Conversation with Lionel Abrahams

“I am now not looking at your sensitivity, truth-to-life, originality, power-with-words, etc,(qualities that are rare and must be hailed when they appear) but more at lapses, mistakes, inconsistencies, flaws of presentation” - Lionel Abrahams

Dear lan,

As usual, what you impart is hugely interesting. Lewis is giving us a kind of critique of theory, pointing to its limitations, especially in relation to the untamable region of reality and our inner selves, and the distortions that result when a grand theory is too dogmatically insisted on and suggesting what follows such a 'taming' endeavour in terms of conduct. The chaos-theory of theory, eh? I'm grateful for your deciphering and implication of the riddles - I'd have missed much of that.

But there are some bits of unclarity in your letter. l indicated a couple when you were here. And then there's the following:

“Psychoanalysis, or any such theory for that matter, cannot make it across the bridge (make a particular argument for its veracity) without also allowing competing theories to use the same argument. To do so would be irrational (and thereby to admit that the unconscious, the irrational, cannot be made completely rational). When it comes to things like the unconscious of which we can have no direct apprehension, about which we must make assumptions at base -as with culture- we make an arbitrary yet ‘absolutely‘ necessary choice."

To do so..." puzzles me. I take it "so" does not refer to "make it across..." but to "also allowing competing theories...etc." But then wouldn't it be "NOT to do so would be irrational"? But then what comes next, in parentheses, doesn't work. Don't you mean the following? : 'But to do so (albeit a rational procedure) would be to risk admitting that the unconscious, the irrational, cannot be made completely rational." If not, I need clarification.

Flourish!

L

Dear Lionel

As promised: C.S. Lewis poses three riddles that free his protagonist from the prison in which Psychoanalysis had put him and not a few others.

The first was: "What is the colour of things in the dark, of fish in the depth of the sea, or the entrails in the body of man?"

Then: "There was a certain man who was on his way home. His enemy was close on his heals. Now to get to his home he would have to cross a river over which there only one bridge. It was impossible to cross the river except over this bridge. Must he instruct those at home to destroy the bridge now so that his enemy is prevented from crossing or tell them to leave it so that he may cross it and so to his enemy?"

Lastly: "By what rule is a copy told apart from the original"

None of which the giant, The Spirit of the Age, could answer thus losing the wager, upon which Reason plunged her sword into his heart and the giant become what it was to begin with a sprawling hummock of rock.

These riddles are explained in detail to Lewis's luckless protagonist in the following chapter. Basically the argument goes like this. We cannot see the unconscious as it is (that would be to make it conscious - which is something else so we must imagine what its colour and shape is, or rather, could be. But the product of the imagination is not the same as the thing itself –which is why the gaint could not tell the difference between the original and the copy because he had assumed they were the same.

Let’s say that I closed my eyes and saw the inner workings of my own unconscious mind. It is like a pin-ball machine. An impulse would be "launched" by the body into the space of the mind where it would bump and ricochet off the furniture of my mind i.e. the concept, views, experiences, habits of thought, the prejudices and beliefs and so on that make up my personality. Each encounter with these things would give shape to the impulse, as it made its way through my mind it became a thought which could then be articulated. It was this that went through the 'goal' at the bottom of my pinball mind into consciousness, into the light of day. Now who’s to say that this is different in principle from that of psychoanalysis? Here is where the second riddle comes into play.

Psychoanalysis, or any such theory for that matter, cannot make it across the bridge (make a particular argument for its veracity) without also allowing competing theories to use the same argument. To do so would be irrational and thereby to admit that the unconscious, the irrational, cannot be made completely rational. When it comes to things like the unconscious of which we can have no direct apprehension, about which we must make assumptions at base -as with culture- we make an arbitrary yet “absolutely” necessary choice.

What I am beginning to think now is that by far the greater thing to do is to leave the unconscious as the unconscious, except it as it is -a brute, uncontrollable aspect if oneself- and learn rather to deal with its impact, deal with it as a resource of enormous power, to see perhaps that rationality needs to be over thrown from time to time in order that we may grow and not to fear it. Obviously to be confronted with something which originates from oneself but is sometimes so utterly alien to one’s view of oneself, is anxiety provoking. And the film "Nightmare on Elms Street" is all about allowing that fear to posses one as a kind of self indulgence. t is better, I am beginning to think, to learn to deal with that anxiety, see it rather as a potentially good if not necessary thing, than to try and reduce the anxiety by explaining the unconscious away.

I think that Lewis points to the idea that to give oneself over to the spirit of the age and these tidy pc explanations is to give up on life, simply to give up. The unconscious tells us that we are not yet complete, it reminds us to get up from the comfortable bed which we have made for ourselves and carry on and it provides the resources to do so. It is popular to regard the concept of hell as an ideological tool to scare the ignorant populace into servile obedience, that those that dreamed up such a place were themselves twisted and utterly contemptible. What if those that argue thus are themselves having a nice day-dream, having explained away the hideous aspect of life?

Now that I am in full flight let me say one further thing about democracy....

Anyway I have gone quite beyond myself, I must apologise.

I shall try to finish the poems at least and send them off for publication, but I can see that I will not have the time for much else besides work in the short term anyway. I hope that you will forgive me this neglect and still accept my occasional e-mail.