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To: donh; betty boop
No. My dad took me golfing when I was about 14, and I had an abreaction.

Freud popularized that word, abreaction. Unless I miss my mark, it means you relive a truama so vividly, it is not really something experienced as being 'relived'. It is happening, as it were, for the first time, again.

For you to use such a word in connection w/ your Dad? No wonder you pithily typed 'No.'

However, you should be aware that in the world of those great trustworthy fellows, psychologists, abreactions are seen very positively. Abreactions are essential mileposts that must be passed on the road to full health during the psychotherapeutic experience. Essential catharsis moments if you will...

But they use the word incorrectly, I think, while you used it, I believe, quite correctly. For golf is actually designed to produce abreactions in my view. Ping pong, like all reactionary sports, is designed to lull you toward the false joys provided by Zen and its varients.

My understanding of Freud's Dad, and how he treated his son, Sigmund, leads me to think if I had Sigmund's Dad as my own Dad, I would likely be focusing on words like abreaction too, as well as some of the other things ...

The Mosaic religion had been a Father religion; Christianity became a Son religion. The old God, the Father, took second place; Christ, the Son, stood in His stead, just as in those dark times every son had longed to do.

Moses and Monotheism (1938)

It could be that Sigmund never knew any thing other than "dark times" w/ his Dad. And, logically, if all you experience is dark, why, then light itself .... must be a myth.

btw, I found 'abreaction' in this article too:

Knowledge as an emotional and intellectual realization of the unconscious Gnosiology, Psychedelic Drugs and Prenatal Experiences.

One last thing. Darwin had ancestors who were famous in their own right, but he had one descendent, a grandson, who was also famous:

(betty, the Gnosiology stuff is just an fyi for you; thought you'd possibly want to know about it, though obscure)

2,250 posted on 03/02/2006 4:09:58 AM PST by gobucks (Blissful Marriage: A result of a worldly husband's transformation into the Word's wife.)
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To: gobucks
That's way more about the word "abreaction" than I believe I care to know.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom

...

e.e.cummings

I think I'll defend my use of the word on the basis that I just like how it makes the sentence feel. I don't think I was primally responding to my father, who is a reasonably personable guy--I think I was primally responding to golf. For some reason, this cummings poem seems to be trying to grab my attention at this point.

Also amusing to me, is that "abreaction" as a cathartic reference, and "unconscious gnosiology" came up in your essay, when the most recent thread of this argument was about the christian persecution and murder of it's philosophical enemies, 2nd most centrally doctrinal of whom, after the jews, were the gnostics and the cathars.

And here I thought you were changing the subject, oh subtle one.

2,251 posted on 03/02/2006 9:41:46 AM PST by donh
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