Posted on 06/08/2002 7:11:32 PM PDT by Aquinasfan
Exerpt:
...The narcissist, of course, perceives none of this, precisely because he has been raised to be “empty.” Narcissism is a defensive reaction based on a failure to internalize the reality principle. That choice becomes exacerbated by a culture which promotes narcissism as its ideal of behavior. Because he has been taught to choose illusion over reality, the narcissist sees any social structure which might threaten his illusions—from the family to the local community— as inherently inauthentic. The only reality is the grandiose self and its unrealistic desires, a fact which is invariably misunderstood by less narcissistic types. As a result, the narcissist world is made up of bifurcations, good parents and bad parents, etc. It is also essentially Gnostic, having the sense that the true self is enmired in bad matter, in this instance bad social circumstances which do not let the true self express itself fully and properly. “A characteristic symptom of narcissism,” according to Cushman, is, above all, “a sense of personal fraudulence describe as a ‘false self’ that masks the frightened ‘true self’” (p. 605).
This is precisely the situation at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Harry is living with the Dursleys, a thoroughly unattractive group of people who are quite emphatically not his real parents, his real parents being dead. This bifurcation of the family into good parent and bad parent, corresponds to the narcissist’s inability to conceive of the mother as an independent person who both gratifies and thwarts infantile desires. Rather than coming to the understanding that the loving mother sometimes thwarts infantile desire as way of leading the infant to a better understanding of reality as independent of its wishes, the narcissist bifurcates the mother into a fantasy of the good mother who gratifies his wishes and the bad mother who does not, since the gratification of desire is the summum bonum, indeed, the only good for the narcissist.
Rowling conveys this attitude by dividing the world neatly in half. There are people like Harry, his real parents, Hagrid, Dr. Dumbledore, and the Hogwarts school, all of which are good because they believe in magic. On the other hand, we have the Dursleys, Harry’s actual parents, who live in the unromantic suburbs. These people are known as Muggles and their main characteristic is that they don’t believe in “magic,” i.e., the narcissistic dominion of desire over reality. The Dursleys are “proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” Mr. Dursley “didn’t approve of imagination.” The Dursleys, in other words, are what the Germans would call Spiessbuerger, stupid bourgeois suburban types who are fat, unimaginative, selfish, consumerist wage slaves. The Dursleys, n other words, are the ideal citizen in the globalist economy. In other words, perfect examples of the narcissistic empty self, which is, of course, why Rowling has to demonize them as different. Harry, as narcissist, is no different than the Dursleys. Since the thought is intolerable, the solution is once again fantasy, the fantasy that Harry is somehow different, when he is exactly the same because his self is just as empty and narcissistic as the Muggle consumers he (or Rowling, or the reader) finds so repugnant.
This is a very long article and Jones has a meandering style, but the article is well worth the read.
Is that legal???
C.S. Lewis, unlike Rowling, understood both. Harry Potter is a fantasy about education written by someone who looks upon it as something important but essentially inscrutable. Education is what you need to get ahead, and, therefore, to those, like Rowling, who admire its effects but don’t understand its inner workings, education will always seem to be a form of magic. Lewis wrote about both magic and the English educational system as of the mid-’40s in his book The Abolition of Man, one of the best books of the 20th century. Unlike Rowling, Lewis understood the English educational system very well. Unlike Rowling, he did not disguise his dislike for what he saw as escapist fantasy. Lewis takes issue with a textbook he calls The Green Book because its disjunction between facts (which are scientific and objective) and values (which are personal and subjective) will create a nation of “men without chests,” in other words, people without “heart” or character whose brains rest directly on their genitals. Lewis finds it an “outrage” to call such men “Intellectuals” because this sort of man is “not distinguished from other men by an unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her.” They are known as Intellectuals not because of “excess of thought” but rather because of “defect of fertile and generous emotion.” Their heads, in other words, “are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.”As education in England became more “scientific” it also became more “magical” because magic, although it had much in common with applied science, was the opposite of wisdom: For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique, and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious--such as digging up and mutilating the dead. If we compare the chief trumpeter of the new era (Bacon) with Marlowe’s Faustus, the similarity is striking.
Lewis feared “science” of the magical sort. He especially feared its effect on education. His caveats went unheeded. British education became more and more “magical,” which is to say, more and more driven by the will’s desire to dominate reality rather than the opposite, “how to conform the soul to reality,” and as a result it ceased to be education in any real sense.
This is nothing less than unadulterated mumbo-jumbo.
The only narcissist within view here is the author of this swill.
Harry Potter is nothing but a fairy-tale. A cute children's story. The effort by psychologists as well as certain religious bigots to turn Harry Potter into some damned psycho-graphic paradigm is nothing but horse-feathers.
This means, as Lasch noted, promoting sex and not aggression, but what it does not mean is giving students some contact with reality because that would threaten the collective narcissist fantasy that the students can become whatever they want to be simply by putting in time at school.
Go E. Michael!
Well, the fact is Rowling was a divorced mother, and is now married again. Not that it matters, really, we're talking about her work, not her marital status.
There are people like Harry, his real parents, Hagrid, Dr. Dumbledore, and the Hogwarts school, all of which are good because they believe in magic. On the other hand, we have the Dursleys, Harry’s actual parents, who live in the unromantic suburbs
Couldn't be more wrong. There are quite distinctly evil wizards, who are shown as evil and opposed by the "good guys". And there are good Muggles, too, as well as ones like the Dursleys. The lines are not drawn so cleanly as this would suggest. to put it succinctly, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is a fantasy about education as magic, written by someone who does not understand what either education or magic really involves.
Neither does the author, apparently. Magic is not real. Therefore there are no rules on it, other than those that the author imposes. What's so weird about having a school of wizardry? If you're going to posit a world with magic, the kids have to learn it somewhere, and unless you're suggesting that all wizards are homeschooled, that means a school. What's so sinister there?
. Unlike Rowling, he did not disguise his dislike for what he saw as escapist fantasy
Great flying balls of cheese, does this guy know anything about Lewis? The man embraced what we call "escapist literature" almost as much as his friend Tolkien did! It's Tolkien who said (paraphrased) that escapist literature is good, that it is not "the desertion of the soldier, but the flight of a prisoner". What has this guy been smoking?
Since Harry has done nothing to achieve this fame, he must have inherited it, and here Rowling’s fantasy comes full circle. Harry Potter is noble by birth, and as such he and his magic are a direct repudiation of the democratic educational policies promoted by virtually every government in England since the time C. S. Lewis wrote The Abolition of Man. Education is magic when it provides a ticket out of the penury of lower class existence or the dreariness of middle class existence, but it can’t be magic if it does this for everyone.
Uh.... no. Sorry, wrong answer. Harry did do something to achieve his fame - he survived "Lord Voldemort"s attack, and defeated the evil wizard. And there are plenty of low-class wizards, such as Harry's friends the Weasleys - seven children, a ramshackle house, but caring parents. Magic does not automatically make life better, or more interesting - just different.
The spells are all in Latin. This corresponds to the uneducated Blair-regime, yobbo view of the classics.
What about this.... in the Middle Ages, Latin was the language of the educated, a common language for scholars. Wizards, unlike 'Muggles' seem to be more in the medieval period than modern times. And putting spells in Latin means that you can teach the same spell in Japan that you would in France.
Anyway, the rest of this article is pretty much incomprehensible. But he gets this much wrong... so why should the rest be any more right?
"British education became more and more “magical,” which is to say, more and more driven by the will’s desire to dominate reality rather than the opposite, “how to conform the soul to reality,” and as a result it ceased to be education in any real sense. "
It's all about self and with alittle death thrown in there. It's also interesting to listen to an interview with the author. She explains how these stories reflect her dismal childhood. The woman is troubled to say the least. BTW, love C.S. Lewis. This man was ahead of his time.
In the culture of narcissism, everything is magic, because nothing has value unless it “realizes” narcissistic fantasy. So, if cocaine is magic and the Stockmarket is magic and Rush Limbaugh’s Word power is magic, why shouldn’t education be magic too? Magic is always at war with stable essences. Lead is gold, when you know magic, and so the slogan of narcissistic education is, as the billboard advertising the local campus of Indiana University puts it, “Be whatever you want to be.” Law is also magic, at least constitutional law in the United States. The Supreme Court believes that “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and the mystery of human life.” Law is magic because it is also based on narcissist fantasies of complete hegemony over being, which is also how Justice Kennedy put in his by now famous mystery clause of Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Harry’s friend Hermione “is particularly interested in Transformation,” which is to say, “you know, turning something into something else.” Transformation is, of course, “supposed to be very difficult.” But that’s why we send our children to places like Hogwarts where they begin by believing that they can change “matches into needles and that sort of thing” and end up believing that maleness and femaleness are cultural constructs that they have transcended through gnosis.
Maybe this doesn't resonate with you, but this is going off my resonation scale.
In Utah.
This is psychobabble , combined with pedagogic piffle. All fairy tales follow certain standard temes ; not the least of which is the one about dead parent /s . Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Snow White and Rose Red, The Pink, Ashenputtel, The Tokabbies, and several hundred more, that I shan't waste bandwidth typing the names of. Bad parents / parent substitutes ? There are probably 100s of those too. Magic ? Same thing. These " hidden " things in Harry Potter, go back to ancient myths from all over the world !
Trying to deconstruct, psychoanalize, and then smear the Harry Potter series in this way, is purile and ridiculous.
Brother, I did slog through the article which, like so many others, is poorly written and cloaked in obscure phrasing. Anybody that uses the word 'bifurcate' rather than 'divides' is a pompous ass.
If the author has a point to make, I sure missed it. What I draw from the article is the author's attempt to sound intellectual when, in fact, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Perhaps you found the article meaningful. I find it stuffy and obnoxious. My kids find Harry Potter fun reading. Their teacher thought it was satanic.
I'm bemused by all the fuss, really.
Just to clarify something here. Harry was protected from Valdemort because his mother sacrificed her life for him.
It's a very simple concept, really. Evil is stymied by true love.
It wasn't so much his lineage, as it was his mother's sacrifice and love, that made him special.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.