Preface. Part: 1 | 2 || Bibliography |
Bibliography
The following include books referred to in the text. They provide some background for the flow of ideas and are sources for factual material. The supporting literature is huge. This is a small sampling.
Bion, W. R. (1965). Transformations. London: Heinemann. Bion has no peer in peering into detailed working of mad, destructive elements in personality. He writes of a force that goes on working after it destroys personality, time, and existence (p. 101). He puts a tracer on what seems like pure destructive capacity.
———(1992). Cogitations. ed. F. Bion. London: Karnac Books. Bion writes on the importance of dream-work while we're awake. He notes hallucinatory processes in daily life. He believes dream-work is important in emotional digestion, a suggestion I elaborate in Damaged Bonds. If dream-work is damaged, our ability to digest emotions is damaged, and we suffer lifelong emotional indigestion.
Brenner, W. H. (2001). "Creativity, Causality and Freedom of Will," in Wittgenstein and Philosophy of Religion. ed. R. L. Arrington and M. Addis. London and New York: Routledge. Includes Wittgenstein's "absolute guilt."
Drobny, S. (2004). Road to Air America. New York: SelectBooks. As well as charting vicissitudes of starting a progressive talk radio station, basic quotations of President Eisenhower and Vice President Henry A. Wallace catalyze reflection.
Eigen, M. (1986). The Psychotic Core. London: Karnac Books, 2004. The importance of madness in the human condition is examined.
——- (1999). Toxic Nourishment. London: Karnac Books. Studies fusions of emotional toxins and nourishment. We reach for the latter and often find the former because the two may be indistinguishably mixed.
——- (2001). Damaged Bonds. Early attachment to damage as part of bonding can result in persistent damaging scenarios throughout a lifetime. We are challenged to work with psychic damage as part of bonding.
——- (2001). Ecstasy. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. Includes ways ecstasy and destruction blend, fuelling an attraction to destruction.
——— (2002). Rage. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. Rage - one of the most orgasmic experiences, part of addictive destruction.
- - —- (2004). The Sensitive Self. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. A call to partner evolution of sensitivity.
——— (2005). Emotional Storm. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. We are permeable beings, subject to turbulence by our impacts on each other. W. R. Bion: "When two personalities meet, an emotional storm is created." Emotional Storm is an extended exploration of impact and response. It includes a chapter on guilt in the work of Bion, Wittgenstein and Levinas.
Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1954). An Object-Relations Theory of the Personality. New York: Basic Books. Among Fairbairn's concerns is the infant's need to whitewash bad aspects of the parents in order to maintain a sense of connection with the latter. An unconscious identification with the wounding other plays a prepossessing role throughout life, including enacting injurious scenarios without knowing why.
Frank, Thomas (2004). What's the Matter With Kansas? New York: Henry Holt & Company. An analysis of how corporate-political power plays on class/culture enmity to get people to vote against their own interests. I see this, in part, parallel to the infant identifying with an idealized parent that wounds it (see Fairbairn, above).
Freud, S. (1900). The Interpretation of dreams. Standard Edition 4/5:1-361. Freud believed that hallucination is an early mode of cognition that remains active all life long. I believe hallucination adds force to idealizing authority figures and institutions, blurring, even blotting out a sense of being wronged or, rather, displacing the latter to other targets.
Galbraith, J. K. (2004). The Economics of Innocent Fraud: Truth for Our Time. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. A straight-shooter's saying it like it is. A breath of fresh air. So truth telling is not entirely impossible.
Hatfield, J. H. (2001). Fortunate Son. New York: Soft Skull Press. Aspects of George W. Bush's life told in some detail, creating a picture that warrants serious consideration.
Hicks, S. (2005). The Big Wedding: 9/11, The Whistle-Blowers, & the Cover-up. A devastating analysis of possible governmental complicity in 9/11. You may not believe it, but this book makes it harder to disbelieve. At the least, it seems clear that there is much about 9/11 that has not come out.
Jensen, Robert (2004). Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity. San Francisco: City Lights Books. A journalism professor's passionate and clear discussion of our situation.
Klein, M. (1946). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. In Developments in Psychoanalyss. eds. M. Klein, P. Heimann, S. Isaacs, & A. Jaffe. London: Hogarth Press, 1952. Traces psychotic anxieties and ways of handling them. Klein puts her own tracer on what she calls "a destructive force within." My contention is that psychotic anxieties are manipulated in psychopathic ways today.
Malcolm, N. (1984). Ludwig Wittgenstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Contains searing passages on Wittgenstein's youth and a moving portrayal of his death, relevant for a life that takes guilt and problems of integrity seriously.
Miller, M. C. (2005). Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One too (Unless We Stop Them). New York: Basic Books. A primer on factors from voting machine skew to voter intimidation that invalidate the "official" results in the last two presidential elections.
Phillips, K. (2006). American Theocracy: The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money. New York: Viking. A man who predicted Republican dominance nearly forty years ago, now regrets the abuse of power of the dominance he once aided.
Vonnegut, K (2005). A Man Without a Country. New York: Seven Stories Press. A straight shooter says it like it is.
Wittgenstein, L. (1984). Culture and Value. ed. G. H. von Wright in collaboration with H. Nyman, trans. by P. Winch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Contains a number of Wittgenstein's manuscript entries on religion.
Other background sources include a daily reading of The New York Times and listening to Air America.. For an online site that accesses and discusses Rebuilding American's Defence: Strategies, Forces And Resources for A New Century (2000), a neo-conservative plan for expansion of American empire, see www.informationclearinghouse.info/. A plan of multiple wars, permanent global military presence and economic Americanization. A new kind of win-win situation: even if America loses , the power-elite wins, since military-corporate exploits make money for those on top. A win-win situation that actually includes others, the rest of the human race, has not yet evolved. Can it?
The main source of this book is the impact the past five years had on me, starting with the Bush group's usurpation of power in 2000. A spreading assault that requires response. This book is a response to something that is wrong. It grows from an emotional nucleus that keeps sounding an alarm.