dan savage/ curtis/ autogynephilia

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=433857

dear dan savage,
your piece on Eastern Washington, specifically your speculations about ex-state legislator curtis caught my attention. your correspondent's guess at autogynephilia I find a useless category that asks for a dynamic explanation.

allow me to approach Curtis behavior, his enactments, acting out of his desires in the following manner:

1] it is dangerous, risky. He is accomplished; he has done this many times. the risk taking implies masochism, where there is masochism there is sadism [as in his both fucking and being fucked]. the unprotected sex he pays to impose on his prostitute also is dangerous to both parties, and is sadomasochistic. Running these dangers also implies a wish to be caught – to be helped, thus one of the possible meanings of stethoscope. However, the masochism may just be a defense, and overlay, like the sexuality of all of this, which however makes the case notorious and misleads us and thus becomes another instance of the miasma of confusion.

2] let me entertain the possibility that Curtis is not gay: i.e. that his erotic and love object choice is not a projection of something inside himself; the other possibility is, of course, not that he is a hypocrite [a useless moral judgment as far as understanding goes] but that he is split, that one side does not know, does not allow the other to know what it wishes what it is doing.

in the event of Curtis being neither gay nor bi-sexual, the cross-dressing points in a specific manner to Curtis relationship to his mother – or rather it points to a trauma in his past, possibly like a railway trauma, or of a trauma of longer duration, which then was not repaired: the entire enactment strikes me as an attempt, unsuccessful [of course],
at reparation – possibly of early abandonment, perceived or real. thus the stethoscope may be more than part of some early childhood ritual of sexual curiosity games among children – however, it also points towards childhood aside expressing the wish for a real doctor, that is: real the entire scene as a dream and interpret it as such.

whom is the rope tying down, tries to keep from leaving - aside the fantasy of mastery?

the excitement of the risk taking as well of the sex might point to a wish to return to the state of excitement induced by the trauma- not for its own sake; but that once you are in that state perhaps there will be no trauma this time? to keep the identity intact?

the identification with the figure that abandoned him might affect his identity to the point where he don's women's underwear -- if you become your mother then she has not abandoned you: it is a fetish [the sexual aspect, kink turn-on is a kind of lubricant] to allow what is fundamentally more important: the re-attachment. i can't but help suspect the oldest of anxiety, of castration, that is of disintegration, of death, absence being covered by that woman's underwear.

at any event, all of this is speculative since Curtis so far has not said more [anyway not that I know or that you report] nor did Cody, the male prostitute, reveal to you the game that they actually played prior to intercourse. if you had paid Cody, he might of course have lied, or maybe not, if you had managed to make some human contact with him, and pointed out that – aside sex and money – a human being was involved who deserved more than media exploitation. you pity him because Curtis pursuit is so lonely, well the GOP convention conviviality or anything along those lines certainly will not heal him. sincerely,


--
MICHAEL ROLOFF
Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society
this LYNX will LEAP you to all my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS:
http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html

"MAY THE FOGGY DEW BEDIAMONDIZE YOUR HOOSPRINGS!" {J. Joyce}

"Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde" [von Alvensleben]

RE: DR. BERNARD BAIL'S TWO NEW BOOKS

*Dr. Bernard Bail*

*_Irmgard_**_'s Flute_; _The Mother’s Signature_*

*Pubs: 2007**

Fortunately Dr. Bail has his own website, affording the reader the
ability to better inform himself.
**http://www.holisticpsychoanalysis.com/*

* It is important how Philadelphia born Bail came to be an analyst. One
of six U.S. WW II Bomber** navigators trained in the then new-fangled
radar, Dr. Bail's B-24s kept getting shot up, the pilots near mortally
wounded, and Dr. Bail, a man of modest stature, amusingly kept guiding
the wrecks to assafe a survival landing as was possible. For these feats
he has been amply decorated. Finally shot down in enemy territory, he
survived the six weeks prior to liberation in a German hospital under
circumstances that resemble the more sentimental but life-changing
aspects of _A Farewell to Arms_: being loved and nursed, and as a Jew,
by the enemy. Anyhow, a sufficiently transformative experience, if we
are to believe his account in _Irmgard_, for an interest in French
history, to become medicinal, leading to a training at the Southern
California in the then traditional manner. Bail, now an analyst flier,
was the one who brought Alfred Bion to the United States; when the
Kleinians, in whose work Dr. Bail became greatly interested [who had
promised Bion a full complement of patients], copped out, Dr. Bail
became his first and only patient for some time. Bail stayed with Bion
for his ten year duration in SoCal yet did not end up a Bionist himself;
[and I must not be the only person who wishesfor his account of that
experience]. A combination of conscientiousness
and requisite vanity drove him to take a direction of his own. A
practice with a concentration on dreams as evidence, with some
discounting of wish fulfillment - where it needs to be kept in mind even
with the plentitude that dreams afford - in the poetic words of our now
ex-DefSec, "we don't know what we don't know," we cannot know what is
not manifested in dreams, nor at what realms of the unconscious
mechanism that we know to operate at others, continue their blinding.
Dreams are Bails chief baseline and the various beautiful, simple case
studies collected in _The Mother's Signature_ provide evidence of Bail's
legerdemain.
From this work derives Dr. Bail's idea of "the mother's signature,"
which has much to recommend it even if you don't buy into Dr. Bail's
emphasis that such imprinting, as he calls it, may be, invariably, the
most determining for spiritual flourishing, or so frequently its
thwarting: Dr. Bail's findings - under aegis of what a skeptic might say
is something of a fetishization of science [where an entirely different
and non-jumbo-mumbo science cries to be developed]- are finding much
support
in evolutionary biological and fetal development studies that show the
exertion of maternal pressures even on the genetic and on DNA,
intra-uterine! Whether untoward changes in development - however
formulated within the specific family and larger culture - are amenable
to analytic exploration can only be assessed under the wishful
proposition that as of a certain age of experience as large a percentage
of the population as possible not so much shed as pass the immediate
determinants of their upbringing, including the limitations imposed
intra-uterine, through the analytic process. Come the day.
More immediately, parallel studies of twins, but not brought up by the same
mother, might confirm or alter Dr. Bail's findings. I have asked Dr.
Bail, also the first analyst to accompany patients on the trip across
the river Lethe, whether he had patients who were with child while
in analysis, but have not heard back. There is no such case among those
presented here, or where he had both mother and a child in analysis. The
idea of a mother's disposition during pregnancy exerting itself
life-long on a fetus is scarcely unfamiliar, I know of scores of hideous
and wonderful examples where, however, the passage from intra- to
extra-uterine - where the untoward influences of course persist - poses
the question of the duration and inception of lifelong traumatization,
whose vestiges exert their latent power at critical moments. Anyhow:
etiology in the here and now. Dr. Bail's notion of a mother's
unconscious negative influence then splitting the developing psyche
strikes me very much within the tradition of the Kleinians and Kohut,
though splitting I suspect is far too mechanistic a concept to explain
the mental realms that fail to communicate with each other. To take this
briefly out of the theoretical into the here and now of the comically,
abeit gallows humor, historical: what might the influence of being
intra-uterine "Battelship Barbara" be, as compared to the oedipal
relations with George Herbert, and growing up in an environment where
states can be overthrown at a moments notice, on our president; or maybe
we ought to seek the whale in Ma Cheney's womb. But that is Peter
Lowenberg's unenviable field.
No matter the import of the ultimate scientific verifiability of Dr.
Bail's ideas, he comes across as an enviably conscientious and
courageous and loving analyst who keeps stubbornly guiding his wounded
B-24s to as safe a landing as is feasible.
*

MICHAEL ROLOFF
714-660-4445
Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society
this LYNX will LEAP you to all my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS:
http://www.roloff.freeservers.com/about.html

JOHN H. BROWN ON THE VIRGINIA TECH MASSACRE, AMOK CHO

Dear John H. Brown,
http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/index.php/newsroom/johnbrown_main
re your piece in TomDispatch
re: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=189301
reminds me that everything is comparable, but not necessarily to enlightening effect. George Bush's paranoia and unloosed aggressiveness,permitted intrapsychically it appears by being of all things "born agin", andCho's hate are an instance of a fruitless comparison. I suspect that even if Cho had lived in a culture that only provided swords asmurder weapons he might have chosen those: unless too afraid, afraid of theviolence that he knew resided in him and which then was unloosed with malice aforethought.I certainly do not have the information to make me guess at the however complicatedset of reasons why Cho decided to kill, first his adviser, then a witness; andthen indiscriminately. However, the filming of himself and making sure that at the veryleast he would be paid attention to, posthumously, points to a very particular kindof narcissitic wound that I suspect may have been administered continously very early on in his childhood.The reasons may lie intra-uterine in is relationship with his mother, they may be genetic why he lacked all ability to empathize with his fellows. The word autism fellin connection with Cho, perhaps he was not only autistically painfully hyper-sensitive butalso autistic in the sense of being unable to empathize. That he was unable to integrate might have made him part of one of the invariable group of outsiders that the in/out syndrome produces. That does not appear to have been the case either.Appreciatively yours,

BUSH'S INTELLIGENCE TANKS BECAUSE OF HIS NARCISSISTIC INSECURITIES

SPECULATIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE OF G.W. BUSH
God's Gift to the Nation: G.W. Bush; G.W.'s gift to the Nation: 50 years of Iraq!
Below you will find a letter of mine addressed to my name cousin and colleague lee roloff, head of the local jungian clan who had sent me, via snail, a sketch by prof alan schnaiberg, northwestern u., speculating about president bush's NPD [narcissistic personality disorder]. I myself would add, and not under-estimate, that is I would emphasize the impetus of Bush's reaction formation to his once dissolute life, which - the "born-aginness" - I think hugely distorts his view of the world and his motivation.
michael roloff
Dear Lee,
Thanks for Alan Schnaiberg's evaluation of our president's narcissistic problem, his narcissistic personality disorder.[NPD]. I will make a JPEG of the Schnaiberg pages and send the images to you and interested parties.I would agree with most of the sketch: indeed, a difficulty with admitting to mistakes appears to be one feature of the syndrome - however, this is a family characteristic [though contradicted by the albeit mindless born-againness]: recall Bush pere, when a US missile sent an Iranian passenger airliner with about 250 human beings into the Persian Gulf, saying that the US never apologized for anything [Herbert Walker B.'s confusion between himself and the people of the country!]. The son learned about photo-ops from dear old Dad, too; and in Rove found a brilliant and brutal enabler for the safest mirroring on a grand scale. Whether the fraudulence of all of it ever matters? sinks in? Did it ever with any of the sun kings? It is said that the Crawford Kid has a higher IQ than Kerry, which may or may not be saying much or anything at all interesting if you lack the capacity for empathy or rather lack of it [say, the initial response to Katrina/ New Orleans, during the "fly-by"], except perhaps in the closest circles of buddies. The frat boy buddiedom is on the primitive sadistic nipping level what you find among no end of strivers, squash players and mountain bikers - do you find this beer drinking "affability" a mark of a high form of socialization?
As a president he was the cheapest of buys, at 100 million, for the moneyed class; and when the fix that was supposed to be in in Florida didn't seem to be in deep enough they did what they had to in the Supreme Court, this time only! with no precedent! Gore - considering his experience in those evil corridors - is to be blamed for being a babe in the woods. The huge, no loosey-goosey, corruption goes with the buddiedom. I recall that Bush seems to have taken Dad's defeat at his first run at the job and at Clinton's hand quite personally, as well as old Bad Ass's attempt to do away with dear old dad. So we have a primitive, automatic family vengeance streak [talking about clan fealty in Iraq!]. Schnaiberg is right about LBJ looking haunted, and the best thing to be said for LBJ, in that part of his career, is that he died of a broken heart. Yet he persisted in the huge criminal venture because he did not want to be known as soft on communism. I always thought that that was the heart of the country's problem as a whole: not the being soft on the mythical threat of communism, but being other directed. In that respect, Bush Fils, once the tide, as was to be expected, turned against him, has indeed remained admirably un-other-directed! Yet for the wrong reasons and under the wrong circumstances! If stupidity, according to Oedon von Horvarth, provides a foretaste of eternity, narcissistic compensations are a sure fire guarantee of stupefying the greatest intelligence.
It is said that Bush is dyslexic, a family feature, genetic one expects, which may explain the linguistic difficulties, just the way dear old dad pronounced the very word "innelectual", which I loved whenever I heard him say it. But Dad did have the sense of realism that accomplished criminals have, there may be an element of Oedipal competition there as many people claim.-
"Bomber" Bail
http://www.holisticpsychoanalysis.com/
http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/

would look for "the mother's signature" and, I suspect, would find a lot of the horrors of the old warhorse transmitted intra-uterine. What would that man be, even with his prep-school and college and Harvard Bizschool degrees if lacking the genealogy of power? The grandiosity of born-againness? Well, apparently he shaped up under Laura's threat, I've known a lot of dissolute characters who did, which points to what can move the dirigible; that is, we need a better Laura! We need Margaret Thatcher! Indeed, he surrounds himself with no end of minor mirrors, e.g. that typical Mexican sycophant Gonzales, and Schnaiberg is right in pointing out what everyone has noticed: that Bush insecurities are over-powered by the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld. However, in the trafficking of loyalties Bush remains to them as they have to him [as compared to the far more nimble Clinton!], and will only dispense with the loyal tinfoil once they have become entirely untenable, Rumsfeld, Miers, etc. Gonzales I expect; Busch would seem to be someone you could easily blackmail, what with his corrupt streak. Perhaps the whole presidency will unravel, since the US got into a country that is fragmenting perhaps that entire power warrior billionaire class will fragment, wishful thinking no doubt. Of course someone like Bush will believe a surge will do the trick, it appears in college he was one of these try and try again guys, not a bad thing really; however, sheer madness when your own troops, as of the git go, produced an insurrection and you fail to calculate that factor into the equation; the very notion that the US would be welcomed with open arms is a sign of narcissistic pathology; instead, we, I - a once G.I. occuppied, once pet of the OSS [1945-50] have the first instance I know where Iraqi children toss candy back at the GIs. Actually, Bush is incredibly lucky that the U.S. did this to a country riven by a thousand plus year old family feud. Very much like 19th century Indian wars, too; who figured out far too belatedly that their forever betrayer [Uncle Sam, the forever betrayer!] was using their differences to set them against each. If those religious factions ever put their difference aside, the Green Zone will turn into the Black Zone overnight. Everything the U.S did in Iraq and will do there went and will go wrong. "Democratization" [the modern version of conversion to Christianity] produced religiously based parties where there had been a secular state, etc.etc. That entire class of power-mongers belongs into Guantanomo for a good long time. They produced a really big dog that they can't get out of. Cheney is quite right, and perhaps all those who talked about WW IV knew it and wanted it all along; all that maneuvering in Congress is for peanuts type election advantage. Hell, Bush might as well wag a really big dog and attack Iran and get even deeper into the dog that he can't get out of, that will do him in, it will drive the price of Texas light medium sky high! Unfortunately the country and large parts of the world will go down. Then they can all "wait for Godot"... who will appear, surprise, surprise as a cool Chinaman!
Your geopolitical horned owl in the U-District.
Last nite, before going to sleep around midnight - outside my place there is a small pool of accumulated water around a stand of bushes, tall bushes, some of them trees; ducks love freshly accumulated water, it seems to free nutrients; the one duck there was periodically going into fluttering protesting hysterics; and a bird seemed to be swooping down on it - I saw an animal I took to be a medium sized Raccoon sitting about eight feet off the ground on the branch of one of these semi-trees, seemingly hugging it too, the way our branch of the Koalas does; I tried to shoo this coon away as the duck took flight from the noise of my exertion and the "raccoon, " a huge owl! took off after it! I looked up owls of the northwest... fits the description of a great horned... the size and the hornish fluff in its ears.

SPECULATIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE OF G.W. BUSH

below you will find a letter of mine addressed to my name cousin and colleague lee roloff, who is the head of the local jungian clan and who had sent me, via snail, a sketch by prof alan schnaiberg, northwestern u., detailing his speculations about president bush's NPD [narcissistic personality disorder]. I myself would add and emphasize the impetus of Bush's reaction formation to his once dissolute life, which, as far as i am concerned, hugely distorts his views. michael roloff
Dear Lee,
Thanks for Alan Schnaiberg's evaluation of our president's narcissistic problem, his narcissistic personality disorder.[ NPD]
I will make a JPEG of the Schnaiberg pages and send the images to you and interested parties.
I would agree with most of the sketch: indeed, a difficulty with admitting to mistakes appears to be one feature of the syndrome - however, it runs in the family: recall Bush pere, on the US sending an Iranian passenger airliner with about 250 human beings aboard into the Persian Gulf, saying that the US never apologized for anything. The son learned about photo-ops from dear old Dad, too; and in Rove found an enabler for safe mirroring on a grand scale. Whether the fraudulence of all of it ever matters? sinks in? Did it ever with any of the sun kings? It is said that the Crawford Kid has a higher IQ than Kerry, which may or may not be saying much or anything at all interesting if you lack the capacity for empathy [the initial response to Katrina/ New Orleans, during the "fly-by", except perhaps in the closest circles of buddies. The frat boy buddiedom is on the primitive sadistic nipping level that you find among no end of strivers. As a president he was the cheapest of buys, at 100 million, for the moneyed class. And when the fix that was supposed to be in in Florida didn't seem to be in deep enough they did what they had to in the Supreme Court, this time only!with no precedent! Gore is to be blamed for being a babe in the woods, considering his experience in those corridors. The huge corruption goes with the buddiedom. I recall that he seems to have taken Dad's defeat at his first run at the job and at Clinton's hand quite personally, as well as old Bad Ass's attempt to do away with dear old dad. So we have a primitive automatic family vengeance streak [talking about clan fealty!].
Schnaiberg is right about LBJ looking haunted, and the best thing to be said for LBJ, in that part of his career, is that he died of a broken heart. Yet he persisted in the huge criminal venture because he did not want to be known as soft on communism. I always thought that that was the heart of the country's problem as a whole: not the being soft on the mythical threat of communism, but being other directed. In that respect, Bush, once the tide, as was to be expected, turned against him, has indeed remained admirably un-other-directed! Yet for the wrong reasons and under the wrong circumstances! If stupidity, according to Oedon von Horvarth, give you a foretaste of eternity, narcissistic compensations are a sure fire guarantee of stupefying the greatest intelligence.
It is said that he is dyslexic, a family feature, genetic one expects, just the way dear old dad pronounced the very word "innelectual", which I simply love. But Dad did have the sense of realism that accomplished criminals have, there may be an element of Oedipal competition there as many people claim.
- Hide quoted text -"Bomber" Bail would look for "the mother's signature" and I suspect would find a lot of the horrors of the old warhorse transmitted intra-uterine. What would that man be, even with his prep-school and college and Harvard Biz degrees but lacking the genealogy of power? Well, apparently he shaped up under Laura's threat, I've known a lot of dissolute characters who did, which however points to what can move the dirigible. Indeed, he surrounds himself with no end of minor mirrors, like that typical Mexican sycophant Gonzales, and his insecurities are over-powered by the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld, but in the trafficking of loyalties remains to them as they have to him, as compared to the far more nimble Clinton, and will only let them go once they have become entirely untenable, Rumsfeld, Miers, etc. Gonzales I expect. Perhaps the whole presidency will unravel, since the US got into a country that is fragmenting perhaps that entire warrior class will fragment here, wishful thinking no doubt. Of course someone like Bush will believe a surge will do the trick, it appears in college he was one of these try and try again guys, not a bad thing really; however sheer madness when your own troops, as of the git go, produced an insurrection. Actually, he's incredibly lucky that they did this to a country riven by a thousand plus year old family feud. If those religious factions ever put their difference aside, the green zone would turn into the black zone overnight. Everything they did and will do there went and will go wrong. "Democratization" [the modern version of conversion to Christianity] produced religiously based parties where there had been a secular state, etc.etc. That entire class of power-mongers belongs into Guantanomo for a good long time. They produced a really big dog that they can't get out of. Cheney is quite right, and perhaps all those who talked about WW IV knew it and wanted it all along. All that maneuvering in Congress is for peanuts type election advantage. Hell, he might as well wag a really big dog and attack Iran, and get even deeper into the dog that will do him in, it will drive the price of Texas light medium sky high! Unfortunately the country and large parts of the world will go down. Then they can all "wait for Godot"... who will appear, surprise, surprise as a cool Chinaman!
Your geopolitical horned owl in the U-District.
Last nite, before going to sleep around midnight, outside my place there is a small pool of accumulated water around a stand of bushes, tall bushes, some of them trees; ducks love freshly accumulated water, it seems to free nutrients; the one duck there was periodically going into fluttering protesting hysterics; and a bird seemed to be swooping down on it. Then I saw an animal I took to be a medium sized Raccoon sitting at about eight feet off the ground on the branch of one of these semi-trees, seemingly hugging it too the way our branch of the Koalas does; I tried to shoo this coon away as the duck took flight from the noise of my exertion and the "raccoon, " a huge owl took off after it! i looked up owls of the northwest... fits the description of a great horned... the size and the hornish fluff in the ears..

ANNOUNCEMENT + INDEX TO THIS COMMENTS SITE

I WILL POST OCCASIONAL COMMENTS ON PSYCHOANALYTIC MATTERS. CALL ATTENTION TO ARTICLES READ, AND SO ON...michael roloff

INDEX

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-bombing-screen-memory.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2015/05/screen-memory-2-first-bombs.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2015/05/first-screen-memory-from-screen-memories.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-charlie-hebdo-controversy-pen.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2014/10/handke-idiocy.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-mulege-amoeba-dream.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2013/09/comments-on-shierry-nicholsons-now-it.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2012/09/letter-to-ny-times-regarding-their.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-circumcision-debate-links-and.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2012/08/psychotherapeutenyahoogroupsde.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2012/08/beschneidungs-brief-den-ethik-rat.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2012/03/partii-notestowards-psychoanalysis-of.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2012/03/notes-toward-psychoanalys-of-reading.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2011/11/reading-of-handkes-singular-plural.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2011/09/der-fall-krahberger.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2010/06/scotomization-verneinung-handke.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2009/12/green-room-books-of-year-2009-second.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2009/12/dear-louise-lambrich.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2009/12/communication-about-handke-case.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2009/09/peter-hhandke-wounded-love-child.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2009/07/contribution-to-ijpa-discussion-on.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2009/06/fugueing-section-from-part-ii-of-psycho.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2009/03/resume-of-handke-case-opening-of-part.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2009/07/trapping-trapper-crucial-event-from.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2009/02/part-1-of-condensed-psychoanalytic.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2007/11/dan-savage-curtis-autogynephilia.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2007/07/dr.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2007/04/john-h-brown-on-virginia-tech-massacre.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2007/03/speculative-psychological-profile-of-gw.html

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/2007/04/bushs-intelligence-tanks-because-of-his.html