I want to show gratitude to my readers for their continued existence and active engagement with the blog. So please leave requests as to what you want me to blog about. I will then make a list of suggestions and try to cover them all before the end of the year. If there is anything you’ve seen on the news or read anywhere and want me to comment on it, leave the links in the comments.
Thank you!
This post will be sticky for a while, so scroll down for new posts.
Clarissa's Blog 
Not a very happy topic, but any thoughts on Russia’s “don’t say gay” bill passing in St. Petersburg?
I’d also like to see a full post on your thoughts on finals, since I’m dealing with them now. š
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I was actually going to write about the current wave of homophobia in Russia but I wasn;t sure people would be interested. Now I have an excuse to blog about it. š
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I, too, would like to read about this.
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More translations of fiction if it’s kosher to post them.
Academic craziness.
Stories from Ukraine.
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erotic fiction!
š
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You want me to write it or review it? š
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Stephen King nominated for worst sex writing: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15836511
Whatever it was it cannot be any worse than all the bullshit that went down in ‘It’.
Yeah second nominatissima write about the gay Russian thing.
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This is timely. About writing academic articles. My tutor wishes me to write one and frankly the very idea makes me want to hide under my bed and never, ever come out.
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I can try. š And then, hopefully, people who are better at it than I am will come here and share their advice, too.
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Academic articles are all about defining parameters and terms. Initially you need to know what those who will read your article would already be aware of. One of the greatest difficulties for me, when writing in an academic way (or indeed, when writing in general) was to try to understand what most people took for “common sense”. Common sense does not need to be explained and therefore forms the framework for further explanations.
Technical terms do need an explanation, however, and they need more detailed explanations the further they depart from “common sense”.
Think of writing an academic article as if you were writing a computer programme. All the terms and values must be accounted for.
Make sure you have defined all the parameters. For example, “Let A stand for the values of 1,2,3.” Once you have got all this underpinning logic out of the way, you can continue to fill in the details of your article.
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One of my favourite novels is The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. I’ve often wondered just how exaggerated is his depiction of bureaucracy in Russia? You’ve mentioned him before, so I expect you’ve read this.
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Thank you kindly for this request! I’ve been dying to talk about this novel but I didn’t want to bore people. But now that I have an actual request for it, I will feel free to blog about it.
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Yay! I’ve read the novel before and look forward to your post.
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I would like to see you blog about the question of what you should blog about.
So I’m quite content š
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It’s good to have such easy to please readers around. š
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I never got an answer to a question I posed in a comment thread, and I think the full answer might be too long for a comment. So, here it is again: Why do you regard behavioral psychology as invalid, but adore the field of child psychology?
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I don’t adore the field of child psychology. My thing is psychoanalysis and I’ll be glad to share what it has done for me. š
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I have very intellectual readers, which makes me very happy.
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From your posts on the co-sleeping and ‘what bugs me’ I gathered otherwise. Psychoanylsis always struck me as a waste of time, because the psychiatrist usually hears another thing from what the patient is actually saying. Then again, you do that too sometimes. I’ve pretty much given up on psychology; I’ve picked up some useful information on how my brain works, but for the most part, the field’s hopelessly subjective. And you always get far too many people who use psychology as a bludgeon.
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Psychiatrists don’t do psychoanalysis. Besides, what the analyst hears or not is completely irrelevant.
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I would appreciate a post on what you would change about yourself and why? If that is too deep then just disregard. š
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Actually, it’s kind of topic I love discussing, so I will definitely write about that.
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Sorry to ruin your day Clarissa but I would be interested in hearing your opinion on this outrageous article in the Daily Mail (where else?) about a theory proposed by Simon Baron-Cohen (who else?) that suggests that women’s equality is to blame for the rise in autism in the west.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2064834/Is-changing-role-women-society-rise-autism-past-30-years.html
Once again I am very sorry. Why does the Daily Mail have to be so disgusting?
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Oy, oy, and once again oy. Thanks for leaving the link. I definitely need to write about this.
I’ve just been recording a lecture about the rise of fascism in the West. And here are so-called specialists using the same dramatic rhetoric about autism. Sweet Jesus on the cross.
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That *is* a horrible article!
I think I might have to write about it, too.
(Though I am intrigued to see that SBC is actually doing a prospective study to see if “high systemizers” — math, science and tech people — really do have any greater likelihood of having autistic children. However, I’d hope he would use some other tool besides his own AQ to screen the children once they are old enough; the AQ has a lot of overlap with his test of “systemizing” ability, so any inherited or learned tendencies in that direction would boost a kid’s AQ score even if the kid wouldn’t meet diagnostic criteria for autism.)
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I read the article and it comes across like metaphysics. Intelligence and superiority are defined as male qualities, with the underlying argument of the article being that we are becoming more “male brained” as intelligent and superior people of both genders reproduce.
Eventually, I’m sure, the whole population will become male and then women’s physiology will shift until they are also biologically male.
This will spell the end of the human race.
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Yes, the article is straight from bizarro land. I’m writing a post about it right now. It’s hard, though, because I have to make efforts not to pee my pants with laughter.
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I’d disagree that what the analyst hears is irrelevant. In any therapy, there’s invariably a record kept, and if what ze hears adds up to ‘schizophrenia,’ ‘manic-depressive’ or ‘clinically depressed’ it’s going to be noted, put on the record, and will come back to haunt the person who’s in treatment.
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A psychoanalyst does not operate with the terms you mention and never offers any diagnoses. I think you are confusing an analyst and a psychiatrist. Psychoanalysis was born precisely out of a rejection of psychiatry.
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Well, that is perhaps the intellectual ideal — that what the analyst hears is irrelevant. However, contemporary social organisation has been about labeling in order to control. So, a great deal of circumspection is in order when speaking to any kind of professional. This is due to the reductive nature of meaning that forms the epistemology of professionalism.
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Once again, a person who offers a diagnosis is not a psychoanalyst.
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When I was writing my thesis, I had to deal with the issue of psychoanalysis. One of the critics had written a psychoanalytic book on my author, which basically made out that he had mother problems and was an all round no-goodnik, due to his inability to conform to bourgeois norms.
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Well, who doesn’t have mommy issues? Only those of us who have daddy issues instead.
And then there are the lucky bastards who have BOTH mommy and daddy issues. š š
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Then some other prof. decided to treat me like I was largely insane and irrational because I had decided to study “pre-Oedipal” psychology from a Jungian perspective (which he disagreed with — he thought Jung was “a Nazi”).
So I learned from this that psychoanalysis was a form of emotional blackmail — more specifically an intellectual and emotional strait-jacket — to stop people from having non-conformist ideas.
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In terms of literary criticism, I also hate it when people start applying psychoanalytic theories to literary analysis. However, we have to distinguish between that and therapeutic practices that allow people to resolve their major psychological issues without ever even looking at a pill. And that, I believe, is priceless.
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Write what you think about literary theory and criticism.
Marx? Freud? Frye? Brooks? Lacan? Foucault? Derrida? Baudrillard? Fish? Deleuze? Greenblatt? Butler? Bloom?
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Said? Spivak? Fanon? Barthes? Kant? Aristotle? Nietzsche? Hegel? Jonson? Johnson? Milton? Dryden? Pope?
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I liked the first list better than the last. š
But it’s an absolutely fantastic idea. Thank you!!
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Yeah, but it implied that non-adaptability on the part of this individual (who had rather specific and hardly bourgeois, psychological issues to deal with) was a feature of his own, personal, individual immaturity, which caused him to fall short of objective, generic (bourgeois) standards.
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Actually, his mother had cast an evil spirit into him (an “ngozi”), which I interpreted as casting her own sins onto him through a mode of conscious projective identification.
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Heh. Like the American Express?
My subject did claim to psychoanalyse himself and resolve his issues, however, I am not so sure. Psychoanalysis seems to be a poison to anyone who touches on it, as others read it as an open invitation to diagnose one’s experiences as pathologies, in these terms. I have never not had that happen, ever since I delved into it. It is bad “muti” because it always backfires nowadays, as people impose pathological interpretations onto things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muti
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Wasn’t it Mastercard? š
I think we are not talking about the same thing because, from what I know, the concept of pathology is not one that psychoanalysis employs.
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I think we are talking about the way that originally liberating ideas get co-opted and become the opposite to what they started out to be.
For instance, Christianity was originally the idea that one’s spiritual liberation was entirely subjective and came from within. Nowadays, it is the means by which the most extreme form of patriarchal asceticism and control of human lives is reinforced.
I sense that the advocates of psychoanalysis are embarking on the same path, to the detriment of any value in their system. They want to be respected as authorities who have the power to decide who is or isn’t pathological.
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Yes, we are talking about different things. I’m talking about the situations where a person gets fed up with feeling miserable, comes to an analyst and talks about their life. The analyst never says “You are bipolar, here’s a scrip” or “You are traumatized by your distant mother.” Rather, s/he says, “And how did you feel about this? Why do you find this situation so significant?”, etc.
Of course, you do martial arts and shamanism, so you definitely don’t need psychoanalysis. Many of us, though are not into those things. So we have to go the route of psychoanalysis.
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I guess my real beef with psychoanalysis is that it becomes a dogma for reinforcing patriarchal norms. If you don’t accept that your character structure is formed by the father and has to be thus formed in order for you to be considered in any way normal, then you are guilty of a sin against the orthodoxy of psychoanalysis. Of course, Deleuze and Guattari take up this issue in a typically French way, which means you can’t quite draw a line between where they are being serious in intent or just rhetorical and subversive.
On the other hand, the influence of our parents on us, particularly in terms of forming the superego, can be quite significant. These effects don’t even have to be patriarchal. For instance, my father (a severe stroke victim of five months) is now dictating to me his memoirs. It would be hard to underestimate the effect that the motif of personal sacrifice has had on his life. He just about starts his story with it. A few paragraphs down:
“I had a lot of reasons to be introverted. The circumstances of my birth. There was this huge pile of presents, such a big pile of presents that it was quite a daunting operation. During the war, my mother had stayed in the mess, which was a group of women who had got together and hired some flats, and these women pulled together. I had such a huge pile of presents for Christmas that my mother thought it was wrong for me to have all those presents and maybe I should give one way. My mother said it couldn’t be one I didn’t like, it had to be one I liked, so there was sacrifice involved. She wanted to teach me values. It taught me to sacrifice things that you make too valuable. So then under pressure I selected a wooden fire engine, which was duly put back in its box and later I was taken to the children’s home and the box was placed in my hands and I was told to take it in and give it to them. I walked into this building and all there were was a lot of kids running around. Some boy came up to me and said what do you want. I pushed the box to him and said that is for you and some matron came and said yes what is it.
I said this is for the boys and she said okay, and off she went. Strangely enough, many years later, I met a young man who had actually been bought up in the children’s home and professed to remember the fire engine. It gave me a link back to my childhood, which was a good thing. My childhood was full of broken promises and broken connections.”
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“If you donāt accept that your character structure is formed by the father and has to be thus formed in order for you to be considered in any way normal, then you are guilty of a sin against the orthodoxy of psychoanalysis. ”
-In my experience, the mother gets as much attention in psychoanalysis as the father. So there is perfect gender equality there. š
You know what’s interesting? My father is also a stroke victim and I’m now translating his memoirs. One more thing you and I have in common, eh? This is very uncanny.
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I just learned the scientists have discovered the speed of light may be slowing down…that it may not be constant as we have supposed. This could completely dismantle everything modern science has been teaching as “truth.”
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To be honest, I never supposed anything about the speed of light. š I’m grievously ignorant about sciences. Is there anybody knowledgeable here who’d like to comment?
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I was kind of looking-over Nominatissima’s shoulder here, and felt inspired to reply:
I’m afraid I’m not sure to which results you are referring, Anonymous. If you are referring to the hypothesis proposed by John Moffat and others that light in the very early universe propagated sixty orders of magnitude faster than it does today, then that is not a discovery so much as it is a proposed mechanism to solve certain problems in theoretical cosmology. But this hypothesis is unproven, and, in any case, also involves all of the other constants of nature varying proportionally in order to preserve the laws of physics.
Are you talking about supposedly-observed variations in the fine-structure constant? If so, these are still hotly contested, but would actually imply that the speed of light is getting faster.
In any case, I don’t see how any of these things would ‘completely dismantle everything modern science has been teaching as “truth.”‘ They might turn much of modern physics into an approximation (in much the same way that Einstein turned Newtonian physics into an approximation) but it would still be a valid description of the world in a certain limit.
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Pretty soon light’s gonna be showin up late and messed up. Like you flip a switch and nothing happens till an hour and a half later there’s a clumsy knock on the door and light’s just barely standin there stinkin of SoCo and cheap weed. If you complain light’ll get defensive and angry all demandin who you are you think you can treat it like a slave, then it’ll start cryin that gravity finally had enough and kicked it out of their apartment and can it crash on your couch for a while.
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It’s lovely to see such bright people visit the blog, so feel free to keep looking over. š
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I dunno.. the idea of analysis still makes me shudder. The more information you give someone, the more information they have to use against you. I prefer my privacy.
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I don’t want to pry so please don’t respond. But if you ever had problems with anorgasmy and wondered why, here is your answer. An intense fear of losing control.
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LOL. You really shouldn’t try to diagnose over the internet. I fear being OUT of control. I’m the sort of person who mentally schedules her day- hell, the week-, in advance. I like working from a script, knowing exactly what my responses should be to any given question or situation. I find emotions cloud the brain, so I try to work my way around them. I don’t put myself in situations where I can’t control the outcome, so analysis is totally out of the question. I don’t like medical personnel in general, so the less of them in my life, the better.
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Yes, that’s exactly what I said.
Extremely often, the fear of losing control is a cause of anorgasmy. I’m just sharing this knowledge because some people might find it useful. Anorgasmy is a serious problem for both men and women and there are few places where it’s discussed intelligently.
If you don’t have it, though, then that’s fantastic.
I don’t advocate psychoanalysis for everybody. Only people who feel they’ve really had it with being miserable but don’t accept medicinal treatments will find it useful. It’s a very painful, complex kind of treatment but it produces extremely fast results if compared to, say, psychotherapy. I know people who’ve been going to a therapist for 5+ years, which is ridiculous.
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It’s your blog, you decide what you want to blog about.
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Yes, but I want to be nice to the readers, too. š
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*Shrug* Rock music is cheaper than therapy.
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Now we are getting somewhere! š Music is definitely therapeutic.
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Write about people that are too stupid to get out of their own way š
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I think my idea of music would keep you up at night š
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I’m into gangsta rap, so nothing much surprises me music-wise. š
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I would like to read about your experiences with psychoanalysis. What was it about, how did it help you, what techniques did your analyst use, etc.
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I’ve sort of rediscovered my inner metalhead and inner punk lately. My city has a huge music scene, and I’ve found it’s really easy to find local bands that I like, and my friend’s contaminated my itunes with her symphonic metal. I like some classical music, but only a few pieces.
Weirdly, US rap is the one genre that I just can’t get into. French rap, however, is really cool.
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I like French rap, too. You see, we do have something in common. š
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Could be. By the way, do you have any ideas for recipes involving Russian Caravan tea? We have at least a tablespoon of used tea leaves, and no one wants to drink it. (My little brother was trying to make tea for his girlfriend, and as a non-tea drinker, he didn’t realize that less is more when it comes to some teas.) If you don’t have any idea, I’m planning to brew it up and make it into barbecue sauce.
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Sorry, nothing comes to mind right now.
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Well, I guess I’m going to have to ask google. I could brew the stuff again, but..yick! I might as well lick an ashtray.
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Clarissa, can you write about Alexander Pushkin? Was he really killed by Russian Tzar or his duel was only about his wife and her sisters?
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As much as I dislike the tsar, there is no evidence he had anything to do with the writer’s death. Pushkin’s duel was a manifestation of his need to preserve a macho image and preserve the ownership of his wife.
I don’t think that Pushkin was a talented writer. His poetry is secondary, his Eugene Onegin is, in my opinion, worthless artistically.
I’m married to a Russian person who thinks these ideas are sacrilegious. š
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