Talk:Psychoanalysis

Author of quote?
"In psychoanalysis nothing is true except the exaggerations." ? ~ DanielTom (talk) 23:23, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * The blog post Adventures in the Orgasmatron states:  ‘IN PSYCHOANALYSIS nothing is true except the exaggerations.” So wrote Theodor Adorno in his Minima Moralia...  -- Mdd (talk) 23:34, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. I found many conflicting attributions on Google Books, but decided to add it as Adorno's like so. Thanks ~ DanielTom (talk) 00:03, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Seems fine. Did you notice in your search that Bertrand Russell made some statements about psychoanalysis, for example in his 1949 book Authority and the Individual? -- Mdd (talk) 00:37, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, you know, there is one passage from that book that I remember quite well, as it was the first time that I learnt how much Russell enjoyed detective stories. (I later discovered that he read one such story a day!) Here it is, for your amusement:
 * "Psycho-analysis, though no doubt it has its exaggerations, and even perhaps absurdities, has taught us a great deal that is true and valuable. It is an old saying that even if you expel nature with a pitchfork it will still come back, but psycho-analysis has supplied the commentary to this text. We now know that life which goes excessively against natural impulse is one which is likely to involve effects of strain that may be quite as bad as indulgence in forbidden impulses would have been. People who live a life which is unnatural beyond a point are likely to be filled with envy, malice and all uncharitableness. They may develop strains of cruelty, or, on the other hand, they may so completely lose all joy in life that they have no longer any capacity for effort. This latter result has been observed among savages brought suddenly in contact with modern civilisation. Anthropologists have described how Papuan head hunters, deprived by white authority of their habitual sport, lose all Zest, and are no longer able to be interested in anything. I do not wish to infer that they should have been allowed to go on hunting heads, but I do mean that it would have been worth while if psychologists had taken some trouble to find some innocent substitute activity. Civilised Man everywhere is, to some degree, in the position of the Papuan victims of virtue. We have all kinds of aggressive impulses, and also creative impulses, which society forbids us to indulge, and the alternatives that is supplies in the shape of football matches and all-in wrestling are hardly adequate. Anyone who hopes that in time it may be possible to abolish war should give serious thought to the problem of satisfying harmlessly the instincts that we inherit from long generations of savages. For my part I find a sufficient outlet in detective stories, where I alternatively identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but I know there are those to whom this vicarious outlet is too mild, and for them something stronger should be provided." (pp. 17-18)
 * Russell said a great many things about a great many subjects (and to import some of his quotes to individual themes' articles certainly is on my to-do list). ~ DanielTom (talk) 01:10, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Well who doesn't? I do? -- Mdd (talk) 01:40, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Mickey Spillane, classic :) DanielTom (talk) 01:50, 25 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Psychoanalysis: the analysis of the id by the odd. Anonymous. Nemesis1A (talk) 15:43, 11 January 2016 (UTC)