Sir, – Reading Patrick Freyne's review "Sexy Netflix and Freud" (Features, March 26th), returned me to WH Auden's poem In Memory of Sigmund Freud, which resonates with this time of confinement and reliance on inner resources.
So Freyne’s putting Freud on our menu is welcome as a starter.
Sure, Freud focused on our feelings, but always argued that biology and emotion are secondary to “modes of identification”, unique to human beings.
So while not underestimating affectivity, this aspect is not the main meal – our speaking being.
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We talk, therefore we are. Psychoanalysis is not called the “talking cure” for nothing.
Freud uncovered the child in the adult, and Melanie Klein, a faithful follower, saw the infant in the child, while Jacques Lacan brought out the latent linguistics in Freud, just as Picasso saw the latent cubism in Cézanne.
Auden’s poem is so evocative of what we are experiencing during this pandemic, remembering Freud, who “to us is no more a person now, but a whole climate of opinion”. – Yours, etc,
BRENDAN
STAUNTON SJ,
Dublin 1.
Sir, – What a blast! Patrick Freyne’s take on Freud on Netflix was so entertaining and hilarious.
Keep these rollercoaster reviews going (and thanks for the crosswords). – Yours, etc,
ANNE CURRAN,
Dunmore East,
Co Waterford.