Kraus asks the question of Freudian analysis: What would be enough? At what point would talking about ones problems for x hours a week, be sufficient to bring one to a state of normalcy?The genius of Freudianism, Kraus writes, is not the creation of a cure, but of a diseasethe universal, if intermittent, human sentiment that something is not right, elaborated into a state whose parameters, definitions, and prescriptions are controlled by a self-selecting group of experts, who can never be proved wrong.It was said that the genius of the Listerine campaign was attributable to the creation not of mouthwash, but of halitosis. Kraus indicts Freud for the creation of the nondisease of dissatisfaction. (See also the famous malaise of Jimmy Carter, which, like Oscar Wildes Pea Soup Fogs, didnt exist til someone began describing it.) To consider a general dissatisfaction with ones life, or with life in general as a political rather than a personal, moral problem, is to exercise or invite manipulation. The fortune teller, the life coach, the Spiritual Advisor, these earn their living from applying nonspecific, nonspecifiable remedies to nonspecifiable discomforts.The sufferers of such, in medicine, are called the worried well, and provide the bulk of income and consume the bulk of time of most physicians. It was the genius of the Obama campaign to exploit them politically. The antecedent of his campaign has been called Roosevelts New Deal, but it could, more accurately, be identified as The Music Man.
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About David Mamet
David Mamet was a contemporary American playwright, author, and filmmaker. David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, author, and filmmaker. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- Politics — Governance, civic duty, and the structures of power