No. of comments: 0On average 58 people are killed each day in South Africa, a horrendous statistic — but numbers gloss over the qualitative aspects of each homicide — and psychotherapy is needed to address the hidden motives
Freud
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, Gender violence, General, Health, Media, Tech
No. of comments: 0
Human ‘nature’ as explored in a riveting television series: ‘The 100’
No. of comments: 0The question, what is dominant, human ‘nature’, or ‘nurture’ (culture), has been the motivating force in a debate that has waged since at least the 18th and 19th centuries — for instance in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see his prize-winning Academy of Dijon essay on the question, whether human morals had improved by, or […]
Posted inEquality, General, Health, Media, News/Politics
No. of comments: 0
The resurgence of anti-Semitism
No. of comments: 0The spectre of anti-Semitism is once again stalking us, according to Vivienne Walt (TIME, July 1 2019, p. 33-37). Unbelievable, one might exclaim. Not really, and I’ll explain why – or rather, I’ll let Freud – one of the most original thinkers in history – explain why. But let’s look at the evidence for the […]
Posted inGender violence, General, Media, News/Politics, Tech
No. of comments: 0
‘Dark technology’ and human ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’?
No. of comments: 0In the later 19th century there was a protracted debate among thinkers of various stripes about the question, what ultimately determines human actions — ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ — a debate that is still going on today. But while it was then influenced by the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, on the one hand, and empiricist […]
Posted inGeneral, Media
No. of comments: 0
“Names Unvoiced but not Unknown”: Cleone Cull’s surrealist art
No. of comments: 0Judging by the recently opened exhibition of multimedia drawings by Eastern Cape artist Cleone Cull – who spent years teaching fine art, first at the Port Elizabeth Technikon and later at the School of Music, Art and Design of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University – art is thriving in this corner of South Africa. Cleone […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
No. of comments: 1
The Tshwane protests, Freud and how to control a crowd
No. of comments: 1It is regrettable that so many thinking people today – even those in the discipline of psychology – regard the work of the founder of psychoanalysis (which is by no means synonymous with psychology) as being of no more than historical importance, and Sigmund Freud himself as a historical curiosity. And yet, Freud is more […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
No. of comments: 3
Why cartoons are linked to human freedom
No. of comments: 3There is a very obvious reason why cartoons are inseparably linked to human freedom. And here I don’t mean the Walt Disney variety, or indeed any cartoon film, although they are clearly connected to “artistic freedom” insofar as one’s creativity sets the bounds for the imagination as source of the construction of such films. What […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
No. of comments: 2
The ‘perversion’ of Donald Trump’s popularity
No. of comments: 2A lot has been written speculatively about American presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s popularity, which has seemed surprising to many if his outrageous statements about women or about Mexicans are taken into account. Until recently when he did an egg-dance on the question of women and abortion, trying to correct what he had suddenly realised had […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
No. of comments: 10
Student protests as ‘acting out’
No. of comments: 10The recent, and still continuing university student protests across the country call for a more fundamental theoretical approach. Although one could always address them at the level of “common sense” or everyday discourse (which is what I have done here before), it is perhaps time to elaborate on the fruits yielded by a psychoanalytical perspective […]
Posted inGeneral
No. of comments: 2
A flexible model for research in the human sciences
No. of comments: 2It often happens that postgraduate students and I have conversations about the question, how to go about doing research in the humanities and social sciences (the “human sciences”). And I’m not only talking about methodology (which is not the same as method); methodology is closely intertwined with epistemological (knowledge-) and ontological (being-) questions, and cannot […]