“As if it weren’t ludicrous enough for every child to be ‘gifted’, now they have to be ill as well: a touch of Asperger’s, a little autism; dyslexia stalks the playground; the poor little gifted things have been ‘bullied’ at school; if they can’t confess to being abused, they must confess to being abusive.” — Edward St. Aubyn, At Last
Some of the stories and poems may be inappropriate for persons under 16
- A Dog by the Ears
- Abrumpo
- After the Dreaming
- Albuquerque, 1996
- All the Sobbing Cops
- apple strudel
- At Kahun, for the Health of the Mother and the Child
- burning man
- Candlelight and Flowers
- Casserole Man
- Christmas Pictures
- Dehiscence
- Descartes’ Dreams – Intro
- Desserts for the Reading of the KJV
- Dolomite
- Dropping back to Punt
- Eighth Dream – The Lion Sleeps Tonight
- eleanor in uncertain way, pulling
- Entomology
- Exit Interview
- Extinguisher (with Unpacking the Object)
- Fifteen Small Apocalypses
- Fifteenth Dream – The, uh, target
- First Dream – Puttin’ on the Ritz
- Fourteenth Dream – By the Waters of Babylon
- Fourth Dream – Motherless Child
- Franny & Toby
- Gnats
- Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Pickles and Fries
- Guys Come in Three Sizes
- High Street: Lawyers, Guns & Money in a Stoner’s New Mexico
- Howl
- Introduction
- Karen and the Dropout
- Kimberly!
- King of the Wire Rings
- latrodectus, loxosceles, lycosa tarentula
- Lawn
- Legal Advice
- Liberation
- Linear Perspective
- Lost Things and Missing Persons
- mama when she’s really pretty
- Metronome
- My Friend!
- Ninth Dream – Descartes’ Dreams
- Poems 2001-2010
- Rag Doll
- Road Rave
- Sandhills
- Saved
- Shelving
- Shod
- Sixteenth Dream – Scoring Six Hits
- Tahoe
- Taking Calls
- Tale of the Tribe
- Tenth Dream – The Vicissitudes of the Seasons
- The Comedian
- The Congenital Fiance
- the german for it, the french
- The Gordon Lish Notes
- The Hole of Sharon
- The Italian Story
- The Lock
- The Take-Out
- the talking french cat
- The Tellings
- The Tiny Toy Train
- The Usual Story
- The Well-Molded Military Brick
- The Year Our Children Left
- Third Dream – A Thousand Times No
- Three Very Short Fictions
- Tossing Baby to the Tiger
- Twelfth Dream – Fantod
- Vitrine
- Wednesday
- What Coy Said
- Who, what, etc.
- Yellowjacket
- Yttat
God, yes. What the hell is it with this country. If I hear one more person tell me that therapy is the end all and be all for a complete and balanced life, I may come unglued enough to truly need it. Where do people get the money, anyway?
Therapy is a means of social control. Power flows along networks of discourse. If you can be diagnosed with a recognized disorder, you can receive attention, sometimes even subsidized attention. That the price to pay for this attention is an at-least partial loss of self–through being demeaned, infantilized, categorized within the power structure of the state’s medical bureaucracy, and even sedated–is a price many people are willing to pay through misplaced desire to be loved. They’re not loved. They’re a means to someone else’s ends, and that someone else is in return a means to their own, even if they lack sufficient self-awareness to know what those ends may be.
As for where they get the money, some have insurance that will pay for it. Those who don’t have insurance will have insurance if medical reform holds; in that case, we shall all be entitled to some amount of science-based soul-saving. Such is the lot of a people whose god has died–whether or not they know their god has died.
I’ve been thinking about your comment all day. I’m not sure I’ve gone as far in my thinking as to agree that therapy is a form of social control, but you may have something there. My naivety inhibits my natural pessimism in this case.
(You’re so fucking smart.)
It’s Foucault’s idea. He was all cynical and dark and Marxist and French. Kinky, too, from what I’ve read.