Derrida revisited

    Certain schizophrenic patients can exercise a powerful
    fascination for the apprentice shrink. Their disordered
    thoughts & expressions have, at least initially, a strange
    & seductive charm - those droll associations, the comical
    rhymes, the ingenious fancies, the marvellous tortuosities.
    Instead of dismissing them as mere products of a disordered
    brain function, the young idealist feels challenged to make
    a bit more psychological sense of it all. He remembers Jung's
    'discovery' of the collective unconscious, Freud's surmisings
    on the rituals of the primitive mind &, instead of slinking back
    with the older time servers to the Residency for the lunchtime
    sherry & the afternoon golf, decides instead to work towards
    an eventual decypherment of the schizophrenic code.

    In the end though - after a couple of months, a couple of years
    - he gives up. The charm has worn off, the jokes revealed as
    threadbare, the clang associations turned simply wearisome.
    Yet it once all sounded so portentous & elusively meaningful.
    Pity. A real pity, but all we're left with is the sound of wind
    whistling through an unhappy & splintered mind. Old Pat Lynch
    was right. We've been wasting our time. Better to turn one's
    attention to the rich, good-looking hysterics. So much more
    rewarding & so much more fun.

    Certainly once encountered, the presence (& vacuousness) of
    schizophrenic thought-disorder is as unmistakable as the smell
    of putrefaction.

    I remember the conversation in which Brendan & myself first
    shared our disillusion - almost fifty years ago. It returned with
    great vividness as I ice-picked my way last night up the sheer face
    of Différance.

    Scottie B.

-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
Received on Fri Dec 13 03:50:45 2002