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March 23, 2004
More on Spaulding
I caught the entire second segment of Fresh Aire's tribute to Spaulding Gray and it brought to mind some things I haven't considered in a while, which is the indulgence of analysis. It wasn't cemented in my mind until I Gray himself started talking about how difficult it was for him to deal with the fact that after having children, he wasn't being mothered by his girlfriends. A hell of a thing to learn in your 50s I'd say.
Gray got divorced, or legally separated (I suppose there is some difference) when his psychiatrist informed his wife that his behavior was sufficient in California to have him committed into a mental institution. She would have been on the hook legally. It's rather curious to follow this instance of marriage considering that Gray was having babies by another woman during his marriage to this one. They got together because, as Gray was having many operations on his eye, his girlfriend only had limited access to him in the hospital. The law giveth and the law taketh away.
Such legal conveniences are expected of those privileged characters in our society, again illustrating the differences between marriage and Matrimony.
I would like to believe Gray's exposure of his own life, in time, gave a mature treatement of his immaturity but I am not familiar with his later works. In either case I wonder with increasing suspicion what psychoanalysis reveals about personality and values in a corrective way. I've only been through a touch of it myself in the aftermath of my own brother's death. But I suspect that in the best circumstances psychoanalysis gives one a friendship that friends don't - allowing you to make an honest assessment of what you do in life.
Still, it is the conceit and privilege of those with dough to make reasonably functional lives out of that which would wreck the average Joe. But another way to think of psycholanalysis is as a crutch without which those who cannot walk under their own power to stumble through life more or less reasonably. We save those who ordinarily couldn't be saved thus extending the expectations of what is redeemable behavior. I have a problem with this and I am likely to be a harsher judge of Gray than I have been. It's a class thing too.
Posted by mbowen at March 23, 2004 04:28 PM
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Comments
I heard the same interview and I remembered thinking "The guy's biggest complaint is that he was no longer the center of attention?? Boo hoo. Welcome to the real world."
I know next to nothing about Spaulding Gray's life or work. Perhaps knowing more about him would cause me to take his words in a different context. As it stands now, he just sounded like a spoiled kid in a 50 year old body.
I also had a hard time understanding why women would put up with that. He certainly didn't sound like he'd be an easy person to live with.
-A
Posted by: andy at March 24, 2004 08:47 AM