you call your analyst "Donny"?

[excerpt, 1979 film, Manhattan]











Isaac -- "Donny?  You call your analyst Donny?"


Mary (laughing) -- "Yes!  Don't you..."


Isaac -- I call mine Dr. Chomsky, or he -- hits me with a ruler. ...





---------------------------------


[excerpt II]


Mary -- Don't psychoanalyze me.  I pay a doctor for that.


Isaac -- Hey, you call that guy that you talk to a doctor?  I mean, you don't get suspicious when your analyst calls you at home at three in the morning and weeps into the telephone?





Mary -- All right, so he's unorthodox.  He's a highly qualified doctor.


Isaac -- He's done a great job on you, you know?  Your self-esteem is like a notch below Kafka.


[end excerpts]





-----------------------------------


I'm tempted to blame some areas of pop-media, when people have trouble.


______________________________
Rap music ("gangsta"-rap?) -- "A gun is always the answer!  And makes you powerful!"


Talking-head cable-TV -- "Listen up, High-Salaried members of the dominant culture:  minorities are being treated sometimes with fairness...look out for that!"


("you don't get suspicious when your analyst calls you at home at three in the morning and weeps into the telephone?"...)


_______________________________


Before we take advice from any part of pop-media, or allow it to influence us in any way, we have to do two things:


1.  "Consider the source," as my father used to say; and
2.  Remember, something that's out there for cheap, noisy, indignant, lowest-common-denominator "entertainment" is not there to help or support us, or really even to agree with us, it's there to get money.


We all have to be very aware -- and it often is not easy -- I've certainly at times got opinion-and-comment confused with news; and entertainment confused with opinion-and-comment. 


It's the way they present it; and we get tired -- we come home from work, flip an ON-switch, we are not in a mode where we're ready to analyze and question; it's natural to just listen.  (But -- when they tell us to go up to the cliff and jump off, are we going to do that too?)


If it looks like a circus, and "grabs" our emotions like a circus -- 's-probably a circus.  And we don't want to get a circus confused with solid information or truth; 'cause that's unhelpful in our lives.


-----------------------------------------


[Manhattan, excerpt III]


Isaac -- Somebody should throw a blanket over me.  You know, I'm...


Mary -- Well you see, Yale called me several times in a very depressed state -- and he still loves me.


Issaac -- This is shaping up like a Noel Coward play.  Somebody should go make martinis.


Mary -- I don't blame you for being furious with me.


-- I don't get angry. ...I can't express anger.  That's one of the problems I have.  I grow a tumor instead. ...What does your analyst say?


-- Donny's in a coma.  He had a very bad acid experience. ...


-----------------------------


(you don't get suspicious...?)





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