Re: sighunctific rigger
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Sat, 04 Apr 1998 11:41:32 -0500
Scottie said:
> I suspect,Tim, you're no great believer in the talking cure, but, come on
>now, admit it.
> Doesn't that feel a whole lot better ?
Now, now, Scottie. I never know whether you're serious, and as such will
gather that you're teasing. I'd like to think you are. (There's no reason
for any other motivation, eh?)
Actually, it's not true that I have no belief in talking cures -- to me,
"cures" are a matter of choosing one's poison. There are treatments that
have reproducible results (e.g., biochemical) and others that have as a
result ... whatever happens.
The Catholic church and its splinters have retail outlets all over, and so
do the Freudians and their many breakaway groups. I have occasionally been
relieved by talking to a trustworthy doctor. But I've had nearly as much
relief talking to sensible friends; at least friends allow and encourage
you to fall into belly laughs. Try that on an orthodox analyst's couch!
That's slightly unfair; one orthodox fellow I have visited was dour and
tolerated nothing smile-worthy, but I've had reports that other patients of
other orthodox doctors have had similar experiences.
In New York, my two dachshunds could hang out a sign and call themselves
therapists. For all the overregulation we have here, that's one area NOT
regulated, the area of "therapy." And these people, too, seem averse to a
good burst of humor, or of anything that strays from some orbit only they
appear to see.
If you mean that I think there's no intrinsic merit to dredging up memories
of how one learned to pick one's nose, then, you're right, I don't see the
point. If on the other hand talk therapy helps you discover bad patterns
in yourself and your family, so that you can avoid them, why not?
And if it helps you, so: talk.
GETTING BACK TO SALINGER.... I have often wondered (as so many of us have)
what ear was at the other end of Holden's monologue. Sometimes I imagine a
befuddled Viennese fellow with beard and spectacles (the perverse part of
me likes to imagine this, someone like Muriel's mother's analyst as I
imagine that man), and sometimes I have imagined (nobody throw anything at
me) it's Seymour, or even Buddy. Forget timing and dates of stories and
when Seymour is dead; I'm talking pure imagination. If Holden is talking
to someone in his picture frame, someone invisible to us, this is who I
wonder about, and Seymour has occurred to me.
> Still, I guess feeling better doesn't really count. Not until it's been
>defined & allotted an
> agreed & graded index. I can almost hear the firm smack of scientific
>rigour as your
> chum's fist drives home into that big palm.
There are times -- very few -- that I believe this arena isn't worth the
effort or even the small amount of care it requires to participate. I
don't really know where this is coming from. Is a scientific method so
objectionable to you??!?
> As Wystan might have said:
> Yesterday dopamine & serotonin & 2.beta-isoscrofulanase.
> But today.... the struggle.
Do you mean tilting between physical treatment and overlooking the abyss,
which is there no matter what the treatment? I believe in the abyss. I've
seen it too many times. You, Scottie, too -- I'll bet you've looked at it
too. As a friend of mine who used to do performance routines once used the
line: "I have looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me -- and
neither of us liked what we saw."
> Incidentally, you don't want to worry too much about the monoamine
> oxidase inhibitors. My patients tell me they never noticed any
> significant lifting of mood until they'd supplemented the damned
> things with a good square meal of camembert & chianti.
>
> But I must collect myself. There's a place & time for levity &
> this isn't it. Back to JDS & the identification of receptors.
(It's not really as funny as you imagine. But let your imagination run
with you on this, though where it runs, I'm not entirely sure. Like
certain belly-laughing religious celebrities of centuries past, I try to
latch onto and embrace anything that will make me physically, shakingly
howl, even if it starts out sounding like some kind of sniping, which in
this context here, I'm sure, is purely my imagination.)
We started out talking about treatment and medicine and what some doctors
think, and we touched on what some of our subscribers (who mercifully have
declined to speak) feel about treatment. I like to think this is a subject
that has strangled on its own vomit. If it's not, it surely will.
Has anyone else a comment to make on it? Or are Scottie and I the only
ones who have run into the brick walls of getting the brain to do what
people think it's supposed to do? I ask this with genuine curiosity. I
can never get enough of honest reactions.
... Though I know that many of us who appreciate the later Salinger work
like to sneer at what "they" did to Seymour (c.f. F&Z).
Cheers!
--tim