Jazz Freud

devoured by the tube

Today’s post was a bit of a riff on an odd draft from the first months of the foolsletter.

I was defending something Freud said today. I know, why and how could I defend Freud.

A colleague was getting cranky about Freud’s concept of the ‘devouring mother’ within his Oedipus framework.

Freud was pretty brilliant. Much of his research I now think of as great storytelling. Freud was a great storyteller.

And the ‘devouring mother’?

That’s an archetype that has been showing up for long before Freud.

An archetype is a great tool for a story teller. Yes, they are not all mothers.

But an archetype is a great short hand. It’s something that a couple of storytellers can recognize.

Archetypes are to stories what standards are to jazz.

But like jazz, it’s less about the standard, the song, or the archetypical story function and much more about how the notes are played.

Toot toot fools!