Taboo words are the subject of this book. Extending Freud's study, the author traces the psychic origins of dirty words to early infancy and childhood and their place and value in life and analytic therapy. He also provides a journey through universal literature - the rich variety of "dirty" words used by Rabelais, Quevado, Mozart, Voltaire, the Marquis de Sade, Joyce, and Lawrence. Dirty words are "dirty" because they are obscene. They name without hypocrisy, euphemism, or modesty what should never be mentioned in public - parts of the adult body, secretions of sexual behaviour patterns. The author argues that obscene words have a great capacity for summoning emotions and that if we do not use them, we will not fully experience our sexual nature. He concludes that for the preservation of a healthy society, dirty words must have a legitimate place in our daily life.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
It is hard to disagree with the premise of this psychoanalyst practicing in Argentina: that "dirty" words--obscene or taboo ones, the speech of childhood and the street--are the required currency of the couch. Using clinical expressions to describe anatomy, copulatory or excretory functions as they occur in dreams, memory and fantasy is simply another form of repression, he maintains. Citing our most common three- and four-letter words, Arango ranges far and wide over Western cultural, religious and psychological history, finding in Plato, Dante, De Sade, St. Augustine, D. H. Lawrence, Schopenhauer, Freud and Ferenczi, among others, support for his position that free acknowledgment of our animal instincts liberates us from their control. More arguable are his assumptions that street language doesn't occur in daily conversation, his rigid view of the psychotic nature of homosexuality, his dismissive regard for women, and the absence of current literature from his references, all of which combine with his stilted, formal English to give his book a dated tone. But as a compendium of common taboo words and practices, it may find interested readers.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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The Power of Taboo Words,
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This review is from: Dirty Words: Psychoanalytic Insights (Hardcover)
The book, DIRTY WORDS: Psychoanalytic Insights by Ariel C. Arango is a pleasure to read. It is academic and clinical. Serious research has been put into it. It is insightful and literary. It will touch and enhance the emotive and expressive capacities that we possess. It has emotional power. Arango believes that saying and hearing these dirty words inserts us into the organic cycle of birth and death. These words propel us to our animality. It is a wonder how we ever evolved from this state. It is so deeply satisfying. The tug to go back to this primary process is constant. The source of the repetition compulsion. Nevertheless, somehow we have evolved minds that can contemplate the galaxy of the Milky Way, the Fibonacci spiral conical hole, the release of supernova energy that rents and ripples time and space. A far cry from our birth that was mired in shit and urine. Chapters: 1 Dirty Words 2 Hallucinations 3 The way of the Milk 4 We are Born among Feces and Urine 5 Cruelty and Submission 6 The Secret Pleasure 7 The Supreme Prohibition 8 The Longing of the Sea 9 The Voluptuous Mother 10 Praise of Obscenity According to Arango, some cultures and in some psychotic individuals these words will overwhelm any power of synthesis the Ego possesses. In normal states of mind in the usual social setting the release of such disintegrating power is still bounded by the synthetic function of our Ego. In other words, no one in their right mind in this day and age will lose their mind and the society will not come apart when these words are uttered. But sometimes it seems to come close. For example, the use of these words in contemporary music and movies send shudders to susceptible individuals that it augurs the end of the world. Forces join up to counter the "the obscenities, the misogyny, the incest." Radio jocks have been fired; individuals of righteous indignation try to buffer us. The forces of censorship, repression takes over for a while. Arango states the use of these words release the pent up energy in repression. This energy can be used to free us from instinctual controls. Energy that is released can be sublimated into creative insight, judgment, and innovation. The author states the use of these dirty words causes emotional lava to suffuse and penetrate every nook and cranny of our labyrinth mind. It forces upon us to a deeper reality our true nature our animality. Clinical or euphemistic terms for theses dirty words take away the deep powerful biologic power these words possess. This plays into the hands of the censors social and personal. But it does prove for greater objectivity and reduces subjective interference so that these words can be studied scientifically without any emotional overlay. Instead of the Freudian "where Id is Ego shall be" Arango believes that it is "where the Ego is Id shall be." But the Id is still contained within the Ego. The author gives examples from Western cultural, religious and psychological history, Plato, Dante, St. Augustine, and Freud among others, support for his position that free acknowledgment of "our animal instincts liberates us from their control."
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