BlogU
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The Teacher-Stupid Relationship
By Scott McLemee January 9, 2009 1:17 pmSomewhere out on The Edge of the American West, a professor sends a note to one of his young charges who has contacted him about the semester's work:
You don’t need to apologize for emailing me two hours after class about an assignment not due until [much later]. It shows that you’re on top of things, and professors love stupids who are on top of things.
It turns out that the entry for "parapraxis" (as Freud himself preferred to call this sort of thing) in one of the online reference works gives another academic example:
An oft-told example is the story of the young university lecturer who invites her doctoral supervisor, a very eminent psychoanalyst, to give a guest lecture in the department where she has taken her first job. At the end of the distinguished lecture, the junior colleague stands up and says “I’d like to spank the speaker”, betraying some repressed frustration, or possibly unconscious sado-masochistic desire.
For some reason this calls to mind Adorno's remark that nothing is true in psychoanalysis except for the exaggerations. (Unless I'm misremembering that.)
