Faux Fu

Friday, June 06, 2014

Mind & Behavior!

I'm reading this book about Alex Chilton, and I guess the title is a clue, "A Man Called Destruction." Tells you that it's gonna be a story of creation and well, I guess, the other side of creation.  I studied Psychology in College, and I think this man and his group, Big Star, would have been a hell of a great case study.

Psychology - "the science of mind and behavior." I always thought that the science part of psychology was a little suspect. Freud made up interesting and insightful narratives, and B.F. Skinner tortured little pigeons for some crazy reason, and C.J. Jung, well, he was an amazing, insightful mystic with some loopy, and cool theories... and then there were all those "therapies" -  "tell me about your childhood..." - lobotomies, shock treatments, massive doses of drugs, brain-scanning - "look at all the pretty pictures"... the whole field seemed crazy, and maybe a little bit sick...

So anyway, yes, the human mind and behavior, what a topic.  Endless and deep. Contradictory. Unexplainable. Strange. Kinky. Destructive. Funny. Disturbing. How many things can go right? How many things can go wrong? And what do people do under stress, or in the midst of success, or the lack of success? People never cease to amaze... and disappoint... and well, just when you think you get it, that you have finally figured these people out, something else comes out of left field...

Blog Archive