What do *you* want?
Dec. 30th, 2003 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
featherynscaleCame across a passage I found worth noting... From Queen Maeve and Her Lovers, Sylvia Perera. Perera is a Jungian analyst, and the book is focused on Jungian approaches to addiction and recovery therapy - it's quite interesting so far.
In this passage, she has just talked about Cuchulain receiving three wishes from Scathach, as long as he could name them on the spot, in one breath.
"...the goddess of desirousness...does not seek repression of passionate hungers, but rewards the partner who can appropriately respond to her demands and transform raw need into desires specifically related to time, place and person .... To be able to name three wants suddenly on demand and in expectation of their fulfillment requires freely flowing, spontaneous access to passion, and a clear, articulated sense of entitlement. Such thrice-focused desire is remarkably difficult for modern rational consciousness, which is often too far removed from its repressed libidinous sources or in distorted relation to them through learned fear and addictive patterns. How far removed is easy to see. All we have to do at any moment is to ask ourselves the goddess [Scathach]'s question: what three things do I want most, now and here? Where there is a limp sense of entitlement, asking oneself and seeking to answer the question exercises a necessary psychological muscle."
Having the aforementioned limp sense of entitlement myself, this was of interest...
In this passage, she has just talked about Cuchulain receiving three wishes from Scathach, as long as he could name them on the spot, in one breath.
"...the goddess of desirousness...does not seek repression of passionate hungers, but rewards the partner who can appropriately respond to her demands and transform raw need into desires specifically related to time, place and person .... To be able to name three wants suddenly on demand and in expectation of their fulfillment requires freely flowing, spontaneous access to passion, and a clear, articulated sense of entitlement. Such thrice-focused desire is remarkably difficult for modern rational consciousness, which is often too far removed from its repressed libidinous sources or in distorted relation to them through learned fear and addictive patterns. How far removed is easy to see. All we have to do at any moment is to ask ourselves the goddess [Scathach]'s question: what three things do I want most, now and here? Where there is a limp sense of entitlement, asking oneself and seeking to answer the question exercises a necessary psychological muscle."
Having the aforementioned limp sense of entitlement myself, this was of interest...
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Re: Entitlement
Date: 2003-12-30 08:59 am (UTC)Bah - fevers suck.
Date: 2003-12-30 09:02 am (UTC)Since this is the discussion about Sylvia Perera and not the one about Robert Anton Wilson, let me revise my earlier pronouncement:
"entitlement" doesn't have to have the nasty connotations that the conservatives/libertarians have given it; it's unfortunate that it has been hijacked that way, but I don't think it's inherent in the word itself.
Re: Entitlement
Date: 2003-12-30 09:04 am (UTC)Although it's also true that there are a lot of words in analytic schools that mean different things than what they mean outside of the Freud-and-Jung club. (And, alternately, most words in use in politics mean something different than what they mean outside of those circles. So it runs both ways.)
Re: Entitlement
Date: 2003-12-30 09:44 am (UTC)But I disagree about the connotations of a word. Whether a a politician used a word in a new way or a comedian on SNL, a word picks up connotations. It is the nature of our language and we don't have a language police (yes we have people who police us using language but not the language itself...see France). Most words are constructs and have no inherent meaning. Peruse the OED and watch a word change over time. The reclaiming tradition is all about changing words or changing them back.
Re: Entitlement
Date: 2003-12-30 10:02 am (UTC)I'd argue that all words are constructs and have no inherent meaning... but that may be just me. It's all based on consensus. If you and I have agreed that "sprorgle" means the sort of cappucinoid coffee that one gets from the dispenser at the gas station (you know, the sort that you have to fill your cup only 2/3 of the way up, and then let go of the button?), then sprorgle is as valid a word as anything else. This is why I got so PO'ed about the whole "trance" discussion not so long ago... in my world we can call it anything we want to as long as we understand that the meaning we assign to it is valid only for us... Or not.
Re: Entitlement
Date: 2003-12-30 10:21 am (UTC)Re: Entitlement
Date: 2003-12-30 10:27 am (UTC)That also occurred to me, that most languages attach the Ma- sound to the concept of mother, since odds are, that's the first thing the kid's going to say, and odds are that Mom's going to be the one who's around to hear it, but even that may not be the cut-in-stone sort of thing... in the Future(tm), when the feminist revolution is complete, and all children are raised by stay-at-home dads, Ma- may come to refer to the concept of father :-P
Re: Entitlement
Date: 2003-12-30 10:36 am (UTC)