Now though, I’m beginning to suspect that you may actually be a gatekeeper for the de Burgh conspiracy. Under the guise of criticising the man, you are clearly disseminating information designed to prepare us all for our new overlord. Your knowledge of de Burgh and his plans is far too detailed to be anything other than insider-information. He has arranged for you to prime the world… to get us all used to the idea of his impending power-grab, so that when it happens we will be less challenged by the idea and more likely to accept it.

Personally I’ve always felt de Burgh was not very good, but the first couple of albums have nice tunes on, which is more than you can say for Huey Lewis. Given the fact that you’ve never shown anything like the same level of venom about Mr. Lewis, it’d always been obvious to me that your obsession with de Burgh was a result of your aforementioned donkey-disgust. Now though… all these details you appear privy to… I suddenly see the psychological projection involved in your accusations against me.

Merrick “Gatekeeper de Burgh” Godhaven? It all becomes clear.

if you’re in the vicinity of the Trinity Postgrad Reading Room over the summer, pop in and say hello. You know where I’ll be.

Yeah, and we all know what you’ll be doing there, too; plotting with Hubie De Burgh.

Luckily for me though, Bateson’s “double-bind” theory of schizophrenia is currently experiencing something of a resurgence within psychoanalysis. So that gets his foot in the door. Though I suspect I may be committing a minor heresy by writing on Bateson and not making “double-bind” the focus of my paper.

Incidentally, there’s a very interesting (well, to me) paper to be written on the ‘double-bind’ theory of schizophrenic development from a Lacanian perspective. Don’t imagine I’ll have much time between now and September to get around to it, but maybe something for the future………

And certainly that would be a much more mainstream paper. By taking Bateson’s ‘ecology of mind’ idea as my starting point I’m definitely asking a lot from the external examiner. Mind you, I am passing Bateson through a Freudian filter (if you’ll excuse the expression) which will hopefully mollify any traditionalists on the small awards committee. I’ll be applying Freud’s 2nd topography to Bateson’s ecology of mind. On top of that, the Pleasure Principle Vs. Reality Principle stuff is just about as mainstream as you can get in psychoanalysis. Some real back to basics psychodynamics amongst the high-falootin’ interdisciplinary stuff.

But yeah, I do take your general point. And on the specific point of smelling of Bateson… well, given the appalling dearth of “post-Batesonian” writing, I’ll not be too offended if that’s the worst criticism I receive. I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed that I’m wearing enough eau-du-Sigmund to balance it all out.

Having said that, I also suspect it’ll be pretty damn good.