do you consider yourself a reel collector? Sigmund Freud said the collecting mania was only a substitute for the sex drive-the object sought is just a symbol of sexual love-his successors in the psychiatric business went even further-they called the collecting urge a throwback to the oral and anal conditions of infancy, sucking and bowel control-they say the acquisitive desire is nothing more than a savage instinct, an uncontrollable desire to seize upon a treasure and hoard it away!
I should have given attribution over Freuds quote-it came from a great book by Charles Hamilton called Auction Madness which I highly recommend-when this book first came out it created a furor in the auction world because he gives away a lot of the unethical tricks used by the world's largest auction houses in fleecing their customers-they blackballed him of course, and he went summarily out of business-I was living in New York at that time and I remember particularly how nasty the New York Times was toward him-they didn't dispute his charges, but were quite ticked that he gave away those secrets-at any rate, the quote is Hamiltons.
hey, PB: I have a more kindly interpretation of the collecting urge...we are, after all, hunters and gatherers and that strong instinct is the only reason we aren't dust at this point. However, since we don't need to harvest berries and beavers (for most of us, that has two meanings), we still have the drive to slay some thrift store crap and drag it home :-] so, let's stop being so hard on ourselves and just go with it!
Another trait that has kept us moving is the innate ability to rationalize virtually any behavior.
Poor, poor, pitiful Freud. He was so caught up in his psyche dissection that he failed to understand that collecting and the sex drive are synergistic. As for the throwback theory-- well, we were all Jung once.
Hey Joe, et al: Dr F would have said the same thing about donorcycles that he said about horseback riding: that's putting the POWER where you feel you NEED it. And regarding those porsches, unlike cacti and porcupines, they carry their pricks on the inside. There you have it, from the keyboard of a shrink, who, by the way, doesn't feel the least sexual relatedness with those Pfluegers and Kovs on the shelf. Ron
Wasn't it Robin Williams that said, "Owning a Porsche and snorting cocaine is gods way of saying, you got too much money!" You won't catch me indulging in either! We will forgive ya for the spelling this time. Maybe Paul should add a spell checker to this board! Ha Ha Ha !
"H"
