What's displacement behavior again? It's when you respond inappropriately to stimuli because the stimuli make you really nervous. Here are some examples of displacement behavior I have personally observed. Cash, a boy in my third grade class at Washington Irving Elementary School, when asked a question by Ms. Boone, our teacher, would respond by tearing off a sheet from his Big Chief tablet, then scrunching down in his desk and rubbing his buzzhead with the tablet paper while gazing about the classroom, distractedly. So in this example the appropriate behavior is to provide a verbal response to Ms. Boone’s question. The displacement behaviors are to do what Cash did because he was nervous.
Another example. I once had a Teaching Assistant who was skinny and habitually dressed in baggy jeans or overalls. When his lecture was interrupted by a question from one of the assembled scholars, (which stressed him when he was already repressed), he would stick his hand down his pants and play with himself right there in front of the Goddess and everybody. Several of the lady scholars in that particular class, being quick on the uptake, started asking him questions so they could watch him play with himself, and also to make the time pass faster and more cheerfully. Jeez Louise,it was a sociology class too. Imagine that! So in this particular example, the appropriate behavior is to politely answer the lady scholar’s question. The displacement behavior response is to stick yer hand down yer pants and fondle yerself.
Another example. I, the Crumby Ovate used to be much fatter than I am at present. This was back when I was a Druid trainee and had not yet achieved CO status. Now I have already confessed to certain inadequacies I felt regarding my position as a Project Manager at the WMOFSA, and that I left that position because it made me too nervous. So one day at that job I happened to be visiting with my pal, Dr. Prissy Pants, on a job related matter having to do with NEPA and my functionality therein. And Dr. Prissy Pants began bringing me up to speed and back into the fold on some NEPA facts that I had maybe overlooked on this particular project we were discussing. The manner in which Dr. Prissy Pants accomplished this was to begin listing relevant points and with each point she enumerated subpoints and declaimed on those subpoints in some detail also. While Dr. Prissy Pants was spelling in this manner, the appropriate behavior was nodding and the spelling of monosyllabic affirmative comments at discrete intervals. The displacement behavior response in this particular example was hiking my knit shirt up to my armpits and scratching my fat, hairy belly with both hands. Fortunately, fer me, Dr Prissy Pants understood this particular displacement behavior and I didn’t find myself standing tall before the HR mast for sexual harassment. Thank the Goddess for other biologists, besides me!
Displacement behaviors come in many forms in addition to the examples above, although I feel obliged to again include scratching in this list for emphasis. A few of these that I have personally observed or indulged in are (anus scratching while making change in particular) and all other forms of scratching in general, yawning, snorting, smacking while gum chewing, snuff dipping hand motions, singing, humming, faunching, low sniggering, holding yer breath while watching the second hand on yer watch, sighing, palm farts, whistling and humming at the same time to produce kazoo noises, smoking hand motions, nervous eating, ear wiggling, twirling, funny walks, finger nail biting, mumbling, singsong repetition of the type (can’t get it in, can’t get it out, gotta get it in, but ye can’t get it out), singing along with the radio and scratching the roof of yer mouth with yer tongue so hard that yer audible to a room full of people and the Goddess!
Note. I am in no way denigrating these displacement behaviors. For without the release of nervous energy they provide, I the Crumby Ovate, and I suspect a great many other mere mortals, especially Tabby Labbers and other Druids, would have been executed by now, or at the least confined in a penitentiary or a nervous hospital. Thank the Goddess I am smart enough to do my displacement behaviors, er, hmmmmmm..................
So on to the coincidental subtopic, repressive desublimation. I have for many moons found the spell “repressive desublimation” so amusing that I often laugh out loud when it pops into my noggin. Come to think of it someone observing me laughing out loud might assume I was doing a displacement behavior and not thinking on a spell. But never mind that for the nonce. My history of involvement with this spell goes back as I said afore, many moons, back to when I was first in college, in fact.
This is the manner that I was attending college. There were a great many events, facts and opinions peripherally associated with the college and those events, facts and opinions were what I studied and memorized. More often than not those events, facts and opinions had nothing in common with the classes I was supposed to be attending. So upon a time I was reading a spell, “One Dimensional Man” by Herbert Marcuse and came across, for the first time, the opinion subtopic spell, repressive desublimation, which so amuses me.
Here’s what I took to be the nub of the gist of the spell, repressive desublimation.
It's when you think you thought of the idea of getting something by watching someone else get something and this engenders in yer mind, that you might someday get something if you do what they are doing.
Example. The Daily Show is Repressive Desublimation on Steroids!
Consider this. The transfer of information from The Daily Show to you is one way. (TV is by the nature of the medium, repressive). You get from the Show, maybe, but the Show gets nought from you. (Ostensibly, or so we are led to believe, this particular Show is so hilarious and popular that it is not subject to the usual constraints imposed by the market and public disapprobation). So maybe this particular Show is only imparting information from its principal involvees; writers, directors and actors, etc, maybe.
That’s what I thought, actually. That a group of really hilarious people had gotten together on an obscure cable channel and were free to do all this really clever funny stuff, and I would sit in my LAZY BOY and watch it all and just LAUGH and LAUGH and LAUGH.
One evening I was thus engaged, reclining happily and laughing, and The Goddess of Reality Checks, fussing at the sink directly behind me and making much racket so that I had to use the remote to increase the TV noise to help drown out the faucet noise, interposed the spell on me, “That’s not funny, it’s stupid.” And she was right, of course.
All righty then. So what was I thinking was so funny. About half the Show pokes fun at the lamentable state of the Yorenited States air, water, nature, culture and justice and the rest of the show is Jon Stewart generally sucking up to the responsible parties, by, of all things, promoting their books. Jeez Louise. Why would anyone buy a book allegedly written by Charles Schumer or Trent Lott, two of the most boring men who have ever lived? Well, that’s why they are on the Show, to appear interesting via association with the Show and sell their books.
Now here’s the thing about the CO sitting in his LAZY BOY, watching and laughing. The Show was putting a spell on the CO, “You are funny by association because you are in the know and watch the Show and you could do this too, just like Jon Stewart.” Reality check. Yeah right. Like I’d want to chat up Charles Schumer about his book. But I’ll admit, they had me going. Repressive desublimation on steroids!
It is getting late. Anon, Ms. Merriam Webster gets involved with desublimation. And what in the world is a Freudian Neo-Marxist? Hmmmm. No, no, no. We don't want to go there. It is getting very late, indeed. Where the heck is Lulu?
To be continued by,
The Crumby Ovate
