Black Ship to Hell by Brigid Brophy

Black Ship to Hell Reviews

• 
  Nathan "N.R." Gaddis

  So I picked thus up for one US dollar thinking it was a novel. Rather, it is an outdated Freudian (if you think that adjective is redundant, then you shouldn't be reading this) study of the propensity of being-human towards violence and self-destruction. Blah blah.
  
  The title is from The Odyssey.
  
  Nuegut of Wisdom :: Whether you be atheist or theist, if your theology rotates like as if you had a nail through your foot into the oak floorboards around HELL then you're probably off your rocker.
  
  But I have no disposition to read an obscure reading of Freud from the early nineteen sixties without being permitted to regard it as a field-refashioning work.
  
  The Index (credit where due :: this is a purely Swiftian strategy of reading) contains a single entry under "Heidegger", one for "Kant", and not even a hedge for "Hegel".
  
  In short ;; ain't gunna happen.
• 
  Steve Morrison

  This was one of those books for me where I found myself vehemently disagreeing page by page for much of the time. But I kept reading nonetheless and found it compelling due to Brophy's engaging, erudite, witty voice. This is a very full book, and worth rereading, crammed with myriads of references from mythology to psychoanalysis to Mozart to Sade to Leopold and Loeb. And I love this crazy genre of psychoanalytic cultural history. Erich Neumann's Origins and History of Consciousness, and The Great Mother are also in this genre, if it can be called that. Maybe Frazer's The Golden Bough, though that's a little earlier. Those 20th century Freudian scholars really had their act together and make for fascinating reading, whether or not you buy all of their arguments. It will start the ball rolling on a lot of engaging thoughts one way or another.
  
  Anyhow, it's a great journey through the Underworld of human history--the self-destructive Thanatos impulse and the way it manifests itself through civilization and culture, as well as in individual lives. And a great riff on Freud's Civilization And Its Discontents.
• 
  Dan's

  This is a very full book, and worth rereading, crammed with myriads of references from mythology to psychoanalysis to Mozart to Sade to Leopold and Loeb. And I love this crazy genre of psychoanalytic cultural history. Erich Neumann's Origins and History of Consciousness, and The Great Mother are also in this genre, if it can be called that. Maybe Frazer's The Golden Bough, though that's a little earlier. Those 20th century Freudian scholars really had their act together and make for fascinating reading, whether or not you buy all of their arguments. It will start the ball rolling on a lot of eng
  
  
  [ a few 'loose pieces' so I may recall the reasons behind researching this one]
• 
  Jay

  A very wide-ranging overview of human violence through a Freudian lens, pulling on just about every piece of fact and fiction Brophy wants to. Strangely quite a compelling page-turner from the offset with the reading of Leopold and Loeb's crime, and stranger still a book of theory and criticism I'd happily read again from page 1.
• 
  Richard Thompson

  This Freudian analysis of society, intellectual history, myth, religion and art could have been great fun, if it did not take itself so deadly seriously and if it had not gone on for so long. The Freudian toolbox is wonderfully versatile and can be used in almost any conceivable human situation to craft an analysis that sounds plausible and that contains enough truth to be at least a little convincing. But please. I never wanted to have sex with my mother, and though I sometimes wanted to kill my father, it was out of frustration and embarassment at his eccentricity, not because he was my rival for my mother's love. All of the Oedipal stuff, the nonsense about castration and the analysis of totems does not ultimately hold up, but still it can be fascinating and revealing. And Brophy is a good writer with a deep knowledge of Western history and culture. But Brophy sees Freud (and oddly also Bernard Shaw) as the second coming, the one revealed truth, and that aspect of the book is too much to take for 500 pages. If she could have had a small sense of irony, if she could have allowed her tongue to creep into her cheek a few times, this book could have been immensely entertaining. Instead it is a huge trudge through a world of delusion.