Elvis the Pelvis - Part One.
Before the Beatles, before Dylan, before the Boss, namely Bruce Springsteen, before the Clash, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Smoky Robinson, Aretha Franklin, Beyoncé or Adele, there was Elvis Aaron Presley. He created rock music, or rock'n roll, as it was first called. "If I could find a white man who had a Negro sound," said the Memphis-based record producer Sam Phillips in the early 1950"s, "and this man had a Negro feel, I could make a million dollars."
Lo and behold in August 1953 a tall 19 year old man showed up in Phillips's small recording studio in Memphis. His name was Elvis Aaron Presley and he revolutionized popular music. First off, he recorded a song in the studio and it went nowhere. Then in January 1954 he cut another record in Phillips's studio and it too turned nobody on. Yet then times changed. Presley came back in July 1954. He sang a few nondescript songs. Yet then near night time he sang a song first recorded by a black or African American singer called Arthur Crudup. It was called 'That's All Right'.
Phillips suddenly realized that this young man was the person he'd been looking for. He recorded Elvis singing Crudup's song. On the record's other side - the 'B' side as it was then called- he put Elvis singing 'Blue Moon of Kentucky'. In both of these songs Elvis Presley fused together rhythm and blues which was an African American music with country and western music, which was a white person's music. Presley had invented a new music. At first it was called rock'n roll. He was only 19 years old.
Phillips soon sold his right to Presley's music to a slick agent called Tom Parker for $35,000. Parker also became Elvis's manager. Parker turned Presley into a super star. In 1956 Presley appeared on three top t.v..shows, including the Ed Sullivan show. Presley's songs now soared to the top of the music charts. 'Heartbreak Hotel', 'Don't Be Cruel', 'Hound Dog' and other of his songs added up to one half of all the records that the giant record company RCA sold in 1956.
Yet Presley wasn't only selling music. He was also selling sexual excitement. His gyrations and twists onstage, threw young girls into ecstasy and heart throbs. They screamed, cried and yelled as Presley performed. "I think they were having orgasms," one 20's something male said about Elvis's female fans years later. Ed Sullivan, or some other t.v. emcee stopped t.v. cameras from showing
Elvis below the waist. Soon Elvis was called 'Elvis the Pelvis'.
The authorities were alarmed. In the mid-1950's, the United States was a totally segregated society. yet here was a white man, barely out of his teens who sang like a black man and could literally move millions of young people especially young girls. J. Edgar Hoover, the then head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, sounded off about the Elvis phenomenon. "Presley," he said, " is a definite danger to the security of the United States." In the mid-1950's, the U.S. and the communist-ruled Soviet Union were locked in a titanic struggle for control of the world. Hoover and many other figures of the establishment were terrified of communism. Suppose Presley was a communist primed to subvert the U.S. What would happen then?
Wednesday 20 December 2017
Saturday 9 December 2017
Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe: The Rise and Fall of Freudianism - Part Two
Chapter Four. Part Two of The Rise and Fall of Freudianism..
Many of Freud's ideas don't sound too good to-day For instance he believed that women suffered from what he called "penis envy". All young men he said had what he called "An Oedipus Complex.". In other words subconsciously they wanted to kill their fathers and marry their mothers. Freud's claims for these complexes don't stand up to examination.
In his lifetime Freud had his critics. In the city of Vienna, Freud who was a Jew, faced virulent anti-Semitism. And Freud spent most of his life in this city. Also other psychologists like the behaviourist B.F. Skinner had no time for Freud's theories. Some Anglo-American philosophers doubted Freud's system from the very start.
Still, by about the late 1950's Freud was seen as the greatest scientists of all time. Yet then came his downfall. Already in her massive 1949 book 'The Second Sex', the feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir had criticized Freud's psychology. In 1963, the American feminist Betty Friedan went after Freudian psychology in 'The Feminine Mystique'. Years later Gloria Steinem a very prominent feminist ridiculed Freud and Freudianism. "Freud was just a straight male chauvinist," a feminists told this author in the late 1970's. "His theories are just being used to oppress us women and keep us down."
This was how many feminists were now seeing Freud. Freud's theories they asserted were just totally false ands oppressed women.
Soon male critics appeared and started to trash Freud. Neuroscientists didn't believe Freud's view of the mind. Peter Swales, who at one time had worked for the Rolling Stones band, condemned Freud for his use of cocaine and his love affair with his sister-in-law. Frederick Crews an English professor at Berkeley University, first praised Freud but then turned on him. Crews's latest book called 'Freud: The Making of An Illusion' spends 746 pages charging Freud with one sin after another. Crews's book title echoes Freud's famous book on religion called 'The Future of An Illusion'.
Freud's reputation now is blurred. He died in England in exile in 1939, having fled Vienna to escape Hitler's troops who annexed Austria. So he's not here to defend himself. Yet others have. They point out that Freud's methods of healing patients was for the time relatively humane. He didn't use drugs on patients, carry out lobotomies or practice electric shock therapy treatments. Many others did when Freud started his practice. Others continued to do these sorts of treatments long after Freud had died.
Then, too Freud did not molest, abuse, rape or stalk his patients. He just sat down and listened to them talk. Nor did he put his patients in hospitals where many patients just wasted away. Many women back then suffered from hysteria. This is a very rare disease today. Yet Freud did cure many of his patients. Of course Freud's claim to be practicing a science doesn't stand up to examination to-day. It also seems that he lied about his patients and his cures.
Also some modern drugs do seem to work faster on mental problems than talking to a psychiatrist. A man who passed away a few years ago was an epileptic. "I had terrible explosions of anger," he once confessed. "But the drug Dilantin calmed me down." Modern pharmacology has helped soften but not cure not only epilepsy but also bi-polar syndrome and schizophrenia. Drugs work much faster than Freudian talk fests.
Stanley Cavett is a philosopher who admires Freud. "Most philosophers in my tradition," he says, "relate to psychoanalysis with suspicion, habitually asking whether psychoanalysis deserves the title of a science. Still, says Cavett, "Freud achieved an unsurpassed horizon of knowledge about the human mind." Freudianism today is just one of 60 branches of psychology and Sigmund Freud no longer is praised by too many people as a paragon of intellect and a genius.
Like many past visionaries his flame of inspiration has now burnt out. Or as post modernists might say, "This is just another Grand Narrative that no longer makes sense."
Many of Freud's ideas don't sound too good to-day For instance he believed that women suffered from what he called "penis envy". All young men he said had what he called "An Oedipus Complex.". In other words subconsciously they wanted to kill their fathers and marry their mothers. Freud's claims for these complexes don't stand up to examination.
In his lifetime Freud had his critics. In the city of Vienna, Freud who was a Jew, faced virulent anti-Semitism. And Freud spent most of his life in this city. Also other psychologists like the behaviourist B.F. Skinner had no time for Freud's theories. Some Anglo-American philosophers doubted Freud's system from the very start.
Still, by about the late 1950's Freud was seen as the greatest scientists of all time. Yet then came his downfall. Already in her massive 1949 book 'The Second Sex', the feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir had criticized Freud's psychology. In 1963, the American feminist Betty Friedan went after Freudian psychology in 'The Feminine Mystique'. Years later Gloria Steinem a very prominent feminist ridiculed Freud and Freudianism. "Freud was just a straight male chauvinist," a feminists told this author in the late 1970's. "His theories are just being used to oppress us women and keep us down."
This was how many feminists were now seeing Freud. Freud's theories they asserted were just totally false ands oppressed women.
Soon male critics appeared and started to trash Freud. Neuroscientists didn't believe Freud's view of the mind. Peter Swales, who at one time had worked for the Rolling Stones band, condemned Freud for his use of cocaine and his love affair with his sister-in-law. Frederick Crews an English professor at Berkeley University, first praised Freud but then turned on him. Crews's latest book called 'Freud: The Making of An Illusion' spends 746 pages charging Freud with one sin after another. Crews's book title echoes Freud's famous book on religion called 'The Future of An Illusion'.
Freud's reputation now is blurred. He died in England in exile in 1939, having fled Vienna to escape Hitler's troops who annexed Austria. So he's not here to defend himself. Yet others have. They point out that Freud's methods of healing patients was for the time relatively humane. He didn't use drugs on patients, carry out lobotomies or practice electric shock therapy treatments. Many others did when Freud started his practice. Others continued to do these sorts of treatments long after Freud had died.
Then, too Freud did not molest, abuse, rape or stalk his patients. He just sat down and listened to them talk. Nor did he put his patients in hospitals where many patients just wasted away. Many women back then suffered from hysteria. This is a very rare disease today. Yet Freud did cure many of his patients. Of course Freud's claim to be practicing a science doesn't stand up to examination to-day. It also seems that he lied about his patients and his cures.
Also some modern drugs do seem to work faster on mental problems than talking to a psychiatrist. A man who passed away a few years ago was an epileptic. "I had terrible explosions of anger," he once confessed. "But the drug Dilantin calmed me down." Modern pharmacology has helped soften but not cure not only epilepsy but also bi-polar syndrome and schizophrenia. Drugs work much faster than Freudian talk fests.
Stanley Cavett is a philosopher who admires Freud. "Most philosophers in my tradition," he says, "relate to psychoanalysis with suspicion, habitually asking whether psychoanalysis deserves the title of a science. Still, says Cavett, "Freud achieved an unsurpassed horizon of knowledge about the human mind." Freudianism today is just one of 60 branches of psychology and Sigmund Freud no longer is praised by too many people as a paragon of intellect and a genius.
Like many past visionaries his flame of inspiration has now burnt out. Or as post modernists might say, "This is just another Grand Narrative that no longer makes sense."
Tuesday 5 December 2017
Enda and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Four, Part One.
The Rise and Fall of Sigmund Freud. Part One
Whatever happened to Sigmund Freud? In 1954, the well known American psychologist Calvin S. Hall published a book called ' A Primer of Freudian Psychology'. Freud, Hall claimed created what he called "a dynamic human psychology.". This psychology, Hall said, studied the changes and transformations of energy within the human personality...
"This was Freud's greatest achievement," Hall wrote, "and is one of the greatest achievements in modern history. It is certainly the crucial event in the history of psychology." Yet what was supposed to be true in mid-1950's America seems to be no longer believed in 2017. To-day Freud is rarely mentioned and his theories are mostly ignored.
Hall didn't stand alone in his enthusiasm for Freud. Writers like the U.S. sociologist Philip Rieff. Marthe Robert in France and the famous literary scholar and novelist Lionel Trilling praised Freud as a great truth seeker. Few people do this today. So what happened? Well, times change and people change with it.
Born in what is now the Czech Republic in 1856 and back then what was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Freud became a medical student and then a doctor of medicine. He visited France and Germany and studied psychology in France. Soon he developed his theories of psychology using what was called "the talking cure".
Upper middle class men and many women with mental problems came to Freud's office in Vienna to talk to him and pour out their inner struggles. They sat on a famous couch in his study. Freud listened to them and then suggested ways to cure their neuroses. Freud didn't just propose cures. He also expounded theories about why men and women had mental problems. The human mind, he claimed had three main systems.
First off, there was the id, which should rid the mind of tension. The id was the home of dreams, desires and mental illnesses. Then comes the ego, which should control the id. The ego if healthy, keeps everything going normally in the mental arena. Third, comes the super ego, which has the power to punish the person or approve of a person's actions. Along with these three components, Freud claimed to have discovered other parts of the mind. There was the pleasure principle, instincts and many other driving forces. For Freud, the id must be reined in, and the ego should take control.
"Where id was," went one of the Freudians's most famous slogans, "let ego be." This was how a person became mentally healthy. Yet Freud was not just a doctor and a theorist of the mind. He was also an author who poured out his ideas in many books. Works of his like "The Future of An Illusion'., "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life', and 'Three Essays on Sexuality' became well-known. A gifted stylist, Freud wrote in an attractive style. These books and a growing circle of devotees made Freud famous - at least with some people.
Whatever happened to Sigmund Freud? In 1954, the well known American psychologist Calvin S. Hall published a book called ' A Primer of Freudian Psychology'. Freud, Hall claimed created what he called "a dynamic human psychology.". This psychology, Hall said, studied the changes and transformations of energy within the human personality...
"This was Freud's greatest achievement," Hall wrote, "and is one of the greatest achievements in modern history. It is certainly the crucial event in the history of psychology." Yet what was supposed to be true in mid-1950's America seems to be no longer believed in 2017. To-day Freud is rarely mentioned and his theories are mostly ignored.
Hall didn't stand alone in his enthusiasm for Freud. Writers like the U.S. sociologist Philip Rieff. Marthe Robert in France and the famous literary scholar and novelist Lionel Trilling praised Freud as a great truth seeker. Few people do this today. So what happened? Well, times change and people change with it.
Born in what is now the Czech Republic in 1856 and back then what was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Freud became a medical student and then a doctor of medicine. He visited France and Germany and studied psychology in France. Soon he developed his theories of psychology using what was called "the talking cure".
Upper middle class men and many women with mental problems came to Freud's office in Vienna to talk to him and pour out their inner struggles. They sat on a famous couch in his study. Freud listened to them and then suggested ways to cure their neuroses. Freud didn't just propose cures. He also expounded theories about why men and women had mental problems. The human mind, he claimed had three main systems.
First off, there was the id, which should rid the mind of tension. The id was the home of dreams, desires and mental illnesses. Then comes the ego, which should control the id. The ego if healthy, keeps everything going normally in the mental arena. Third, comes the super ego, which has the power to punish the person or approve of a person's actions. Along with these three components, Freud claimed to have discovered other parts of the mind. There was the pleasure principle, instincts and many other driving forces. For Freud, the id must be reined in, and the ego should take control.
"Where id was," went one of the Freudians's most famous slogans, "let ego be." This was how a person became mentally healthy. Yet Freud was not just a doctor and a theorist of the mind. He was also an author who poured out his ideas in many books. Works of his like "The Future of An Illusion'., "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life', and 'Three Essays on Sexuality' became well-known. A gifted stylist, Freud wrote in an attractive style. These books and a growing circle of devotees made Freud famous - at least with some people.
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