Analysis: Freud, Derrida and the Magic Slate

Do you remember playing with a magic slate as a child? Learn how Sigmund Freud uses this device to talk about the unconscious mind.

A Finnish Version of Freud's Wunderblock.

Do you remember this toy from your childhood? It’s charmingly called a “Magic Slate” or an “Etch-a-Sketch”. In German, the Wunderblock. I had a version of this toy as a kid. The novelty of the apparatus consists in the ability of the pad to retain impressions, such as drawings, and like a normal slate, the impressions can be erased, not by an eraser but by simply lifting the page. Presto. Freud and Derrida loved this thing. Freud liked it because the Magic Slate is a model for the human mind. Psychoanalysis! Derrida liked it because Freud's reading of it seems to suggest the unconscious is inhabited by writing and is prior to speech acts. Deconstruction!

Deconstruction!
The stylus is used to write, scribble, or draw on the transparent plastic sheaf which creates an impression on the middle thin layer. The magic slate I had as a kid was a simple plastic, red stylus. The slate itself was a flimsy plastic backing with the “magic sheaf” part lightly affixed to the backing.

When the sheaf is lifted, the thin papery layer which exists beneath it is erased of its impression. At the bottom, a resinous wax layer exists which retains etched into the resin the residuals, or traces of all the previous impressions.

Freud on the “Magic Slate”
Freud wrote a short seven-page essay called "A Note Upon The Mystic Writing Pad." He wrote the essay to explain his theory of memory via the working apparatus of the Wunderblock. The outer coating represents the protective layer of the mind. The layer protects the mind from too much excitation. Notice if the thin paper layer is torn or contaminated the Wunderblock ceases to work in the same way that trauma can irreparably damage the psyche. The stylus represents a stimulus from the outside world. The papery layer is the conscious mind and the wax resin is representative of the unconscious.

The memory of the present can be erased, but like the mind, retains the impressions in the unconscious. The Wunderblock can both destroy and create.

Freud thought the Magic Slate was the closest machine-toy resembling the human mind. The only difference between the Wunderblock and the human mind is the mind's waxy resin layer can come back and disrupt the psychic life. Notably in dreams and trauma.

Derrida On Freud
Derrida, in an essay called "Freud and the Scene of Writing" was astounded that Freud, as a metaphysical thinker, could have inadvertently stumbled upon a machine that is a metaphor for the techné (production) of memory.

Derrida wonders how Freud could have imagined the Wunderblock to represent the psychic life while not realizing that the fundamental essence of the toy, like the mind, is its reserve of graphical traces, not phonetic signifiers.

Fall Teaching Diary: After a Quarter of the Year Teaching (On the Hinge of the Covid-19 Pandemic)

I am a high school English teacher. But, in this post, I don't talk at all about teaching. But if you want to check out my store on Teachers Pay Teachers — it's lit! I took a selfie while waiting for a burger at the Five Guys on Fifty-Something street in Manhattan. Then I went to see a French film at the Museum of Modern Art — L'amour Fou, directed by Jacques Rivette. I knew nothing of the movie, except that it was an artifact of the Nouveau Vague — and its running time was well-over four hours. The movie's images and set-up captivated my imagination. I only once became anxious about sitting in the theater for that long. The movie is about the break-up of a theater director guy and his girlfriend, an actor (performed by by Jean-Pierre Kalfon and Bulle Ogier). The film cuts between life in their Parisian apartment, scenes from rehearsal of the play Andromaque, and a documentary film crew filming the director's rehearsals. Lots of talking. And improvisation. So it feels natural. Something that a long-run movie does for the viewer. And the scene where the couple has a Dionysian tear-up of their apartment was fantastic. And then the moments when the guy was a total masculine unsympathetic man — I didn't care for that much. The focus on the female character was my go-to source of enjoyment. Hooray! I watched that long French movie. And then I went home and became anxious because I was looking to move to a new place. I move on December First, and I have no idea where I will end up or with who. Long story short — I decided (and my current roommate) agreed that our time was up. We divorced. Amicably. Kind of like in the French movie — except my roommate is not my lover. *Laughing out loud* I plan to move to another place in the neighborhood — in Jackson Heights, Queens. I like the environs even though it is a tad boring. So wish me luck and let me know in the comments if you have ever seen a French film that you liked and why.

Film Still from Jacques Rivette's 4-hour long film L'amour Fou

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Street Photography: 74th Street in Jackson Heights, Queens (Plus Some Creative Writing)

     What was supposed to be a walk to increase my daily steps turned into a journey. People pop out. Restaurants offer outside seating. The night is crisp. Saturn and Jupiter are still visible in the sky — on the way to convergence. I wanted to get more faces in my photographs. But the moments passed by too quickly. I saw a masked guy in a cab. He was balefully looking out a window. The Q49 bus runs along 74th Street. Wear your mask. 

     Today in class an adolescent pupil couldn’t answer a question — so she said to me, “This question makes me feel unsafe.” I was taken aback by her statement. It’s the Covid. I imagined her shrieking out of class. By an unsafe question. I’m teaching a course on mythology. And one characteristic of myth is the unknown. So I get it, girl. Stuff gets real. From chaos to calm. From the womb to the tomb. ⁣

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Reflection: Another Year Goes Away and a New Year Begins

Sometimes life is like a circle. I could go on and give examples - and I will - but I feel like E.B. White did it best in an essay he wrote about circus performers.
      It’s been a while since I closely read the essay but I remember its thesis poignantly. Time is like a circle. White focuses his writing on one performer specifically who takes command of the circus ring. He notices she is in counterbalance to another performer, older, who is also in the ring. White imagines the younger performer is at the crest of her career, illuminating and graceful yet the other performer is also she - less graceful and aging. That’s what I remember. White manages to place an idea of recurrence - of repeating and twinning that resonates with me even now. Perhaps it’s because it’s the beginning of a new year - 2019 and I just recently celebrated a birthday. In a year from now, I’ll celebrate forty years on earth. I’ve been out of school long enough to miss it and I’ve been working just long enough to see myself getting better at what I do - but I can see my older, aged twin on the other side of the circle. He waves at me but I can’t figure out if he’s happy or not.  If I zoom in too much on the daily details of my life it’s all a bunch of minutiae - picking up the trash, sipping a cup of coffee, placing dirty clothes in the hamper. And if I zoom out a bit more - like in that book - where each page is a zoom-out or zoom in of the universe - I see bigger picture things like how much time I spent teaching or how much time I spent writing. And if I zoom out even further I see myself as a generation among generations, and further out too I’m a speck - not even significant. Yet this is what amazes me about human beings. We are persistent in our urgency to slam into the earth some smattering of meaning. And it feels worth it when I’m introspective and desperate when I’m barraged by life’s demands - yet it’s a life. At the start again. So - happy New Year.

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How I Learned to Love Solitude and Why I Am No Longer a Benedictine Monk

I am going through old papers, tossing out papers, and boxing up books so I can move out of my apartment on April first.

Saint Joseph Abbey Church in St. Benedict, Louisiana

I realized I could not find any photographs of me as Brother Bede. I used to be a Benedictine monk. But the traces of that life are quickly receding.

Leaving a Monastery 
When I left Saint Joseph Abbey - a Benedictine monastery in Saint Benedict, Louisiana - I was twenty-eight years old (and six months). In my life as a monk, I was Brother Bede. I baked bread once or twice a week with my fellow monks, I went to daily prayers, ate with my community at the common table, worked in our college library - and I was a graduate student at the local university. That was nine years ago (and eight months, roughly).

As a monk, you are told: "To work is to pray." So I grew up in this dispensation. We were told that we were monks first. Our work was just something we did as part of our religious identity. If I was baking bread, or if I was studying Latin, I was merely living out my life of prayer and work. I was a monk. So don't complain.

The Life of the Monk
Life in the monastery followed a trajectory. And there were different stages of my life there. Depending on how you count the years, I was first a seminary student - I was called a scholastic. Then I was a postulant, then a novice, then a monk in temporary vows, then a monk in solemn vows - all for a total of ten years. 

I had just graduated from high school when I joined the seminary. It's crazy to think that was twenty years ago. In May, I am going to Louisiana to celebrate my high school reunion. But I probably won't visit the abbey where I gave ten years of my life - formative years (if you want to put it that way.)

I fantasize that when I tell people I was a monk, they think I lived in a stone hut, spoke to no one and ate bone stew and hard bread. The truth is my life as a monk was at the same time innocuous and magical. Life follows a scheduled rhythm in a monastery. Vigils, Morning prayers, Mass, Evening prayers, and Compline. Monks were assigned jobs. And for the most part, we went through our day praying, eating together, and performing our tasks.

Why did I Join?
People often ask me why I joined a monastery. What was going through my head? And then they ask me why I left the monastery. And people seem to be pretty curious about the whole process. For me - I wanted to be a priest or a monk from an early age. I can remember pretending to celebrate Mass with Ritz style crackers while my brothers complained (they'd rather play other games). When I was in High School, I was very much into Catholicism - and I made it pretty well known that I wanted to join the seminary when I graduated.

Read more about why I became celibate after the jump . . .

Photographs: Walking Underneath the Hell Gate Bridge in Randall's Island Park

Setting: A Randall's island soccer field with the Hell Gate Bridge cutting through like a beeline. Where's that crack train from Albany? Walking underneath the trestle, the trains above me carry all Amtrak trains on their way to upstate New York, Boston, and all points north. I took these photographs with my friend @trolson14. And I sing "Under the Bridge" by @chilipeppers. P.S. We saw a Blue Winged wasp (with the scientific name #scoliadubia) and a wall covered with U.F.O. graffiti. I call it "Dripping Wet U.F.O". P.S.S. To get to the island, we walked across the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (a.k.a. The Triborough Bridge. Caveat: Walking this bridge is not for the faint of heart. @nyc_dot.

Greig walks under the Hell Gate Bridge (Randall's Island)

Troy walks across the wet grass of a soccer field 

(with a fabulous, atmospheric view of the Hell Gate Bridge)

A wasp

Tri-Borough Bridge

"Dripping Wet U.F.O."

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On Looking Back at My First Blog Post

Portrait of an Articulated Skeleton on a Bentwood Chair

Yes, this is confessional.
Forgetting that what I post on a blog is read by people, today someone (a student, no less) found my blog online and read my first post. It is an obscurely written poem about Prague and Dvořák. I do like the first line of the poem, "Dvořák strums his fingers on the dashboard, a melodic lilt to the tune of lips," but the rest of the poem is arduous.

Photograph: "Lifesaver"

"Lifesaver" © 2012 Greig Roselli

The life you save may be your own. I understand this quote now than I ever did before in my short life. I take a rather peculiar take on life. I feel like no matter what happens to me two things eventually occur. First, I cannot control a lot of stuff that happens to me. I can't pay my rent. My boyfriend dumps me. I lose my job. My doctor says I have high blood pressure. And so on. But then there is the response to whatever batsh*&t crazy stuff happens to me. I can respond to it. I go to my room and shut the door and don't come out for forty-eight hours. Or. I go to a museum (I live in New York so museums are like drugstores). I take a walk. I flirt. I talk to strangers. I do. I be. I am. Do be do be do. Therein lies the small modicum of freedom between what is unassailable and what I can do about it.

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Why I Like Wanderers (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Love the Epic!)

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Love the Epic!
On Loving the Greek Epic Form

Odysseus slays the suitors (while Penelope and Telemachus Look On)

I have a penchant for Greek epic. It's the absolute in the epic I adore. The epic form does seem outdated. But it lives on in presidential speeches and high arching ontologies. Odysseus is an epic wanderer. He's clever. He's stubborn. And he risks the lives of others for his own gain. That's who he is. I think they call it an archetype. Odysseus the man of many wiles. They don't call him that for nothing. I don't like the epic for all those reasons, though: I like the epic form simply because I like to think of the stories of Homer and so forth as unmoored from traditional metaphysics.

Living Life Like I Am a Character in a Novel
I live more like a novel. Or at least when I read novels, especially contemporary novels, that is the vibe I feel. Maybe I should say I want to live my life novelistically rather than epically. Or maybe I should say to live one's life like an epic is foreclosed to us. To think of the world metaphysically has never been all that simple, or might I say, successful. We see in the novel something akin to what it means to live day to day in our modern life. We see in the epic something "satisfactory" to quote the Wise Men in T.S. Elliot's poem about the former dispensation of gods forgotten.

A New Dispensation: God is Dead
I would say the new dispensation is the forgetting of God. Of absolutes. God is still around. We just forget to not believe in him so he sticks around, lingers, like a photograph of a former boyfriend you keep for memory's sake.

I am not saying this mantra "God is dead," in a purely Nietzchean sense, but maybe more like God has been dead (no one killed him), and we like to keep his poster still tacked to the wall.

I'm The Type of Guy Who Likes to Wander 'Round
Which is why the wanderer is an apt modern trope. For Odysseus, it is a mark of human fragility and the inevitable consequence of a man who forsakes God. For the modern wanderer, it is not so much the case we wander because of something the Greeks called excessive pride (hubris). Still, instead, it is a search for different authority unrelated to a top/down structure of power. To wander is more like to stumble about looking for what authorizes existence.

We wander because to stay still is too Medieval.

We keep it going. Kierkegaard's category of immediacy, it turns out, is not a definition of despair but rather an accurate depiction of humanity. If the immediate man is the despairing man, then I would have to claim that all men are despairing.

Growing Up and What That Means for Me
What happens to philosophy when it grows up? Does it become a wanderer sans the narrative script of Greek verse?

I only say all this to mask a more autobiographical story.

I've been in flux. I am in between apartments. Moving from one place to another always unsettles me.

Or maybe it's the tracts passed out in the subway stations announcing the end of the world on May 21, 2011.

And, Finally a Dedication to Walker Percy and György Lukács
I dedicate my homelessness to Walker Percy and György Lukács. No, don't worry, I am not writing a doctoral dissertation on those two guys. It would be fun. I am lucky if I can land a teaching gig this summer. Pay my rent. Eat hot dogs on Coney Island and manage to subsist on anything that can be stir-fried in a wok.

Peace out.

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The Stages of Life According to Erikson

Erik Erikson, the accessible psychologist, child of Freud, conceived of an eight-layered schematic to illustrate the entirety of human development —  first marked out in his groundbreaking book, Childhood and Society. In this book, he maps out a continuum from birth to death of the struggles of human development. Even though they are not meant to be like a grocery list, I list them out here:

1. Trust and Mistrust  

The first stage begins at the moment the infant meets the outside social world for the first time. Our first experiences with the world forms the basic trust/mistrust dyad. It’s kind of like the father who tosses his daughter up in the air and catches her. Trust: he catches her safely. Drops her? Basic mistrust forms.

2. Autonomy and Guilt

The struggle between autonomy and guilt – that nasty fight between independence and the debilitating fear of the all-seeing eye that threatens to swallow you alive with its judgment, catapulting a person into shame and doubt.

3. Initiative and Guilt

Then, of course, there is the whole question, “what do I do with myself once I’ve achieved autonomy?” that either gets us going to self-actualization or we become mired in the things we should have done or said – in a word: guilt. 

4.Industry and Initiative

Every child has to learn what to create with their bodies after they’ve decided they can actually get off their haunches and express themselves – and added with that, the internal feeling of being loved and the inner worth that goes along with creating work worthy of pride.

5. Identity

You can have an identity, it seems, without struggling through those forgotten visceral experiences of infancy; adolescence merely pokes its ugly head in to confuse us all over again – and we thought the womb was tough.

6. Intimacy and Isolation

But once we get a firm grounding on who we are as individuals we can really enter into genuine intimacy with another, although rocking precariously with the threat of isolation; this is where boundaries are set and committed relationships begin.

7. Generativity versus Stagnation

  And once we accomplish these mile markers we feel we have to give something back; we feel mortality nipping at our heels and generativity rushes in as a contraposition to idle stagnation.

8. Coming to terms. Or not.

The final hurrah is accessing whether the whole thing was worth it from the womb to the final tomb. We struggle at this point in the journey between feeling satisfied that we have gained much from life and whether or not we have nurtured the seeds for our children’s children. If we feel we've failed, death is a painful process, and we sink into the depressing cavity of despair, hopelessly casting off any hopes for immortality.

image credit: The Library Company of Philadelphia

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