Sigmund Freud once said, “Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.”
William Shakespeare went before pretty much everybody. However, while he managed to surpass Freud, it looks like he fell short of Erik Erikson. So what would a game of poker look like with those three guys?
***
Sig opens with five stages of development, all of them with labels that read, at least to me, insulting across the board, especially if you’re “fixated” in either anal or oral. However, phallic phixation—I mean fixation—sounds an awful lot like “using your feminine wiles” so I don’t know if that’s really all that bad if done in moderation. Lord knows I’ve had my share of underachievers, so I’ll take an “overly” ambitious phallic guy any day.
On to the Bard.
Will calls Sig’s five and raises him two in his monologue “All the world’s a stage.” Infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon, and second childhood. Stephen Sondheim wrote a line in A Little Night Music, “If they’re actors, they’ll have to sleep in the stables.” (Somebody deal Mr. Sondheim into the next hand, please, and put him next Will.)
Erik sees Will’s seven and raises him one then turns to his wife Joan who slips him another to make a total of nine and the Eriksons take the pot.
As for Carl Jung, he’s on a metaphysical emergency conference call, trying to analyze my analyst. It appears that poor Daniel may well be fixated in Carl’s Athlete stage considering how, at least twice a month, Daniel will find some way to throw in the phrase, “I’m an athlete.”
I always thought it had to do with his obsession with baseball, softball, tennis, and swimming, and also that, for some lame reason, he had the need to show off with me. But perhaps his motive runs deeper.
Maybe Dan’s been hinting for me to look up Jungian developmental theory but I haven’t been paying attention. Except now that I have, Dan is still in big trouble. Because according to one article I read, Jung’s Athletes are “self-absorbed” and are “the least mature.”
Oops.
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