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The defensive knowingness of psychoanalysis


Firm boundaries’, ‘autonomous egos’ and recognisable gender identities (gender identities become the central part of being, the ‘privileged site in which the truth of ourselves is to be found’)
Most psychoanalytic literature is a contemporary version of the etiquette book; improving our internal manners, advising us on our best sexual behaviour (usually called maturity, or mental health). 

It is indeed, dismaying how quickly psychoanalysis has become the science of the sensible passions; as though its aim was to make people more intelligible to themselves rather than to realise and accept how strange they are. 
When psychoanalysis makes too much sense, or makes sense of too much, it turns into exactly the symptom it is trying to cure: defensive knowingness. 

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