or an example of *The Resistance* (otherwise known as the theory that the shrink is always right).
The moral police have taken over India,a country whose leaders and citizens often crow over the country’s liberal face.On the one front there is the rightwing Shiv Sena,on the other the Muslim fanatics.India has been reduced to a fanatics’ opera.It is surprising that fanatics are mollycoddled.The day is not far off when students in India will get to opt for a subject like Laws of Fundamentalism.If India is to survive as a vibrant nation ,it must learn to respect every shade of opinion.
Humanity in the view of Islam
Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid, which aired on Iqra TV on July 26, 2007:
online at MEMRITV
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1520.htm
This is a nation of monotheism, and this is the Islam that Allah wants to spread throughout the world, and to rule the land it its entirety. Allah wants this. He sent down the Koran and the hadith for that purpose….
….There are rules of shari’a in everything. We have counted almost 70 rules about how to urinate and defecate. In contrast, how do those beasts in the West answer the call of nature? They stand in front of other people, in toilets at airports and other public places. They do not care about covering their private parts. Even their underwear is colored and not white, so it can conceal all that filth. We are a nation that has long known the meaning of cleanliness, what to do when nature calls, and what the rules of hygiene are. The others, to this day, live like beasts.
[..]
anyone to teach them on racism, multiculturalism, sensitivity, tolerance, and the like ?
the too many whores of Persia
Sharia alert from Iran, via MEMRI
The commander of the Intelligence Police for Public Security Affairs in Gilan province in northern Iran, Yadollah Hosseini, has announced the arrest by security forces of 3,925 women in the province, under the country’s campaign to enforce the Islamic dress code.
He added that legal proceedings against 2,077 of them were underway, and that warnings had been issued to 25,214 women.
Source: Baztab, Iran, August 15, 2007
>Israel Lobby has its tentacles
>in B & W.
Paranoia (conspiracy theories) is a main, a characterial, evading strategy of the islamic culture. An in built safety device.
No change, no critical self examination and progress will ever be made there until it is somehow dropped.
Your very negative coverage of Iran makes it increasingly imperative to state that an impartial observer must consider the hypothesis that the Israel Lobby has its tentacles in B & W.
Three of the five most recent posts on B&W are, without equivocation, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim. You count them. Any observer of the last several days could not miss the plentiful articles speifically knocking Iran.
All five of the ajoining list of B&W articles are unquestionably anti-Muslim. Take a look.
>All five of the ajoining list of B&W >articles are unquestionably anti->Muslim.
And anti-Christian and anti-Judaiac and anti-Hindu (interstingly you don’t seem to notice, or be bothered, by that too).
Just read the archives and search for names as God, Yahweh, Hindutava, Allah, Dawkins, atheism, enlightenment, blasphemy, intelligent design, and the like.
Satan and his archangeles (the ‘jinnis’ in the islamic “pure monotheism”) have all clustered here at B&W.
Ah, mes anges!
So THIS is where you all are!!!
Ah, mes anges!
So THIS is where you all are!!!
Philip Rieff’s problem with freedom.
(i.e. the joys of submission, bondage and masochism)
http://bostonreview.net/BR32.4/article_scialabba.php
“His exegeses are ingenious and original, and they all yield the same conclusion: religion is prohibition, culture is inhibition, authority is salvation, submission is wisdom, transgression is folly, and criticism of anything but the pretensions of critical reason is impiety.”
and “arbeit macht frei”.. Rieff forgot this one
What a useless life this Rieff-guy lived. There just wasn’t anything he didn’t get wrong.
The article by Jahanshah Rashidian is well written. I agree to most of it. Hijab is what I call a flag on a women that is not given equal rights. If you see women wearing a hija, it means she has given up her rights. The only way any society can go forward is by education, equal rights for both men and women and open mindedness. I have seen everywhere, when anyone loses an argument or cannot prove a point, they pull out a term like its haram. Hope people change and think about doing more good in the society than quarrelling over hijab on women. I believe in equal rights and I believe God being the most beneficient and most merciful gives an equal opportunity to everyone. Its up to women to tear of their hijab and get back their rights to equality.