Rob Weatherill - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Rob Weatherill
Routledge eBooks, Aug 5, 2022
Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 1978
The eReview provides analysis on public policy relating to Canadian families and marriage. Below ... more The eReview provides analysis on public policy relating to Canadian families and marriage. Below please find an analysis of the importance of fathers to child development.
"Let's get a few things straight," says a middle-aged man at the beginning of yet a... more "Let's get a few things straight," says a middle-aged man at the beginning of yet another fraught session, "I want you to accept that I am a married man; I am heterosexual and happy to be so; I love my wife and my children; I am good at my work. So can we return to what I sought these sessions for in the first place, namely my chronic anxiety? This is what I need to put right and I need your help." Of course, this demand for the analyst to get a few things clear—"straight"—is precisely the issue: the analyst simply repeats the guiding principle about free association.
The third book in the new 'Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis' series. This book will be of ... more The third book in the new 'Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis' series. This book will be of interest to all those students and professionals alike who might have come to question consoling notions of therapy as leaving something important and central to Freud's thinking, his often neglected second reference point, the death drive.
The response was published here: http://tinyurl.com/6a8a7tk (criticalpsychoanalysis.com). None of... more The response was published here: http://tinyurl.com/6a8a7tk (criticalpsychoanalysis.com). None of this work could have happened without the support and informed discussion of my psychoanalytic colleagues in Ireland and Britain to whom I am most grateful. Rob Weatherill, Dublin, Spring 2010. tioning? Surely, comes the reply, communication is crucial for the smooth operation and the self-ordering of systems. Surely, it is more important than ever to speak. However, the speaking that is required amounts to the transmitting of information, approximating to digital communication, through operational channels and protocols, analogous to cell and tissue signalling systems. Speaking with precision; nothing else will do. Forgetting Freud? molecules cool down. The digital revolution is creating this cooling effect-isolating, automating, marginalising, bit by bit the human qua human. Eventually, perhaps, the whole thing will proceed without us, when awesome processing power, akin perhaps to nuclear energy, finally overpowers. 4 The claim by some opponents of contemporary psychoanalysis that it is unethical, that it turns the moral universe on its head, might be conceded to some degree in what follows. However, it is no weltanschauung; it is not prescriptive, not a religion or an ideology. Freud says at the end of the New Introductory Lectures, "Psychoanalysis is, in my opinion, incapable of creating a weltanschauung of its own", and he goes on to warn, "[a]ny of our fellow-men who is dissatisfied with this state of things, who calls for more than this for his momentary consolation, may look for it where he can find it... we cannot help him". 5 Bion referred to psychoanalysis as a probe, no world-view, no consolation, no safety within a religion, none of the "momism" of popular therapy. Beyond religion, beyond psychoanalysis, the ethical tears through all stabilising notions revealing the depth of our problem-the extent of contemporary freedom and indifference. Freud was increasingly realistic; not peace and harmony-we should prepare for war! 6 In relation to the death drive, an ethical call if ever there was one, Freud states at the end of Chapter VI of Civilisation and its Discontents: "In all that follows I adopt the standpoint, therefore, that the inclination to aggression is an original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man... that constitutes the greatest impediment to civilisation". As civilisation is precariously held together by the other great instinctual pole, Eros, Freud concludes that it is, "this battle of the giants that our nurse-maids try to appease with their lullaby about Heaven". 7 Here Freud names the ethical coordinates. What is argued in the 10 essays that follow is the renewed engagement 8 of psychoanalysis with the world, beyond post-structural relativism, the crisis of meaning, and the retreat into the academy. The analyst explores and loosens the threads of meaning, deconstructs and punctuates the polysemy, knots, chaos and indeterminacy of language, and must also be the one who is alerted to real absence. Forgetting Freud? up for you-but also a new infantile whinge with its retreat into the loving embrace of the mother which is simultaneously a retreat from the world. This retreat, or more properly ressentiment, has long been a feature of the wider culture in the West. Andrew Smith 10 was the man who disappeared, who belongs to no one and knows no one. His body was discovered in his flat in North London by a neighbour, someone he had never talked to, who smelled the decomposition of the body and phoned the police. This was two months after Smith had died. There were no details of Andrew Smith's next of kin and nothing to identify him with anyone, family or friends. He was buried with no one to grieve him. Journalist Ariel Leve followed up his lost story. She discovered he had been fostered by a working class elderly couple who already had two children of their own. His foster mother died of cancer in 1978 when Andrew was only 13. He lived with the father, but gradually and unaccountably withdrew from family and friends who in turn lost contact with him. He was last seen by his sister in December 2004. In that same year, there were seven million people living alone in Britain, four times the number recorded in 1961. By 2021, it is estimated that 37% of all households will be single occupiers. The figures for aloneness are rising 20-30% faster in the 22-44 age group. Adam Phillips illustrates the retreat of the academic into self-satisfaction. "Sane now" is the title of the last chapter of his recent book. 11 Here, the author's "religiosity" comes to the fore which exemplifies this absence of ethics in the guise of the ethical. "Deep sanity", he describes as keeping opposites in play, listening endlessly and never judging. Here, contra Freud, the analytic position is generalised to a whole way of life of evenly suspended attention. According to Adams, the deeply sane do not need a number of things. They don't need to be understood; they don't need recognition; they don't need relationships subject to contract (because they don't expect relationships to last); they see their talents as gifts (not apparently something hard-worked for); they know that wanting is frustrating and getting can be even worse; so they are ironic in their pleasure-seeking, and real pleasure-seeking is known by the deeply sane to be risky, but that doesn't the Word and the Real. Chapter Three follows Levinas, who regarded psychoanalysis as unethical, and thereby implicitly challenges psychoanalytic practice and its relation to suffering. Chapter Four returns to the all-important yet psychoanalytically foreclosed subject of seduction. All the complex ideological battles within psychoanalysis, as well as its more recent professionalisation, can be seen as systematic attempts to stop the play of seduction. Chapter Five continues that theme with a complex discussion about the nature of sexual enjoyment and the effects of sexual abuse. The main illustration is Nabokov's Lolita. Chapter Six considers our "faith" in the value of the analytic process. The analyst has to have
"What we have lost, writes Rob Weatherill in this wide-ranging meditation on contemporary cu... more "What we have lost, writes Rob Weatherill in this wide-ranging meditation on contemporary culture, 'is our sense of, and a necessary respect for, the unconscious, for otherness, for mystery, for death'. We are preoccupied with survival and gratification at the expense of human suffering and concern. This is the denial of the psyche: a levelling-out of meanings and values." "The central paradox explored in Cultural Collapse is that while we enjoy greater freedom and abundance than ever before, at least in the rich parts of the world, we can't help noticing a corresponding inner weakness and loss of control.
Questions Žižek's advocacy of revolutionary violence.
Routledge eBooks, Aug 5, 2022
Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 1978
The eReview provides analysis on public policy relating to Canadian families and marriage. Below ... more The eReview provides analysis on public policy relating to Canadian families and marriage. Below please find an analysis of the importance of fathers to child development.
"Let's get a few things straight," says a middle-aged man at the beginning of yet a... more "Let's get a few things straight," says a middle-aged man at the beginning of yet another fraught session, "I want you to accept that I am a married man; I am heterosexual and happy to be so; I love my wife and my children; I am good at my work. So can we return to what I sought these sessions for in the first place, namely my chronic anxiety? This is what I need to put right and I need your help." Of course, this demand for the analyst to get a few things clear—"straight"—is precisely the issue: the analyst simply repeats the guiding principle about free association.
The third book in the new 'Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis' series. This book will be of ... more The third book in the new 'Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis' series. This book will be of interest to all those students and professionals alike who might have come to question consoling notions of therapy as leaving something important and central to Freud's thinking, his often neglected second reference point, the death drive.
The response was published here: http://tinyurl.com/6a8a7tk (criticalpsychoanalysis.com). None of... more The response was published here: http://tinyurl.com/6a8a7tk (criticalpsychoanalysis.com). None of this work could have happened without the support and informed discussion of my psychoanalytic colleagues in Ireland and Britain to whom I am most grateful. Rob Weatherill, Dublin, Spring 2010. tioning? Surely, comes the reply, communication is crucial for the smooth operation and the self-ordering of systems. Surely, it is more important than ever to speak. However, the speaking that is required amounts to the transmitting of information, approximating to digital communication, through operational channels and protocols, analogous to cell and tissue signalling systems. Speaking with precision; nothing else will do. Forgetting Freud? molecules cool down. The digital revolution is creating this cooling effect-isolating, automating, marginalising, bit by bit the human qua human. Eventually, perhaps, the whole thing will proceed without us, when awesome processing power, akin perhaps to nuclear energy, finally overpowers. 4 The claim by some opponents of contemporary psychoanalysis that it is unethical, that it turns the moral universe on its head, might be conceded to some degree in what follows. However, it is no weltanschauung; it is not prescriptive, not a religion or an ideology. Freud says at the end of the New Introductory Lectures, "Psychoanalysis is, in my opinion, incapable of creating a weltanschauung of its own", and he goes on to warn, "[a]ny of our fellow-men who is dissatisfied with this state of things, who calls for more than this for his momentary consolation, may look for it where he can find it... we cannot help him". 5 Bion referred to psychoanalysis as a probe, no world-view, no consolation, no safety within a religion, none of the "momism" of popular therapy. Beyond religion, beyond psychoanalysis, the ethical tears through all stabilising notions revealing the depth of our problem-the extent of contemporary freedom and indifference. Freud was increasingly realistic; not peace and harmony-we should prepare for war! 6 In relation to the death drive, an ethical call if ever there was one, Freud states at the end of Chapter VI of Civilisation and its Discontents: "In all that follows I adopt the standpoint, therefore, that the inclination to aggression is an original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man... that constitutes the greatest impediment to civilisation". As civilisation is precariously held together by the other great instinctual pole, Eros, Freud concludes that it is, "this battle of the giants that our nurse-maids try to appease with their lullaby about Heaven". 7 Here Freud names the ethical coordinates. What is argued in the 10 essays that follow is the renewed engagement 8 of psychoanalysis with the world, beyond post-structural relativism, the crisis of meaning, and the retreat into the academy. The analyst explores and loosens the threads of meaning, deconstructs and punctuates the polysemy, knots, chaos and indeterminacy of language, and must also be the one who is alerted to real absence. Forgetting Freud? up for you-but also a new infantile whinge with its retreat into the loving embrace of the mother which is simultaneously a retreat from the world. This retreat, or more properly ressentiment, has long been a feature of the wider culture in the West. Andrew Smith 10 was the man who disappeared, who belongs to no one and knows no one. His body was discovered in his flat in North London by a neighbour, someone he had never talked to, who smelled the decomposition of the body and phoned the police. This was two months after Smith had died. There were no details of Andrew Smith's next of kin and nothing to identify him with anyone, family or friends. He was buried with no one to grieve him. Journalist Ariel Leve followed up his lost story. She discovered he had been fostered by a working class elderly couple who already had two children of their own. His foster mother died of cancer in 1978 when Andrew was only 13. He lived with the father, but gradually and unaccountably withdrew from family and friends who in turn lost contact with him. He was last seen by his sister in December 2004. In that same year, there were seven million people living alone in Britain, four times the number recorded in 1961. By 2021, it is estimated that 37% of all households will be single occupiers. The figures for aloneness are rising 20-30% faster in the 22-44 age group. Adam Phillips illustrates the retreat of the academic into self-satisfaction. "Sane now" is the title of the last chapter of his recent book. 11 Here, the author's "religiosity" comes to the fore which exemplifies this absence of ethics in the guise of the ethical. "Deep sanity", he describes as keeping opposites in play, listening endlessly and never judging. Here, contra Freud, the analytic position is generalised to a whole way of life of evenly suspended attention. According to Adams, the deeply sane do not need a number of things. They don't need to be understood; they don't need recognition; they don't need relationships subject to contract (because they don't expect relationships to last); they see their talents as gifts (not apparently something hard-worked for); they know that wanting is frustrating and getting can be even worse; so they are ironic in their pleasure-seeking, and real pleasure-seeking is known by the deeply sane to be risky, but that doesn't the Word and the Real. Chapter Three follows Levinas, who regarded psychoanalysis as unethical, and thereby implicitly challenges psychoanalytic practice and its relation to suffering. Chapter Four returns to the all-important yet psychoanalytically foreclosed subject of seduction. All the complex ideological battles within psychoanalysis, as well as its more recent professionalisation, can be seen as systematic attempts to stop the play of seduction. Chapter Five continues that theme with a complex discussion about the nature of sexual enjoyment and the effects of sexual abuse. The main illustration is Nabokov's Lolita. Chapter Six considers our "faith" in the value of the analytic process. The analyst has to have
"What we have lost, writes Rob Weatherill in this wide-ranging meditation on contemporary cu... more "What we have lost, writes Rob Weatherill in this wide-ranging meditation on contemporary culture, 'is our sense of, and a necessary respect for, the unconscious, for otherness, for mystery, for death'. We are preoccupied with survival and gratification at the expense of human suffering and concern. This is the denial of the psyche: a levelling-out of meanings and values." "The central paradox explored in Cultural Collapse is that while we enjoy greater freedom and abundance than ever before, at least in the rich parts of the world, we can't help noticing a corresponding inner weakness and loss of control.
Questions Žižek's advocacy of revolutionary violence.