Great review! I read an Edmundson book about a hundred years ago—it was called Why Read?—and observed most of the same issues you point out. I think academics writing for a popular audience try to dumb it down way too much, or are ordered to do so. I agree with you that, if we're going to use psychoanalysis for this task, Jung's psychic model explains the internet better than Freud's, from shadow projection for the cancellation and purity spirals on both left and right to anima/animus-possession for some of the Tumblr-gender phenomena. (I love Signy Leid, by the way.)
Love Signy Lied, and yeah it’s weird not to bring up Jung in a book like this. Since you brought him up in a footnote I’ll say that this point-“One doesn’t have to agree with Freud on this point, but if one disagrees, it seems a bit odd to devote a whole book to employing his cynical theories as a way to scrutinise modern culture only to dismiss them at the end.” -got me thinking about how Rieff eventually sours *so*much on modernity and on Freud himself that one finds it strange reading those late works that he was ever as invested in the man as he was at the start!
Signy Leid!!!!
Great review! I read an Edmundson book about a hundred years ago—it was called Why Read?—and observed most of the same issues you point out. I think academics writing for a popular audience try to dumb it down way too much, or are ordered to do so. I agree with you that, if we're going to use psychoanalysis for this task, Jung's psychic model explains the internet better than Freud's, from shadow projection for the cancellation and purity spirals on both left and right to anima/animus-possession for some of the Tumblr-gender phenomena. (I love Signy Leid, by the way.)
Love Signy Lied, and yeah it’s weird not to bring up Jung in a book like this. Since you brought him up in a footnote I’ll say that this point-“One doesn’t have to agree with Freud on this point, but if one disagrees, it seems a bit odd to devote a whole book to employing his cynical theories as a way to scrutinise modern culture only to dismiss them at the end.” -got me thinking about how Rieff eventually sours *so*much on modernity and on Freud himself that one finds it strange reading those late works that he was ever as invested in the man as he was at the start!