Archives for July 2025

"In Roman Catholic mythology, there exists a figure which has always moved me; namely the child in limbo, the unbaptised child who.can neither go to Heaven, nor to Hell, nor to Purgatory. This child wanders back and forth in all eternity between Heaven and Hell. Since it is not baptised it cannot go to heaven, and having died at birth, it had no opportunity to sin, so it cannot go to Hell. The figure of the child in limbo was, even for conservative Catholics, too much to swallow, and it has therefore been omitted from most Catholic churches. And yet the following book deals with the part of our psyche which could be represented by the unbaptized child in limbo; unbaptized meaning that part … [Read more...]

“From ancient times the saying comes, There is no death; there is no life. Indeed, the skies are cloudless And the river waters clear.” Yoshimoto (Samurai 1185 -1333. Zen Death Poems, Yoal Hoffman, tr) "What makes the patient with a character disorder a patient at all? In fact, this, as well as the related question — when is analysis terminated? — reveal the inner limits of psychoanalysis. The theory of the individual becomes a theory of society. The psychoanalytic theory of narcissism is entangled in the same web. Narcissism is a character disorder, often surfacing with such vague symptoms as "emptiness" and "futility." Moreover, the narcissistic patient is often not dysfunctional … [Read more...]

"There is a world elsewhere." Shakespeare (Coriolanus) " but the beauty is not the madness Tho my errors and wrecks lie about me. and I cannot make it cohere" Ezra Pound (Canto 116) "One of the arguments put forward in propaganda for colonizing Ireland in 1594, Virginia in 1612 (and on many similar occasions), was that 'the rank multitude' might be exported, 'the matter of sedition . . . removed out of the City." Christopher Hill (Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England ) If I were granted the opportunity to direct another Shakespeare play, it would be Coriolanus. I have long meditated on this late and somewhat problematic (in the … [Read more...]