Mar 18, 2005
While the Biological Clock Ticks
When I was an undergrad at North Texas I took a couple of classes from Bill Painter, a fine teacher. He amazed me one day by arguing that most of the psychoses identified by Freud were in a way created by him or, more precisely, by the combination of his peculiar genius and the contemporary culture of Vienna. He agreed that Freud’s patients had problems but argued that the society shaped both the problems and their responses. Freud, with unconscious creativity, looked for universals in those responses and thought he found some. .
Painter argued that Freud was wrong. While going crazy may be universal, how you go crazy is cultural, and the relationship between the two is not a simple one.
This came to mind while reading a Salon article by Rebecca Traister (membership probably required) on the Male Biological Clock and the sight of middle-aged men chasing independent women with a shopping list of questions in the quest for marriage and stability.
It’s a fun article—it would have made a great “Sex and the City” episode--and there’s probably some truth in it (which is why it would have made a great episode).
Where did these biological clocks come from? When did people begin to feel anxiety about the alarm ringing and (to use Mark Twain’s imagery) the candlestick going soft and the candleholder barren? At some level, these concerns arise in any society where a sufficient number of people live long enough to have them.
However, the metaphor itself could not exist before the ticking clock, that is before the pendulum and the mechanical watch. Did this “modern” concept of time lend some urgency to it? I suspect yes. Time flickers instant by instant when the clock /ticks/ out/ time. So a bit of poetry increased the anxiety-- though I am not sure when the metaphor was first used.
But in the last twenty years or so a combination of science and culture has increased consciousness of these limits in our society. In part that is because they no longer seem inevitable. Women have children later and later, via hormones and in vitro fertilization. Viagra and its competitors allow men fun, and depending upon the state of his partner, the two might even procreate the old fashioned way. Thus, those with the money and the desire can change the structures of their lives and others watch with envy.
Then there is the loss of the status of age. Age may bring a bit of wisdom, but it also brings befuddlement as nipple-ringed students rip music and stack a gazillion songs into a little box with no moving parts.
If the candle still lights, if a child may come of us, then we haven’t abdicated youth to the strange new young.
Painter argued that Freud was wrong. While going crazy may be universal, how you go crazy is cultural, and the relationship between the two is not a simple one.
This came to mind while reading a Salon article by Rebecca Traister (membership probably required) on the Male Biological Clock and the sight of middle-aged men chasing independent women with a shopping list of questions in the quest for marriage and stability.
It’s a fun article—it would have made a great “Sex and the City” episode--and there’s probably some truth in it (which is why it would have made a great episode).
Where did these biological clocks come from? When did people begin to feel anxiety about the alarm ringing and (to use Mark Twain’s imagery) the candlestick going soft and the candleholder barren? At some level, these concerns arise in any society where a sufficient number of people live long enough to have them.
However, the metaphor itself could not exist before the ticking clock, that is before the pendulum and the mechanical watch. Did this “modern” concept of time lend some urgency to it? I suspect yes. Time flickers instant by instant when the clock /ticks/ out/ time. So a bit of poetry increased the anxiety-- though I am not sure when the metaphor was first used.
But in the last twenty years or so a combination of science and culture has increased consciousness of these limits in our society. In part that is because they no longer seem inevitable. Women have children later and later, via hormones and in vitro fertilization. Viagra and its competitors allow men fun, and depending upon the state of his partner, the two might even procreate the old fashioned way. Thus, those with the money and the desire can change the structures of their lives and others watch with envy.
Then there is the loss of the status of age. Age may bring a bit of wisdom, but it also brings befuddlement as nipple-ringed students rip music and stack a gazillion songs into a little box with no moving parts.
If the candle still lights, if a child may come of us, then we haven’t abdicated youth to the strange new young.