On the basis of my blogging, text messaging and emails,  my phone is learning to speak my language.

When I write “go to”, the phone suggests the following words to continue the phrase:

1. Fuck yourself
2. Hell in a basket
3. Psychologist

When I write “crazy, the phone suggests:

1. Russians
2. As fuck
3. Expensive

When I write “stupid, the phone suggests:

1. Sheep
2. As fuck
3. Russians

Everybody makes fun of George W. Bush because of the following quote but the guy is totally right:

He’s right, nothing is ever given to us. Because it all went to him.

King Midas turned everything he touched to gold. Bureaucrat busybodies turn everything they touch into a pile of steamy, fragrant cowshit.

An example. The most recent craze in higher ed is “sustainability.” Nobody knows what it is but there is a sort of a game we (meaning, institutions of higher learning) are obligated to play. In the game, each school plays for points. You accumulate points by forcing as many educators as possible to mention the word “sustainability” (in any context) on their syllabi, by making professors prove that every class they teach is “a living laboratory,” and demonstrating that 10% of all class time goes to teaching students about sustainability. I’m sure that will be super easy to do in my Spanish 101 class. And obviously, my graduate course on the Short Form will make us a bunch of points. Shorter means more sustainable, right?

Today I discovered a really phenomenal music group called Nirvana. Wow, people,  that’s really good music.

Of course, 30 minutes later I discovered that the lead singer died a bizillion years ago. And got very sad. I had already started planning to go to a concert.

Please,  don’t laugh. I have a weird relationship with music.

Reader n8chz (whose great blog you can’t find here) left some good questions about psychoanalysis that I want to address sin a separate post:

Psychoanalysis somehow seems expensive, but that’s because I’ve been told (perhaps by people I shouldn’t listen to) that real psychoanalysis is at least three 50-minute hours a week for something like five years, at with a practitioner with an MD, plus psychiatry residency, plus being psychoanalyzed, plus training in psychoanalsyis.

Today, most analysts refuse to do more than one hour-long session per week. I could go into details as to why they have departed from the Freudian model of four 40-minute sessions per week but I don’t want to bore. Suffice it to say, that these days hardly anybody practices this way. In extreme cases, an analyst might offer (and reluctantly, at that) two sessions per week for a short period of time. This is normally done when the analysand is in an acute stage. Four sessions per week are maybe suggested for people with terminal cancer or something as tragic and urgent.

Psychoanalysts don’t hold MDs, they don’t study psychiatry, they can’t and don’t want to prescribe drugs. The very words “doctor” and “psychiatry” make them wince. Psychoanalysis was born out of a rejection of psychiatry. Of course, there are analysts who follow Freud’s journey of studying psychiatry, getting massively disillusioned with it for obvious reasons, and switching to psychoanalysis. 

Here is the kind of training a psychoanalyst needs to get to be considered one: 

1. full personal psychoanalysis (at least once but often twice.)

2. assisting a practicing analyst.

3. constant and ongoing supervision.

The number of hours any individual analysand will require depends on:

1. the goal s/he wants to achieve. 

2. the readiness of the analysand to solve his or her problems.

3. the analysand’s capacity to relinquish control and break out of the intellectual rut.

4. the analysand’s familiarity with the procedure. 

Usually, the first 6 months of analysis are all about breaking through the very typical resistance structures. As we discussed before, psyche values nothing above stability and will cling to what is bad but familiar. 

The technique of psychoanalysis is “supportive frustration.” While a psychotherapist consoles and comforts, an analyst will gently try to frustrate you during every session (except when you are in extreme distress.) If you don’t feel the need to say, “Oh my God, my analyst is so annoying!”, something is not going right.

The economy of the US recovered from the global economic crisis of 2007-9 brilliantly. Unemployment rates dropped off a cliff, Western Europe is enviously eyeing “the American economic miracle,” the most underdeveloped regions of the US have gone back to full-scale constructions, expensive chic restaurants started mushrooming even in our small town in the middle of nowhere, job recruitment agencies are overworked and overwhelmed, etc.

However, the American people don’t seem to be happy. They went to the polls two weeks ago to show their discontent to the president who walked the country out of a crisis that is still ravaging other developed countries. There are constant reports that the general public believes we are still in a recession and does not notice any improvements in the economy.

Are the American people simply stupid? Can they not see how different today’s economy is from what we were all experiencing in 2008 and 2009?

No, of course, they are not stupid. The American people have a deep-seated and completely justified suspicion that the old world order is gone for good. The economic crisis of the 2008 is gone in terms of the economy but it is still very much here in every other sense. The Great Recession coincided with the moment in time when it became completely clear to everybody that there was a massive transformation underway of both the global world order and the structure of the nation-state. Since there is no public discussion of this enormous tectonic shift, people are verbalizing their preoccupation through the familiar language of recession and unbalanced budgets. 

The conscience of crisis remains even after the unemployment rates have climbed down. This would be a great time to talk about what is really going on and why we feel like the crisis is only beginning. However, what is the likelihood that anybody will put aside the comforting party slogans to look for new terminology that will be relevant to the new reality?

For the first time in my life, I spoke about my research in class. This means that instead of delivering the simplified, watered-down version, I actually spoke in my “research voice” and at the level at which I conduct the research. I wasn’t planning to do it but then students started asking really profound questions, and I couldn’t resist.

This was a strangely exhilarating experience. Since this class, I have already received emails of gratitude from 3 different students. Usually, nobody thanks me for specific lectures, so this is a first. One student told me that this was the best lecture he ever heard in his life.

This is a singular occurrence because there is always the issue of linguistic competence which stands as a barrier between me and the possibility to deliver such material more often. And, of course, there is the issue of students expecting lists of things they can memorize. My lectures are always exciting and informative (seriously, you should read my student evaluations) but they are never actually at the level of the research I conduct. Because the research cannot be reduced to a bullet-point list.

The only other time I tried teaching at the level of my research was in a graduate course back at Cornell. That single lecture led 23 students out of 29 to drop the course instantly. So I never repeated the experiment.

Maybe I need to talk to this group about the nation-state before the semester ends and I never get such another opportunity.

My colleagues constantly send me “job” opportunities for students. These “jobs” are unpaid, “resume-building” activities. I never share these opportunities with students, however.

I understand that they are adults who can make their own decisions as to whether they want to donate their labor for free. However, I’m also an adult who is entitled to make my own decision. And it is my decision not to participate in this form of exploitative labor practices. 

In the same vein, it has been suggested to me that I can “employ” several unpaid research assistants alongside with my one paid RA. I refused because I’ll be damned if I ever exploit a worker in this way. The way it was explained to me is that spending time with me and learning about my research is already so valuable that students don’t need to be paid for helping me with my research. The good news is that I’m not deluded and self-centered enough to take this approach.

 

“Government employees produce nothing. They’re a net consumer. And you got that cost forever and ever and ever because they’re on the KPERS (pension) plan, they’re on all the government insurance and everything,” Merrick said. “That is employment to Democrats. Hire more (government employees). And that was Kathleen; she’d brag about her employment number, ‘Oh, I got a lot of people employed.’ Yeah, you got a lot more government employees employed. That doesn’t stimulate the economy.”

I wonder how such an uneducated and embarrassingly stupid person could have been hired to represent the interests of the people. Maybe this government employee who produces nothing but stupid and pompous speeches should be fired.