I suppose. It's not that I dislike Freud, I've had to read him before, it's just that when I'm reading him I'm very consciously aware that his theories (beside the very basic, overview stuff) are now rejected by contemporary psychology. Yet Humanities departments still use him and read him in literary criticism and analysis - why? I don't know, it seems to me utterly ridiculous.
I'll be honest, I don't know hardly anything of Freudian theories, but the few I've interacted with (likely the overview stuff you mentioned), while originally wrong within the sexual instinct conclusion, were repurposed and were quite interesting. I get your frustration, though.
They are interesting, and often serve to unlock very interesting character motivations when it isn't so obvious. It's well worth using psychological approaches to character motivations, especially when character's desires drive the plot. I suppose Freud is used because he's so easy to apply to literature, and because actually he can be quite pleasurable to read. He has this good, clean prose style. But ... yeah, by now the question of relevance is one I can't help but make, and a friend of mine who is a TA at my old university as assured me I'm not the only one who thinks this. (Freudian theory, read on only if you are interested) With Freud, most of the sexual stuff has to be understood three aspects of personality: the id (your barbarian nature, only wanting to eat and have sex), your ego (you, your consciousness), and the super ego (your repression instinct). Only the 'ego' is conscious, and aside from all these, floating over everything, is the Death Drive, the desire to return to death - but returning to death on your own terms. This last bit I'm less clear on I must admit, and also the drives for both sex and death is a problem Freud admitted and never could properly solve. There is also the childhood development stuff in Freud that isn't honestly all that complicated, you can learn about it very quickly. The Oedipus complex is the most famous thing in Freud, and the female opposite, the Electra complex, is just as easy to grasp, if very bad and lacking. Freud was not a good psychologist of women. The Oedipus complex, though, shouldn't really be applied to literature, other than maybe a character like Norman Bates, or Orestes or something. Basically applying to Literature, we can take all narratives as being really no different from a 'dream work', as being symbolic of progressions toward death with the Death Drive, but cannot be completed until the plot has been resolved.
I've rented Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation by Bill Nye, and now have a hankering to read the copy of Beowulf. I've got the Seamus Heaney translation of the book.
Enjoy it! Heaney is a wonderful poet. His way with words is wonderful, and he captures the feel of the poetry of the North Atlantic perfectly.
I will enjoy it immensely. I've got a copy where the original text is on one side, and the translation is on the other. Um, I suddenly feel the need to say, with regards to the Bill Nye, book, that I do believe in Evolution, I got it because it looked interesting and, well, because Bill Nye, people!!
Dying of the Light - last of the Skulduggery Pleasant Series Might re-read the Chaos Walking series, loved those books.
Dan Simmons' Hyperion. I'm getting Canterbury Tales vibes from it, but it seems quite interesting (I'm like 30 pages in), especially the world. I've heard a lot of good things about it, so I hope I'm in for an entertaining ride.
Civilization and its Discontents by Sigmund Freud. I actually love this book! I think it is one of the best exposes of the heart of human society that I personally have ever came across, and it also helps that it's very pleasurable to read. James Strachey, the translator of my edition, is obviously a man who had a good ear for language, and Freud seemed to be the same. It's really wonderful.
Many MANY books/articles on formatting a novel for Kindle ...from iPages. NONE are complete or totally up-to-date. Frustrating....
I'm actually reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for the first time, believe it or not. Couldn't read them as a kid because my mom thought it was demonic, when in fact it is fanctastic! In just the first 30 pages I'm already completely enthralled with this kid's world and all that inhabits it. The Dursleys are unforgettably insidious, and every moment is packed with perfect tension that drives me through the book.
Just finished Disgrace by J.M Coetzee. It was about half way through before I realized I'd seen the movie adaptation some years ago. Really good writing.
I have read so much about the American poet John Ashbery and decided to go to the library and get something of his to read. I found Notes from the Air, and I have to say that I am hugely disappointed. It is absolute gibberish, non-nonsensical garbage. I read some "how-to's" in regards to reading his works (that should say enough); however I have studied Sociology and get the concept of Ethnomethodology and that does not at all defend his works or integrity, despite the bouquet of lovely awards and honours...
I have Palahniuk's Diary on my nightstand. That'll probably be what I start next. Currently still reading Infinite Jest, a horror novel by British writer James Herbert, Daughter of Hounds, by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Widdershins, by Charles de Lint, Portrait of the Artist, by Joyce, and going to start The Fifth Queen, by Ford Madox Ford.
Stunning book. One of my favourite ever. The sequel even manages to live up to the original, which helps. Endymion and The Rise of Endymion slightly less good, but still brilliant. I'm reading some Simmons myself at the moment: Ilium. I'm no scholar of the Iliad, on which it's based, but it feels like I don't need to be. I have Olympos on standby for when I polish Ilium off.
From a historical perspective Freud was interesting, but from a scientific perspective most of his stuff is garbage. He maintained cocaine was beneficial, probably because he used it. Not that that's a bad thing, I was reading some book about medical advances during the time, a lot of people were addicted to cocaine or morphine partly because they would use one to try to get a person off the other. One of the founding doctors at Johns Hopkins, William Halsted, was addicted to cocaine and morphine but he still managed to introduce a number of important advances to medicine. I guess I don't know why Freud annoys me, but he does. Well, I guess its because he could come up with so much incorrect crap and still be a household name one hundred years later.
Ran into my neighbor at the library just this evening and he recommended Mr Mercedes as we compared audio books we liked. Well I tried a sample, gave them all up. I couldn't get through Pynchon's Bleeding Edge. The reader was just too absolutely atrocious. After looking at a few pages of Gravity's Rainbow which I plan to read in the distant future, it was clear why pairing a semi-literate reader with a Pynchon book was a big mistake. I checked out The Crying Lot of 49 to get started with Pynchon. In the meantime I took the last Nora Roberts book back without getting past the second CD. The author is absolutely atrocious. OK, so Northern Lights wasn't bad. But the three I tried this week were all horrid. Two were in her JD Robb pen name. They could have been written by a third grader. The last was Blue Smoke. I cannot believe that book has decent Amazon ratings. Gag. Then I tried an Ann McCaffery book. My brother raves about her dragon stories. But both books I picked out were in the middle of her series so I took them back and got Freedom's Landing, book one in the Freedom series. I'll give it another try but it's not promising. I'll see how it goes before getting the first Dragon series book. And I got Anathem, by a Seattle author, Neal Stevenson on the recommendation of my neighbor.
