The Vampyres Of New York
October 26, 2015
The Vampyres Of New York
A NOVEL
by
R.E. Prindle
A Prospectus
I’ve been searching around for a more discursive format for a while now; I think I’ve finally found one. I have been a great admirer of the German Romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann for several decades now. He has been described as a prolific author of twenty volumes in German although most of that remains untranslated. Mostly there are collection of twenty or so from his tales.
Hoffmann was at one time very famous. The opera Tales Of Hoffman by Offenbach is based on his stories perpetuating his name better than he could himself. Then I got wind of a two volume work (a thousand pages) called The Serapion Brethren. On the off chance that it was available I searched specifically for the title on Amazon as it didn’t come up under the author’s name. And, lo! it turned up from some hidden corner of that giant book store. Why it isn’t up front with the various collections is beyond me. Having obtained my copy I am now half way through it. A fabulous book.
I don’t think Hoffman fans are legion but I know there are a lot of us; if any of them haven’t learned of the existence of The Serapion Brethren the way is now clear, two volumes, less than fifty dollars on Amazon. Not my point but I pass the info on.
The format Hoffman uses is perfect for what I want to do. The idea of The Brethren is that a group of writers (artists) get together to discuss their stories written according to a serapiontic point of view. Thus Hoffmann presents a couple dozen of his amazing stories within a framework of these meetings and discussions.
Hoffmann was an amazing psychologist far far ahead of his times. In a generation since the advent of Anton Mesmer’s discovery of the unconscious, while Mesmer was still living, Hoffman takes psychology to a level such as Sigmund Freud nearly a hundred years on was able to borrow from it wholesale. As Freud refers to Hoffmann by name it is certain that he read him while Freud a Jew brought up within German culture had access to all twenty volumes of his work. Hoffmann was current of psychological matters while making his own contributions. He refers to the Frenchman Phillipe Pinel of Paris’ Salpetriere Insane Asylum. Pinel was the first to remove the fetters with which inmates were chained thus beginning a more human and understanding treatment of inmate. Hoffmann himself visited insane asylums for study and reflection.
It was Pinel who first came up with the idea that the insane were afflicted with a Fixed Idea, the Idee Fixe of Pierre Janet who worked at the Salpetriere with the great Jean Martin Charcot in the last third of the nineteenth century. Freud also picked up on the notion incorporating it into his corpus as ‘fixation’ or reminiscences.
Hoffmann’s stories are examinations of various fixed ideas or phantoms. And what stories. Mademoiselle Scuderi is one of the greatest stories ever written. When I say stories, these are mainly novellas not short stories. They are mostly 50 to 100 pages thus giving the imagination greater latitude with superior character development.
Hoffman himself was a very accomplished individual. His first longing was to be a great composer hence music motifs abound. Teaming up with La Motte Fouque, another great German Romantic write he wrote the music to Fouque’s great novella Undine while Fouque wrote the libretto. Writing mainly after 1809 to about 1822 Hoffman was close in time to the great composers such as Beethoven, Mozart, Handel and others being very familiar with their work while being able to discuss it knowingly as a composer himself and in his early career a director of opera houses. His knowledge of European music and art from its origins is encyclopedic. He provides names you have never heard of that will send you scurrying to the internet to possibly find more info, view the pictures on images.
This is rich stuff for any artist/litterateur or musician. Don’t delay, enrich your life today.
Thus in my using Hoffmann’s format I hope it will be possible to examine and interrelate disparate historical elements into a unified whole relating to today’s events. While Hoffmann’s work is mainly fiction I intend to write accurate history that reads like fiction. Hoffman himself fictionalizes certain stories in a historical manner.
For instance his terrific story The Singers’ Contest deals with a historical or semi-historical event in thirteenth century Germany between various historical Master Singers including Wolfram von Eschenbach who wrote the great German version of the story of Percival.
As a Romantic in reaction to the Enlightenment Hoffmann blends the fantastic or spiritual with scientific reality. Indeed that is the point of his writing, identifying the religious side of the mind from the real or scientific. It is that aspect of his writing that attracts me.
He opens his treatise with the story of a contemporary mad monk Serapion who thought that he was Saint Anthony living in the Theban desert while actually being in Germany. Serapion insisted that he was in the Theban desert. Hoffmann was very sympathetic insisting that following his inner wishful thinking or delusion ‘Saint Serapion’ actually was who he believed and was actually living in the Theban desert.
Of course as Serapion was merely successful in denying reality, a quite common occurrence as Hoffmann will show, in his insane condition he was neither the saint nor in the Theban desert; however he was successfully living the saint’s life as a hermit in a wilderness. This conflict fascinates Hoffmann and it fascinates me. I find that in our own society people, society’s leaders, are living fixed ideas that have little or no relation to reality while trying to impose these fixed ideas on the entire population of the world. In other words as in Edgar Allan Poe’s great story, itself based on Hoffmann, the inmates are in control of the asylum. Thus Poe’s story The System Of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.
As I envision my work it will deal with the problems caused by inner wishful thinking as contrasted with reality. While the New York City of the Dylan period will be the central focus I see the work as wider ranging but closely related to the theme of Bob Dylan and the Vampyres Of New York.
As I envision it the work will be quite long and will be posted in chapters and sections as it is written. I have already dealt with most of the issues as posted on I, Dynamo and Contemporary Notes so that my progress should be steady and relatively quick. I expect to post one to two chapters or sections per month. Feel free to make comments or suggestions.
A Review: Kevin MacDonald: Psychoanalysis In Its Death Throes
December 18, 2008
A Review
Kevin MacDonald:
Psychoanalysis In Its Death Throes
by
R.E. Prindle
MacDonald, Kevin: http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/paper-CrewsFreud.html
This is a review or commentary of Kevin MacDonald’s paper of 1996: Freud’s Follies: Psychoanalysis As Religion, Cult And Political Movement.
The paper has apparently been retitled here as Psychoanalysis In Its Death Throes: The Moral And Intellectual Legacy Of A Pseudoscience.
I don’t know Kevin but I have had some correspondence with him over the internet so I hope he won’t find me presumptuous by referring to him as Kevin. As a Professor at California State University At Long Beach Kevin MacDonald has a distinguished record adding to the luster of the faculty.
His book Culture of Critique is a valuable addition to the literature. Generally speaking I endorse all his conclusions in this paper with the exception of his condemnation of psychoanalysis. I do not believe the discipline to be a pseudo-science. The problem is with Freud and not psychoanalysis. The investigation of the mind was in its elementary stages at the time Freud entered the picture. Indeed people had a horror at the very notion of almost any psychological concept and still do. To my mind Freud’s most valuable contribution was the The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life. Even the study of simple everyday psychologically revealing traits was derided. The thought that a ‘Freudian slip’ could give away one’s inner thoughts was too horrifying to contemplate.
But there it was in bold relief- the subconscious, or unconscious as Freud called it. Freud neither invented nor discovered the unconscious as many people still believe. The unconscious had been a topic of investigation for some time. It was a mystery then, a mystery to most now, many people disbelieved the concept then, many still do.
The trouble with Freud’s vision of the unconscious is that he believed it was inherently evil, uncontrollable and actually a separate entity of the mind but connected somehow.
His error was pointed out to him at the time but as Kevin points out Freud had insulated his vision of psychoanalysis by making an Order of it. He thus separated his thoughts from scientific criticism building a wall around them just as his Jews built a wall around Torah. As Kevin points out:
The apex of the authoritarian, anti-scientific institutional structure was the Secret Committee of hand-picked loyalsits sworn to uphold psychoanalytic orthodoxy, described by Phyllis Grosskurth in ‘The Secret Ring: Freud’s Inner Circle And The Politics of Pyschoanalysis. By insisting the Committee must be absolutely secret, Freud enshrined the principle of confidentiality. The various psychoanalytic societies that emerged from the Committee were like Communist cells, in which the members vowed eternal obedience to their leader. Psycholanalysis became institutionalized by the founding of journals and the training of candidates; in short an extraordinarly effective political society.
Thus Freud was able to separate his doctrine from scientific scrutiny while creating a terrific mystique about himself and his ‘science.’
In fact while his doctrine was based on sound, for the state of learning at the time, factual research he fashioned the facts into a tool or weapon for a specific purpose for which any changes to the doctrine would weaken its effectiveness. It was essential that it stay the same.
As Kevin points out Freud was a politician first, researcher secondly and a scientist thirdly. While more scientific outsiders were critical Freud’s fellow Jewish insiders picked up the ball and ran with it.
Freud was a member of the International Order of B’nai B’rith. He attended meetings regularly in Vienna while lecturing on psychological matters frequently. Can it be a coincidence that the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith was created in the United States in 1913? Does anyone believe that the subtle psychological methods weren’t worked out in Vienna?
When the Frankfurt School Of Social Research was organized in Germany in 1923 incorporating Freudian psychology does anyone believe that was a coincidence? The Marxists embraced a Freudian agenda. You may be sure that Franz Boas applied Freudian doctrines to Anthropology.
There was a good deal of natural reisistance to Freudian doctrines in Europe but the Nazi disaster played into Freudian hands completely. After Hitler’s election in 1933 droves of Freudian analysts and the whole Frankfurt School fled Germany most choosing to settle in the United States in the cultural capitols of NYC and Hollywood.
While psychoanalysis was all the rage through the fifties the reaction set in during the sixties. There was much to disagree with in what was essentially an unchanging doctrine that was hostile to the non-Jewish world. Freud’s reputation has gradually been demolished among the goyim since the sixties. However this is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what the goyim think. The tool, the wapon is in the hands of Freud’s fellow Jews where it has been and is being wielded effectively.
So, while Kevin MacDonald’s critque and condemnation is accurate and effective among the goyim it is of no consquence to the effective application of the doctrine by Freud’s fellow Jews. It’s like Machiavelli. Just because you’re appalled by his doctrines doesn’t mean they don’t work and aren’t being used.
One would do better to educate people to defend themselves against this pernicious doctrine than to merely condemn it.
While I agree with Kevin’s analysis I do disagree with his condemnation of the effectiveness of a psychoanalytic approach.
The key to Freud’s misuse of psychological analysis is his description of the unconscious. As a scientist it is diffiicult for me to believe that he actually perceived the unconscious in such a way. I have to believe that his private understanding was quite different then his public description. It is possible that his understanding is purely religious based on Kabbalah and Talmud and having nothing to do with science. The notion that the unconscious exists independently of both mind and body is absurd on the face of it.
One thing to bear in mind is that Freud was well informed on the subject of hypnosis. He studied (for a couple months) under the Frenchman Jean-Martin Charcot who associated hypnotism quite correctly with hysteria. Freud also visited Bernstein of the Nancy hypnotic school. He must have had a reasonable understanding of hypnosis and its active agent, suggestion.
When he says that he abandoned hypnosis for subliminal recall which he says he found just as effective he is betraying a profound knowledge of the relationship of the un- or subconscious mind and conscious actions. He actually discovered that he no longer needed to put people into a trance to obtain the same results. Contrary to his statement I’m sure he was very effective as a hypnotist.
In point of fact in the interchange between the conscious and the unconscious he had discovered the true nature of the subconscious. That is what the interior dialogue is- a discussion between the clear conscious mind and the fixated subconscious which distorts reality to conform with its mistaken understanding.
Further, I would be surprised if Freud didn’t understand that fixation was merely hypnotic suggestion. By suggestion I dont limit the notion of spoken suggestions by others but to suggestion by circumstances. For instance if one is defeated at a game by another this may suggest a lack of manliness on one’s own part. In retreating into a hypnoid state the suggestion of unmanliness may be translated into a fixation of emasculation that renders one effeminate in relation to other men. This is done unawares to oneself but the fixation controls all future responses unless exorcised. It is possible that an exorcism may occur spontaneously in relation to another event later in life but otherwise the fixation has to be recognized and rectified by analysis.
The inadequacy is a diminution of ego. Such a diminution of ego always takes a response of a sexual nature.
In fact, Freud’s work centers on hypnosis and suggestion, emasculation and sex. He himself was severely emasculated and sexually repressed. So there you have the core of Freudian psychology. This understanding is then used to further the Jewish cause in the warfare with European ‘Christian’ society. I exclude America because Freud was too European to extend his interest further.
Freud then devised a plan to mass hypnotize, confuse and psychologically conquer Europe and by extension the West. Running his special knowledge as an Order, as Kevin indicates, he was under no compunction to share his knowledge in a scientific manner. In other words he sought to control his knowledge uninfluenced by outside contributions that would render his intent ineffective. Even inside the Order as Kevin points out Freud strictly controlled psychoanalysis by the use of his Secret Committee and strict disciplining of what he considered deviant thought.
Both facets were absolutely necessary if his plan of subversion was to work. So far the plan has functioned perfectly.
There is no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water however.
Freud and Freud’s doctrine should be repudiated.
Psychoanalysis however is a valid psychological approach. However administration of it take great skill. Once a correct understanding of suggestion and hypnosis is adopted as the basis of psychology and its relationship to fixation in a subconscious having an active relationship with the conscious, fixations can be located and exorcised freeing the mind from compulsive behavior.
The individual with a proper understanding can then be put on guard to prevent new fixations. I think it may require a certain amount of intelligence.
Freud’s system completely negates the role of intelligence and the conscious mind in favor of compulsive behavior. Thus by emphasizing the individual’s ability to control both his conscious and subconscious minds he will be able to master his own will and act without interference from fixations.
Those are the key factors. While I second Kevin MacDonald in his analysis of Freud and Freudianism I affirm the scientific nature of psychoanalysis itself. Just because Freud used his knowledge dishonestly doesn’t mean he wasn’t onto something.
I, Dynamo 