Read a paper recently by an analyst who referred to an aesthetic experience between patient and analyst. He was at pains to indicate that by using the word aesthetic he was not referring to an experience that pertained to beauty, rather something created between two people; something struggled for. At pains. Some might wonder why he’d bother, in either forum: the clinical or the literary. After all, isn’t the purpose of the written or spoken word to make oneself understood? Why use esoteric language, or use known language but change its meaning to something idiosyncratic?
In a book that may be published before the coming of the apocalypse, I use numerous words that I know will be upon the margins of readers’ vocabularies. Some will read these words, annoyed, and bristle at my showing off, forcing them to use a dictionary. They will question my purpose, wonder why I don’t speak or write plainly, as others might if the text is meant to be expository, not artful in nature. Within the manuscript of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, a title that suggests a certain plainspoken directness, there are words like ontological, Saturnian, Copernican, anodyne, unctuous, and…I don’t know…a few others that may wrinkle a brow or two and make readers wonder, what does that mean? Once or even if they know the meanings of these words, or more popular synonyms, they might then ask, well, why didn’t he just write that? As the book in question is not a fiction, and is aimed at professionals primarily, and features the odd passage wherein bullet-points are called for, then pragmatism over, uh, aesthetics, will be expected. I mean, by everyone. I can tell already that scrutinizing editors and would-be publishers will bristle (see, there’s one—used it twice here already—why not write “object”, not that “bristle” is incomprehensible…just sayin’) at the use of terms not widely known or digestible. They won’t like that I might compel gratuitous effort versus unblinking recognition of a loaded term or phrase. Unconcerned by prose, they’ll care less, I think, about the flow of sound—that rough estimation of how many syllables might tax a reading mind, for example. See, check that last sentence out: pithy and sweet, wasn’t it? A bit cryptic, but satisfying? The word count on this will be economical, which adds to the effect. There’s an illusion afoot. A reader feels that the script is taut, in order.
But I have something else in mind, actually. And it has little to do with aesthetics or order, though it does concern an experience with both reader and patient, for sometimes they are one in the same. This something has to do with well-known words: loaded words, saturated words; words that everyone knows but knows with too much prejudice, for these words get used too damn much. You know these words, and given the title of mine and Joe Farley’s book, you might guess what words are coming. Addiction. Trauma. Misogyny. This is to name just three. That’s enough, maybe, to stir in the reader thoughts that are already linked or fast linking, for these are the kinds of words that are used so often that people needn’t use a dictionary to determine their meanings, even though definitions that exist for them are either loose, variable, or dubious. Take the first two: the word addiction conjures many definitions—more opinions than facts, actually—such that delineating pathology, as in the case of sex addiction, has become a Gordion Knot (yes, I know: google it, I guess. Sorry, don’t mean to seem insulting—it’s just that some will moan and say…). Then there’s the word trauma, a favorite of therapists, for it renders everyone’s past sympathetic, which we like, even though it complicates matters: how to be responsible, basically. Trauma means…well, it doesn’t really matter what it means precisely, or comprehensively, which is what some attempt. It means the intrusion of the environment, Freud thought with uncharacteristic brevity. Beyond that, it denotes the power of the past; that we find it hard to “get over” things, to learn and not repeat.
The word misogyny is simple enough: it means hatred of women. Everyone knows that. It’s the extra connotation that bears explanation, signaling as it does a pervasive phenomenon, plus a tacit context, not an aberrant state of mind. In modernity, it both reflects and assigns hate, and is a cudgel in either sense, weaponized on both sides of a hate divide. There. That’s an example of a cryptic thought. Reader: tease that one out, make of it what you will, or else wait patiently for our book, wherein I shall expand on the subject. Misogyny is one of the few concepts I explore in a repeated fashion, though I don’t research the concept’s intellectual pedigree. What I have to say on it squeezed out others’ thoughts. Sorry. You’ll find that I’m studious on most subjects, I promise. Anyway, phenomenology (to simplify: what is observed) is what misogyny has in common with addiction and trauma: whether we know the precise meanings of these terms or not, we know the ubiquity of impact. One problem is that this engenders prejudice, and lazy thinking, alongside legitimate social concern. In one sense, we don’t have to research these words. We don’t have to use a dictionary. We just need to have listened, and not even listened well, to what gets talked about incessantly in media and film. Well, I guess I’m less interested in the incessant. I guess I want to be different, and so I want to use words that some will know but many will not: again, philosophical words like ontological, but also diagnostic categories—schizoid personality, for example—or social constructs like misandry (misogyny’s lesser heard and therefore less saturated analogue); the odd anachronistic charm like lickspittle, and weathercock; allusions like Bovarism, or Gordian Knot, come to think of it. By the way, some of these words will be properties for some, and this “some” will be even lesser impressed by my glancing use of their precious esoterica. So much for effort. See, I’m straddling worlds with this writing project, this book/blog bridge: between the learned academic and the lumpen proletariat; between the journeyed professionals and studious consumers of mental health care. Aiming for the in-between reflects my uncertainty, my not fitting in, which is my story. And publishers won’t like that either, because fitting in means knowing the reader.
So, my purpose is a re-direction, though a subtle one, in keeping with—how is it phrased—an analytic frame? Will I irritate with the unfamiliar, the abstract? Or the abstruse? Can I be understood? Perhaps the reader/patient will take responsibility, want more.
Graeme Daniels Psychewriter 