din, thank you for marvelous feedback, despite the absence of a more
punitive tone. As is clear, I lack the background in 19C pre-Freudian
medicine/psychology in which I might see origins of much of how sexuality
is framed; I only know what Foucault and Freud have told me about
Kraft-Ebbing, etc. (Does anyone know a good place to start in what seems a
hilarious morass of weird science?)
You've hit on something I'm struggling with: I am not claiming that these
discursive practices Foucault identified,"perverse implantation" and
"postulate of general and diffuse causality," have *origins* in
psychoanalysis. That would be a more severe misreading of Foucault than
mine. Foucault writes of the "reproach of pansexualism that was once aimed
at Freud and psychoanalysis" that "what they had attributed solely to the
genius of Freud had already gone through a long stage of preparation; they
had gotten their dates wrong as to the establishment, in our society, of a
general deployment of sexuality" (History I, 158-159). However, I am
assuming for the time being that psychoanalysis, or at least vulgarized
psychoanalysis, retained those discursive practices (perhaps in a changed
way). Obviously but interestingly, vulgarized psychoanalysis (e.g.,
psychoanalysis in popular discourse) is often quite off the mark compared
to its "originals"; in his writing Freud cast less pathology on
homosexuality than the psychoanalytic discourses that followed.
Incidentally, one much more specifically psychoanalytic discourse that is
fascinating to trace in the Cunanan case is that of narcissism, which Freud
associated with homosexuality in complicated ways. Reading the coverage of
the case against Freud's "On Narcissism" has been enormously productive.
It is as if the journalists had forgotten to cite that essay in their
stories.
-m.
punitive tone. As is clear, I lack the background in 19C pre-Freudian
medicine/psychology in which I might see origins of much of how sexuality
is framed; I only know what Foucault and Freud have told me about
Kraft-Ebbing, etc. (Does anyone know a good place to start in what seems a
hilarious morass of weird science?)
You've hit on something I'm struggling with: I am not claiming that these
discursive practices Foucault identified,"perverse implantation" and
"postulate of general and diffuse causality," have *origins* in
psychoanalysis. That would be a more severe misreading of Foucault than
mine. Foucault writes of the "reproach of pansexualism that was once aimed
at Freud and psychoanalysis" that "what they had attributed solely to the
genius of Freud had already gone through a long stage of preparation; they
had gotten their dates wrong as to the establishment, in our society, of a
general deployment of sexuality" (History I, 158-159). However, I am
assuming for the time being that psychoanalysis, or at least vulgarized
psychoanalysis, retained those discursive practices (perhaps in a changed
way). Obviously but interestingly, vulgarized psychoanalysis (e.g.,
psychoanalysis in popular discourse) is often quite off the mark compared
to its "originals"; in his writing Freud cast less pathology on
homosexuality than the psychoanalytic discourses that followed.
Incidentally, one much more specifically psychoanalytic discourse that is
fascinating to trace in the Cunanan case is that of narcissism, which Freud
associated with homosexuality in complicated ways. Reading the coverage of
the case against Freud's "On Narcissism" has been enormously productive.
It is as if the journalists had forgotten to cite that essay in their
stories.
-m.