KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA 115 (Lothane)

Response 1 (to C2, McCarthy)

( DISCUSSION )

by Zvi Lothane

18 June 2009, posted 27 June 2009

[1]

I find this reply to be superficial and misleading and not attentive to the content of my paper. I did not write AGAINST science, I made a plea for an OPERATIONAL approach to mind and spirit. Spirit is what spirit does: it has do with spiritual activities, not with THEORIES about spirit, or soul, or mind, whatever terminology you choose.

[2]

McCarthy is also dismissive of me and of the subject: "How appropriate for a psychoanalyst. It is a statement of free associations." He is also dismissive of free association, an important operational concept since Freud, and one about which I have published studies, as an equivalent of loose talk.

[3]

But it is once again a case of the kettle calling the pot black, when McCarthy writes: "The forgotten meaning of the Greek word 'psyche' is butterfly - that ephemeral beauty whose chaotic flight seems to lug its body around fitfully; like a suitcase which is far too heavy for it to carry." Psyche NEVER had the LEXICAL meaning of butterfly in ancient Greek, this idea McCarthy got from Greek MYTHOLOGY : the butterfly was the SYMBOL of the mythological PSYCHE, lover or wife of the god eros or amor, pictured with butterfly wings. In McCarthy's imagination she becomes a suitcase -- how unpoetic and also how sloppy.

[4]

Please note: I am not being critical of the man McCarthy, I do not know him, I am only debating him on point, with all due respect.

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Zvi Lothane

e-mail <Zvi.Lothane (at) mssm.edu>