Page 7 - Boca ViewPointe - February '22

February 2022 Viewpointe, Page 7

Book Review from page 6 haunted him and excited his artistic endeavors. Freud adaptation. You will discover that they are masters of
gained many of his insight, over the course of some four miniaturization, foraging, digesting, seeing, smelling,
transformed humans. They were thought to be conjured years in the second decade of the twentieth century, about hearing and even thinking. The fruit fly, Drosophila
by pharmaceutical arts, and led to the profession of the effect of the traumas of childhood on mental illness. Melanogaster has been the model though which we have
witchcraft which focused on creating transformative From the Freudian perspective, mental illness is an effort come to understand our own DNA genome as the parallels
brews. Stories of men transformed into werewolves to reconcile oneself and cope with reality. In his lupine are uncanny. Yes, flies have brains and neural networks
appeared in the earliest historical writing of the ancient persona, Pankejeff was reacting to his relationship with models comparable to our own; though we have some 10
Greek Hesiod to the satires of the Roman Petronius. Plato a domineering father, fear of castration, and the trauma billion neuron networks to the fly’s some 135,000.
studied animals and noted that the wildest of animals of the later suicides of both his father and sister. Wolves The life span of a house fly is a matter of days; but
resembled the tamest and reflected the duality of man’s became a protective cover as they were for Circe and they are chock full of activities, namely the same ones that
nature, his brutality and his humanity. But legends Hecate, and he himself could identify with the wolf as highlight our humanity: birth, survival, propagation, and
associated with the werewolf, the belief in the ability of a fierce warrior. Though Pankejeff later rejected the death. They follow the rules of the animal kingdom where
humans to transform into wolves became the stuff of fear Freudian analysis, Freud’s Wolf Man has remained a rather be a predator than a victim. They are vampires
and fantasy, ranging from nightmares to folk literature staple of psychoanalytical writing. that feed on us, consuming virtually oceans of our blood
to sculpture and art. Particularly predominant in the If you think it hard to find admiration and love for and spreading disease. They in turn are devoured by
Middle Ages, they continue to hold a place in modern flies, you need not trouble to read any further. Jonathan other animals. While agricultural pests, they also serve
fantastic writing from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Balcombe, an entomologist extraordinarily curious about as cleansing agents gorging on feces and corpses, and
Brad Stoker’s Dracula. the quadrillion of these six legged mopeds, has made neutralizing their polluting effect. They also play an
Sigmund Freud’s study of the phenomenon of the Wolf his career the study of flies and their likes: maggots, important role in pollinating plants and fruits like mangos,
Man, not considered by Ogden, offers a useful modern mosquitos, wasps, spiders, beetles—some 160,000 strawberries, cherries.
psychological perspective to this mythic relationship. species. They have been around for the last 150 million When John Donne in his seduction poem, cited in the
Freud psychoanalyzed a Russian aristocrat Sergei years and can teach us about efficiency and survival. He is epigraph, praised the flea for uniting his lady and himself
Pankejeff, which helped clarify his own understanding of a great fan, to the extent that he has not only has inhabited in its body, their virtual “marriage bed,” to which she,
mental illness and aberration. Young Sergei’s obsession their space for three score years, but even willingly alas, is a reluctant entrant, he likely had no idea how
with white wolves perched outside his window on the (though obviously unwittingly) submitted his own body insightful he was being. The sexual practices of flies
walnut tree at the age of four first encountered in his to their maggot intrusions and voracious appetites. display a willfulness and a sophistication that would
imagination became a lifetime obsession which both And he renders them as models of evolutionary impress the most lurid voyeurs of our species. From their
courtship practices, which include rivalries among males,
Serving Palm Beach and Broward County to the plump gifts offered to the females, wooing, kissing,
petting, licking, and congress which can extend to some
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION REALTORS ® 56 hours; moreover, in the course of a year, they will
OF
Hereby honors and bestows upon Prudence J. Carswell (1981 - 2021) the Status of complete some 25 generations, replicating their species
in the upper quintillions.
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all validating William Blake’s anthropomorphic conceit.
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& Delray Beach fly footprint on humans to contract.”
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Emeritus Professor of English. rmeyers@esu.edu. 
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