Stories from the Bog: On Madness, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis

237 Pages·2012·1.829 MB·English

by  Patrick B. Kavanaugh

This collection of short stories and essays calls into question the medical-scientific
CPS
Patrick B. Kavanaugh
narrative, its understandings of psychoanalysis and madness, and the identity,
purpose and ethics that flow from and sustain its narrative. These stories are
S
gathered from meetings with people on in-patient units and in private practice.
t
Emphasis is placed on the centrality of the Freudian unconscious in the process of o
r
listening, understanding and responding in the analytic discourse. Collectively, i
e Stories from
they reintroduce the identity of the analytic practitioner as the shaman of
s
contemporary times, a mind-poet who sees the world through a magical –as
f
r
opposed to a scientific- visionary experience.
o
m
“With a wry humour and piercing intellect, Dr. Kavanaugh’s Stories from the Bog…,
the Bog
evokes the Celtic legacy of story-telling in psychoanalysis.” - David L. Downing t
h
“A scintillating book that dances on edges of the human mind. At once, e
challenging, reflective and enriched by details of therapeutic work.”
B
- Michael Eigen, Author, Contact With the Depths o
g
“Dr. Kavanaugh captures the essence of the psychoanalytic enterprise. … this On Madness, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis
book is a work of psychoanalytic art by one of its most creative practitioners.
- Marvin Hyman
Patrick Kavanaugh, Ph.D. is the founding president of the Academy
for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts, and a former president of the
International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education and the Michigan
Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology. He is a former director of clinical
training at the University of Detroit-Mercy. Currently, he is in private
practice in Farmington Hills, Michigan.
P
a
Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies (CPS) is an international scholarly
t
r
book series devoted to all aspects of psychoanalytic inquiry in theoretical, i
c
k
philosophical, applied, and clinical psychoanalysis. Its aims are broadly

B
academic, interdisciplinary, and pluralistic, emphasizing secularism and .

K
tolerance across the psychoanalytic domain. CPS aims to promote open
a
v
and inclusive dialogue among the humanities and the social-behavioral
a
sciences including such disciplines as philosophy, n
a
anthropology, history, literature, religion, cultural u
ISBN 978-90-420-3487-7 g contemporary
studies, sociology, feminism, gender studies,
h
psychoanalytic
political thought, moral psychology, art, drama,
and film, biography, law, economics, biology, and studies
cognitive-neuroscience. 9 789042 034877 PPCPS
Stories from the Bog
This page intentionally left blank.
Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies
14
Editor Associate Editors
Jon Mills Gerald J. Gargiulo
Keith Haartman
Ronald C. Naso
Editorial Advisory Board
Howard Bacal Robert Langs
Alan Bass Joseph Lichtenberg
John Beebe Nancy McWilliams
Martin Bergmann Jean Baker Miller
Christopher Bollas Thomas Ogden
Mark Bracher Owen Renik
Marcia Cavell Joseph Reppen
Nancy J. Chodorow William J. Richardson
Walter A. Davis Peter L. Rudnytsky
Peter Dews Martin A. Schulman
Muriel Dimen David Livingstone Smith
Michael Eigen Donnel Stern
Irene Fast Frank Summers
Bruce Fink M. Guy Thompson
Peter Fonagy Wilfried Ver Eecke
Leo Goldberger Robert S. Wallerstein
James Grotstein Brent Willock
R. D. Hinshelwood Robert Maxwell Young
Otto F. Kernberg Oren Gozlan
Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies (CPS) is an international scholarly
book series devoted to all aspects of psychoanalytic inquiry in theoretical,
philosophical, applied, and clinical psychoanalysis. Its aims are broadly
academic, interdisciplinary, and pluralistic, emphasizing secularism and
tolerance across the psychoanalytic domain. CPS aims to promote open and
inclusive dialogue among the humanities and the social-behavioral sciences
including such disciplines as philosophy, anthropology, history, literature,
religion, cultural studies, sociology, feminism, gender studies, political thought,
(cid:80)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:3)(cid:83)(cid:86)(cid:92)(cid:70)(cid:75)(cid:82)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:74)(cid:92)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:87)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:71)(cid:85)(cid:68)(cid:80)(cid:68)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:191)(cid:79)(cid:80)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:69)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:74)(cid:85)(cid:68)(cid:83)(cid:75)(cid:92)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:79)(cid:68)(cid:90)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:72)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:82)(cid:80)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:69)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:74)(cid:92)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:3)
cognitive-neuroscience.
Stories from the Bog
On Madness, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis
Patrick B. Kavanaugh
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012
Cover illustration: www.morgueFile.com
Cover Design: Studio Pollmann
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-3487-7
E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0764-5
© Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012
Printed in the Netherlands
Brigid
These words will never carve
your image out of bog oak
but that is what they want to do
to dig down into the moist wetness
to touch the layers of centuries
that have made you
woman, goddess, saint
to see your shape emerge intact
from the dark earth.
My instruments are crude for such a work
the bog resistant to intruders
as an ancient tribal memory
in its dark and secret places.
But I must search out these roots
this memory as vital as breath.
I must drag this ancient oak
from the centre of the bog.
I will wait as I must
for the time of dryness where I can see
the shape of what you were and what you are…
From the Collection,
Singing From the
Belly of the Whale (Dublin, 2009)
by Anne F. O’Reilly
This page intentionally left blank.
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction xv
One Stories From the Bog: On the Underworld, the 1
Underconsciousness, and the Undertaking
Two The Dead Poets Society: 21
Ventures into a Radioactive Psychoanalytic Space
Three Frankenstein’s Genie-ology: The Magical Visionary 39
Experience and the Associative Method
Four An Ethic of Free Association: Questioning a Uniform 57
and Coercive Code of Ethics
Five Wang Fo and an Ethic of Free Association: Poetic Imagination, 75
Mythical Stories, and Moral Philosophy
Six The Dramatic Meaning of Madness in Psycho(analy)sis: 97
The Ear-Rationality of Treating Illusion as Reality
Seven Escaping the Phantom’s Ghostly Grasp: On Psychoanalysis 113
as a Performance Art in the Spirit World
Eight A Fractured Fairy Tale: The Story of Our Professional Lives 133
in the Kingdom of Positivism
Nine Developing Competency in the Destruction of Psychoanalysis: 151
An OtherApproach
Ten How Will Bodies of Knowledge(s) Speak the Psychoanalytic 175
Practitioner of the 21st Century? On Madness, Shamans and
the Psychoanalytic Arts
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge some of the different people, life-experi-
ences, and groups that have influenced my thinking over the years about philoso-
phy, madness and psychoanalysis.
First and foremost, I feel privileged and deeply indebted to those people
who shared their stories with me over the years at various residential treatment
facilities, day treatment programs and in private practice. Not only did these sto-
rytelling and institutional experiences allow me to learn something about institu-
tional life and the profundity of the human spirit, they enabled me to learn some-
thing more about the analytic discourse, myself, and the notion that, indeed, we
are all more alike than otherwise.
While certain identifying information and circumstances have been
altered in the following stories in the interests of confidentiality, the mystery, magic
and muscle of the analytic discourse as a unique storytelling process remains. The
selection, organization, understanding and recounting of the following stories are
functions of my own perceptions and constructions of reality.
Having come from a blue-collar background and ethic, my first introduc-
tion to the method and madness of institutions and their discourses of power,
knowledge(s) and ethics -outside the institution of the family, that is- came from
significant experiences gathered from my “misspent youth,” involvement in the
military, and membership in the Teamsters union while working as a truck driver.
Although not fully appreciated at the time, these early experiences proved to be
quite valuable in my later involvements with institutions in professional life
whether they were residential-treatment, academic-educational, or professional-
political.
The rationality of an institution’s seemingly irrational discourse(s) follows
its own discursive rules. The awareness and understanding of these rules, I came to
realize, is absolutely crucial so as to function effectively and ethically within its dis-
course(s) -and, often times, to do so in spite of them. Collectively, these institu-
tional experiences played a major role in shaping my views on the inseparability of
culture and psychoanalysis, the significant and dynamic interplay of context and
meaning, and the necessity of appreciating and respecting the relativity of reality
in attempting to understand the complex and often times contradictory meanings
of a person’s life-story.
I would like to acknowledge Dr. La Maurice Gardner for his generous
support, advisements, and sharing of knowledge(s) in helping me navigate the
institutional power, discourses and madness I encountered early on in my profes-
sional life.
Attending the University of Windsor for my doctoral studies involved
crossing the border between Detroit and Windsor on a daily basis. These border