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Re: Nabokov and Pedophelia (fwd)
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From: Jay Livingston <LIVINGSTON@saturn.montclair.edu>
Someone quoted from the Times Web Forum wrote: "I ran across an
article in a psychoanalytic journal called "Vladimir Nabakov, A Case Study in
Pedophilia".(The author is Brandon S. Centerwall and the journal Psychoanalysis
and Contemporary Thought vol 15, 1992."
Around the same time, Centerwall published an article in "The Public
Interest" (a neo-conservative quarterly) arguing that television was an
important cause of crime.
It's tempting to dismiss the psychoanalytic viewpoint as being so
simpleminded that it cannot distinguish between the world of imagination and
the world of actual behavior. More insultingly, it also attributes this
inability to other people. So if an author makes up a story about incest and
pedophelia--not once but twice!--then pedophelia and incest must be real events
in his own life. And if children see violent stories on television, they will
be unable to understand the difference between that and real violence, and they
will go out and wreak mayhem. And if people see a film about a charming
pedophile, a tide of child-rape will inundate the nation.
More charitably, we could say that psychoanalysis--especially at its
less dogmatic--is doing what we all do: speculating about the interplay
between reality and imagination.
Jay Livingston
Someone quoted from the Times Web Forum wrote: "I ran across an
article in a psychoanalytic journal called "Vladimir Nabakov, A Case Study in
Pedophilia".(The author is Brandon S. Centerwall and the journal Psychoanalysis
and Contemporary Thought vol 15, 1992."
Around the same time, Centerwall published an article in "The Public
Interest" (a neo-conservative quarterly) arguing that television was an
important cause of crime.
It's tempting to dismiss the psychoanalytic viewpoint as being so
simpleminded that it cannot distinguish between the world of imagination and
the world of actual behavior. More insultingly, it also attributes this
inability to other people. So if an author makes up a story about incest and
pedophelia--not once but twice!--then pedophelia and incest must be real events
in his own life. And if children see violent stories on television, they will
be unable to understand the difference between that and real violence, and they
will go out and wreak mayhem. And if people see a film about a charming
pedophile, a tide of child-rape will inundate the nation.
More charitably, we could say that psychoanalysis--especially at its
less dogmatic--is doing what we all do: speculating about the interplay
between reality and imagination.
Jay Livingston