tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post3458467292459168207..comments2024-03-29T03:04:00.853-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: Schnitzler's substitute for the talking cure - He felt as if nothing bad could happen to him nowAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-26378473529605937202012-11-15T12:42:08.539-06:002012-11-15T12:42:08.539-06:00The reader of Schnitzler takes on the "listen...The reader of Schnitzler takes on the "listening" role.<br /><br />Except for the immense difference that in Schnitzler there is no original, hidden or suppressed. A huge difference between Schnitzler and Freud. Schnitzler's traumas take place here and now, not in childhood. In this way Schnitzler's "system," such as it is, is much simpler than Freud's.<br /><br />To what extent Schnitzler was also more of a child of the Enlightenment - good question! I think your description of Freud probably works pretty well for Schnitzler, too, given that we do not demand methodological soundness from fiction.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-45452634983559392362012-11-15T11:20:08.219-06:002012-11-15T11:20:08.219-06:00A brief note on Freud (who is good - the case stud...A brief note on Freud (who is good - the case studies in particular are fab, although literary criticism was not his forte). One of the main Freudian ideas is Nachtraglichkeit - or the fact that we become scared in anticipation of traumas which have actually happened in the past. The mind, outraged that it has allowed trauma to happen, becomes extra vigilant, on the offchance that it can prevent whatever it was from happening again. So the idea of the talking cure is to trace symptoms back to original causes. Hysteria, the first illness to be 'treated' by the talking cure was a way of encouraging patients to express what was on their minds, rather than have it expressed psychosomatically by the body. But funnily enough, it could more accurately be described as a listening cure, as Freud would listen to what was odd, inexplicable, irrational, etc, in the patient's story, as a way to find clues to the original trauma.<br /><br />In any case, Freud was an Enlightenment sort of thinker - we might not be acceptable to ourselves, but we are intelligible. We are a problem that can be solved. And he believed problems to be resolvable through creating a neat and tidy narrative of events that was satisfactorily explanatory.<br /><br />Now we live in a post-Enlightenment phase in psychotherapy, which is to say that therapists believe that there will always be gaps and lacunae in people; we can't be solved, tidied up or fixed. Mostly, it's about coming to terms with who we are and accepting it. <br /><br />For guilt, you really need Melanie Klein. But another day, another therapist. Just thought you might like a few extra thoughts about Freud.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com