What do you see--beauty or bones?
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Anorexic Girls on You Tube
http://www.truveo.com/this-weekend-was-a-flop-food-is-my-enemy/id/642747423
Why does this young woman not want to show the upper half of her face?
Is anorexia a faceless disease, a social disease that expunges individuality and unique beauty?
http://www.truveo.com/rant-about-eds/id/2925098957
Do you see anorexia as a way of boxing in chaos? A sort of order or language ascribed to the unmanageable?
Is anorexia a social disease stemming from unresolved issues in early development or a disease arising from a genetic predisposition? Can it ever be fully cured? Why is this disease so serious and detrimental? Have you ever heard a group of girls joking about wanting to be anorexic?
If anorexics know how wrong their disease is, why can't they just get better by eating?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU_kUrXpjl0
When does the quest for beauty become too much?
Is thin really beautiful? Why do so many young women gravitate towards this disease when awareness of this disease is at its apex?
Why does this young woman not want to show the upper half of her face?
Is anorexia a faceless disease, a social disease that expunges individuality and unique beauty?
http://www.truveo.com/rant-about-eds/id/2925098957
Do you see anorexia as a way of boxing in chaos? A sort of order or language ascribed to the unmanageable?
Is anorexia a social disease stemming from unresolved issues in early development or a disease arising from a genetic predisposition? Can it ever be fully cured? Why is this disease so serious and detrimental? Have you ever heard a group of girls joking about wanting to be anorexic?
If anorexics know how wrong their disease is, why can't they just get better by eating?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU_kUrXpjl0
When does the quest for beauty become too much?
Is thin really beautiful? Why do so many young women gravitate towards this disease when awareness of this disease is at its apex?
Midterm Paper
Finding Never Land: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Anorexia Nervosa
Tiffany Celeste Lum Wansee
English 638
Seminar in Critical Approaches to Literature
Steven Wexler
Spring 2010
Midterm Paper
Tiffany Celeste Lum Wansee
English 638
Seminar in Critical Approaches to Literature
Steven Wexler
Spring 2010
Midterm Paper
Introduction
We can apply Freud’s Psychoanalytic approach to anorexia nervosa, the mental illness with the highest mortality rate. The term was established in 1873 by Sir William Gull, a physician of Queen Victoria. Anorexia dates back further to such notable people as Mary, Queen of Scots and the first recorded death of anorexia by a Roman woman in 383 A.D. In his book, Holy Anorexia, Bell asserts that there have been 261 cases of anorexia between 1206 and 1934, many elevated to sainthood (Bemporad On-line). But it was in the 1960’s, starting with Twiggy Lawson, when anorexia would soon become a household term.
Anorexia is a social condition on the rise, however an inevitable one stemming from the psyche too. It is about taking control when feeling powerless, the body being the greatest tool in coming to grips with the mind.
Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development
The Oral Stage:
One can argue that anorexics have unresolved issues with food because of a lapse in the oral stage. Perhaps the mother doesn’t breastfeed and bond with the baby sufficiently or the baby isn’t able to assume its independence in the feeding process.
Because there are problems in the baby’s feeding during the first months of nourishment via the mouth, the baby becomes conflicted over this natural phenomenon of eating. When the baby is not given the breast regularly, the baby feels like it is not worthy of sustenance, that starvation is a means of survival and the only way to earn the mother’s love. Love is associated with refusing food and breast milk, denying the body of what it needs.
The baby is helpless in feeding itself. It needs the care of its mother. If the mother is an absent caretaker and neglects feeding the baby when it cries out, the baby will be stuck in this helpless, powerless state, and in adulthood will cry out for a mother’s love and care by starving, trying desperately to get the mother’s attention, hoping the mother will do what she has not done before—force feed her grown child via tubes, doctors, and pleas of desperation. To the anorexic, not eating is a relentless tug-of-war with the mother, a kind of in-your-face spectacle, saying, “Look what you’ve done to me, Mother! You’ve castrated me! Now I’m going to do the same!” More on this shortly.
The Anal Stage:
One thing anorexics are concerned with is excretion—defecation. The greatest control they have over their bodies is controlling what goes in and out, expelling the waste matter within—heavy, weighing toxins.
Anorexics are avoidance people with constipation of the soul. They starve and purge, because they can’t shit out years of suppressing their pain and feelings. Their tenseness and sparse nutrition also lead to bodily constipation which then leads to anxiety about maintaining control over their bowels, maintaining control over their shrinking existence.
An anorexic fills her soul by emptying her body, the most satisfying exit—her anus. There is an interplay between mouth and anus. The anorexic, powerless because of an unfulfilled childhood, only knows her mouth and anus as the two focal points in her life. Whether she is throwing up or downing laxatives, she is in control; she is her own master, dictating the landscape of her digestive tract.
Because the anorexic is unfit to give birth and nurture a child, the anorexic like men who lack a womb, gravitates towards killing. If the anorexic can’t create, she can destroy, her most viable weapon her anus. By vomiting and defecating, she is taking delicious, life-giving food and killing it through her digestive system. She is taking all her power to destroy the very thing that empowers and sustains the human race. In this way, she feels powerful. With her anus as the magic wand, she is the Tinkerbell of her universe.
The Phallic Stage:
Anorexics are very troubled by what they put into their mouths, because food resembles a phallus (e.g. hot dogs, bananas, popsicles). Ninety to ninety-five percent of anorexics are women, who when entering the phallic stage will develop penis envy. Because girls never sprout a penis, they rationalize to themselves that a penis is vile and reject all phallic symbols, the most obvious—food.
They come to equate their mouths with their vaginas, associating their taste buds with their clitoris. Just as it feels good to eat, it also feels good to be sexual. But because of the shame that comes with a woman’s budding sexuality, she denies herself of sexual pleasure along with eating, because both activities make her feel disgusting, vile, boorish, indulgent, unattractive, and unlovable.
Now let’s apply the Electra Complex (coined in 1913 by Jung) to anorexia. Anorexic girls feel castrated by their overbearing, controlling, loud-mouthed mothers, so they turn to their fathers for love and affection, because the sexual distance and differences make them feel safe and unthreatened. They are repulsed by their mothers’ fat, womanly, fertile bodies and feel oppressed by the bodies they would have as healthy adults, bodies similar to those of their grotesque mothers. They starve to never become their emasculating, castrating, baby-wielding mothers.
They are “Daddy’s little girl,” wanting to stay youthful and ethereal so their fathers will always love them, hold them, and protect them like delicate, porcelain dolls. Threatened by all women, feeling in competition with all women who resemble their mothers, they will do anything to be the only women in their fathers’ lives.
So often do aging, over-the-hill men like fathers have the wandering eye for younger women. By Daddy cheating on Mommy for a younger hot dish, the girl will do anything to be that hot, young thing, so that a big, strong thing such as her father will always be there and shield her from the dangers of the world. She does not want to be the fat mommy cow that daddy has lost all carnal interest in.
Id, Ego, and Superego
The anorexic avoids satisfying the id, because of her superego, fashioned from society’s unrealistic demands of thinness. There is a constant battle between the id and superego, and because the anorexic is a high-minded, ambitious individual, she will give in to her superego. She strives for ideals beyond her limits. She derives great pleasure from starving her body and not allowing herself to feel pleasure. She confuses hunger with satiety, starving the body with feeding the soul, and in the end, lets her conscience and all of society’s propaganda override her primal needs.
Defense Mechanisms
Regression:
The anorexic cannot deal with her internal turmoil plus the demands of adulthood, so she regresses back to a simpler, more primitive phase of her life where she feels safe and guarded. Because she cannot nurture herself and feels starved of attention as a child, she seeks nurturance and attention by being a defenseless child.
Womanhood is a state of the unknown. Because the anorexic is already insecure, she cannot venture into a world of ambiguities and responsibilities. She wants to be a little girl forever and put growing up on the back burner, because she wants to frolic in a so-called Never Land where there are no battles, no losses, no letdowns, and no evils. She has already seen a hectic, cutthroat world, one that she is not ready to face and deal with, thereby regressing into a child, responsibility passed on to someone else.
Besides the tragedies of life, there are also men to contend with—men with their google-eyed lusting, advances, infidelities, and big, scary genitals. One can argue that in order to escape the damage that men so often bring about, the anorexic is trying to make herself look like a baby, becoming a sexless object rather than someone vulnerable to men’s transgressions. By losing her menstrual cycle (amenorrhea), she stops herself from being a fertile, life-bearing, sexual creature. By shirking a curvaceous, womanly figure, she avoids growing up and becoming a woman who can be hurt. She regresses to being a child to escape her inevitable evolution and the unfolding of her life.
Denial:
The anorexic will lie, cheat, and steal just to feed her illness and cover up her rituals. She is deep in denial, telling herself that she is not sick and emaciated, but rather fat and in need of losing more weight, that she has no control over her condition. Just ask an anorexic if she’s anorexic, you’ll most likely get a “no.” Denial preserves the quest for thinness and allows the anorexic to continue avoiding the real issues. Just ponder how fat people say they never touch a calorie and how skinny people call themselves incorrigible food whores. Food is always a trigger of denial, either way.
Repression:
Usually anorexia develops because of something repressed within. Rather than facing the thing being repressed, the anorexic channels her energy via her anorexia. The anorexic deals with her repressed emotions by eating and purging food which she takes as eating and purging her emotions. The anorexic assumes that by starving her body, her repressed feelings and torment will disappear. She believes in taking her repressed energy and using it to construct the perfect, svelte body.
Reaction Formation:
The anorexic hides her true feelings and ignores body signals by telling herself that she is not hungry, that she does not need to eat. She cannot come to grips with the reality of her condition; she does not want to change, so she tells herself she is the opposite of her nature, every bodily urge.
So often, an anorexic becomes fascinated with nutrition books, cook books, and the food network. All she’ll do is talk about food. Everything revolves around food: cooking and baking for others, eating vicariously through friends and loved ones, binging, and purging.
Some people think anorexia is all about restricting and leaving the fork on the table, but an anorexic will think about eating more than anyone, dreaming about food in her sleep, making a lifestyle of food, and ultimately never reaping the full benefits of eating, always at odds with her greatest lover and enemy.
Deborah Hautzig’s Second Star to the Right
This novel based on Hautzig’s own experiences with anorexia follows the descent of healthy, fourteen-year-old Leslie Hiller into the bowels of an eating disorder. At 5’5 ½,” Leslie goes from 125 pounds to 74 pounds. In the later part of the novel, she spends her time on a psych ward, and never fully recovers, as we are left without resolution on the last page, fully capturing the sad fact that no one recovers completely from an eating disorder.
The title comes from a song in the animated film, Peter Pan, a character referred to countless times in the novel. It’s about finding perfection, Never Land, the Peter Pan Syndrome—staying a child forever in a sort of Disneyland fairytale. The title also stems from the story of Leslie’s Aunt Margolee in the Holocaust who chose to go to the left, the line to die, instead of to the right, the line to live. Leslie chooses, ideally, amidst her personal struggles, to go to the right, but more and more, she feels that is not hers to decide. Her fate seemingly feels like that of a concentration camp prisoner.
So often, anorexics feel two polar opposites battling it out in their minds and bodies. Leslie confesses, “I want to be a skeleton—but I also want to be attractive. I want to die—but I also want to live. I don’t deserve to feel good—but oh, I want to so much!” (Hautzig 149-150).
Conclusion
An anorexic will never fulfill her desires through starvation, though anorexia seems to be her only recourse, the only viable answer. The real solution is too far away, too shapeless and impalpable. And so continues the cycle of destruction that will never completely end. Is there hope for recovery? Yes. Is there hope for a permanent, steadfast recovery? Sadly, no. Being anorexic is an undulating search for happiness, perfection, and the answer to the unanswerable—it is about finding that fictional place of love and serenity—Never Land. Because of unresolved issues in the formative years of life, an anorexic will take on the imagination and illusions of a child and create her own existence with the only power she has left—the strength to battle food.
We can apply Freud’s Psychoanalytic approach to anorexia nervosa, the mental illness with the highest mortality rate. The term was established in 1873 by Sir William Gull, a physician of Queen Victoria. Anorexia dates back further to such notable people as Mary, Queen of Scots and the first recorded death of anorexia by a Roman woman in 383 A.D. In his book, Holy Anorexia, Bell asserts that there have been 261 cases of anorexia between 1206 and 1934, many elevated to sainthood (Bemporad On-line). But it was in the 1960’s, starting with Twiggy Lawson, when anorexia would soon become a household term.
Anorexia is a social condition on the rise, however an inevitable one stemming from the psyche too. It is about taking control when feeling powerless, the body being the greatest tool in coming to grips with the mind.
Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development
The Oral Stage:
One can argue that anorexics have unresolved issues with food because of a lapse in the oral stage. Perhaps the mother doesn’t breastfeed and bond with the baby sufficiently or the baby isn’t able to assume its independence in the feeding process.
Because there are problems in the baby’s feeding during the first months of nourishment via the mouth, the baby becomes conflicted over this natural phenomenon of eating. When the baby is not given the breast regularly, the baby feels like it is not worthy of sustenance, that starvation is a means of survival and the only way to earn the mother’s love. Love is associated with refusing food and breast milk, denying the body of what it needs.
The baby is helpless in feeding itself. It needs the care of its mother. If the mother is an absent caretaker and neglects feeding the baby when it cries out, the baby will be stuck in this helpless, powerless state, and in adulthood will cry out for a mother’s love and care by starving, trying desperately to get the mother’s attention, hoping the mother will do what she has not done before—force feed her grown child via tubes, doctors, and pleas of desperation. To the anorexic, not eating is a relentless tug-of-war with the mother, a kind of in-your-face spectacle, saying, “Look what you’ve done to me, Mother! You’ve castrated me! Now I’m going to do the same!” More on this shortly.
The Anal Stage:
One thing anorexics are concerned with is excretion—defecation. The greatest control they have over their bodies is controlling what goes in and out, expelling the waste matter within—heavy, weighing toxins.
Anorexics are avoidance people with constipation of the soul. They starve and purge, because they can’t shit out years of suppressing their pain and feelings. Their tenseness and sparse nutrition also lead to bodily constipation which then leads to anxiety about maintaining control over their bowels, maintaining control over their shrinking existence.
An anorexic fills her soul by emptying her body, the most satisfying exit—her anus. There is an interplay between mouth and anus. The anorexic, powerless because of an unfulfilled childhood, only knows her mouth and anus as the two focal points in her life. Whether she is throwing up or downing laxatives, she is in control; she is her own master, dictating the landscape of her digestive tract.
Because the anorexic is unfit to give birth and nurture a child, the anorexic like men who lack a womb, gravitates towards killing. If the anorexic can’t create, she can destroy, her most viable weapon her anus. By vomiting and defecating, she is taking delicious, life-giving food and killing it through her digestive system. She is taking all her power to destroy the very thing that empowers and sustains the human race. In this way, she feels powerful. With her anus as the magic wand, she is the Tinkerbell of her universe.
The Phallic Stage:
Anorexics are very troubled by what they put into their mouths, because food resembles a phallus (e.g. hot dogs, bananas, popsicles). Ninety to ninety-five percent of anorexics are women, who when entering the phallic stage will develop penis envy. Because girls never sprout a penis, they rationalize to themselves that a penis is vile and reject all phallic symbols, the most obvious—food.
They come to equate their mouths with their vaginas, associating their taste buds with their clitoris. Just as it feels good to eat, it also feels good to be sexual. But because of the shame that comes with a woman’s budding sexuality, she denies herself of sexual pleasure along with eating, because both activities make her feel disgusting, vile, boorish, indulgent, unattractive, and unlovable.
Now let’s apply the Electra Complex (coined in 1913 by Jung) to anorexia. Anorexic girls feel castrated by their overbearing, controlling, loud-mouthed mothers, so they turn to their fathers for love and affection, because the sexual distance and differences make them feel safe and unthreatened. They are repulsed by their mothers’ fat, womanly, fertile bodies and feel oppressed by the bodies they would have as healthy adults, bodies similar to those of their grotesque mothers. They starve to never become their emasculating, castrating, baby-wielding mothers.
They are “Daddy’s little girl,” wanting to stay youthful and ethereal so their fathers will always love them, hold them, and protect them like delicate, porcelain dolls. Threatened by all women, feeling in competition with all women who resemble their mothers, they will do anything to be the only women in their fathers’ lives.
So often do aging, over-the-hill men like fathers have the wandering eye for younger women. By Daddy cheating on Mommy for a younger hot dish, the girl will do anything to be that hot, young thing, so that a big, strong thing such as her father will always be there and shield her from the dangers of the world. She does not want to be the fat mommy cow that daddy has lost all carnal interest in.
Id, Ego, and Superego
The anorexic avoids satisfying the id, because of her superego, fashioned from society’s unrealistic demands of thinness. There is a constant battle between the id and superego, and because the anorexic is a high-minded, ambitious individual, she will give in to her superego. She strives for ideals beyond her limits. She derives great pleasure from starving her body and not allowing herself to feel pleasure. She confuses hunger with satiety, starving the body with feeding the soul, and in the end, lets her conscience and all of society’s propaganda override her primal needs.
Defense Mechanisms
Regression:
The anorexic cannot deal with her internal turmoil plus the demands of adulthood, so she regresses back to a simpler, more primitive phase of her life where she feels safe and guarded. Because she cannot nurture herself and feels starved of attention as a child, she seeks nurturance and attention by being a defenseless child.
Womanhood is a state of the unknown. Because the anorexic is already insecure, she cannot venture into a world of ambiguities and responsibilities. She wants to be a little girl forever and put growing up on the back burner, because she wants to frolic in a so-called Never Land where there are no battles, no losses, no letdowns, and no evils. She has already seen a hectic, cutthroat world, one that she is not ready to face and deal with, thereby regressing into a child, responsibility passed on to someone else.
Besides the tragedies of life, there are also men to contend with—men with their google-eyed lusting, advances, infidelities, and big, scary genitals. One can argue that in order to escape the damage that men so often bring about, the anorexic is trying to make herself look like a baby, becoming a sexless object rather than someone vulnerable to men’s transgressions. By losing her menstrual cycle (amenorrhea), she stops herself from being a fertile, life-bearing, sexual creature. By shirking a curvaceous, womanly figure, she avoids growing up and becoming a woman who can be hurt. She regresses to being a child to escape her inevitable evolution and the unfolding of her life.
Denial:
The anorexic will lie, cheat, and steal just to feed her illness and cover up her rituals. She is deep in denial, telling herself that she is not sick and emaciated, but rather fat and in need of losing more weight, that she has no control over her condition. Just ask an anorexic if she’s anorexic, you’ll most likely get a “no.” Denial preserves the quest for thinness and allows the anorexic to continue avoiding the real issues. Just ponder how fat people say they never touch a calorie and how skinny people call themselves incorrigible food whores. Food is always a trigger of denial, either way.
Repression:
Usually anorexia develops because of something repressed within. Rather than facing the thing being repressed, the anorexic channels her energy via her anorexia. The anorexic deals with her repressed emotions by eating and purging food which she takes as eating and purging her emotions. The anorexic assumes that by starving her body, her repressed feelings and torment will disappear. She believes in taking her repressed energy and using it to construct the perfect, svelte body.
Reaction Formation:
The anorexic hides her true feelings and ignores body signals by telling herself that she is not hungry, that she does not need to eat. She cannot come to grips with the reality of her condition; she does not want to change, so she tells herself she is the opposite of her nature, every bodily urge.
So often, an anorexic becomes fascinated with nutrition books, cook books, and the food network. All she’ll do is talk about food. Everything revolves around food: cooking and baking for others, eating vicariously through friends and loved ones, binging, and purging.
Some people think anorexia is all about restricting and leaving the fork on the table, but an anorexic will think about eating more than anyone, dreaming about food in her sleep, making a lifestyle of food, and ultimately never reaping the full benefits of eating, always at odds with her greatest lover and enemy.
Deborah Hautzig’s Second Star to the Right
This novel based on Hautzig’s own experiences with anorexia follows the descent of healthy, fourteen-year-old Leslie Hiller into the bowels of an eating disorder. At 5’5 ½,” Leslie goes from 125 pounds to 74 pounds. In the later part of the novel, she spends her time on a psych ward, and never fully recovers, as we are left without resolution on the last page, fully capturing the sad fact that no one recovers completely from an eating disorder.
The title comes from a song in the animated film, Peter Pan, a character referred to countless times in the novel. It’s about finding perfection, Never Land, the Peter Pan Syndrome—staying a child forever in a sort of Disneyland fairytale. The title also stems from the story of Leslie’s Aunt Margolee in the Holocaust who chose to go to the left, the line to die, instead of to the right, the line to live. Leslie chooses, ideally, amidst her personal struggles, to go to the right, but more and more, she feels that is not hers to decide. Her fate seemingly feels like that of a concentration camp prisoner.
So often, anorexics feel two polar opposites battling it out in their minds and bodies. Leslie confesses, “I want to be a skeleton—but I also want to be attractive. I want to die—but I also want to live. I don’t deserve to feel good—but oh, I want to so much!” (Hautzig 149-150).
Conclusion
An anorexic will never fulfill her desires through starvation, though anorexia seems to be her only recourse, the only viable answer. The real solution is too far away, too shapeless and impalpable. And so continues the cycle of destruction that will never completely end. Is there hope for recovery? Yes. Is there hope for a permanent, steadfast recovery? Sadly, no. Being anorexic is an undulating search for happiness, perfection, and the answer to the unanswerable—it is about finding that fictional place of love and serenity—Never Land. Because of unresolved issues in the formative years of life, an anorexic will take on the imagination and illusions of a child and create her own existence with the only power she has left—the strength to battle food.
Annotated Bibliography
Bemporad, Jules R. “The Psychoanalytic Approach to Psychosomatics and Eating
Disorders.” AOL. On-line. 10 March 2010.
Summary: Traces the evolution of anorexia from the Hellenistic Age to starving
saints to the 19th century to the 1960’s when numbers soared.
This text is important, because it gives anorexia a place in history and shows how
the evolution of the world coincides with the evolution of this disease.
Chabert, Catherine, and Jeammet Philippe. “A Psychoanalytic approach to eating
disorders: The role of dependency.” AOL. On-line. 10 March 2010.
Summary: Discusses addiction, erogenous zones, oral sadism, and anal control. This in-depth text is important, because it raises awareness and debate over the
insidious machinations of a misunderstood addiction to and denial of food.
Cherry, Kendra. “Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development.” AOL. On-line. 10
March 2010.
Summary: Overview of Freud’s Oral Stage, Anal Stage, Phallic Stage, Latent
Period, and Genital Stage.
This text is important, because it step by step, takes us through the stages of our
development and explains how unresolved issues in our early life affect the rest
of our future endeavors and behavior.
Hautzig, Deborah. Second Star to the Right. New York: Greenwillow, 1981.
Summary: Fourteen-year-old Leslie Hiller’s abrupt and rapid descent into anorexia nervosa, her avoidance of food, her plunging weight, her relationship with her troubled mother, her shame and animosity towards her Jewish heritage, her strained friendship with loving, concerned, best friend, Cavett, and her stay in a psych ward amidst other anorexics.
This text is important, because it was written at a time before Karen Carpenter’s death when the general public still had little knowledge and awareness of this social disease. It is one of the first books to really illuminate the seriousness of anorexia and so beautifully and candidly reveals the deeper layers.
Kolodny, Nancy J. When Food’s A Foe. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1992.
Summary: Discusses self-image, anorexia, bulimia, and ways to seek help, prevent, and overcome an eating disorder.
This text is important, because it very simply, concisely, and candidly introduces the reader to the psychology of eating disorders and informs already E.D. sufferers in such a way as to motivate them to seek help and not take their disease any further. This book perhaps is one of the most straightforward texts out there for young E.D. sufferers.
Bemporad, Jules R. “The Psychoanalytic Approach to Psychosomatics and Eating
Disorders.” AOL. On-line. 10 March 2010.
Summary: Traces the evolution of anorexia from the Hellenistic Age to starving
saints to the 19th century to the 1960’s when numbers soared.
This text is important, because it gives anorexia a place in history and shows how
the evolution of the world coincides with the evolution of this disease.
Chabert, Catherine, and Jeammet Philippe. “A Psychoanalytic approach to eating
disorders: The role of dependency.” AOL. On-line. 10 March 2010.
Summary: Discusses addiction, erogenous zones, oral sadism, and anal control. This in-depth text is important, because it raises awareness and debate over the
insidious machinations of a misunderstood addiction to and denial of food.
Cherry, Kendra. “Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development.” AOL. On-line. 10
March 2010.
Summary: Overview of Freud’s Oral Stage, Anal Stage, Phallic Stage, Latent
Period, and Genital Stage.
This text is important, because it step by step, takes us through the stages of our
development and explains how unresolved issues in our early life affect the rest
of our future endeavors and behavior.
Hautzig, Deborah. Second Star to the Right. New York: Greenwillow, 1981.
Summary: Fourteen-year-old Leslie Hiller’s abrupt and rapid descent into anorexia nervosa, her avoidance of food, her plunging weight, her relationship with her troubled mother, her shame and animosity towards her Jewish heritage, her strained friendship with loving, concerned, best friend, Cavett, and her stay in a psych ward amidst other anorexics.
This text is important, because it was written at a time before Karen Carpenter’s death when the general public still had little knowledge and awareness of this social disease. It is one of the first books to really illuminate the seriousness of anorexia and so beautifully and candidly reveals the deeper layers.
Kolodny, Nancy J. When Food’s A Foe. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1992.
Summary: Discusses self-image, anorexia, bulimia, and ways to seek help, prevent, and overcome an eating disorder.
This text is important, because it very simply, concisely, and candidly introduces the reader to the psychology of eating disorders and informs already E.D. sufferers in such a way as to motivate them to seek help and not take their disease any further. This book perhaps is one of the most straightforward texts out there for young E.D. sufferers.
Friday, March 12, 2010
My Understanding of Equus
A few years ago, I heard that Daniel Radcliffe was going all-out nude for something. Now I have finally connected the dots, he went nude for a play I'd eventually have to read. That made the reading a slightly more intriguing one. I like it when I can visualize the exact actor playing the role. I don't like forming my own picture of the character. And nudity makes the play feel gritty and raw to me, especially when the actor is Harry Potter.
I really like this play, and I'm not just saying that to be agreeable. I read it in about four hours practically straight through, only breaking for American Idol at 8 p.m.
One thing I find forced is when Dysart meets with Alan in the dead of night. Everyone knows that psychiatrists don't work on a psych ward at night. That time is reserved for patients to sleep. Perhaps it would be more viable if Dysart and Alan had this breakthrough session in the early morning while the ward is still calm and quiet.
The minute I read about Alan's fear of the horses watching him, I kept thinking of Panopticism and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby--the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckelberg. I think it is inherent in us to always feel like someone or something is watching us when in reality, we are our most captive audience. Our conscience is inescapable, for we cannot escape ourselves, and that is why most criminals confess. Though there is no evidence around us of our trangressions, there is evidence within us and the evidence is too much to live with. We must always release our sins to the open air.
The real A-hole is Frank--what a close-minded, ignorant, dopey man. I hate people who castigate television. There is nothing wrong with TV. It doesn't make us dumber. It doesn't turn our brain to mush. It stimulates the brain and informs us greatly. It keeps us abreast of the times. I really don't see the difference between books and TV--they are all a text in their own right.
But I see what Shaffer is trying to do with the denial of television. Coupled with Frank's horror of finding his son with another girl watching a dirty movie, Shaffer is trying to show how the denial of passion, pleasure, and human need can send anyone over the edge. Shaffer is not just blaming Frank, but society as a whole. Society constructs what is acceptable in our nature, thereby making us hate within ourselves--our sexuality and need for intimacy--what doesn't fit the mold.
Sex is a very natural, beautiful thing. It's just that it gets cheapened by human depravity and becomes a topic of shame. It is something pure made impure by human vice.
All the youth and free-spiritedness are sucked out of Alan, because he is denied feelings and urges that are nurtured in other healthy, growing, young men. He has been reduced to jingles (I cracked up at the Doublemint one). And he is made wild and rageful, because of the confinement within his father's dogma. Alan needs a God, but when the Christ poster is taken down, he finds horses to be his God, confusing horses and God with his overbearing father and society as a whole. Because the restrictions of this God are too much to take, he attacks the only creatures he can, the most defenseless of all threats present in the play--horses.
In the end, I got the impression that what Schaffer is really trying to say is that we may champion animal rights and sometimes go for a vegan lifestyle, but no matter what we do to ease our conscience, we are all hypocrites just by being a part of this society that preys and feeds off weaker, defenseless animals. We may nurse a sick dog on the street to health, but then we pick up our forks and dive into "Approved Flesh" (Shaffer 109).
There is no escape from being predators. Our survival is based on the slaying of weaker animals, all part of the food chain. So perhaps rather than castigating another for doing what is socially and morally wrong, we must look at ourselves doing the very same thing. We always look around and find error in others when we are just as much to blame as the rest. If there's any hope left for human beings, it's to understand our depravity, to not judge harshly, and to accept that killing and attack are all part of the greater plan.
I really like this play, and I'm not just saying that to be agreeable. I read it in about four hours practically straight through, only breaking for American Idol at 8 p.m.
One thing I find forced is when Dysart meets with Alan in the dead of night. Everyone knows that psychiatrists don't work on a psych ward at night. That time is reserved for patients to sleep. Perhaps it would be more viable if Dysart and Alan had this breakthrough session in the early morning while the ward is still calm and quiet.
The minute I read about Alan's fear of the horses watching him, I kept thinking of Panopticism and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby--the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckelberg. I think it is inherent in us to always feel like someone or something is watching us when in reality, we are our most captive audience. Our conscience is inescapable, for we cannot escape ourselves, and that is why most criminals confess. Though there is no evidence around us of our trangressions, there is evidence within us and the evidence is too much to live with. We must always release our sins to the open air.
The real A-hole is Frank--what a close-minded, ignorant, dopey man. I hate people who castigate television. There is nothing wrong with TV. It doesn't make us dumber. It doesn't turn our brain to mush. It stimulates the brain and informs us greatly. It keeps us abreast of the times. I really don't see the difference between books and TV--they are all a text in their own right.
But I see what Shaffer is trying to do with the denial of television. Coupled with Frank's horror of finding his son with another girl watching a dirty movie, Shaffer is trying to show how the denial of passion, pleasure, and human need can send anyone over the edge. Shaffer is not just blaming Frank, but society as a whole. Society constructs what is acceptable in our nature, thereby making us hate within ourselves--our sexuality and need for intimacy--what doesn't fit the mold.
Sex is a very natural, beautiful thing. It's just that it gets cheapened by human depravity and becomes a topic of shame. It is something pure made impure by human vice.
All the youth and free-spiritedness are sucked out of Alan, because he is denied feelings and urges that are nurtured in other healthy, growing, young men. He has been reduced to jingles (I cracked up at the Doublemint one). And he is made wild and rageful, because of the confinement within his father's dogma. Alan needs a God, but when the Christ poster is taken down, he finds horses to be his God, confusing horses and God with his overbearing father and society as a whole. Because the restrictions of this God are too much to take, he attacks the only creatures he can, the most defenseless of all threats present in the play--horses.
In the end, I got the impression that what Schaffer is really trying to say is that we may champion animal rights and sometimes go for a vegan lifestyle, but no matter what we do to ease our conscience, we are all hypocrites just by being a part of this society that preys and feeds off weaker, defenseless animals. We may nurse a sick dog on the street to health, but then we pick up our forks and dive into "Approved Flesh" (Shaffer 109).
There is no escape from being predators. Our survival is based on the slaying of weaker animals, all part of the food chain. So perhaps rather than castigating another for doing what is socially and morally wrong, we must look at ourselves doing the very same thing. We always look around and find error in others when we are just as much to blame as the rest. If there's any hope left for human beings, it's to understand our depravity, to not judge harshly, and to accept that killing and attack are all part of the greater plan.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Order and Chaos
I am very happy to admit that I am intrigued by Post-structuralism and Deconstruction. I think I know more about Differance and the idea of infinite, open ended significations than Structuralism itself, though Structuralism led to this reformation of thought.
To be honest, I think this theory shedding light on the undoing of binary oppositions is very good and interesting in theory, but not in the practical world we live in. Why? Let me explain.
I believe in absolutes, in good and evil, beautiful and ugly, just and unjust, spirituality and depravity (arbitrary as I may be as an individual). Even though my absolutes are different from the next person's, they are still absolutes in my universe, and to be blunt, I am egocentric like any other. All that matters to me is me.
Because we are human beings, infinitesimal specks of dust, insignificant to the larger context, and limited in our perception, we are not created to bear the idea of infinite possibilities. We were created to live and die, to begin and end; therefore we are creatures of extremes, endings, and limitations. There is no way we can fully grasp the concept there are no identities, that all we can rely on are differences. This notion of endless signs and significations is too high above our realm of comprehension and functioning. Just as a dog will never fathom the intricacies of Derrida, we will never grasp the Greater Workings of the Universe. We should just be content with extremes of thought and coming to terms with the grayness in between. I mean, come on, if the gray areas are hard enough to live by, how are we supposed to live with infinities?
There is a reason we have laws and boundaries and borders. There is a reason we pass judgments on others, why we stereotype people and reserve our prejudices. It's because we were not created to figure out the grandiosity and totality of the universe. We are here to serve ourselves and even in serving others, we are still serving ourselves, never the higher cosmos. So why even bother to be so high and mighty, when that is left to some greater being, God? And really, what is God? Another container to encapsulate meaning so it doesn't run away from us.
In my opinion, absolutes and binary opposites, one signifier per signified, is the reality of our reality. And endless signifiers and signifieds is the reality of the universe's reality. We can not marry our reality with that of the universe's. We must exist as binary opposites (ha ha).
This whole idea that nothing can be contained, that there are no identities, is chaos of thought. I do not believe in chaos--there are no answers in chaos, and human beings must answer many questions in life. We survive on truths, not truths of truths of truths. We need the essence, the epitome of existence. We can't flourish amidst confusion and anarchy. We were made for structure as we have built half the earth into structures and buildings and left the other half to what we'll never grasp.
In order to keep sane, we cannot believe in this "ongoing network of relays and references" (Rivkin and Ryan 259). We must preserve our human side and know that we'll never get the answers in this reality, maybe when we die, who knows? But really, who wants to know? Sometimes it's true, ignorance is bliss. So, we must be happy in our little cubicles of the universe and not allow ourselves to get too caught up in our dreamy ponderings. We are creatures of thought. Wait a minute, perhaps we were made to hypothesize endlessly. Perhaps crazy postulations are inevitable in our beings. Perhaps we are projecting our thoughts, our grandiose ideations onto a blank screen, a universe that contains nothing, that means nothing, that perhaps in its entirety is smaller than a fragment of one person's consciousness. We may be far more complex than this ever-expanding-shrinking universe. Who knows? Yes, questions and confusions are inevitable in the human reign.
See, I love Post-structuralism!
To be honest, I think this theory shedding light on the undoing of binary oppositions is very good and interesting in theory, but not in the practical world we live in. Why? Let me explain.
I believe in absolutes, in good and evil, beautiful and ugly, just and unjust, spirituality and depravity (arbitrary as I may be as an individual). Even though my absolutes are different from the next person's, they are still absolutes in my universe, and to be blunt, I am egocentric like any other. All that matters to me is me.
Because we are human beings, infinitesimal specks of dust, insignificant to the larger context, and limited in our perception, we are not created to bear the idea of infinite possibilities. We were created to live and die, to begin and end; therefore we are creatures of extremes, endings, and limitations. There is no way we can fully grasp the concept there are no identities, that all we can rely on are differences. This notion of endless signs and significations is too high above our realm of comprehension and functioning. Just as a dog will never fathom the intricacies of Derrida, we will never grasp the Greater Workings of the Universe. We should just be content with extremes of thought and coming to terms with the grayness in between. I mean, come on, if the gray areas are hard enough to live by, how are we supposed to live with infinities?
There is a reason we have laws and boundaries and borders. There is a reason we pass judgments on others, why we stereotype people and reserve our prejudices. It's because we were not created to figure out the grandiosity and totality of the universe. We are here to serve ourselves and even in serving others, we are still serving ourselves, never the higher cosmos. So why even bother to be so high and mighty, when that is left to some greater being, God? And really, what is God? Another container to encapsulate meaning so it doesn't run away from us.
In my opinion, absolutes and binary opposites, one signifier per signified, is the reality of our reality. And endless signifiers and signifieds is the reality of the universe's reality. We can not marry our reality with that of the universe's. We must exist as binary opposites (ha ha).
This whole idea that nothing can be contained, that there are no identities, is chaos of thought. I do not believe in chaos--there are no answers in chaos, and human beings must answer many questions in life. We survive on truths, not truths of truths of truths. We need the essence, the epitome of existence. We can't flourish amidst confusion and anarchy. We were made for structure as we have built half the earth into structures and buildings and left the other half to what we'll never grasp.
In order to keep sane, we cannot believe in this "ongoing network of relays and references" (Rivkin and Ryan 259). We must preserve our human side and know that we'll never get the answers in this reality, maybe when we die, who knows? But really, who wants to know? Sometimes it's true, ignorance is bliss. So, we must be happy in our little cubicles of the universe and not allow ourselves to get too caught up in our dreamy ponderings. We are creatures of thought. Wait a minute, perhaps we were made to hypothesize endlessly. Perhaps crazy postulations are inevitable in our beings. Perhaps we are projecting our thoughts, our grandiose ideations onto a blank screen, a universe that contains nothing, that means nothing, that perhaps in its entirety is smaller than a fragment of one person's consciousness. We may be far more complex than this ever-expanding-shrinking universe. Who knows? Yes, questions and confusions are inevitable in the human reign.
See, I love Post-structuralism!
Monday, March 1, 2010
Penis Envy, Type A Personality, and Genetics
Freud, though obsolete in today's understanding of the mind, is quite an interesting character. I never considered the idea of penis envy. When I was a kid, I really had no concept of a penis, not until I reached my early teens. I knew about genitalia as a means for urination, but I never considered a man's genitals, his sexual prowess, so how could I have penis envy in my childhood? I didn't find out about the concept of sex until I was thirteen when my cousins told me. I thought it was the most hilarious thing on the planet. Even today I don't take sex seriously. I am ashamed of it and still laugh at the thought, wondering if sex is just God's joke for the entire human race.
I had quite a sheltered upbringing, one full of misguided care however. When I think of Freud, I wonder about all the weird fetishes and preferences I have. I wonder if Freud can explain why I like weak, effeminate men. And why I am such a control freak. Did this all begin in one of his stages like the phallic stage or anal stage?
I am the most anal-retentive person I know, and it depresses me. Are Mom and Dad to blame because of faulty potty-training? Or did I inherit this trait through my genes? It's very easy to blame genetics and far more complicated to blame environment. It ends with genes, easy as pie, but where does it end with upbringing and social influences?
I still rely more on genetics, because I feel like there are intrinsic parts of me that no one has power over, not even me. I was born this way and no one can change that, though I still give some credit to Freud.
There are so many theories in psychology and they all seem pitted against each other. There're Cognitive and Humanist and so on. I like to take a little from each and form my own picture. I like Freud most, because of his outlandish claims and his fixation on sex.
I don't want to stereotype genders, but I'm pretty sure crazy sex is not number one on women's minds, probably not even in the top ten. If Freud were a woman, I wonder what the Psychoanalytic Theory would be like with all its alterations, if it would materialize at all. And could there ever be a Mother of Psychology? It would make more sense, since women are the child-bearing sex and the greatest creators of humankind.
I had quite a sheltered upbringing, one full of misguided care however. When I think of Freud, I wonder about all the weird fetishes and preferences I have. I wonder if Freud can explain why I like weak, effeminate men. And why I am such a control freak. Did this all begin in one of his stages like the phallic stage or anal stage?
I am the most anal-retentive person I know, and it depresses me. Are Mom and Dad to blame because of faulty potty-training? Or did I inherit this trait through my genes? It's very easy to blame genetics and far more complicated to blame environment. It ends with genes, easy as pie, but where does it end with upbringing and social influences?
I still rely more on genetics, because I feel like there are intrinsic parts of me that no one has power over, not even me. I was born this way and no one can change that, though I still give some credit to Freud.
There are so many theories in psychology and they all seem pitted against each other. There're Cognitive and Humanist and so on. I like to take a little from each and form my own picture. I like Freud most, because of his outlandish claims and his fixation on sex.
I don't want to stereotype genders, but I'm pretty sure crazy sex is not number one on women's minds, probably not even in the top ten. If Freud were a woman, I wonder what the Psychoanalytic Theory would be like with all its alterations, if it would materialize at all. And could there ever be a Mother of Psychology? It would make more sense, since women are the child-bearing sex and the greatest creators of humankind.
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