Sunday, March 21, 2010

Freud and the Irish and some other modern Myths and stories

When U2 were playing a gig Bono got the crowd to slowly clap after a moment he said "everytime I clap my hands a child in Africa dies from hunger", in the silence one guy shouts back "Stop f#cking clapping your hands then", this funny as it may seem is an urban legend. What is true and ironic is that Bono is a tax exile from Ireland, with all his work on global responsibility to poorer countries, he pays very little tax at home!
There is a belief that Irish people cannot be cured using analytic methods of psychiatry, "This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever"  is what Sigmund Freud actually said about the Irish. Freud claimed that the Irish had no rational thought processes that could be analytically studied, I do not know what size of a group he studied to come to this conclusion or if it was from observing people in an Irish Bar but luckily there is nothing in the water or the Guinness that makes us any different to all other races genetically. But we love the quote and what other way can we explain the madness of being Irish :-).
Last one is a Titanic myth, the Titanic was built in Belfast where there has always been tensions between the Prodestants and the Catholics. The story goes that the hull welded onto the Titanic by a Prodestant was 3909 04 or when viewed in a mirror is 'NO POPE' , for this reason the ship was sunk. This of course is false the actual  number was 401.
BTW we may be a bit mad as a race, but we do put the fun in dysfunctional!

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