Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Series Editor's Preface
- Author's Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Memento Mori
- 2 The Death-Drive Does Not Think
- 3 A Subject Is Being Beaten
- 4 White Over Red
- 5 Literature – Repeat Nothing
- 6 A Harmless Suggestion
- 7 The Rest of Radioactive Light
- Postscript: Approaching Death
- Index
4 - White Over Red
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Series Editor's Preface
- Author's Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Memento Mori
- 2 The Death-Drive Does Not Think
- 3 A Subject Is Being Beaten
- 4 White Over Red
- 5 Literature – Repeat Nothing
- 6 A Harmless Suggestion
- 7 The Rest of Radioactive Light
- Postscript: Approaching Death
- Index
Summary
O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.
(William Blake, ‘The Sick Rose’)Try as I might, I cannot make a mistake. Everything I do – no matter how stupid, how socially inept, how askew from even my own designs – will be just right. I cannot fail.
Under what circumstances could one make such a claim?
Under the circumstances of psychoanalytic theory, that's how. As long as the ‘I’ refers to a psychoanalytic subject, the claim has perfect validity. Freud's famous work on parapraxes – slips of the tongue and the like – paradoxically implies the psyche never goes wrong. Chapter ten of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is entitled ‘Errors’. Paragraphs two and three read, in Strachey's translation, as follows:
In my Interpretation of Dreams (1900a) I was responsible for a number of falsifications which I was astonished to discover after the book was published. They concern historical points and, in general, points of fact. After closer examination I found that they did not owe their origin to my ignorance, but are traceable to errors of memory which analysis is able to explain. On page 266 (of the first edition) … I refer to the town of Marburg – a name also found in Styria – as Schiller's birthplace. […]
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- Death-DriveFreudian Hauntings in Literature and Art, pp. 82 - 107Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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