Word: paranoia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...profession's desire to take over a process in which males had traditionally been prohibited from participating. By focusing on obstetrics, she ignores a parallel process through which the modern medical profession discredited all traditional medicine, relegating male healers as well as female midwives to disrepute. Rich justifies her paranoia with the claim that men will always support the status quo, because "however much it has failed them, however much it divides them from themselves, [patriarchy] is still their order, confirming them in privilege." Maybe she is right. But she offers no serious discussion of alternatives to patriarchy, unless...
...than women. If the structure of mothering in society were really the only source of world problems--Rich blames patriarchy for every problem from anomie to malnutrition--her argument might be valid; if women alone were exploited under the present system, then repossessing our bodies would feed everyone. Her paranoia blinds her, forcing her to reach a puerile conclusion. Which is too bad, because she starts out with an uncontestable argument. It's just that she gets lost somewhere along the way, and the result is a beautifully written disaster...
...adds, "I was a C- student. Smart girls weren't supposed to get boy friends." Says Messer, "Psychiatrists see Southern women because of their rage and resentment at having to bury their feelings. Northern women tend to be treated by psychiatrists more for depression and paranoia. There is much more hysteria in Southern patients." But, Messer notes, change is in the air: fewer Southern women are hiding anger and frustration behind the image of the happy gentlewoman...
...sentences and dismissed as a failure. That is however, considerably better than the discussion of Amin's shift from a relatively close relationship with Israel to a virtual alliance with Lybia. While the pathology of Amin's anti-Zionist position is explored in detail, in all its vicious paranoia, no serious effort to explain the political and/or economic motivations of his new alliance is attempted. It would seem that one is meant to chalk the whole thing up to the whimsical ways of a deranged dictator...
...only exist in popular fiction, where their function is to focus the otherwise vague regional fears of Northern liberals. In his pursuit of Reed, the reluctant Reynolds becomes involved with an engaging assortment of odd characters: Jack Weston as a New York-born Government man parboiling in sweaty paranoia; Alice Ghostley as a dotty old bookkeeper who has the goods on the gangster; Lauren Hutton as a TV newshen whose professional ambitions ire at war with her attraction to the superstud from the swamps. The job also involves Reynolds, a former stunt man, in a couple of nice action sequences...