It’s a Faust for Freud’s eyes!
QUESTION
Did Sigmund Freud have a favourite novel?
Sigmund Freud is famous as the father of modern psychology, the founder of psychoanalysis and an explorer of psychosexual theory and dream interpretation. He is known to have enjoyed the great works of european literature, using their characters as a testbed for his ideas.
The Ancient greek tragedian Sophocles wrote Oedipus rex, which was the basis of one of Freud’s most famous diagnoses, the Oedipus complex. in the play, Oedipus, the king of Thebes, unwittingly fulfils a prophecy that says he will kill his father, Laius, and marry his mother, Jocasta.
Freud also admired Shakespeare’s plays — particularly Hamlet, the archetypal case of an unresolved Oedipus complex.
As well as the german classics, such as goethe’s Faust, Freud cited milton’s Paradise Lost, rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and Heinrich Heine’s The Lazarus poems as some of his favourites.
He was impressed by the russian author Fyodor dostoevsky, and described The Brothers Karamazov as ‘the most magnificent novel ever written’. His 1928 article dostoevsky And Parricide links the work to Hamlet and Oedipus rex.
His favourite British novelist was Charles dickens. He loved david Copperfield, as its autobiographical content was ripe for psychological examination. This was the book Freud gave his fiancee, martha Bernays, upon their engagement in 1882.
in stark contrast, Freud found it almost unbearable to listen to music, because it caused him migraines and severe neurosis.
Harriet Bettinson, Malvern, Worcs.
QUESTION
Is it true that women can perceive more colours than men?
ViSiOn is one of the most complicated senses. Ocular cells called cones are responsible for how we perceive colours. The three types of cones detect short, medium and long light wavelengths.
The average human can distinguish one million colours. There is evidence that men and women perceive colour differently, and that women are able to see more shades than men.
in 2012, a team of psychologists at Brooklyn College in new York published Sex & Vision: Spatio-Temporal resolution in the journal Biology Of Sex differences. They tested a large group of young adults with normal vision, examining acuity (sharpness of vision), colour vision and depth perception.
The researchers demonstrated that women are better at discriminating between colours, while men excel at tracking fast-moving objects and discerning detail from a greater distance.
These findings support a huntergatherer hypothesis, whereby the sexes evolved distinct abilities to fit their roles in prehistoric society.
males were able to detect predators or prey from afar, while female gatherers may have adapted to be better at recognising wild berries.
differences within the brain can explain this. The male hormone androgen is responsible for controlling the development of neurones in the visual cortex during embryo development. males have 25 per cent more neurones than females in this area.
most humans have the standard three types of cone cells in our eyes, but some women are believed to have a fourth cone that lies between the standard red and green cones, vastly increasing their range of perception.
Only women have the potential for super colour vision as the genes for the pigments lie on the X chromosome, which they have two of.
Scientists at newcastle university believe that a tiny number of women — 1 to 3 per cent — can distinguish an extraordinary 100 million colours.
Annette Duff, Norwich.
QUESTION
When did the word ‘cool’ come to mean something stylish?
THe word ‘cool’ has had a long and interesting history in the english language. The idea of it meaning stylish is linked to the jazz era, but there is evidence that the word may date back to the 19th century.
Cool is derived from the 9th-century Old english word col, meaning not warm. it quickly lent itself to more figurative use. in the epic story Beowulf, the author uses the word twice to describe hot tempers cooling.
Shakespeare used it in a literal and figurative sense. in macbeth, the Second Witch reduces the temperature of her potion: ‘Cool it with a baboon’s blood, Then the charm is firm and good.’
in A midsummer night’s dream, Theseus tells his Amazonian bride-tobe, Hippolyta: ‘Lovers and madmen have such
seething brains, ‘Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend ‘More than cool reason ever comprehends.’
Hamlet, ranting at the ghost of his dead father, frightens his mother, gertrude, who cries out: ‘O gentle son, ‘Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper ‘Sprinkle cool patience.’
exactly when cool came to mean more than mere composure is uncertain. Some point to Anna Lee Chisholm’s 1924 record Cool Kind daddy Blues.
An article by the American linguist James A. Harrison in the January 1884 issue of Anglia, a german quarterly devoted to english linguistics, contains a glossary of phrases used by African Americans including: ‘dat’s cool!’
By the 1940s, the term ‘cool cat’ was a popular phrase on the jazz scene, and the word has had currency ever since.
Jazz documentary-maker Ken Burns claimed it was Louis Armstrong who coined the term, as in his song This Black Cat Has nine Lives.
Don Livesey, Stone, Staffs.
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