The Best American Poetry

Freud Quiz # 14

Freud Quiz # 14

Freud's discovery of "drives" came about because

(a) some dreams cannot be ascribed to wish-fulfillment

(b) when Freud played golf in Scotland, he favored drivers over putters
(c) he was inspired by the Walter Donaldson song “You’re Driving Me Crazy”

(d) there were more things in heaven and hell than are dreamed of in your philosophy
(e) there was no other way to explain death

-- DL

Freud Quiz # 13

What do women want?

(a) what they have

(b) what they don't have

(c) a cigar

(d) R-E-S-P-E-C-T

(e) next question

What do men want?

(a) food

(b) sex

(c) beer

(d) food, sex, and watching football drinking beer

(e) a power car

-- DL

Freud Quiz # 12

At which of these jokes did Freud laugh:
(1) Catholic is to wholesale as Protestant is to retail.
(2) “A wife is like an umbrella. Sooner or later you take a cab.”
(3) “This girl is like Dreyfus. The army doesn’t believe in her innocence.”
(4) “Was your mother once in service at the palace?” “No, your Highness, but my father was.”
(5) Blind man: “Wie gehts.” Lame man: “As you see.”

-- DL

Freud Quiz # 11 (with bonus question)

Freud maintained that death was

(a) the best of a bad business

(b) the best of both worlds

(c) the right answer

(d) one of two unknowns in the equation

(e) the greater of two evils

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Bonus points: Auden concludes his elegy for Freud by saying, “Sad is Eros, builder of cities, / And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.” What makes Freud call Eros – the impish god of love, known in Latin as Cupid -- “builder of cities"?

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Below: Caravaggio's Cupid

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DL

Freud Quiz # 10

Freud, an avowed agnostic, said that he remained culturally Jewish. The best evidence for this is

(a) the skullcap that he wore when having sexual intercourse with his wife

(b) in no photograph do you ever see Freud smile

(c) Freud compiled a joke book as diligently as he collected dreams and errors

(d) he refused to take a Rorschach Test

(e) he left Vienna for London rather than die at the hands of the Nazis

-- DL

Bonus Questions

1. Who wrote the Confessions of Rousseau?
2. Who wrote the Confessions of Nat Turner?
3. Who wrote the Confessions of a Justified Sinner?
4. Who wrote the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas?
5. Who played Boswell to Samuel Johnson?

Clues:

1. Rhymes with Robinson Crusoe.
2. Rhymes with Byron.
3. Rhymes with the hero of Around the World in 80 Days starring David Niven.
4. Rhymes with Einstein and is a genius.
5. "Nothing concentrates the mind like a hanging in the morning."

-- DL

Freud Quiz # 9

If Jacques Lacan had written "Beyond the Pleasure principle," death would be

a) A one-way ticket to Palookaville
b) The big sleep
c) A modern office building
d) A seventeenth-century orgasm
e) The mirror

Match wits with the experts:

1) Auden
2) Queen Elizabeth I
3) Terry Malloy
4) Sylvia Plath
5) Philip Marlowe

Freud Quiz is supported by a grant from the tomb.

-- DL

Freud Quiz # 8

In Freud’s view, when the Dalai Lama met Salvador Dali

(a) they discussed a possible merger of Surrealism and Buddhism

(b) it was in his waiting room and they criticized US foreign policy

(c) they were in a Gap commercial for khaki trousers

(d) they sang “Hello, Dolly”

(e) it was like the meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine on the operating table.

-- DL

Freud Quiz # 7

Psychoanalysis became known as the "talking cure" because

(a) it depends on free association

(b) all talk and no action make Jack a dull boy

(c) it was the talk of Viennese café society

(d) he heard a woman’s voice in a dream: “she’ll be riding six white horses when she comes.” and he woke up feeling pretty good.

(e) the shrink with the hearing aid is the single greatest metaphor for the profession since Groucho Marx told a mother of eight that he liked his cigar a lot but took it out of his mouth once in a while

-- DL

"The Compulsion to Repeat" by Kathleen Ignatius

The Compulsion to Repeat

(after reading David Lehman's Freud Quiz #5)

I'm going to begin by repeating a phrase

oft repeated

and despised by those like me who dislike

repetition for impression

a friend of mine

a poet

made a quiz about Freud:

what is the compulsion to repeat

to do the thing that scares you

over again and be

forgiven

or should we ask Hitler about Napoleon

and Russians about the madness of repeating the same futile action in hopes of expecting a different

result repeat it

in repeating your quiz, David

I pretend to make a poem

because

pretender

in Spanish is a lovely way to say

you tried, didn't you

implied, the failure being the outcome of your compulsion,

also to woo, court,

pretender

try it is better than our word to be

repeated repeat try

in a rhetorical strategy

to be better than pretending

to repeat what almost was

yet another attempt

to try and get

that Spaniard to pretend.

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-- Kathleen Ignatius,

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Madrid, Spain

5 marzo