Learning about/from Psychoanalysis

“the captivating term ‘autobiographical impulse’ to discuss desire for our storied lives with the pressing question, what holds us back from saying more.”“an intimate conflict between the desire to make one’s world meaningful when speaking to others and the schooled prohibition on worded lives where we are ‘taught in educational systems how to cover our narrative tracks and even be ashamed of them’”“The existential dilemma is that words signify more than we mean and can be used to invoke the breakdown of our meaning.” -focus of psychoanalysis obviously“He argued that words are found in other people’s mouths, borrowed, tattered by use, yet they can feel anonymous.”“Language’, Bakhtin (1981) wrote, ‘is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intentions; it is populated – overpopulated – with the intentions of others’. And yet the other’s intentions are also composed of a riotous crowd, subject as they are to the unintended and to language’s tendency towards displacement, substitution, condensation, undoing and reversal of meaning.”“We do know that education wants something from the teacher, but what does the teacher want for herself/himself? There are many desires we may consciously insist upon, such as: the teacher wants the students to learn, only wants to help, give knowledge to others, and be seen as a good teacher. But these mainly concern the wish for an education without being interfered with. We don’t often admit the teacher wants more brains, wishes to understand the self within the pedagogical exchange, or desires something wild.”“one may create new meanings from the throwaway lines, the accidents and the missed details that do have a second life in anxiety, dreams and slips of the tongue.”“psychoanalysis does three things [for education]. In the first place, it is well qualified to offer criticism of existing methods. In the second place, as a scientific theory of the instinctual drives, the unconscious, and the libido, psychoanalysis extends the educator’s knowledge of the complicated relations between child and adults. Finally, as a method of therapy, the analysis of children endeavours to repair the injuries which have been inflicted upon the child during the process of education.”“Freud replied, ‘In a word, this material, whether it consists of memories, associations or dreams, has first to be interpreted’ (219). The word leaves the impartial person burning mad: ‘Interpret!’ A nasty word! I dislike the sounds of it; it robs me of all certainty. If everything depends on my interpretation, who can guarantee that I interpret right?’. Who indeed?”“We can think of interpretation as already supposing the narrative impulse and reading into memory, and so as a delicate container that holds what feels in words and deeds disparate, persecutory and estranging.”“Kristeva’s (2010) view is that psychoanalysis – and I would add education – is a treatment for thought and desire.”