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Comment by qarl | Hacker News Reader

> I don't know how familiar you are with Freud, but it's not something that can be made piecemeal.

Hm. That seems unlikely.

Care to elaborate? A four-word rebuttal to a well-written, fairly detailed response doesn't really make your case for you.

Well - for one - I don't see at all how the well-written, fairly detailed response supports that initial claim.

I feel like my four-word rebuttal has as much support as did his initial statement.

>I feel like my four-word rebuttal has as much support as did his initial statement.

You know what they say: "facts don't care about your feelings."

I'd love to hear you explain how your essay supports the statement that Freud's ideas "not something that can be made piecemeal."

As a single example, I'm pretty happy with his concept of psychological projection, despite the fact that I'm pretty critical of his ideas on cocaine. How does your essay show my position here is untenable?

I mean I can see where you're coming from, even if it's a bad example (derivatives of cocaine are extremely common today in medicine--procaine, lidocaine, etc.--but Freud worked with what he had at the time). Though its true that the entire psychological apparatus stands behind everything anyone ever says, writes, signs, for Freud, so it's impossible to read one part separated from any other, or to value one part more than another absolutely, instead of seeing it instead in a complex network of interwoven--as the French say--signifiers.

What your valuation (of projection over the use of cocaine in medical treatment) describes has more to do with the social and psychological economy from which you have received Freud as a body of texts and paratexts, than anything about Freud as a total system. What I've argued prior is that on account of the way Freud constructs psychoanalysis, and sets psychoanalysis as the means by which one can track their own place in discourse, means that everything is mediated psychologically, and therefore everything written by an author must be connected for that author. To take Freud, then, not as Freud as such, but as Freud as a body of disconnected texts, would be a disingenuous reading: still, possible, but not at that point Freudian. At that point, you'd be developing your own theory with reference to Freud.

I'd still love hear you explain how your essay supports the statement that Freud's ideas "not something that can be made piecemeal."

This new essay seems to be completely unrelated to the original essay.

Aren’t you at least a little curious to read the comment you replied to?

I would really appreciate a clear, concise, direct answer to my question.

I don't think I'm asking too much.

It sounds like you did the first part of reading, looking at words, and not the second, thinking about them.

And from my perspective, the whole thing sounds very much like a weird religion.

So I guess we should just agree to disagree.

Freud’s thinking was dynamic and dialectical. I think you’re acknowledging that when you say he has to be taken as a whole. There are parts of that whole that are inconsistent, parts that were added and removed, a ship of Theseus grand theory of personality. His seduction theory is a good example of the dialectical aspect of his theorizing, but there are many others. So I agree, it is the process that describes the Freudian “analytic” approach, moreso than a specific construct or summation of his theory (theories?) as it (they) existed at any particular point during or after his lifetime.

I guess this is really four words:

tl;dr

when it comes to Freud, I tend to keep it to four letters.

In that case, here are two words for you: "shallow dismissal." More to the point, there's no "there" there in your comment. And, it's against the guidelines (which we all know are really "rules" here, and not actual guidelines, but that's a different post):

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

I don't know about anyone else, but your four words taught me nothing about the subject matter.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You're absolutely right. I'm somewhat new here, despite having an old account. I will try harder to follow the guidelines.

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